The Story of a Vow

by admin on May 3, 2013

Brother,

 

This is the story of my vow to you and to all.

How I loved you last year under that huge full moon in July at the Rainbow Gathering in Tennessee. How passionately, how tenderly and fully.

It was cold at night in the Smoky Mountains, but you were there, my heart’s husband, with your giant kind eyes and your nimble hands. With silken blond hair and luminous soul and deep voice that soothed me like no other voice ever had.

How vastly I loved you.

 

I loved you to the furthest extent of romantic love, at a height and at a vibration that many only imagine.  And you loved me the same way.

Heaven is like that week in the Smoky Mountains.  You and I are together and we want for nothing.  You can play music for hours and see the old visions. I can give gems to the sweet travellers who pass by our blanket, and talk to them and listen to them.

At night we hold each other to sleep in the blue grass under the pulsing moon.  In the morning you find coffee for me.  In the dusk we sit at fires where beautiful friends sing haunting songs and tell stories.

You are everything, everything.

 

I look at you and feel safe and protected and known and cherished.  You hear my kind thoughts and they elevate you.

We go to swim in the jade green lake, naked and laughing with the others.

carolynandannie1rainbowgatheringtennessee

 

(me and one of my sisters, Annie Derek, at the Rainbow Gathering)

We understand one another. We are happy as children and everyone can see how dearly we love each other and delight in it. It radiates; it radiates.

It melts into our friendship towards everyone. We are the friends of everyone.

Later that month, back home in Pittsburgh, on the bright morning of the evening you proposed marriage – I knew psychically that you would do it.

carolyninlovepsychedelic

 

(me, in psychedelic love with the addressee)

I readied myself; my whole being sung in glad agreement.  I walked five miles to the meeting of the three rivers in our dream city to meet you.  As I walked I was drunk with delight.

It was July 25th, the day out of time.  We planned our honeymoon to happen at the Global Rainbow Gathering at the Mayan ruins in Mexico, on the week of December 21st, when the world would end.

Then how it stung to lose you.

 

To lose you as our big wedding came close in the fall.  It hurt like nothing I had ever anticipated.  It felt like being burned alive.  It excoriated me. It drove me mad.

And the week before we were married in mid October, the date you insisted upon, Saturn vaulted into Scorpio again for the first time in the 28 years since I was born.

Saturn, the Great Teacher, brought hard reality to me.

Saturn in Scorpio brought the reality to me that this world is not yet the Rainbow Gathering.  That you and I can’t yet just be together under the moonlight and in the forest, with abundant food and drink and song and warmth.  That we have to work, to toil, and to stress.  And that when we stress we set each other off like evil volcanoes seething.

You drank and hid away in your drawing and music.

I woke you in the nights before the wedding with my anxieties about money and work and you hissed at me like one possessed, speaking in tongues.

I was dead I was dead I was dead I was dead I was dead.

All our friends and all our family celebrated our marriage to each other in the glorying Pennsylvania countryside on a clear, cool day.

But by then you were no longer you and I was no longer me.

Instead of angels kind and radiant, beaming love in all directions, we were both strangers, uptight and insane.

We were demons to each other, cold and cruel and hateful and frightening.

fireatthewedding

(the fire at our wedding)

I couldn’t even bear to spend our wedding night with you.  And I felt humiliated beyond every degree of shame I ever thought possible.

confettiatthewedding

(confetti fallen at the wedding)

I was married in the eyes of all who knew me but my true love was nowhere I could find him. No matter how I scratched at you or wept or pounded or paced. You were a locked door with no key.

theweddingcake

(the lovely cake)

Every morning for more than a month I woke up screaming in my bed at my parent’s house.

I howled bloody murder. I kicked and shouted each day until my mother and father begged me to stop.

All I could think of or speak of was bloody murder.

 

I wanted to go to our hill in the lush Allegheny cemetery, the hill where we first celebrated our love in May without anyone else’s eyes – with just a picnic and the words of Shelley and Rilke – and there murder myself, slice open my wrists with a kitchen knife and bleed out and die.

After I would stop howling in the morning, after my parents left for work, I would go to the kitchen and sharpen the knife.

And I would pray while I sharpened it, pleading Jesus and Gautama and Mary and any saint anywhere to help me live again.

And I have to tell you, brother.  Jesus and Gautama and Mary and the saints from all times and places – they kept their vows.  They spoke to me when I was shattered.

Seek and you will find. You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

 

Gradually in prayer I realized a truth.

I saw that you and I had lost each other due to our self-cherishing, due to our ego grasping, our self-centeredness.

And I saw that in my present form, as a mere limited human, I had no power to end your self-cherishing or to stop your self-destruction.

I could only end mine.

 

And I saw that if I murdered myself it would stop nothing.  It would end no one’s pain.  It would only make more pain, and I would go to hell.

