Would you find yourself performing all the same actions all over again?
What do you most regret? Sometimes grief lies in wait for us at our happiest moments. What would you change, if anything? How about altering your Soulmate, fellow traveler on life’s journey? Would you roll those dice again?
Skeptics say a stopped clock is right twice a day, but whatever the causation, sometime prophecies come true. A creeping suspicion bubbles up out of nowhere – manifesting as reality. We guess restlessly at “The Truth.”
This glittering gazing ball at the center of our garden reflects our hopes, wishes and dreams, one of which is that it confers the gift of prophecy. We know we must be right about some future event; but if we share our knowledge too often we are discredited or disbelieved.
Perhaps all we need is to cultivate our gift; forget “knowing”; concentrate on the blur of memory and project it forcefully into the future. Think about past, present and possibility, making all our choices with our Wisdom Eye fully open. It could be that the answer to the question we seek is already known to our Soulmate if we can only learn to trust and understand.
What fresh new worlds might we create with our clear shared minds?.
YOU ARE NOT LOST
Do forests think? These trees know where they are In spite of all our attempts At subjugation We are all still here In spite of prophets who Calculated chances of survival With the eye of a murderous god Every one of us Who has ever been Is still here
The Pond may reflect what it sees, but we know it has depths. There are things in there, moving around, looking back at us, possibly making calculations about us. The pond is deep enough so that we could swim – and never touch bottom. When we look into a mirror, is the mirror looking into us? We know the answer is always Yes as long as we have a Soulmate. We function as each other’s mirrors. World within world; bubble within a bubble; our vision alters. We learn from each other what Truth really is.
Truth lies just beyond our vision, but luckily our Soulmate provides eyes in the back of our head. The Truth will out. The Pond waits quietly, knowing someday it will repossess. Hidden creatures study us as we study them. We remember what it is like to dip beneath it surface and gaze back at the blurry universe – blurry now – where some breathe air. Goldfish will nibble at our skin while spiders tangle in our hair. Someday we must acclimate to a different ethos. Appearing in your spread, The Pond means Judgment is coming. It can be good or it can be bad: it is up to us.
Because that’s what we’re scared of, isn’t it? We know how we make judgments: Interestingly, in our everyday life it seems like “judgment” is constantly changing. There’s appeals, and reconsiderations and every now and then some “delivered and done” decision is disinterred and we all publicly agree: “That was wrong.”
So, like a lot of “finite” things, “judgment” is a “concept”, just like the theory that if you keep dividing a distance in half you’ll never reach zero. We’re afraid of “bad” judgments, that’s the truth; because we judge ourselves harshly: “Why can’t you do anything right?”
And we are cognizant of a Group of Others – lets call them by their true name – bullies – who are actively seeking tender vulnerabilities they can exploit. Once they realize what a mess we are won’t that be the Final Judgment we can never recover from?
We are a fearful species. And a lot of our fears, it turns out, are hardwired. Behavioral experts pointed out a hundred years ago that children are automatically afraid of things like snakes and cliffs but not speed or electric light sockets. Fear isn’t rational.
And since we are a social species it only makes sense that at least some of our fears would be “social” in nature. But here’s the rub: defensiveness ramps up anxiety and most – if not all – of obsessive behavior is engineered to distract us from anxiety! We’re pigeons pecking at ourselves! So we’re not doing ourselves any favors by getting hysterical about “what other people think.” Better work on maintaining our calm and maintaining our wellness program. Remember, soulmates can save each other.
Haiku: Devourer of Hearts
Scaling hearts For final judgment: Soured hearts Desiccate; Tantric hearts Burgeon
You will never rub the edges off each other, says the Orchid – and that is a good thing. You don’t want to. We’re not here to “bland out” or diminish each other. We are here to enhance and free each other.
We pay homage to each other’s special qualities. Naturally it helps to know where each other is headed but not even the Self really know that. Ultimately, we are mysteries to each other.
We must be each other’s Map and each other’s Mirror. The challenge is to accept and honor each other’s strangeness; singularity. You were drawn together for a reason. Sometimes it prickles and we feel ourselves shrink, or even withdraw. That is the rhythm of the tango we have undertaken.
