THE MULE
Chapter 21
For all of that day I existed in a sort of semi-daze-not dulled of senses, but knowing or aware that I was not functioning mentally as I had been used to functioning. It seemed to me as if I was reflecting on things that seemed new, but were known to be old.
After having breakfast and a shower it had only been then as I had been dressing that I remembered my self-hypnosis efforts of the night before. The memories had at first seemed fragmented and disjointed, and had taken quite a while to piece together.
Knowing from past experience with dreaming states and how to bring the dreaming state images back to my conscious mind I had not hurried the process, and had instead, allowed them to resurface at their own pace. I just kept gently nudging the direction from which I wanted them to come-the dreaming state. I figured the trance I had reached must have been close to a comatose or lucid dreaming state, which was why I felt so physically, mentally and emotionally rested, revitalised and refreshed.
One by one they, the memories of that state or trance had, over the first half of the day, and then completely by just after lunch, come back in full. In the euphoric state, or lucid dream state, or even the normal natural dreaming state we open our minds to many different levels of our own unconscious. Not only are all of our previous conscious experiences stored there, but it was also the storehouse of resources, which rarely come to conscious awareness.
The subconscious mind has remarkable talents for finding solutions to problems. And as of right then I seemed to have plenty of problems. The subconscious mind houses all of our wishes, our hopes, and our memories of past experiences, and can also assist us with self-examination, providing practical guidance for any question. It even makes it possible for us to have psychic experiences. I also had plenty of questions.
It was after the memories had all come back to me I realised that in trancing as deeply as I had done I’d had something akin to a psychic experience. My conscious mind had then been excited and remained that way. Always in hypnotic mind research I was excited, like a kid in a lolly shop.
As I relaxed and reflected calmly on everything I could allow to wash over my conscious thoughts I sensed that physical life was based on duality. -the duality of light and dark-positive and negative-charged particles of the human atom-of male and female needs and gender distinctions and the liberal and conservative political differences of men and women, males and females between men and women and males and females. I realised, in fact, that we, in our ignorance of the differences between who we are as males and females and what we are as men and women come to expect polarity in everything we encounter, only we don’t know it, don’t recognise it.
But what I realised most clearly, almost as if the awareness kept gently insisting I get it right, well and truly, was that it was, in fact, this unknown and unrealised duality that gave life its necessary and healthy tension-its upper safe arousal limit to live and exist happily and healthily. I could see now that at its best it entailed a creative, dynamic interplay that moved us along the path of real personal growth if we would but become aware of it. But more often than not, the tension of that duality, of male and female, of men and women, paralyses us. Peace between the two is almost always destroyed as we feel pulled apart by competing demands that were simply never destined to be by Mother Nature.
I knew already that it was a rare person who would experience peace in trying to reconcile the masculine and feminine aspects of self—whether in love relationships or in the inner alchemy of meeting one’s own opposite sex characteristics in the opposite gender. Nowhere, however, I realised now was the threat to personal peace more evident than in the most fundamental duality of human existence: the polarity of male and female, and of life and death. The stark reality of the physical male and female by gender design and right of birth now as real as death was an unavoidable matter for all of us. Ordinarily, even to the most skilled therapist it was an issue for even the most healthy, life-affirming person. Consciously or unconsciously, our peace of mind is eroded by the inevitability of our own male or femaleness, and of our ultimate and impending death.
I wondered idly of what was to be done, then, if we wanted to attain peace in a world of males and females-of polar opposites? Was peace an unachievable ideal in this world of nature’s natural, but unrecognised duality? Perhaps we could bring a spiritual understanding to a physical law? The physical world, yes, operated by gender duality. But I could see now that we’re also beings of gender spirit. I also saw clearly now that it’s this reality that actually makes it feasible for us to reconcile the countless difficulties we encounter between men and women-not between males and females, but between men and women, the what of who we both are.
I knew now that it was possible to experience oneself as a soul and harmoniously blend the qualities of masculine and feminine, naturally embracing the gender design we began this life with as the dominant of our soul-gender integration. Even more fundamentally, from the spiritual perspective I could see that males and females and earthly life and death are simply two sides of the same coin-we are all and both One. Who we really are has never been born and has never died. It was only what we are that underwent transition, which represented change of any kind.
