Some notes on crucibles.

My method regarding the relationship I was in and which has now gone into some spontaneous regenerative process is of utility.  I did in fact ride to the brink of jettisoning the relationship with a heart and mind  of determination.  What is interesting is the quality of the determination.  My intention was to move into a relationship, either some future iteration of this one or some other wherein certain of my needs would be met. This intention,  (qualified by merits one might find in a magical or other ceremonial operation)  was conditioned with the conception that all and any involved would achieve some greater measure of wholeness by moving through the process..   

What went on was something that had every aspect of a breakup and diaspora..  but then what ensued involved a tiny immature black Japanese kitten,  A fantastic dancer in a club in Hiroshima and a midnight phone conversation with an Amazonian shamanness deep in my confidence..  which phone call of course happened on the full moon just after an intensive healing ceremony involving Ayahuasca and the prospect of my arrival there to design/build temple space...  

Long and short,  everything exploded.  there was tears and anger and dejection...  and then somehow, later that day a healing ceremony involving 7 Japanese people,  some leftover Amazonian medicines,  some illicit materials from the market district and some inspired interaction between Tarot, human desire and some brand of diagnostic yogic interpretations of people's energy states and auras unfolded without agenda or previous experience.  Things just happened..  and it was clear choreography like any great ceremony...  When it was done...  the intention came full in its most unexpected manner,  everything was rearranged like the shuffle, perfectly stacked between hands of Pinnochle...   poof!  new world!

Love Arts Unbound

      In a volley of text messages with my first Love, from a relationship that started in my 18th year, I salvoed "I need someone to laugh at me"  and proceeded to explain a situation regarding what I see as the changing of my current relationship which is in process now.   I realize I chose her for the laugher for a very important reason...  There is no one on earth with as long a view on me and my character as well as what I am in the arena of Love Art.  I wanted to hear from someone who had no illusions,  but also no antipathy..  At least in my summation,  we've made our peace,  but continue to hold each other in regard and with special meaning for the gamut, or gauntlet of our lives and mutual becoming in those years..

     My unequivocal note to a Japanese woman, Miyuki, whom I danced with a couple of times and have some interest in knowing better was copied to 1rst loves message.  It is this  "hmm.. sounds complicated... I want to dance with you... I want to feel this amazing connection. I don't do complicated and I won't stay at a hotel. You're fantastic and I think we could share some incredible things... Figure out what you really want and get back to me.. I'll be in Japan for another week. If you want to see me, invite me to your house... we'll dance and talk and eat... otherwise... meet me in Nepal."

   
      To which 1rst Love replied "You acquire and discard mystical loves at a rapid pace these days.".  I thanked her sincerely in response.  But not as one might expect, because it sent me reconsidering myself as in error or mistaken...  that sort of reaction can be found in numerous other articles by other authors.

What riveted me was the word "Discard".  This is something that has been going through my head for years..  The idea that changing the relational elements of a relationship for whatever reason is Discarding  someone.  In some cases I find this to be the case.  Not always though.  (hanging participle?)

     Our society has a preloaded, largely unexamined presumption that every time you get into a relationship,  you should make it last forever in the state that it is begun.  It's a beautiful concept, but is it always the best idea?  I propose that it is not for everyone and not in all cases and we as visitors here must change when it becomes apparent that it is in the interests of ourselves AND the person we are with.   The saying "good for the goose, good for the gander" comes to mind.  And though many might think otherwise, I intimate that if you really look at it and if you look at your experience on a more whole and discerning perspective, it is in fact impossible for someone to do what is right for their health, their needs and their heart which in the end is not good for everyone else including the so called "jilted lover".  

     I do not mean to say that it doesn't hurt.  My reference is to our soul and it's unquenchable need to be what it is and in its way.  Nobody gains from remaining in a dysfunctional partnership.  And one should never disguise their feelings in manner of staying with someone who does not inspire them. In the case of being in a relationship with someone who is no longer invested it is demeaning to the receiver and destructive to the one carrying that load.  

     As anyone with eyes to hear knows, not all pain is futile. nor is it without gifts.

     My reflection on the trend of culture thinking that staying with people forever is a necessary condition has 2 origins that I reckon. 

1. In the past we were civilized in such a manner to lose track of the abundancy of life and so people needed to stick together, often no matter what happened. 

2. It hurts.  I don't like to hurt people even if an unavoidable circumstance might do so.  I also don't want to be hurt though I know what a gold mine it can be when we are blind.

     In regards to "Discarding people",  this is the juicy bit,  the valence.  In my younger years this seems to be the outcome of leaving relationships.  In retrospect I see that it is, in my opinion, a conditioned cultural artifact.  To wit,  If I've loved someone for 3 years and then realize that we are no longer fit to each other for whatever reasons and we've worked and discussed and tried whatever changes or ideas we could come to, then sometimes the answer is, "Though I love you still, I must go". 