Many Soulmates welcome costume and role play to try to express the range of interests, the force of questions, the eagerness of exploring and adventuring we will always have. The key is to be aware of the rhythms of advance, retreat, resist, re-fashion, re-remember. Expect these. They are necessary to our continued growth. Our relationship is a greenhouse and we must check constantly on the health of our tiny plants. Fill air and soil with love and…release.
In the Butterfly Pavilion
This evening you said you wished I was more conventional. I bowed my head. I did not speak. Outside the animals leaned together, Holding breath To hear my answer. The cats-tongue ferns Swelled up like swords, pushed out the stink Of possibility while The rabbit-blooded lawn curled back: Sows littered in the cyclamen Phlox flamed Dwarf stars Broke free Spew molten ore Across a sky now Darkening to night. Nighttime is my kingdom. I fold my hands in my sleeves and Wait.
We find ourselves now in an endless pandemic, a New Normal caused by our aggressive human interference with our planet’s wildlife. By a miracle the same pharmaceutical companies that have been competitively bleeding all of us dry have come up with a vaccine that seems effective at keeping most of us out of the hospital. Wouldn’t want to kill the golden geese!
But it doesn’t work if you don’t take it and, wonder of wonders, a substantial number of Americans have become suspicious of the medical establishment! Since insurance companies have been advertising for years that healthcare is “our choice” based on “what plan we can afford” I for one am not surprised.
This is the only possible end result of a gated health care system that actively despises “Public” health as “radical socialism”!
So where is our Soul & our Soulmate in all this, our little, fragile, mortal, human body that drew the “medical intervention” card only this morning? “Medical intervention” is represented in the Tantric Garden by the humble foxglove.
Foxgloves contain digitalis, the building block of cardiology care. Where do we stand on intervention? We may create a “perfect world” with our Soulmate but does that mean we can let no one in? A moment’s thought convinces that we must keep the freshening breezes of this world blowing as long as we are in this world! “Help” will always be needed and hopefully, offered.
Can we learn to trust the Helpful Intervener? We don’t want to create a love nest so fragile it is threatened by any outsider. Instead, we want to make certain we avail ourselves of every good advancement and improvement opportunity in our oh so imperfect world.
ALYSSUM
What wound is this? Flowering? Flowering? I wake at two am Immobilized – A curvilinear clamp Half hoop clenching My right side. .
It could be the strain of Fishing for a future Hooking sky through a Porthole window or I could be over-organized. The Doctors dismissed me in My mother’s name. “You dare to be angry? You dare to grow old? You are a false alarm.”
I say a prayer to the great night heron, that Pregnant thief of dreams – Solitary hunter calling to collect me. Dream he rises To unleash the silken sinews Of submission from my torn and Tethered wing – Feathered like a revelation Stippled like the phases of the moon Birthing spirit, coming Coming, coming In his cloud of fire.
“Can you now recognize beauty where you once saw chaos?”
What if a garden yearned not for care but to be ravished by wilderness? Wildflowers don’t care whether we look at them or not; they grow wherever they wish. Attempts have been made to translate this freedom into predictable practicality without success, because once a flower has been tamed it is no longer a Wildflower.
Amusingly, however, we keep trying to reproduce that magic moment when we saw them blush in wood or field and were so entranced we set ourselves to copy surprise, to reproduce astonishment. It must be something about us that we so long to mirror God’s effects. In the meantime, Wildflowers sleep in earth and clay, and they keep coming up to gladden our hearts and surmount the sadness of all our petty certainties.
Personal, cultural and historical beauty standards evolve. Online dating apps sort by “status”: not a good way to find a Soulmate. Georgia O’Keefe is famous for seeing a bleached cow skull abandoned in a desert landscape as beautiful and teaching us to see that, too.
Today we embrace the Wildflowers in our Tantric Garden, (or more truthfully, Wildflowers embrace us). Traditionally wilderness is an undervalued resource in a planned garden. Gardeners sweep them away to plant something more intentional.
The relevance to our Soulmate Quest is the question of Unintentional Beauty or Beauty Surprise. My question is, Is there any other kind? Beauty questing noisily (and showily!) for admiration is hardly as evocative as beauty that doesn’t care whether we see it or not, doesn’t represent an attempt to “control” or manipulate us and doesn’t position itself in a trophy race.
Wildflowers remind us that we could be overlooking something natural, close at hand. That “something close” could be ourselves! Think how you undervalue your own wildness, the indigenous rather than “acquired” parts of your personality.
