The Fruit is the sweet result of day after day of concentrated sunshine. The Fruit is a summit of achievement; centuries of unique conditions ending in delight for the senses poetry for the tongue.
Raspberry, Strawberry, paw-paw, pomegranate, banana, apple, pear, cherry; so much nectar; so many wines. Together they symbolize for us the moment of celebration: Harvest, when there is nothing left to do but relax and enjoy. But Fruit has even more to offer than that.
We revel in the concept of a storehouse full to bursting; a pleasure-palace of magical alchemy where the very humblest fertilizers such as dirt and sweat are transformed into visible, taste-able joy. The blood of the planet becomes our blood and the most potent chemicals of its deepest mines flood our aching emptiness with repletion.
The Tantric Garden Harvest concept says you are about to enjoy the fruits of all your yearning, planning, efforts. You are looking into the eyes of, touching the hands of a potential Soulmate. You are close, close. The Harvest invites us to just revel in the bliss – actual and potential – of this moment. It is critical that you not “numb out.” The temptations will be there. There are plenty of chemical fast-tracks to ‘letting your guard down.” But you don’t want to do that. You want to explore that very “guard” and not make a dash for a mythical “finish-line” because the essence of Tantra is there is no finish line.
There is only the Now, a universe of infinite possibility which has just been doubled as you gaze into the Soulmate’s eyes and hold the Soulmate’s hand.
Sweet Family
I want you To deliver our children With your tongue That deft baker’s paddle would Lever them out Warm & fresh In their marzipan coats Trailing the pineapple Blood-rind Traced with poppy-seed adornments Marking them as ours. A little boy with a pastry-tube Rosette between his legs A girl as hard & round as A hot cross bun Petals furled on her Crystallized convolvulus In whose depths lie stored All the honeys of the future.
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.
In Dawn we are between two worlds; our feet in night and our heads in the future yet to come. Sometimes we can’t wait to shake off the darkness; even pretend it never happened; other times we are sluggishly unwilling to give ourselves over to the cares of daylight hours. The ancients celebrated each “return” of the sun’s light as a religious and philosophical triumph; a sign that the mighty ones have forgiven us the past and will allow us to continue the grand experiment of life for another day.
There is a special quality of light to Dawn when ordinary objects look different; magical, even the air feels different, full of portent and excitement. Often we find ourselves wishing this transitional period would last forever. Dawn is the Future itself; perhaps more thrilling as we contemplate its possibilities than when we begin the hard slog of making them come true.
Dawn signals a freshening, a slackening of tension. We confronted Night alone; now we are going to get some company. We were all keyed up – now we are going to get a break. This can be interpreted as a Reward – finally! Some little crumb to keep us going. When we have been trying so hard and are allowed to relax, it’s almost as if a sense of shock sets in.
We’re so exhausted from all our effort we don’t even want to TRY to figure out what’s REALLY going on. We just want to roll with it, for now. Get our breath back. Recover our mojo. We are plunged into a new dream-like state of particular value to Skryers hoping to Discern their future: Day Dreaming. As our “night terrors” subside, we are flooded with images, ideas, memories, yearnings, disconnected at first. Go with it.
What do these visions say to you? How do you feel about it? It is in moments like these that we may get some unexpected insight. We may realize that the high-status Soulmate we THOUGHT we wanted (Financial bro! Super-model! Sports star!) is not what we want AT ALL. We feel new yearnings, for someone more in tune with our REAL lifestyle and our cherished, secret sense of self.
As dawn breaks, the game re-sets. We get to start again! Allow yourself to celebrate all the fresh possibilities suddenly poured so generously into your lap.
THE TREEHOUSE
Eager I was to initial your flesh Mark it mine forever A fairly short forever as I recall. Trilling up my drainpipe
Your hot unvaried song – “Who will know?” We were the ones who did not know. The treehouse was our yearbook –
Memory’s coffin; there You swallowed me whole A circus act, a disappearing act None saw
Insects feasted on our Unwatched blood Bursting to the rhythm Of our bursting.
If I mistake your face these days In a flower-field of faces Shifting to moon pressure Swaying to wind pressure
Listing according to laws unknown Count me not along your abacus of traitors; I am she. The blood still flows, still glows In the treehouse.
“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
“Begin anew with the Day, as Nature does” says George Woodberry. What good advice! Every dawn is a fresh chance for us to put new principles into practice, make original resolves and absorb consequent lessons and engender successful strategies that bring us closer to our goals. If, as the sages say, “it’s the journey not the arrival that matters” then each and every day is, literally, the first day of the rest of our lives.