I also realised in my mental meandering that only those who considered male and female and life and death as a natural Oneness would be able to understand what peace really means. That, I believed I now understood quite clearly, so clearly, in fact, that I wondered why it had not seemed so obvious to me before. Now I finally believed I knew the basic guiding principle of life and happiness between the sexes, which was simply to keep looking for the continuity of life-not the end in death, but the continuity in life. And to achieve that aim through our natural and unique maleness or femaleness and to try to see the tension-producing dualities from the perspective and perceptual angle of the differences between who we are as those males and females and what we are as men and women, as guided by our spiritual self.
I knew now that peace can and would be ours as individual human beings only when we could see the principles of nature underlying that Oneness in our separation. The principles, such that soul mates would be easily recognisable to each other and all males and females-not to men and women, but seen easily by natural males and females who lived, thought, behaved, felt, and emoted in accordance with Mother nature’s natural structure and order for all living, breathing animals and human beings alike. And that guidance, I saw now, was simply what felt right, with no injustice intended toward another-the guidance of who we really were.
I thought of Tina the more my mind wandered. I thought of her past and my own and of the future together I had sometimes dreamed of when thinking of her. I knew now that almost every person feels a longing for companionship. At times we might understand this desire as a directive toward union with God or our spiritual Self, and at other times, as a desire for union with another person.
Two ideas then came suddenly together in my conscious awareness concerning the choice of a companion-particularly a life partner. First was the principle that we are here on the earth for the purpose of growth and development in consciousness. And what’s more, the associations with some individuals that are more conducive to growth than associations with others. I seemed to be aware that it would be prudent to choose carefully our companions, based upon who we are as males and females with human needs, by comparison to what we are as men and women with material wants.
I found this principle was easy for me to accept if I reflected on the types of influence various friends and acquaintances have had on me in the past. The impact was most powerful in marriage and relationships. It seemed very clear to me now that a natural union should be founded upon a shared-felt purpose in life and the capacity to help each other to grow.
The second idea that came to me as I sat there gazing out idly over the deep blue ocean was one that related to reincarnation: We, as spiritual beings experience our growth in consciousness through a series of lifetimes in the physical human form of what we are in learned growth, guided by who we are in feelings of right that were always naturally known to us. I believed now that we’ve been on the earth many times before, and more specifically have had close personal relationships with particular souls. Attraction to another person and thoughts of marriage could very likely be related to subconscious memories and memory patterns of having been with that soul in the distant past-perhaps often even attracted to a particular person for relationship or marriage in this lifetime because of such a relationship at least once before.
Then I had a quandary. If reincarnation was a fact, we might expect that we had been married to many souls in the course of other incarnations, but which one of these partnerships would be the best one to build upon now, in this life? Does each person have exactly one other special soul that it was meant to be with whenever possible? I had always known that there were many sources of psychic information and other metaphysical teachings that have proposed concepts such as soul mate and twin soul. But now I realised fully that in the beginning was what became as the Sons of God, in that male and female were in actual reality as one. I now sensed somehow the very nature of the soul. Was it male or was it female? Both or neither? The answer came very, very gently.
I realised that in order to learn and grow, a soul enters into the physical domain and is characterised by such polarities as light/dark, positive/negative, thinking/feeling, and chooses to incarnate in a male or female expression. And most likely, in the long-range growth of the soul over many incarnations, male and female experiences are needed. In selecting one gender over the other in a particular lifetime, a condition was usually created in which a balance or complement was needed, such as could be found in a gender-opposite companion. .
I wondered then as my vision cast its relaxing net far out with the seagulls flying and diving, swooping and soaring above the fishing boats in the bay that perhaps this pattern of growth had not always been the usual way. Perhaps in ancient prehistory, such as the times of Atlantis more than 12,000 years ago, a soul could incarnate in such a way that male and female qualities were manifested simultaneously. Perhaps then both male and female might be desired so… in One.
