Triptych: Sutta 23: TWIN FLAMES

Love. Carnal, real time love between a man and a woman. Tango. Waltz. Two-step. Gavotte. Break Dancing. To truly dance that dance the lovers must be prepared to sacrifice all. Nothing left but the dance. A dance tempered in fire. To merge as flames. Twin flames. Lovers from the beginning. Across infinite galaxies. Across eons. To burn. To burn. To become the fire itself till there’s nothing left but the heat rising. The air pirouetting in slow motion. The dark of night - finally  - at ease.

 

FIRE DANCERS

& what of those beautiful tango dancers, Adam & Eve? You & me.  I pin so much hope on finding that one being who completes me. To jive, like the joyous, eight-footed octopod rolling in the deep of love-bliss, that Plato describes so succinctly, so comically. Complete. Married at the umbilicus. Yeshuah & the Magdelena. Yoni & Lingam. Romeo & Mata Hari. Judas & Juliet. & yet, & yet - I still - I still believe. Across the eons & vast expanses of inter-
galactic, inter-Cosmic time, each reaches out to the other. Yearning. Knowing completion is only a lifetime away. Maybe this time. Maybe. In the jostled crowd a face surfaces. A being. A recognition. Fingertips touch. A prestidigitation. An imbrication. The fruit is red, juicy with endless jewels locked into precision. The tango in the flames. For me, it continues. & who are you? Could it be you?

 

THE MOTHER TREE

In Genesis, we focus on the serpent, on the fruit, & on those two doomed lovers. The real anchor of the story is the tree that sits at the heart of the garden. My viking ancestors note that the whole cosmos is centred on Yggdrasil, the sacred Ash from which Wodin hung. The Buddha came back from ascetic starvation by remembering the fragrance of the rose apple tree of his youth. Of  course he achieved full awareness under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya. The tree connects the earth to the sky. In my imagination, the lovers dance, the sun radiates, the dragon curls , furling his angelic wings ,  hurling out blasts of tempering fire. All this drama is calmed to stillness  by the majesty of the eternal Mother Tree that engenders life itself.

 

DRAGON OF THE SUN

Man is built in the image of the Divine. The corollary is equally true. The Divine is built in the image of Man. The dragon embodies the highest ideal of how that mystery unfolds. Wings of the angel. The breath of catalyst. The origin in the birth of galaxies. The skin of rippling ones & zeroes. The body of the serpent which emanates from the heart of the Great Mother, our living earth. Dangerous. Ferocious. Fearless. Puissant. Of the world of dreams but nonetheless more real than every pebble in the rock quarry of reality. Look into the eyes of a Dragon ( if you dare ). The knowing is so vast, so contained - we surrender to a beauty that knows no bounds.

AQUIFER

Unbeknownst.  

The dark abides.  

Cool of the night. 

The dew descends. No breeze stirs. 

Bated breath. Hooded lids. 

Sleep invites.

Waiting. 

A willingness to wait. 

Waiting. 

In the stillness - a knowing. 

Silence within the silence.  Within - 

the silence.

THE SEEKER

In this briefest of lives, I  have often been alone. I know that way of being. In my tall, seamless tower of isolation. In my small craft, out in the swell, buffeted by dark green waves. In solitary confinement, in my windowless cell. Walking aimless through the crowds in the throngs of the market place. In my time capsule, lost in the space between galaxies. All I know in that emptiness is to keep going. To move onward. To keep moving. I feel the flagstones with my toes in the cool waters beneath. I keep my sight on that one unwavering band of light. One step at a time. One step. One.

SPIRIT GUIDES

There are more things in Heaven and Earththan aredreamt of in your philosophy.” So says Hamlet to his  “Just the facts, ma’am”,  friend,Horatio. When I was a young boy,my father, the hard-core scientist,took me to the engineering building at McGill where Rutherford,  the new-age Alchemist, unpeeled  the shell of the Gold atom, breaking the machine & touching the ghost of matter. Sir Ernest’s main ethos, “Prove all things”, was carved into the granite wall - as if with a little more perseverance all things unknown will ultimately become known. The principle I come to know : the unknown is so vast we barely touch the tip of our toes into that dark water. A silence abides. An emptiness attends. A presence that can neither be proven nor explained. How to  understand this? I could tack words on. Better simply to accept. Accept without the necessity of proof