A Thorny Issue

I'm feeling a little tipsy, for I have been for a drink with a girl friend. It is great to able to be wonderfully honest. You know those moments when you are able to just admit to being human? Able to take off the cloak of wondering if you are good enough, if you will be accepted, and simply say ‘This is how I feel: what’ya think?’

So this was one of the (many) issues:

I have discovered recently that I do not express my needs, and therefore they are not met. Let me be totally candid about it: it is not his fault. It is the other person’s fault in the relationship, who would be, actually, and quite exactly, me.

“But…..” I say extending the u of my northern accent and stretching my neck to look into the skies, while multitasking with a deep breath to be able to say many words in a torrent, “if you tell a man to buy you a box of chocolates and he does, is it the same?”

The issue has actually come up from my friend’s story, about her life. That’s the beauty of these girl chats, you can never really tell who you are talking about…so I launch into advice mustering up my bestest woman-of-the-world wisdom wondering if I’m talking to my friend or myself, or both?

“My mum and I have this silly tendency to hide within our psychic shells. Then if a man comes along and ‘finds’ us, then we have ‘proof’ of his love.”

“Ohh I think lots of women do that, don’t they?”

“Yes, but we aren’t 7 years old any longer. Hide and seek went out long ago as a regular pastime for me.”

“So you think we have to tell of our needs?”

“Well…” I say breathing in deeply again with the sheer joy of communicating “I’ll use an example, because you’ll be able to see that I’m talking parallel - being a woman.”

We laugh voraciously with the idea that we can talk in many-tongued similes and chat about several things at once, without having to actually ever finish anything we are saying. But this time we don’t go off on a tangent. What we both know right now is that have already discussed that you cannot ‘tell’ the man what you want by expressing your need in parallels or analogies, they don’t hear. They think you are actually talking about a bike.

I look around for an object as an example, “Take a bike,” I say, she nods, “lets say I really want one. So I don’t say anything, I hide myself and my need inside, and then if someone, by sheer stroke of a miracle gives me a bike, it is ‘evidence’ that he is THE ONE.”

“But,” she says mimicking my accent “the chances are that you will never get one.”

“That’s right. So we have to say “I would like a bike.” And then he goes off dutifully and buys you a bike. Does that mean that he loves you?”

We both ponder the situation, it is a bit sticky.

“Well, yes, to a degree. He wants everything to be good for you.”

“I guess. But it is all rather perfunctory don’t you think?”

And then I get this flash of brilliancy and pretend that I have known it all along, “The deal is, that we don’t actually want the ‘bike’, what we want is to be recognised within.”

“Ah ha!” says my friend “Wow, yeah, wooo.”

“I just made that up.”

“Sounds right to me.”

And so, given this encouragement I feel the permission to launch into a myth with total freedom to ad-lib to my heart's content.

Sleeping Beauty is dealt her destiny by the fairies who say she will be fair and gentle and good and intelligent and great at cooking and creative and a wonderful friend and intrepid traveller, until the bitch fairy says ‘She’ll die on a prick.’

Everyone gasps, there is no way out. Or so it would seem, until the littlest fairy, who everyone seems to have forgotten about, pipes up, ‘My wish is that she doesn’t die but falls asleep.’

So the court, the family, keep all pricks away from their precious little baby. All men are vetted and none are allowed in through the back door. But as the story would have it, she is in some dark dusty old place and finds a prick and it is a really nasty situation (each and every one of us has a story where we were hurt to some degree, we are talking about any kind of abuse from any kind of person). Blood falls to the floor and she falls asleep. Of course she doesn’t fall asleep really, that would be silly, but part of her, the part that has been damaged, becomes closed off, that bit falls asleep. In its moment it is a good defense mechanism…but if it goes on too long without resolution the area becomes unconscious.

The whole court falls asleep. The family refuses to talk about it, the psychic energy gets frozen, nothing is flowing. Everyone is trapped in the horrible situation and no-one is prepared to talk about it, afraid to open the can of worms. 