We are launched on the journey of a thousand steps. Isn’t it the ideal to make each step as blissfully supportive as possible?
On our quest for a soulmate, aren’t we really looking to be freed from the hum-drum round of daily ordinariness into the ecstatic upper stratosphere, the bliss of the spiritual? Isn’t that what we’re really after? This is what causes our frustration with where we’re at, right now.
What we need is to infuse the ordinary with the spiritual, and like any skill, this attitude can be practiced and IMPROVED and we can start NOW. In Tantric Attachment, “Day” represents your supportive routine (both conscious and un.)
Today’s goal is to make your habits conscious, improve them with mindfulness, then allow them to sink into the subliminal where they can be accessed emotionally and kinetically. We plan to turn OURSELVES into the exact life partner we have been looking for!
Some of us are morning people – others most definitely Not. I started out in life as a night owl and after kids, I changed. Now I don’t think I can write anything intelligent past 3 PM! (It’s currently 7:25 AM.) Every morning must contain spiritual, physical and refreshment practices. Our great enemy is all this anxious doom-scrolling we all do, when we can clearly see it raises, rather than lessens our distress and confusion. Let’s figure out a way to contain it, because that helpless victim can never be our best self.
In a frantic, worried or angry condition nobody can share or enjoy anything. The best choice would be a morning of thought, prayer, gratitude, healthful eating, gentle exercise but if this is not possible let’s keep our survey of The News, Email, etc. to a specific low number. To be loved, we must love ourselves. This is an inflexible rule. Therefore, you must keep telling yourself, “I love you. That’s why I’m taking such good care of you.” Commit to The Day!
ON READING THE ALUMNI DIRECTORY
I’m surprised So few of us have made it. The years seemed quiet The years seem far between. Through interstices the Class clowns fall – Sluts & giants; the Nobodies – Possessed & hunted Now as they were then; Haunted. “Address unknown” “Lives with Mom” “Religious cult” “Deadbeat” “Moved…nowhere.” My blood-mate’s still unmarried I wonder how We’d get along. I translate terpsichore to unknown Tongues, he’s Law and Journalism; how’s that Compatible? He lives so far away. Time off’s a bitch, plus They got my address wrong.
Suddenly we see the way! Breakthroughs look forward, never back; we are different people afterwards. Often, we feel they have been “building up” for a long time; we are amazed at what we didn’t see. But what we see now cannot be unseen. We should congratulate ourselves on our new pair of eyes, our new pair of legs. Our new life.
You connected! A potential soulmate is now present and real. We explore our soulmate, past and future, psychically and physically. Each moment feels truthful and intense. You are on Cloud Nine.
However, new understanding raises us to a lofty plateau. We now see that how a relationship develops over time is as important as who the relationship is with. We understand that some Soulmates are not able to back up their promises with behavior. They “want” to but are weak and feel helpless.
Don’t get drawn into “fixing’ them – this keeps you away from finding your REAL Soulmate, the one who can deep dive all the way with you as well as ascend the highest heights. There’s no reason to be angry or embittered, the failed Soulmate already realizes that their fear and poor self-knowledge are keeping them back. This is a journey that asks the most of every one of us.
VALENTINE
I sent myself In a letter Heart-creased Like a glove, like an Anecdote Too much told Dear stranger don’t Lose me I forgot The rule; Hold back a copy.
“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.
You are looking for a partner in the joint project that is existence. Sometimes our longing is for a family; children. Just as we need mentoring, so we long to mentor.
Your focus shifts to the perfect combination of you and your Soulmate’s perfected traits, and on the legacy you will leave behind. No matter that there may be an “embarrassment of absence” in its’ non-presence, there is always time to dream and plan.
What would we wish others to write on our memorial plaque? Does the universe agree with us about what kind of person we are? What would others say about us and our importance – how would they describe us? It is time to bring these visions of self into synch. Some of us leave solid objects behind – buildings, say, and others leave people – human beings we have generated, affected or raised.
Some of us leave blueprints – foundations, trusts, writings, neighborhood alliances. Some of us leave works of art that fill the minds of watchers with mystery and awe.
And some people don’t care at all. “Après moi le deluge” is the “Let them eat cake” philosophy attributed to Louis XIV – why should he care what happens following his death? In the annals of selfishness this is the ultimate selfishness; a human being with vast power, privilege and control, who just doesn’t care about other human beings. How do we use our powers and privileges? How do we choose to be remembered?