And as I lay in hell all other beings on earth, all our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers, would continue to suffer from their lost loves just as I suffered in those days, shouting in my bed about murdering myself as my parents cried.

I broke up with you by letter on December 21st while you traveled in Mexico on our honeymoon without me.  The world had ended.

It was unbearable, the thought of anyone else suffering as we suffered then.

I made a vow.  And I became happy again, this time with an unbreakable happiness.

I will realize Buddhahood.  I will awake utterly.

 

No matter what you decide to do with this life, I know who we are and I know what the purpose of our love is.

It is the same purpose possessed by all the loves of all lovers anywhere; it is total liberation for all.

I will fulfill that purpose, no matter if you don’t want to.  No matter if you are too afraid; no matter if you are too weak; no matter if you don’t understand.

I am not afraid. I am not too weak. I understand.

 

I have died, brother.  My will to protect my self-cherishing died in the posion flames of losing you.  The nigredo of our alchemy scorched it away.  I will never let it dominate me again.

I will leave all delusion.  I will free every being in existence, in this world and all worlds.

If you won’t free yourself, I will free you, eventually.

You can shirk your bodhisattva responsibility in this life if you want to.

You can hate, you can complain, and drink, and woo women, and amuse yourself with art and music until this round concludes.

If I determine I must no longer speak with you on earth in order to realize my goal, then I will do that without flinching.

If I should fail in this lifetime to reach Buddhahood, it doesn’t matter.  I will never never never never stop trying.  I will not forget my aspiration.

In this life or in another I will gain total virtue and siddhis of awesome power.  I will become stronger than diamond, more fleet than light.

I will find you in the bottom pit of hell with a billion others and drag you all out if I must.

 

I will not rest until every soul has been brought to perfect love, perfect freedom and perfect joy, including mine and yours.

I will take rebirth in samsara endlessly.

Like all my sisters, I am the Magadalene; I am Sophia; I am Prajnaparamita, the Mother of All Buddhas, born and unborn.

Gate, gate, paragate, parasangate, bodhi swaha!

Gone, gone, gone all together beyond, awake at last!

Nothing will stop me.  I will see samsara and nirvana become as one.  I will see you shine in your glory along with all my brothers, O Christ, O Maitreya.

This lifetime no longer exists for me except as a stepping stone to that oneness.  No semblance of love with you or anyone else will ever hold my attention again.

I have had enough of semblances, enough of illusions that can die.  I want only the deathless, and I will find it.

This letter is not an invitation to you to recreate the past with me.  Last summer was only a weak glimpse of the eternal.  It was shattered too easily by the hard facts of this existence and by our self-cherishing.

The romance of our self-cherishing cannot happen again, it’s over.

It’s only purpose was initiation.

 

The only love that is left, the only relationship there is, is the one of wisdom to compassion, of energy to emptiness, and I will realize it.

And one aeon I will be with you again under a full moon in heaven.  And this time we will be truly free.  There will be no world of theft and heartbreak to return to.  We will have dissolved it.

All our brothers and sister Buddhas will be there with us, singing near fires, telling sublime storie.

And there will be no end to this heaven, no end to anyone’s happiness.

rainbowgatheringtennessee

Beings are numberless; I vow to save them.

 

Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to exhaust them.

Dharma-gates are boundless; I vow to pass through them.

The Buddha Way is supreme; I vow to embody it.

Happy anniversary, brother.  I love everyone, and you.

 

Love,

Carolyn

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Misery is a spiritual emergency

by admin on March 26, 2013

So lately I’ve been thinking a lot about spiritual emergencies.

Spiritual emergency: a brief introduction

The psychiatrist Stanislav Grof coined the term “spiritual emergency” to refer to periods of intense transformation that in our culture often get interpreted strictly as an illness and only treated through materialist means.

Nigredo alchemy spiritual emergence spiritual emergency

A spiritual emergency is a kind of sickness, but it’s also a birth, a coming-into-being of the spiritual self – i.e., an “emergence” and a crisis that requires attention – i.e., an “emergency.”

In his work, Grof used the term “spiritual emergency” to refer primarily to episodes of psychosis and disassociation that were actually involuntary or unconscious shamanic explorations. It’s my personal experience that spiritual emergency also can include extremely intense misery (i.e., “depression”) and unease (i.e., “anxiety”).

Misery as spiritual emergency

Intense misery is probably a vastly more common symptom of spiritual emergence than the visionary shamanic episodes that interested Grof.

Intense misery relates to emergence because when it happens in the life of a magically-oriented person who’s aiming for awakening, lucidity and illumination – well, that means that it’s actually the alchemical phase known as “nigredo” or “blackening, decomposing.”