Thorns start to grow outside the castle into a veritable forest. She becomes so sensitive to anyone approaching the area of damage that she has thorny words to say. She becomes adept at putting people off, leading them astray, creating smoke screens: anything to keep people at a distance.

Until, that is, there is a man, within her or without, who with his sword of understanding, can swipe through the thorns and get to the other side. He gets in through her defense mechanisms, and once inside, (if he isn’t a dick so that she throws him out and puts up 24/7 surveillance  mines, barbed wire and mantraps just for measure), if this guy who got through her thorns by understanding her is also actually loving…wooowww that can be so, so, so healing. The prince kisses the princess with a good dose of love, and she awakens. She begins to live a full life again.

And, unless I am the only one, I think many of us women are operating on this fairy tale. 

Fairy tales are actually, though it make shock, pre-Disney. Sleeping Beauty was first published 1697, and who knows how many times it was told before then. There is a reason why it keeps going and why people like telling it, passing it from generation to generation: it has psychic content that somehow comforts us.

But can we keep living like that?

Can we keep wanting men to come and recognise us, to fill in our gaps. Or has it got the point, where we, god-damn-it, have to find the prince within, and do it for ourselves?

One of the ways we can become our own prince is to speak out our needs, instead of expecting a guy who we’ve met for 3 days to magically know what we want. We can wake ourselves up out of own unconscious state, by giving up the fantasies and deciding what we need for ourselves.

Last night, in despair, I practiced it. I was feeling ignored and unloved and wondered if everything was going wrong between me and my love-bird. Weeks ago he had told me to state my needs, but I had found myself so unpracticed in actually understanding my needs that I was unable to until it was too late, like weeks too late…until last night, sat on a terrace restaurant, both of us in silence after me declaring my hurt emotions, I suddenly realised I needed reassurance. Through the silence I launched my words “I really need reassurance. Like right now. It’s a state of emergency.” The silence melted like butter under the sun, and after his wonderful words, which the thorny silence was preventing, we ended up snogging in front of our king prawns.

Back with the conversation today with my girlfriend, she says “You see this guy, the one I went on three dates with and who hasn’t even tried to kiss me yet…?” I nod in a recognising fashion, “all I want for him to do is to claim me. To come up to me as a Man and say something like “I want you. I desire you,” without me having to feed him his lines. I want to feel myself as an attractive woman. I want to feel recognised that I have opened the door to him and my body and that at least he sees me, there in my psychic negligee, panting slightly. I’m not even sure if I want sex with him, but…I just want the situation recognised….or,” she says in a grave tone “are we just friends?”

We both know that this cannot, surely be the case. She asks even though we both know he is calling every day and taking her out for meals. Which friends do not do. Friends meet on the park benches, cos it’s cheaper.

“Tell him what you want maybe. Tell him how you feel. Ask him how he feels.”

“He would freak out!”

“Do you want him?”

“I don’t know.”

My wise woman comes to the surface again, probably talking to myself more than to my friend “You want him to make the decision, you want him to be the instigator. You want him to be “the man”. But maybe before asking him if he wants a relationship with you, you should decide if you want a relationship with him?”

She darts a murderous look at me, as if pained that a friend could be so cruel, “Yes,” she says “yes, maybe you are right.”

The thing is that if we don’t become our own princes we’ll keep asking men to validate us, to heal our pains that manifest in unworthiness, in needing constant confirmation of deserving to exist, or in feeling unloveable etc. We could be putting ourselves in a position where we aren’t actually seeing the man as he is, but a potential magical prince who is going to make us feel good about being ourselves and live happily ever after. If we ask him, stating our needs, to fight through our complicated defense mechanisms and tell us that he wants us, that he desires us, that he is willing to run barefoot to the end of the world for us just because we want a banana straight from the jungle, once he actually does it, (and it is really no mean feat), if we have not done our homework beforehand, we might just find out, once he is within our inner sanctum, on the other side of the thorns, once he has validated us and calmed our fears, that he is a complete knob.