“Parents’ unlived lives are child’s greatest burden,” says Jung. We get it! You could apply this to marriage partners. Is one of them suffering an “unlived life” to enhance the existence of the other partner? This can’t happen with Soulmates.
We have expectations for every relationship – where do they come from? “Expectations” – unrealistic, counter-intuitive, contra-indicated and downright destructive – are the ruination of soulmates. Parents are ALL about expectations.
They can’t help it so we can’t help it. Helicopter parents hovering are like farmers digging up their own crops to see how growth is coming. The kids are left with a disturbed sense of either never getting a personality started, or of having to cultivate a “secret” personality.
Such parents take the concept of “legacy” to mean that they personally will continue to magically exist on this planet, refusing to comprehend the real definition of resourcing and empowering persons familiar but distinctive from themselves.
Gratified parents are no easier on their progeny, if anything, they become MORE intrusive. So many of us are so exhausted by BEING children that the idea of HAVING children is unimaginable. We seek a soulmate with the same level of shock. It feels shameful to confess this, and it adds another worry – won’t we only attract selfish people?
But what if you WANT to have kids? What if you dare? What if that biological clock is gonging away and that’s why you’re in the Soulmate Market to begin with? Clearly someone like that is not looking for a soulmate, they’re seeking a Co-parent, (possibly a step-parent); a co-provider or maybe just an excellent set of genes.
Easier to focus on this requirement for a Soulmate to “join” your family. They’ll have to, and you’ll have to join theirs, if they join you.
Sometimes you “join” by rejecting. You’re going to have to listen to their horror story, and they’ll have to listen to yours. Sex makes babies; that does happen, and should be discussed. But first, you’re going to have to look deeply into someone’s eyes and know that they’re the one. This is the source of that mysterious feeling that you’ve known each other in some other life. And perhaps you have. No wonder they say, “Youth is wasted on the young.”
Today’s mantra is, “Embrace youth…while you have it.”
SONOGRAM
This crowded world could not make do without your life; Summoned up, you surged you split the crust Shocked, I shuddered in my sheaves as you uncored Loosened in my skin as we Unmerged.
We travelled to the rim; Your fragrant cell became a soul unsheathed. From my rind’s brim you blinkered on the world wondered at the fuss. We are you and yet You are not us.
Committed to a course beyond our love – a forfeit tithe; gentle as a snake and wiser than a dove; As stars consume their fuel you were birthed to speed our lives.
Against the odds we found you You found us against the odds. Consecrated to the great transformer We love like mothers; We create like gods.
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
Mysteries lure us in; we are born puzzle mavens. It takes experience to learn that not every Mystery has a solution; or that some solutions only redefine the mystery into even larger questions.
Sometimes by the time the answer comes back we find that we ourselves have changed. The answer to “Who’s out there?” as could well be “Who’s asking?” as well as “Why ask?” Problems tend to be solvable only as far as we can define them. Framing the question frames the answer.
We turn a corner philosophically when we learn to enjoy Mystery for its own sake and welcome its presence in our lives, salute its effort to instruct our limitations and listen to whatever message it can deliver. There is the majestic silence of the universe, the explosive power of a single cell, the eye that looks upon us from the forest. We are part of the Mystery. It can’t be processed, absorbed or put behind us; it can only be lived. The Mystery is Us.
Our Soulmate can’t be “solved” any more than the tiger can cease his “burning bright” or the hound of heaven his pursuit. There will be things about our Soulmates that we never know, just as there are things about ourselves that we will never see.
This realization is an important one for Love, Acceptance and Ecstatic Communion to take place. Realize that “solutions” and “explanations” are language and time-bound, but you and your Soulmate meet in a place beyond language and time.
When you touch, you speak a deeper language, you meet in a timeless place that is eternal. Arguments and misunderstandings fade away – they are captured in Language and you, your Spirit and the ecstasy your union engenders are not trapped by words. You are free of promises, mistakes, even aspirations.
You are two rivers blending, two clouds merging, exchanging psychic atoms of thought and feeling that alter the definition of Being. You are One, you are Two In One, you are Whole.
The Bridesmaid
Yes, I know everything. You’re my poor relation. I know of your daddy’s desk where you Fucked with formaldehyde fingers Heard you tell your sad Rosary of abortions, I know everything. We made love on your letters undisturbed As two icons. She’s imperfect He told me. Unseated by hierarchy We two take our place With the king’s crazy mistresses; Brewing menstrual blood coffee And mandrake root tea. Swim away, little bridesmaid, You’re too young I’m in love – we’ve got Too much in common ever to meet.
Alysse Aallyn 