In the garden stone figures mock us and memorialize us. They can be reassuring or uncanny as if secretly intuiting our states of mind. We put them there to remind us – of what?
Lovers make promises to each other. We do it spontaneously, offering ourselves on the altar of our own desire. We solidify our vows publicly in paper, legal filings, photographs, video, topiary, marble, even stone.
What promises can we make and what promises can we keep? Do these promises allow space to evolve over time? At least we can answer that last question with a heartening “yes.” Our promises are not set in stone. We are not our statues.
Soulmates are in tune with each other. We can feel each other’s evolving spirit, sometimes before the other even can. We know when the petals lose their glisten, when the wings droop.
Did we make a promise to be “perfect”? We know this is not possible or even desirable. The only real promises we can make are to be present, to be honest, and to treat the desires of the Beloved Other as Sacred. But we all have boundaries and we must be honest about uncovering and examining those.
Some can be broken and re-set, some can’t. Does that mean a Soulmate can be temporary? We are temporal beings, but someday we will meet on the eternal plain.
#HAIKU: The Statue
Rose-choked; Tagged; Sentenced by time I stand Mute. Freeze! I see you! Who has won?
Because we’re afraid of snakes, we attract the deadly columbine. We can’t recognize danger and we don’t know how to summon real assistance.
In the language of flowers the Columbine means “Anxious Folly. Resolved to win.” Our folly prevents our winning.
As for snakes, there are many of snakes we depend on in the garden. But every now and then a poisonous one wanders by. How do we tell the difference?
How can we win when we poison ourselves? It’s to lessen that anxiety, to get back to what we assume is “baseline.” But it isn’t. We just haven’t found our baseline yet, and by mimicking the baseline of others we get farther and father from ourselves.
This is why recovery from addiction involves finding ourselves. We can’t find a soulmate when we don’t know who we are.
Our toy-box of pleasures is quite pathetic, but that’s not our fault. We are wired for addictions, with a biological view to turning such basic pursuits for food, mating and recreation subconscious so we can use the front of our mind to think about other things.
You can tell addictions are destructive (and not all of them are!) if they crowd out human flourishing and ruin sharing and our ability to share. “I want to feel pleasure with you” becomes, “Let’s cycle through my tragic past of suffering before I found you.”
Not good. To get out of this mess we cultivate the gift of change, of evolution. We will share and learn to tolerate discomfort. Hold tight. Often the addictions gained their grip over us because we were seeking to escape change or discomfort! The good news it, it’s never too late.
The better news is, this re-discovery and re-creation of the self is one of the life-transforming experiences to share with a soulmate and if you have no soulmate yet, here’s a crucial step to getting yourself ready to present to the world as the Real, the Essential, the True You.
Always look for help. Set up a program and a feedback system for accountability and efficiency and spiritual support for the inevitable withdrawal that’s coming. It’s only giving birth to your stronger, better, best self. You know it’s time.
HAIKU: The Columbine
Gambler’s inferno Dissolves will Slavery Wrecks pleasure- Luck? Loss? Choose.
The Poppy = SUCCESS “The Lovers” “Successful in your eyes”
The Poppy signifies oblivion and eternal sleep in the Language of Flowers. This source of heroin and morphine will definitely obliterate your personality, despite protecting you from pain. Does that sound like success to you?
The greatest pleasure of Soulmates is creating a world all our own, with its own rules and reality. If our Soul Unit is a success, we are a Success. The harsh judgments of the outside world, operating as it does casino-like with few winners and a vast “majority” of losers, fade in impact.
All that is required for joy is that we must be a success to each other, and we must be a success together. This mandates constant soul-searching as we step through life’s landmines, both singly and alone. There is no more restful peace than ultimate confidence that someone’s got your back.
Haiku: The Lovers
Falling upwards Into you My other wing, my second Clapping hand
The Tree = ENLIGHTENMENT “My Beautiful Twin Sister”
“You can if you think you can”
Trees knit a garden together. Thy hover over us the way we remember helpful adults from childhood. They are the elders of our loving garden family.
To be “awakened” is to experience life as it really is. Lots of people are repelled by this notion. Why bother to wake up when the news is so bad? Remain in the happy dream state brought to you by the Sackler family or some other pharmaceutical conglomerate, or by your favorite source of baseless propaganda.