If we only ask him because we want to feel accepted and to be seen by someone, we’d better be ready for a surprise once he gets manly. He might not be the prince we were waiting for.

If we can validate ourselves, while looking at the man, as a man, and decide for ourselves if we would REALLY like to have a relationship with this guy using our logic swords of our animus princes within, then there is a good chance, while we are dreaming and throwing the I Ching every second day to find out if he actually likes us, that he is actually a decent catch. Then it really is worth stating your needs risking rejection and recognition (that we are also now providing wholesale to ourselves) and asking him to get his electrical chainsaw out to cut through our thorny fears of intimacy.

So my girl friend and I, two girls talking with beers between us, in a balmy afternoon sun, didn’t exactly talk in a direct logical fashion, but instead came to conflicting conclusions quite happily:

The other can never fill the void that is in us. No one can but our own selves. That’s it. We may all be addicted to oxytocin, the ‘love hormone’ that regulates orgasms, social recognition, pair bonding and anxiety…we may all be addicted to the bliss of being intimate with someone…but at the end of the day we have to deal with our own relationship to ourselves. For as much oxytocin that you create together, he is not going to sort you out, fill your (psychic) hole and turn you into the pretty woman princess you know you can be: beautiful, sexy, daring, adventurous and successful in ways that people never thought possible. We have to do that ourselves.

“But,” says my friend “we do need relationships to be able to grow personally.”

And then we had to leave. Of course we were twenty minutes late, and had to go to the toilet, and continued talking rapid fire through the cubicles despite the obvious noise interference. Waterfalls aside, as we got outside and as we were unlocking our bikes I said “I feel a bit high.”

“You don’t get oxytocin just from men you know! You get it from doing what you love.”

Which is maybe the actual answer. Just to make life into what you love. Because no one else is going to do it for you. 

Knowing oneself enough to shoot down paranoia

Cover of book by Jonathan Mary-Todd

It is not easy to enter into a new culture. No matter how many times one has done it before. One knows only too well the rings of fire to jump through, but they are all slightly different. Last time they were jumped clear, and this time? I am comfortable almost in being uncomfortable, entering into new groups of people, into new relationships; but it does not stop me being afraid.

Boulder is a great place. I love it. But it does not reduce the fear, nor the psychological mind fucks. If anything it increases them. There is a great community of people here, who are pushing through their boundaries, in that paradoxical way, to find their own centers. 

Everything is so different in this bubble within the US. There are unspoken bike rules, the way one talks in a group (here all must be in the first person to only vouch for one’s own personal experience, whereas in other places it would seem somewhat ego-centric). Here people are expected to be ‘cool’ and accept as perfectly common place such practices that in other cultures would be simply and utterly taboo: naked bar-b-cues, omm meditation where the man who could be a stranger gently rubs the woman’s clitoris for 15 minutes as she meditates the experience, and poetry readings left, right and center.

It is a place where I realise I have been unconsciously heading toward for a long time, little facts suddenly start to make sense, like standing up in a hairless urban society for underarm hair. Learning to dance free in a safe environment on a Greek island suddenly transforms into a useful, if not necessary, tool here. Miles of cycling are remembered in my aching calves. And thank god I can do energy talk. 

It is a place where I would like to stay. Suddenly I wonder: Can I? Will I be accepted? Am good enough? Will I be allowed back?

So the defense mechanisms come out to further confuse the day. Extroversion goes into turbo mode. “Scotty, Scotty turn on the extraversion defense shield!” “Aye aye Captain!” and then I am left, after jabbering on in a group of new people, alone, wondering if they had understood what I was saying, how they saw me and if this time I have made an absolute and utter dick of myself.

I was in one of those moments yesterday. 

