SleepingOrchid

The labyrinth = COMPLEXITY “What’s the secret?”

What is the meaning of this card to our SoulMate quest? The Labyrinth represents the ultimate puzzle – that for which there is no solution, because the Labyrinth keeps adding challenges – just like life itself. Since a longing for stasis is a longing for death, if we wish to live, we must commit ourselves to the constant flow of fresh discoveries that train our eyes in new ways of seeing and our muscles in new modalities of performance.

The Labyrinth draws us in, yet we are fearful. It’s a test, and we know that it is and yet we can’t resist locking wits with such a majestic puzzle, even though the puzzle is bigger than we are, threatens us with its inhuman equanimity and possibly can’t even be “solved”. We’re bored by puzzles people can “defeat”, the ones they come back from. We want the contest no one’s ever “won.” So irresistibly, we step inside.

We know The Labyrinth will change us, therefore we realize how we long for change. Something within us yearns to be mastered, bettered and completed – if not by a SoulMate then by a game of skill personalized for our needs, abilities and temperamental quirks.

We know more than endurance and wit, more than simple knowledge and rudimentary improvisation is required. We will be called upon to maximize our intuition, our imagination. It is guaranteed to make us worthy of the liveliest SoulMate. We will have to uncover previously hidden stores of mysterious assistants, concealed rescue and disguised propulsion. What ingenious shortcuts, what paradigmatic shape shifts and buried challenges lie in wait for us? We are committed to changing The Labyrinth at the same time it changes us. We have pledged to leave our mark upon it. Nothing shakes our certainty that this trial pines for us every bit as much as we yearn for it.
Ready? Let’s begin.

Soulmates have an edge; we have eyes in the back of our heads. Our eyes see forward in time and back – together – we have the benefit of two Third Eyes – the seats of wisdom.

But the Labyrinth keeps separating us. You were just around that corner – now suddenly you are gone. One day you look at me with a different face. Your brain – the Seat of the Self – has been affected – brains are mortal – and You are no Longer You.

That’s illness, mortality, change. But there’s also Bad Magic – Lies that suck us into the riptide to live – however momentarily – in Crazy World. The defining feature of Crazy World is sickness. Sickness, death and hopelessness are cultivated like precious plants. Your mandate: Get out of THERE as fast as you can. Yes, you can try to save each other’s shadows but you will both be lost if you can’t get the mask over your own face first.

Our brain, the thinking organ with which we confront and negotiate the Labyrinth – is a labyrinth itself – possibly the model for all the labyrinths to come. To comprehend the vastness of the universe all we have is this tiny human brain. As Soulmates touch ThirdEyes through Literature, Science, History and Art with all the human brains that have ever existed, can we gauge the immensities of inner and outer space? We must be fearless of complexity. The further we journey, the more we see. Every “solution” posits yet more problems.

Hold hands and don’t be frightened. Our simplified language inhibits our understanding until we invent placeholder terms to represent the “unknown” – just like in mathematics – so that we can begin to imagine a way to place them into our calculations. Luckily you don’t need to know everything there is to know about the ocean just to ride its waves; but you do need to appreciate the majesty, the mystery and the danger that is keeping you afloat.Heraclitus said you can never dip your hand in the “same river” twice. Even if you dip for the second time just moments later, the water itself is completely different. We are all rushing forward and there is no going back. We SoulMates rush on together.

The Labyrinth

I can’t sleep

Because you’re gone

My muscles wake

My mind goes spinning on

And where your fingers

Plied and praised my face

Night air is cold and careless

In its place

And where we turned and woke

In complex rhyme

I’m left to face a music

Frayed by time; that waltz

Which once we won

A losing battle choreographed for one.

None to explore or

Appreciate my line

Though now at last it’s

Incontestably mine.