That lasts as long as you can afford their product. As every rube discovers, Happy Dreamland’s price keeps getting steeper until one day, you can’t pay it at all. Then you are awake and desperately uncomfortable, whether you like it or not, and the life around you has gone to shit. And not the helpful, fertilizing kind.
A common approach to Soulmate-seeking is to try to find someone to join you in Dreamland, or to aggressively shop for a Dreamland you want to join. What these people don’t know is that Soulmates create their own world together; and this is a process that can’t be rushed. Seeing yourself and life as it really is begins by being very uncomfortable, but enlightenment comes eventually, and it promises real peace.
The first improvement is to stop complaining about other people and all the things you can’t fix. Look at and into each other. And then it hits you – that simple thing we always “knew” because we’ve been told over and over: Love is the answer. (“Why Live?” is the question.) Take a walk… together. Look at the stars…together.
Stroll through an art gallery…together. Every joy is multiplied and magnified and now the question is, Aren’t we lucky? Well, aren’t you? And the gratitude for the chance to live for even a moment in this spectacular universe comes pouring out.
MY BEAUTIFUL TWIN SISTER
Twenty months Made you the boss But my twin just the same I gazed adoringly Into your dark power. You braved everything Always being first; Parting airspace with your muscle To improve my flight – you Schooled boyfriends Husbands, children Teachers Bent whole administrations to your will. For my benefit you Deconstructed history, Logic, told me Who to read and what to think; Volunteering for a better world. Protester, Marcher, you Learned Amslan Just to empathize; Conquered mountains Just for fun; Shifting derailleurs, snowshoeing Surefooted through so many Frosty seasons. Inside You were just like me; Scared, hesitant, fragile Pushing yourself out there; A revelation of Impossible courage Giving me a lifelong template To admire.
Illusions are VERY attractive. We WANT them to be true. In my childhood Superman leapt tall buildings in a single bound – all us kids could recognize the fun, the power, the joy in that.
Limitations are unpleasant. We can work to expand them, or…we can dream. Every culture warns the dreamer against getting lost in fantasy. The Tulip is a historic emblem of delusion – impoverishing generations of otherwise intelligent Dutch merchants in a fruitless gamble. Now the Tulip warns that you may be counting on something – or someone – that is false.
Our society has been fueled by misinformation ever since Edward Bernays, founder of modern advertising, wrote his book Propaganda in the 1920’s. Since then legal beagles have defended the right to “puffery” and “spin”, even to saying something manifestly untrue; “miracle pills!”
Advertisers are very honest about manipulating us through wish and fear. We are eager to buy the illusions that seem to promise a warm social life, a happy home or radiating beauty. Lately misinformation has taken a distinctly evil turn as billionaires base their fortunes on convincing us that pollution isn’t dangerous, the climate is fine, science is untrustworthy, the election was stolen and oligarchic rule is what we really want.
The question to consider is, what is our benefit in believing and propagating obviously harmful facts? The rifle-toting man who broke into a Washington DC pizza parlor thought he was a heroic savior of children. He’s now serving a prison term.
Why is violence such an attractive answer? Forget stockpiling bear mace and bullets to abuse your fellow citizens. We need some other way to soothe our raggedy self-esteem apart from clinging to grifters and liars.
On the other side of illusion lies reality. We need to take a look at it, savor it. Often it’s a kid tugging at our clothes begging us to stay, focus, share; not lose ourselves in a fantasy world.
The need for illusion prevents us from finding, seeing and keeping a Soulmate. We must work to make reality less terrible, so that we don’t become dependent on illusion as a pleasure source. Illusion rushes in when life seems meaningless. Joining groups of honest seekers directing their paths with love can save us. When we are surrounded by love we will attract love. Check the philosophy of the group you hang out with. Is it “Let’s you and him fight?” or “Let’s seek joy for all.”
GOTHIC NOVEL
A woman alone is open – gaping, Button hole without a button hook. She carries her muff held stiffly Out before her like an offering Flic, flic! The eyes of strangers Slit the pause like razors. This railway carriage stinks of creosote, wet fur. “I prefer the window up, thank you” “I prefer it down”. She lights a Sobranie to remind her Of Devon in the haying; the gentlemen Lean forward, reading the initials On her morocco case.