Misery is what occurs when our natural self-centered quest for pleasure and status leads us into our own personal underworld.

For many people not gifted with awareness and knowledge this journey to the underworld leads directly to actual death and degradation.

Suicide is now the second leading cause of death in people aged 15 – 34 in America.

How misery becomes ultimately-liberating nigredo

Misery becomes transformed into ultimately-liberating alchemical nigredo when it’s met with honesty, compassion and awareness. We learn to look at our self-centered grasping truthfully, and then to gradually transmute the selfish misery into altruism that uplifts and heals us and everyone around us.

If you’re experiencing a state of spiritual emergency lately, please know that I’m always available to talk to on the phone.

Love, Carolyn

image: [Abode of Chaos on flickr]

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Join the Dreamer’s Tantra

by admin on March 22, 2013

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The 7 traits of highly magic people

by admin on March 21, 2013

1) You know you’re magic.

 

This is the big one.  In their heart of hearts, everyone is magic.  But most folks just don’t know it.  It’s very sad, and it’s not their fault.  They’ve had the awareness beaten out of them one way or another.  Our society is tres anti-magic.

Part of the mission of magic people is to help folks still stuck in the clay (that’s my way of saying “folks steeped in naive materialism or fundamentalism and unaware of their innate magic-ness”) understand that magic is real and within them, too.

But basically, if you know you’re magic, you’re ahead of the game.  Which means you don’t really need this article – but look, it’s the internet and we’re just having fun.

Magic people.

2) Synchronicities happen for you – a lot.

 

And they tend to speed up when you spend a lot of time on meditation, art, ritual, intentional movement or prayer.  Sometimes they’re just cute or silly, but often they’re life-changing and dramatic.

The biggest synchronous thing that can happen to a magic person, in my humble opinion, is meeting another magic person.  Or a whole enclave of them.  It’s thrilling.  It’s overwhelming. It’s love.

When lots of synchronicities are going on, I like to say “the jewel net is moving.” Because we’re all jewels in an infinitely connected web of silken joy.  And sometimes the net shifts and folds in on itself and we run smack into a whole bunch of other jewels. And it’s great.

3. You’re sensitive to seasons and lunar cycles.

 

The more magic you are (and remember, being magic is mainly a matter of… knowing that you’re magic) the more energies of light and the two big cosmic lamps in our region (the sun and moon) affect your business.

You might find that you can’t sleep on full moon nights (all that energy, so ramped up!) and that you go through epic mythopoetic cycles of emotional birth and death as spring turns to summer turns to fall turns to winter.

4. You have very vivid dreams.

 

Magic people have at least partially-developed aetheric bodies.  This means, at the very least, that one or more of their chakras (Rudolf Steiner liked to call them “lotus flowers”) are open and active.

Maybe you’re a magic person with a giant, pulsing, highly-empathic heart chakra. Or maybe your third eye is open and you have an easy time seeing the visionary fluid dance of all things.

At the highly-developed end of the spectrum, magic people have fully-formed aetheric bodies that can freely navigate the astral planes.

But having your aetheric sense perceptions open, even a little bit, means that you can see more vividly in the nighttime dream world than others can.  So, you got that goin’ for you. Which is nice.

5.  When you fall in love, it’s psychedelic.

 

Forget a loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou.  When a magic person falls in love (very probably with another magic person), it’s more like a sheet of acid, a gallon of mushroom tea and thou.  And I’m not saying that actual drugs are involved.

I’m saying that the intensity of dopamine and oxytocin rushes, in magic brains, tends to produce more than just sexy-cozy-attachment.

They tend to also unleash psychic perception (you can read your lover’s thoughts – like, for reals – not just “I was thinking of you!” “I knew you were thinking of me, baby. ‘Cause I was thinking of you!“), encounters with your lover in the nighttime dream world, ecstatic sex that ruptures the boundaries of your identity, and other fun stuff.

Also, be careful with all that. It can get hairy if your lover happens to be one of those not-really-very-stable-or-sane magic people. Of which there are quite a few.

Magic people fall in love and it's all like, whoah. Magic people fall in love and it’s all like, whoah.

 

6. You have an abundance of prana.

 

Or creative energy. Or genius, or whatever you want to call it.

Wilhelm Reich called it “orgone.” Kant called it “Geist.” Emerson called it “Soul.” Mezmer called it “animal magnetism.” It’s sexual energy which transmutes into different feeling-tones when centered in different chakras and channels in the body.

In other words – even though it’s sexual energy, your abundant prana doesn’t necessarily feel “sexy” (although it probably does in spring and summer).  It might just feel buzz-y or space-y or urgently creative.

You get seized with the need to write that poem, plan that ritual, record that song, make those spicy ginger fudge brownies. It’s implacable.