Complete the phrase: “I am a natural______.” What? What’s so deep and automatic about you that it seems inborn? This is the level on which you hope to connect with The Beloved. You seek not just the promise of subtler pleasure but a necessary philosophical correction granting you the relaxing peace of evolving into an effortless, endless wonderment that doesn’t require a platform, management or positioning, but merely acceptance of deep joy and gratitude for life’s gifts.
BEAUTIFUL
He said you’re beautiful I said this carapace of flesh Is my bad fairy clamoring for attention like some approval junkie; People don’t look at me they Look over me Oh well he said All of us got Some cross to bear.
Outside the carefully groomed garden lies the true Wilderness; the ungroomed terrain. At first the eye is confused by the plethora of wildflowers, the riot of wild grasses, the proliferation of low shrubs. The fallen and the dying have not even been tidied away.
Slowly our senses adjust to pick out hovering butterflies, nesting birds and evidence of even wilder visitors such as rabbits, skunks, weasels and raccoons. This is their world; they prefer it to ours.
We must admit they have a point: how can something so haphazard radiate such magnetic beauty? Sometimes we’re forced to judge their world the winner; it is definitely more intricate, majestic and evocative than our carefully raked paths. We study it to comprehend, learn, possibly mimic its effects. And as we absorb their ethos we become one of them, lowly commoners of earth, enjoying a bounty of goodness, even wealth, poured out without regard to our intent or purchasing power.
Destiny warns; “It’s not about you.” “Fundamental attribution error” in the social sciences means confusing individual causation as determinative when mass social movements are actually predeterminative. We would like to believe that we have control over keeping our parents together, preventing war, stopping climate change, averting pandemics, getting promotions, guaranteeing the constant love of worthy Soulmates. How much control do we really have over those things?
We are tiny creatures – out of many – finding ourselves momentarily in a tiny corner of an ever-changing wilderness. This is not our “fault”, but still, we must live our lives as best we can. Can we guarantee our future good health? No, but we can improve it. Can we guarantee our Soulmate’s future health? No, but once again, we can lead a joint healthy life, together.
Can we avoid sorrow? Most likely not; sorrow is endemic to those who think and feel. It’s how we manage sorrow that counts. The Dalai Lama says pain is unavoidable, but suffering is voluntary.
We are creatures of wish & fear. The wish is that we will stay alert for dangerous and destructive incidents and behaviors. Our fear is that Fate is out to get us. And in a way, it is. Age stalks us. History stalks us. But if anxiety about the future only ruins the enjoyment of today, it is not doing its job, it is sabotaging you.
With a Soulmate, you possess two souls, two futures plus a joint Soul and joint future. This gives us not just a reason but a mandate to celebrate the ecstasy, the bliss of every moment. You are Mine and I am Yours.
EVOLUTION The world that seems to us so still And echoes no reflection of our will Somehow produced the seed that in us all Resurrected us from worm to fish, to crawl Upon the earth, to stand and then Return a child to creep and crawl again In some unending pattern, sane or not Judging by the brain that this same seed begot And yet within our every cell lies curled A revolutionary flag to be unfurled To lead us on to who knows what potential end Beyond the reach of enemy or friend? Can it be that simple balls of spinning glass Possessed the strength to lift from this morass All that we are; though we don’t understand This torch we pass so tenderly from hand to hand?
We were amorphous seacreatures once. We breathed liquid through our gills and rubbed our silvery sides against our mates. In the womb we roiled and reveled in our oceanic environment. Whenever we float, eyes closed, we channel what it felt like, shivering and shimmering in an upside-down world. So is the dexterity of melting into a concatenation of dizzyingly different avatars a souvenir of ancestral past or a premonition of some liquid, undiversified future? What can it tell us about recognizing our soulmate?
We are reminded of skills we haven’t even tried yet, and our deep connections to inhabitants of universes we cannot even see. In the tantric garden, sex, gender, and identity are fluid; compromised constructs we create and share only with the Beloved. Let your imagination billow outwards, absorbing the Other. Our bodies express our memories, personhoods, dreams; evoke our aspirations and our lives. What does it mean to be truly open to another human? The level of trust must be so great the future vanishes into an endless present.
God knows, we are willing. To be full of another is the ultimate mindfulness; we touch brains, hopes, memories as well as skin.