“Express your emotions the better to understand them”
We are not the only Creators in the Garden. We are surrounded by nest-makers and musical artists without whose Birdsong we would be tragically impoverished. Birds sing for the same reasons we do; to celebrate, to warn, to differentiate. To bond, and for the sheer joy of being alive in the Garden. Birdsong represents the artistic collaboration and complexity without which our lives would be meaningless.
Art is our rescuer. Art forges connections at the deepest levels; preconscious & collective conscious. Art finds us when we are lost, can even locate love itself when we misplace it. Art sums up the mystery of what it’s like to be alive, questioning, yearning, negotiating, refusing, demanding.
Back when we were mute children, longing to communicate and participate in the thrilling adult world surrounding us, we figured it was just a question of acquiring the tools of language.
Education disabused us of that easy sentimentality. There will always be something within us that is wordless, a secret unknown to ourselves that we long to share. But what does it mean? Who can understand it? We artists devote our lives to fathoming these vast problems. Each question brings a new forest of questions. Each answer produces an ocean of answers.
As our life crests its rise and heads for the downslope we are forced to conclude that we wish to express nothing more than our uniqueness, our exquisite irreplaceability – just like everyone else.
The depth of the Tantric connection provides relief from the echo chamber – together we create a whole new force, immortal in feeling, universal in its application. We sing to each other in courtship, in despair, in longing, and the Soulmate sings our song back, in a different form, inviting collaborative collusion that will buttress our hopes and re-make our world.
HAIKU: Birdsong
Without your chord Duets are soulless; speechless without your harmony
“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
What happens when we discover that to accept a New Soulmate, we too must become entirely new? We must turn our comically ugly caterpillars into gorgeous butterflies. It turns out that in wanting the Beloved what we were yearning for was a new self, as beautiful and as magical as we imagined the Beloved to be.
Transformation is more than mere shape-shifting; it is a complete cellular mutation; a quantum victory of design over matter.
In the garden transformation is law. The oldest things become new when seen through fresh eyes or a shift of visual imagination. Plants capture or seduce; pods fly into silks, colors wither, embolden or whiten, dust balls eject a thousand baby spiders, a worm becomes frog.
When you “transform” you are reborn into a new being. Unlike simple masking or disguise, this change interpenetrates the very soul. When we tire of our selves, our path, our very thoughts, nothing will satisfy but complete and total rebirth.
Seeking wholeness, we are slowly transformed by our own longing into a receptacle for the Beloved. But they must contain us, too, Two Truths will blend together into a singular, mighty Truth. To become The Lover, we must give up the griefs, the imperfections, the pettiness, the vindictiveness of the past.
If we accept that our future is entirely new, we can be born freshly into this fresh moment. It is this deep looking, deep seeing, deep yearning and deep acceptance that attracts our tantric lover to our sphere. Yes, terrible things have happened outside the golden chalice we now offer. Sad lessons were learned.
There has been triumph, vengeance, loss and play. No need to dwell on any of this, it no longer describes or confines us. What does describe us?
The peace of perfected selfhood. We are now ready to merge with yet another enlightened Self.
Dawn walk
Thunder crusts a gelid sky Light or rain – Feathering My nest with longing Stippled soul flushing out New growth; bursting from The steepled trees.
This is my world and I release it Stelliform; Readied For flying – tough as spidersilk – Unrecognized – Unrecognizable – Even to those who birthed me Spent my life creating this; now
Spring means beginning, freshness, newness. It starts small – barely recognizable – the tiniest frond of green among the blackness, calling forth an answering shiver from somewhere deep inside us.
We are told that every cell in our body replaces itself in seven years, so springtime is a constant within us. The best thing about Spring, to my way of thinking, is that it replaces winter. I am not a winter person, though I am told some are. I usually experience a sense almost of hopelessness, right before the end. Spring is the cure for hopelessness. Spring is hope itself.
In the darkest season of loneliness, we must find reason for hope, and the reason is always the same: refreshment and rebirth are coming. We participate in the rejuvenation of the world. We transform ourselves into turnaround specialists, turning around hopelessness and a quitter mentality into can-do optimism & strategies.
