SleepingOrchid

Duality=AMBIVALENCE “Love/Hate”

The Shadow casts us into Duality, and Duality reminds us that meditating on these opposites in our natures must become part of our standard meditational practice. Whenever we desire to bring a soulmate into existence we have to ask ourselves: what is its opposite?

Consider all sides of this equation; consider, also, that we ourselves have opposites and we must observe the potential influence caused by the opposite of intention, the opposite of desire, the opposite of Being itself.

Ambivalence: It is human to want two conflicting and contradictory things at once. When we “choose” one thing, we give its shadow power. We still “want” the neglected thing: perhaps more than ever now that we can no longer “have” it. This doesn’t hurt us as long as we’re aware of it.

We must expect the path not taken to rear up in our dreams and stake its claim to our life. When we see it, we have to dismiss it again: “Begone, I don’t want you. I have not chosen you.” Every time we make this statement we diminish its force a tiny bit. The worst thing we can do is become its advocate: “Maybe that’s not so bad. Why can’t I have both?” If we make that mistake we are setting up a vicious circle of longing for the way not chosen; we may decide we are more about the bad choices than the good ones: “I just can’t help myself.” Speak the words “Begone. You have no power over me. I have not chosen you.”

Every time we say them they become a little bit more true. We have the right to become good souls by design, not monsters
controlled by appetite.

Approach/Avoidance. Fear/Attraction. Love/Hate. We feel all these emotions at the same time, swirling together to form a new emotion, ambivalence, which some of us try to negotiate using experimentation, “safe words”, role play. It’s possible but rigidity must be distrusted. If we are manipulating a series of masks to hide behind the purpose is automatically defeated. What is the purpose? Self-knowledge. Self-revelation. Other-knowledge. Other-revelation. And the fact that, together we become a multiplied force of never-yet-seen-in-the-history-of-the-world power and personhood. To achieve this goal, we must learn to accept and tolerate, negotiate, master and drive the wilderness within each of us and the wilderness we create together.

This course can be fearful, even shaming. We will decide several times a day: “This is too much for me”, “I can’t do this,” “I’m not good at this.” How dare I release you when I can’t release me? How can I create you when I can’t create me?” We dare. We can. With the ultimate result that we release and create, Us.

ICE AGE

In the photograph
The ladies scream or laugh
It’s hard to tell.
Heads back they bare their teeth
In agonies of joy or rage
Or grief; it’s hard to tell.
All that remains of them
Withered icons growing ever dim.
Choosing’s painful; being chosen’s
Worse. Some lop the juice
First spurt and say that’s tastiest;
And some hesitate forever
As the vessel
Guards its drops, fearing
Time itself must have a stop.
Our language reeks of stops and cuts;
We have no other way to think –
Like dancers frozen
At the brink of freedom
Paralyzed abreast the arc
we cannot see
what this design was meant to be.
In that first winter
When they thought the world was dead –
Dogs cried; we heard a devil laugh.
Crystal splintered up in shafts.
We met in tents, in feathered
Rendezvous
Touched and yearned and
Parley-vooed
Till you were me and
I was you.
Somewhere a fetus twists and jerks
Assemblage of dynastic quirks.
For kingdom come from nothing came.
Our world is born
To bleed again.