Also, no matter what you look like, folks tell you that you’re “hot.” And they mean it. You are. You radiate the light and heat of the cosmos. You’re a star, you magic darling.

7. You love to spread the magic around.

 

Your chief motive for making art, cooking great food, tending your garden, whatever – isn’t to be rich or famous. Though that could be cool.

It’s to spread the magic around, because you just can’t stand not doing it.  The magic is so fun, so beautiful, so warm, so true.

It drives you a little crazy when you can totally see the magic in someone, and they can’t see it in themselves.

It drives you maybe even more crazy when you can totally see the magic in the world, and the world at large seems not to tenderly care for and appreciate its magic.

So you put a goodly amount of effort everyday into doing stuff that increases the sum-total of magic and wonder and joy and love and delight in the world.

You turn up the volume on everything gorgeous so it can’t be ignored.

In conclusion

 

You’re magic and I am too, and I love you.  I hope you’ll join me and a bunch of other magic folks in the Dreamer’s Tantra Facebook Group, where we talk about this kinda stuff.

 

Also, if you’re ever feeling in pain or confused about life and magic, I make myself available to talk on the phone whenever.

Love,

Carolyn

 

images: ~rainyXskyz  and ~Lilianne on deviantart.com

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What is ecstasy? And how do I get it?

by admin on March 19, 2013

Ecstasy: it ain’t just a drug.

 

Ecstasy is the joyful experience of being outside of one’s habitual, conditioned self.  The term “ecstasy” comes from the Greek word ekstasis, which literally means “to stand outside.” The habitual self (also know as the “ego”) is often fearful, tense and alienated – so the experience of being outside of it feels great.

Sadly for us, our society as a whole is very afraid of ecstasy.  This aversion likely stems from the fact that ecstatic people aren’t all that interested in buying non-essential stuff.  If we all became ecstatic tomorrow, our consumer economy would flatline.  And capitalism just can’t let that happen.

Our society’s fear of ecstasy means that growing up, we generally don’t learn any means of inducing ecstatic states apart from illegal drugs (which are fine – but you know, illegal) and maybe large-scale dance parties and concerts (which also often involve illegal drugs).

I want to change that. I’m interested in the question of how to generate ecstasy cheaply and easily without drugs or giant parties.

The ecstasy of St. Theresa. image: scazon on flickr.

Ecstatic communication and connection

 

This question of how to generate ecstasy  interests me not just because ecstasy feels really damn good (it definitely does) but also because ecstasy experienced with other people makes possible a mode of communication and connection that is deeply empathetic, vital, and healing.

So what is it that usually prevents us from communicating ecstatically?

Well, if ecstasy is the condition of being outside our habitual selves, it stands to reason that our habitual selves are what commonly prevent ecstatic communication.

So then I ask – what, exactly, are our inhibiting habits?

Hooks and shields

 

We keep ourselves contracted and miserable mostly on the basis of two very ingrained ideas:

1) “I have to get what I want.”

2) “I have to protect myself.”

These are the mechanisms of clinging (attachment) and defending (aversion).

For short, I like to call these mechanisms “hooks” and “shields” – because we’re always trying to hook what we want (a hot partner, a raise, an idea of ourselves as cool and smart) and  shield ourselves against what we don’t want (undesired attachment hooks put forth by others, loss of any kind, an idea of ourselves as uncool or weak).

This means that any interaction is usually a kind of battle, or at best – a game.  In our conversations, we’re most often trying to get what we want.  We usually want, at the very least, an image of ourselves as valuable and important people.

We’re willing to send out manipulative hooks of all varieties in order to insure that we get this.

This kind of interaction can be fun, as long as the people we’re interacting with are willing to take our bait and we’re willing to take theirs.  It can be a nice exchange in which we make each other feel good and enforce our habitual selves.

This kind of interaction can also be be super-not-fun when the people we’re interacting with are not willing to take our bait and / or we’re not willing to take theirs.

In this situation, shields go up.  Iciness. Insult. Alienation.  Our habitual selves feel diminished or wounded, hurt and angry.

Communication without limits

 

All of this dodging of hooks and putting up shields is exhausting.  It reinforces our limited idea of who we are – a small, separate and suffering self who can never get enough of what she wants and needs to feel okay.

In order to communicate ecstatically, we need to suspend – if only for a few hours – our habitual practices of grasping after boosts to make ourselves feel good and protecting ourselves from other people’s potential aggression.

Obviously, that’s easier said than done.

But it is possible.  And I’ll have more to say about that soon.  In the mean time – try this: the next time you talk to a friend, pretend you have no need to enhance yourself or protect yourself throughout the conversation.  And notice what happens.

***

Want more? Well, then it would be a very good idea for you to join the Dreamer’s Tantra. Click the image below. It’ll take you to Facebook. Then hit “request to join.”

 

 

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