There is a trend here for ‘Threshold Choirs’ which are little groups of people who go to hospices to sing to those on the threshold of living, entering into the other world. Singing eases their way into conscious dying. Given our singing we will definitely help them to go faster. There will be a mini presentation which could also be called a concert next week in a synagogue, in front of doctors. In the rehearsal our leader as much as she was trying to stay calm, was nervous, and it showed. Memories of past last minute rehearsals sprang to mind. I felt her emotions in me, twisting through my stomach.

I didn’t know that I was on the edge of ovulation and unconsciously opening up to the world - to all of it, not just the nice cherries on the cake, but to the roots of fear.

After the rehearsal, sat on a sofa, one of the singers wondered why she was so tired when normally, after singing, she felt invigorated. I mentioned stage nerves. She denied them. I mentioned concerts where beforehand I had thought it would be completely embarrassing, only for it to turn out reasonably well and that ... She got up, nodding and saying ‘Yes, yes’ and left mid-sentence.

I felt like a right dick.

Rejected, mid-sentence. She didn’t say goodbye.

Ovulating, I wondered if I was really so rejectable. Should I have been so truthful?

But then, a thought broke through the clouds of my mind. I had had it a week before, entering into other groups. I had had it once before then as well, telling my new love that he was the only one responsible for his relationship with me, that it had nothing to do with me, and that I was the only one responsible for my relationship with him. They are mutually exclusive. It is something that I have learnt to believe now for years. It started after seeing how Melanie in ‘Gone with the Wind’ maintains her faith and trust in Ashley, to the point of apparent absurdity in the face of reality. However it was this faith and trust that kept Ashley faithful and trustworthy against the onslaught of Scarlet. Melanie keeps her relationship safe in her vulnerable innocence, staying as a lighthouse for him in the middle of wild torments.

We are only responsible for our relationship with the world. We are not responsible for the world’s relationship with us.

And there I had it. This simple, but powerful feeling of keeping my energy, my own perspective, grounded in my center. I kept faith and trust in my own viewpoint, instead of hysterically running out of my own safety zone trying to work out what others thought of me. 

I sat there, post stun, regained posture and realised, ‘I like her. She is fine’. I like that scenario, I feel comfortable liking her, even if she is tired and possibly negating nerves. I want to have good relationships with people from my point of view. 

And that is all that I needed to know, because I believe that having spent 38 years with myself I have a better picture of who I am than she does after having known me for a single rehearsal. Paranoia shot down square on.

I sat there knowing what I had said was from a good heart. Perhaps she had misinterpreted me. But that is her responsibility.

Saint George and Alchemical Union

23rd April. Today is a day for lovers, for the lovers within ourselves, as our masculine parts descend and our feminine parts rise to join in amorous harmony. The union of the heart and brain. 

Edward Burne Jones dipiction of George

The prince of the skies, Saint George came down from the air. He fell from paradise, from the place of union of light, flew down through intuition and found himself confronted by his own earthly reality.  Suddenly he is no longer the prince of the skies but now a (half) human (half) being. Woaah! What is that dragon?

They say that we are born on earth impure. The Catalans would say malparits, which is literally born badly, figuratively translated as “in a sorry state”. We come out a little monstrous, not quite as perfect as our minds would like. We are our own Frankensteins. We are not in harmony with the universe (One- version) but we pipe our own out-of-unison song. The cosmos flows around in orderly lines, like a ploughed field, in harmonic unison with each other, like an orchestra with each musician playing as one creating a beautiful uplifting piece of music. And then we are born and get out those party horn things. And blow it. But it's not exactly Mozart.

The dragon is a representation of this rather uncoordinated clumsiness. We are all made up of the four elements, everything is. In an enlightened state, the four elements are equally balanced and working together: Air (intuition), Water (emotions), Fire (thinking) and Earth (sensations). We need to balance our four elements. Ether (the belonging to a whole greater than the sum of its parts) is impotent without the others in balance. It is the secret of physical and psychological health. None of us, as far as I can see, are enlightened: we've got work to do! We’ve got our dragons to face.