The green plant finds a way to surge forth, the beetles wait in the earth until their time is right, the egg contains a perfect hummingbird. So we strip away our fears, negativity and hopelessness to foster the growth inside, growth in the belief that our Soulmate is right around the corner.
PEACOCK PAVEMENT
Femininity has its Everests – I will climb them daily. The crow’s belly’s is black,
Envy his womb-less contentment as I stroll Among the old wrappers, used condoms; Joints rolled tight as bedsheets
Letters used – abused – discarded. Crow envies me my Zircon hair; a lunar map of freedom,
Battering-ram jaw, baroque nose, the Greek depths through which My eyes record their wanderings
Outside the convent walls, between The stalls, corrals, the chained-up lambs, The leaf-filled swimming pools:
First act, second act, third act Epilogue. Number days by counting Depth marks round your taproot
Showing off sporadic questings not my own Belonging to some future – all Unknowing what anyone will make
Of these Portentous Pleiades: Disparate sisters, Me, myself and I.
In Memory lies our Identity. There are probably no sadder words than “I don’t remember you.” We are born with wild, unexplored ambitions and we spend our lives trying to live up to them by learning & acquiring partnership, discipline & practice. And sometimes, trying to forget negative conditioning and poor patterning.
Memory is the foundation of art, science and law as we try to reflect back what we have learned. Memory gives us the words to say to build and express our emotions & intent. Luckily our bodies have memories, too. Memory resides in hearing, touch, taste, sight and muscle; long after words have gone.
Past Patterns – Sometimes we recognize a pattern coming around again, but more often, we don’t. We’re accustomed to treating each new crisis as if it blew in out of nowhere. This is where journaling can really pay off for us as we ask a series of questions: have I been here before? And what did it look like that time? Is there anything different – really new – about now?
Negative Conditioning is when we learned unhelpful or destructive practices. If we grew up with parents who couldn’t forge strong intimate connections there is a danger we will re-experience all their trouble. We also learn from patterns experienced through art or viewed from a distance. And then there are “cultural ideals” – some of which are downright unhealthy and must be discarded.
Sometimes we only see a situation clearly when it’s happening to someone else! What advice does our past self have to give us – our cockier, more youthful self? How about our wiser self – the mature self who can see the whole picture — the one who’s “arrived”?
Memory is not just who we are, memory is where we live. Our Soulmate is not a mind-reader, so communication is constant and evolving. Memories change, as we change. Different aspects of our own story emerge into importance as we evolve. Previously, we might not have even noticed aspects of our own story that we now see as key. This has important implications for the presentation of self that is critical to our connection with another person.
Are prepared for this “other” to dramatically transform the way we see ourselves; to change our story’s “meaning” as well as altering our past and empowering our future? There is an Official Version of our past we like to tell others as we introduce ourselves; now is the time to ponder the Secret Version. The version we only tell our most significant other.
Is it secret because it is shameful? Soulmate Love is not an opportunity to escape our past but to heal it. That toxic shame may be the exact lens through which you and the Soulmate first “see” each other. Your connection will start as a series of conversations, which may be physical, verbal, or non-verbal.
In literature, the tale of Cupid & Psyche embodies these processes, as Psyche (“The Soul”) first thinks she is married to a monster with whom she can only mate in darkness. She “steals a glance” at him when he is sleeping but, when he catches her, he is furious and flees. The plot twist: he was actually a beautiful young man, but he didn’t know it so was not ready to reveal himself. The “monster” was his toxic shame. How does the story end? You and your Soulmate will find out.
PRACTICE CUTS
The dead gush cruelly after dying. High time to make some changes; Get religion, have visions See god, become a nun
Some self worth knowing. Time is gunning for me Arthritic fingers Scrabbling at my dreams
Playing old tunes Scratchy now, less sensitive.
I’m a body in search of a car wreck That old deus ex machina Disaster; blood is so good
At erasing uncertainty & Bringing back a taste for life. Reduce me, silence: fortify Some other ego, mine’s too tired.
Ebb out along the tide, Cauterize this woof-warp of a pattern So plain even I can see it.
Reduce me to unbending bones of My essential self: sweet sister; she; The soul I was before I became me.
Alysse Aallyn 