I see myself in you –
Moth to flame Your meteoric dust Drips ash into my upturned mouth. I taste stars. What manner of being Have you become? I only know you’re something that I need Your mirrored endlessness partakes Of nothing human; suggests an Completion. I’ll take that promise; your shadow arches Like an angry lover Refusing satisfaction. My hunger burns more purely in the titillation of neglect. Without you I’m just myself With you I’m everything; God of Worlds. Anyone can be born: eternity is The lover’s privilege.
“Going to sleep in one world we awaken in another”
Night offers a frightening universe of the invisible and the unfamiliar. How many of us have lain in our comfortable bedrooms and imagined tossed clothes as threatening monsters and scratchy tree-branches as iniquitous invaders?
Night is the domain of nocturnal creatures we imagine are up to no good; otherwise, why seek darkness? Night is the land of dreams when all worries and anxieties bubble up from the deepest depths of our own brains and terrify us with startling and vivid visions. Childhood is largely spent trying to get used to this strange rhythm of sleep and wake, of brooding and action, of quiet and frenzy and attempting to master the suspicions and fears it rouses.
Isn’t sleep like death and isn’t night like Hell? Where is the sun? What has happened to our loved and loving world? It helps to fall in love with Night and uncover its beauties as well as its secrets.
Waking in the middle of the night for some exciting enterprise like Christmas, meeting a beloved, for some family ritual or religious vigil, can be a time of awe-inspiring discovery. In the Planetarium they deliberately create a mockery of Night to show us the majesty of stars and planets.
Lovers wait for night like thieves. This is when most children are conceived, most children are born and the most powerful dreams – the ones that reveal the future – are dreamed.
The night is a mysterious, unsettling boundary. Sages say we go to sleep in one world and wake in another. I say we go to sleep as one person and wake up as someone else. Both are true. But, quite possibly, we don’t like it. We fear the meanings, the realities, the potential behind all of this.
Desires come to us unbidden. Do dreams separate or unite? Sleep is the land of the subconscious, the unconscious, the preconscious and the collective conscious. These are worlds we need to integrate into our Being. “Balance” is a skill that allows us to make the best of all these worlds.
The Subconscious is just beneath the surface. We glimpse it frequently during the day through our reactions to art, music, jokes, accidents and friendly interactions. ‘Freudian slips” are meaning to say one thing and “accidentally” stating the opposite. Our Subconscious is our Mastermind. It can be relied on to recognize the Beloved.
The Unconscious is deeper. We cannot access it except through dreams. Hypnosis will not take you deep enough. The Unconscious is a huge repository of fear and dread. It manifests in our daytime self as anxiety, panic attacks and psychosomatic illness. “Dream therapy” teaches lucid dreaming, when we begin to recall, learn from, even manage our dreams.
The Preconscious is our Unborn Self. These are our Multiverse selves who chose another path, past incarnations and possible selves. It manifests itself in our daily life through mysterious attractions to styles of art, episodes of history or pattern re-enactments. Our Preconscious might recognize the Beloved because you were together in another life/world. Sometimes forging of this bond will be the most advanced stage of your souls’ journey. In both cases, recognizing and blending with the Other is a vital step in your Becoming.
The Preconscious and the Collective Unconscious alike are activated through study, research and learning to accept and enjoy art and history. The Collective Unconscious is our group dream on this planet. It is positively expressed through Art, Shamanism and acting. It is negatively expressed by addictions, circumstances when you know you are acting outside your own control (and against the best interests of your life, health and safety) or when you are “channeling” the soul of another – acting like someone you aren’t but you can’t seem to stop.
These patterns are broken by Rehabilitation Therapy that seeks to connect you to your True Soul, which is always waiting for you to claim it.
Sometimes in our quest for the other we are assaulted by demonic forces masquerading as love. This is easily recognized by the question: does your Beloved improve or worsen your psychic health? If Your spiritual integrity is under threat, you will need help escaping this demon. Don’t hesitate to ask for it.
RESURRECTIONIST
Unearth me, lover I’m a jewel now Melted In that crevice you once loved so Well; it’s an ingot now, a socket For our mingled liquid Essence Suck it up with Dust-lathered lips Strip The flesh as you once did The clothes; I’m burning Cinder-hot – Let me astound you with My time-perfected skill
“Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean”
The Night Sky above our Garden reveals many secrets. The first secret is that we are a World within Worlds. And we are assured that there are further worlds beyond (as well as within), through the contradictory notions that the universe is both infinite and expanding. What a metaphor for life & growth!