     In the realm of the heart,  what is real is real,  the heart can not compromise, nor can the soul if we are alive.  That which feeds the heart and the soul must be had in order that we grow.  The caveat for my reasoning is an important factor to this understanding and that is the question of the manner in which separation is made.  To the point, when we must go, then we must,  but incumbent upon us is to do our utmost in clear communication, moreso, clear understanding. 

From my experience in "leaving relationships"  and watching others do so,  the understanding is often cluttered with various homages to why things suck.  This is not the definition I am working from.  Understanding in my process refers to sense of true soulful communion if it is viable and I reckon it is if we haven't sullied the temple of our love too terribly in the arrival at this juncture.

     I've spent a number of years relating to and working with the ceremonial world.  I would say the earliest was some of the moments in a real Roman Catholic church, some of which can be quite pervading in a real cathedral.  Later I went to a summer camp for boys run by the YMCA and we had opening and closing ceremonies which were quite exciting.  These camp ceremonies involved the counsellors dressed in loin cloths, made up in some Native American approximation  and doing reenactments of Native American stories which involved mach battles with flaming torches,  big bonfires,  drummers way back in the forest booming everywhere through the trees and across the waters of the lake While an elder recited the story. In later years I took a role in these ceremonies.

     I developed a lifelong interest in ceremony, though I had left the church by around 6 years old at the hands of an abusive boyfriend of my mother's who sure could pray and was handy with a leather belt.  These days I say "Life is ceremony" and within the patterns of our lives there are many ceremonies.  I am reminded of the Mandelbrot fractal.  One of the elements of any ceremony, to make it worth anything, is the opening and closing thereof.  From my perspective,  a love relationship falls in this domain.  Like any ceremony,  though we may choose when it starts, we do not always know when and how it will end.

In love,  cierto,  we don't really choose its beginning or its end though we might like to reckon so.  It is important here to note,  I am making a definitive bifurcation  between loving someone and the state of a relationship as well as the types of love one may be referring to.  That is, we can be "in love" or simply 'love'  but not be in love.  I know there are those who say it is not realistic to think  that we should continue to be in love with a partner after some time.  I don't agree and I don't mind if I'm a dreamer.

     A point I feel drawn to understand for myself is once again the word "discard".  My case and point is my note to 1rst love.  I still love her,  she is not discarded though we are no longer "together"  in the intimate relationship sense, but we still have discussions,  think of each other and make each other laugh.  I never discard anyone, because people aren't things and they always have meaning once they have entered our lives.  Nothing made by men or gods can nullify this reality.  I am a man,  we are souls in physical vessels creating a world of experience and nothing can change our love as it is all that we are, who we may bed down with one year vs. the next aside.

     The important facts in my perspective have to do with the ceremony of it all.  How a thing is done,  just like a place where we may dwell should have good proportions, adequate light,  smooth passages, natural elements, peaceful places and creative spaces etc..  Our ceremony must have them as well as good entrances and exits.  By bringing true, deep understanding to the changing of relationship,  we can go from a futile, destructive, painful rejection to another quality of series of realizations.

     The thesis is alchemy.  We come together for all variety of reasons, we part for a multitude more.  My intention is to cut through the barbarity of "discard" and rejection and the need to change relationships only after people become intolerant of each other, but instead to begin thinking with ceremonial a-logic. First, I imply that instead of 'ending"  relationships we begin to use the word change or evolve,  because that's what it is!  Each relationship is a ceremony and every ceremony has a crucible.  What we get from the crucible is dependant upon the ingredients we put in AND the condition of the wholeness of the locus and the time in which it is done. Ceremony or alchemy does not depend on any standard sort of physics.

     When we change a relationship, for example,  from a monogamous love relationship to some other kind of partnership, we are retaining the monoatomic gold from the crucible to be put to further revelation.  To do this,  we must as lovers come to a sometimes difficult but simple understanding;  Though we have loved each other,  the crucible has delivered to us this stone and this work is done..  The change can come without all of the desolation and grief if it can be done without the "how much this sucks"  homage.

Closing Ceremony. 

     1rst love was a great mystical love, but we parted of necessity and so it is a reality that everything in the universe has some magical clock by which it runs.  My purpose is that love is not diminished only the power of our worldly self to give attention to anything without pause. Exit with as much love as you enter and eventually understanding will trump culturally endowed habits of interpretation.  Only love lasts forever,  but not a particular architecture of relating between any entities whether it be man and woman or even river and mountain.

Love and Light

J.W. Starr