 

Aristotle's elemental qualities

The dragon is a representation of the four elements, he blows fire angrily out from his mouth, his wings allow him to fly clumsily in the air, his claws grip into the earth and he cries big baby crocodile tears. But his elements are all badly born. Clumsy and angry, his elements are all at odds with each other, like trying to light a fire in the rain or flying through tarmac...

So, Saint George finds himself in a predicament coming up against this dragon (inside of himself) as he heroically admits to discovering his instincts. And as all cavaliers, to save his good name, he is faced with one option:

Slowly, calmly, he gets out his sword and shield. 

He fights nobly from the top of his white horse of the mind, just like all of our fantasy heros do, and with his sophisticated sword work he manages to slice through the reality of himself (like Shiva´s sword) getting a little closer to the truth to give him a little more strength to dominate his dragon. Some stories just go right ahead and kill the dragon off, but how can instincts be killed? It is impossible. Some Granddad got carried away retelling the story…so in the mystic story, the dragon is dominated. Saint George is able to dominate with his mind the impulses of his instincts. Dominating the dragon he has aligned his four elements to be more in harmony. They do not fight so much anymore, the dragon is a little more docile. Ether is given a chance.

Saint George finds himself in a more balanced state, and as a result, from the mouth of the cave, steps a beautiful maiden now that the dragon is not ferociously guarding the entrance. 

Jung's dipiction from his Red Book

Saint George is rewarded by glimpsing his soul. His Anima, the feminine within, influences his interactions with the world giving them more meaning. Allowing him to begin to conceive of himself in the Uni-verse. It could be considered the path to our creative gifts. From floating in the mind, suddenly Saint George is using his heart, and if expressed in a harmonious way, while the dragon is comfortable domesticated, it is beauty and truth and purity and wonderfully creative expression. It is being fully and ecstatically alive.

We can have as much information in our brains as we can fill, but until we have understood our knowledge through love, it cannot be comprehended. Those moments of eureka when suddenly you ‘see’, when you ‘click’ into what you you know is true because you remember somewhere knowing it once. You feel it's truth, because it is so obvious, so simple. It is like peeling away an onion skin, or taking off a veil (revelation). Normally we are left with something so beautifully simple that we secretly wonder if actually we knew it all along and had just somehow forgotten.

If we only understand our world with our brains, it is dry and unconnected. Comprehension is with our hearts and we connect with our profound memories, with our entire being. This connection of knowledge and heart is represented by the union of Saint George with the beautiful maiden, and how lovely she is! She allows us to leave the dark depths of the cave and resurface to fresh air where we can wake up and smell the roses.  (The Rose is the western equivalent of the eastern Lotus flower). 

The masculine and feminine come together once more, the sky and the earth rejoin... They have sex (alchemically speaking of course...)

The Alchemical union of the King and Queen

The union of Saint George with his maiden creates a third, a rebirth. This time the birth is a little better. They are transformed into the new castle and live happily ever after according to Walt D (....No!!! Don't believe it!!) The castle with its slightly better squared four walls is a representation of the four elements in slightly better harmony.

And the cycle comes to a close, but not an end. Like any spiral, Saint George is back where he began, at the same point but not the same man. Now he has aligned himself a smidgen more to the UniVersal, he has dominated his dragon for a while, and he has incorporated the Beauty of the glimpse of Truth into his self thanks to his inner maiden emerging from the cave of matter.

But too much of a good thing is never good…Saint George soon falls back down through the clouds, motivated by the image of a greater world…to go delve in the realms of his dragon land. Saint George is in constant movement, never getting stale, constantly birthing in another weird but wonderful way as he and his inner maiden evolve in greater and purer love.

Happy Saint George's day!

Carpaggio's dipiction of Saint George