The poetry of the stars and planets is such that our history can be told through the names and patterns of constellations that are shifting. The ancients placed “heaven” right up there, with Gods & Goddesses looking down at us as we look up at them, playing with us as if we were scientific mice running an experimental maze.
We are even seeing dead light from stars that no longer burn; a time traveling conundrum that makes a hash of what we know of past & present. Given these facts alone many of our inherited concepts about “reality” seem naive to say the least. New physics posit the possibility that time travel could age us so slowly we become younger than our own children.
If our minds are our ticket to eternity, teaching us how to rise above our earthly circumstances, then we can learn to signal others; “I am eternal. Are you eternal?” Many people believe they are “in the Now” because they are bouncing on the surface of the moment, but they are really water spiders skimming the waves, fearful of “falling in.”
You are not a person who is afraid of depth. Instead, you will convey the deep peace and truth of living every moment connected to Eternity. Planets & Stars reminds us to turn on our inner searchlight. Our person is close; very close. “Are you Eternal?”
HELOISE TO ABELARD: “FROM THE FLAME TO THE FLAME”
Master, my Brother; Father Confessor; my all – Before you see a nun Abbess in fact – antiphon of grace enclosing Octaves of silence. I had rather be your whore. Slut, jade, poule – What sweets! I relished those words as I craved the Blows you struck like kisses. Five, like Christ’s wounds. I counted them.
No midwife cut my cord but You delivered me. Satan wormed your root; left Me whole but Empty. I’m still cinque-cut while You’re a smooth stockade. I “mistook” the veil – Impetuously as you stole me – Masquerading, copying the night We stole from uncle’s house In holy guise.
This veil is Jason’s wedding dress – It cannot be removed. It burns my flesh, these cerements Cremate me. You denied me thrice, False Peter Though I crawl to Bethany to earn One word. Master, cousin, lover – slave – We are bound. This grave is not so silent as you are.
Yes, I’ve chatted up the dead I’m closer to you than that tattoo you wear As if it became you. When you die I’ll be the fire that quickens In your veins – the centime on your eyes The empty scabbard left Along your thigh Your last escaping sigh – I.
Passion is the fuel by which we live. It can warm us, it can inflame us, it can destroy us. Without it life is dry and pointless. We are born with majestic passions that seem ungovernable.
Our specific passions may seem strange to other people, but no one’s yet been born with none at all. The trick is managing them and making them work for us. A complication is that our passions change and evolve. Fantasies that kept us warm in childhood seem empty to us now. Sometimes in the busyness of life we find ourselves working so hard for other people’s goals our own seem to vanish and life becomes dry and tasteless.
What do we really want? What makes us happy? What ignites our best self and completes our growth process?
It isn’t too soon to imagine how our eulogy should read! Explorer? Poet? Dreamer? Lover? Person?
Passion gives us courage. Courage is hard-won. Whenever it seems to come “naturally”, that’s because we didn’t assess the possible consequences of our actions. That’s not courage, that’s foolhardiness. When we understand the dangers and move forward anyway, that’s true courage.
When we contemplate sharing our deepest self with another, what do we risk? We risk exposure, humiliation, misinterpretation, minimization, stigmatization. Those are serious risks, but the only way forward is through. Don’t pretend you don’t care or it doesn’t matter; hardening ourselves only devalues the very prize we seek as well as our ability to enjoy it and be transformed by it.
To seek depth we must give depth. The secret is self-compassion, to accept our own humanity. Once we can do that we are given the key of seeing deeply into others. We are not interested in those pretending they are less than human – they can neither help us nor themselves. We resolve to keep going – courageously – in our search for The One.
Diaries
I don’t remember anything – Amnesiacs Write everything down Stuffed in my closet Among discarded gowns (Smelling just the same) Useless but Too beautiful to throw away. How I recollect & treasure The act of writing An up and over downtime scrawl Recall the surgeon Cutting at my flesh Tugging splitting sweating Recall liftoff – finally Airborne ; my Hawk’s-eye vision sees Backwards & forwards – Past into future. Too much dig is spoilage; Freedom mined is Priceless.
Alysse Aallyn 