But if that were the case, I pondered, what, then, was a soul mate? Was it the soul that one has been in a relationship with or married to in the most incarnations? Perhaps the frequency of marriage might be one factor because soul mates, I saw now, were built by shared physical experiences over a long period. But I wondered also if a soul mate was a complement to oneself-a tongue to the groove, the tenon to the mortise-more than merely a physical attraction, but a capacity to help each other at the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual levels.
As I watched the gulls and the bay and the fishing boats and the deep blue sky I wondered where all of these realisations had really come from. Had they come from within my own mind in the depths of that deep and wonderful trance state, or had they come from without, while being in that state as being the only doorway through which such knowledge may have ever come? I didn’t know, and lit my first cigarette of the day, only then realising that it was just that-my first, and then forgetting it about it immediately.
I seemed to be thinking of Tina and each time the realisations would come, softly, gently, but fully in awareness-choiceless awareness. They just seem to drift in. And the more I thought about soul mates the more I thought about Tina. And the more I thought about Tina, the more I thought about soul mates and the more the realisations would come.
I knew now that the idea of soul mates and affinities was closely related to reincarnation-that two souls might, in a number of incarnations, grow very close together in their pattern of spiritual evolution. These souls would need the help and assistance of each other as they evolved, and so in any one incarnation would be drawn closely together because of their many past associations and the intricate entwining of their respective soul personalities. I wondered then if one could have more than a solitary soul mate, then decided in all likelihood that the very same problems and opportunities we were currently facing would be the same, regardless of which partner we might have in our lives. I knew that in most relationships we most often come to terms with those things we need to work on in ourselves, even though we might sometimes think of our partner as being the source of our frustration.
Over and over again I began to wonder more frequently if Tina was actually my soul mate. My soft-talking inner mind seemed to answer me then before the thought had even finished. I needed someone who would help me to a more helpful, more sustaining, more well rounded life. I knew I had always been looking for someone who had the right vibrations for me. In fact, this was the phrase I had always thought of and had even used in therapy when trying to describe the kind of experience that might be felt between soul mates-with the union of two that vibrate or respond to those vibrations in Self; in that together, the two would assist one another in finding a balanced life as One.
Then I began to question again because even if I found someone like Tina who appeared fits these criteria-someone who was perhaps a soul mate-would this guarantee a good marriage? The two would still have to work together in order for the greater potential of the relationship to flower.
I wondered if she was the girl of the type and quality of womanhood and femaleness best suited to me for a successful and happy life together. Perhaps, my softly spoken inner mind answered again, I might understand a choice made by the two souls before being born this time, or maybe a connection relating to very strong bonds built over many lifetimes of being together. Or perhaps in two souls sharing a common purpose or ideal. The soul-mate condition was largely built in the material plane of experience, as well as having its mental, emotional and spiritual components beyond just sexual attraction.
I was beginning to notice I was becoming tired, as if my present time of memory retrieval of those dream recollections was coming to an end. I finally asked myself where the subject of soul mates or twin souls was leading me, or trying to. Was it my destiny to find and be reunited with some other special soul like Tina?’ Was it my destiny to find wholeness within our own souls? If I thought in terms of being destined to an ultimate union with some other soul like Tina, then did she consciously or unconsciously think and or feel the same way? The answer, if it was one, in fact, came gently, almost imperceptibly. And that was that the soul was the soul mate of the universal consciousness, rather than of an individual entity.
I returned to my full awareness with that realisation. And also the fact that I could now see the gulls visually, more than conceptually as they soared; that I could now smell the salt air that I breathed, and that I could now see clearly the cigarette that had burnt away without me enjoying any of it as it lay in the ashtray all gone.
I stretched, knowing whatever other answers I had been looking for or had been destined to find because of my deep trance experience would be coming at another time, if at all. I stood up and turned, then walked back inside and closed the sliding screen door behind me. The sun was about to kiss the horizon a gentle and tender good night. As I watched the last of that dying sun a bedtime saying from my mother strangely came to mind. I hadn’t thought of it in years.
I recalled then with just a little sadness that the only times as a child I hadn’t ever had trouble going off to sleep was when my mother had said that little poem for me as she’d tucked me in. I made a mental note to wonder later why that particular poem had come to my mind right then as I watched the darkening ocean seem to reach up and return the sun’s good night kiss. I was tired. It was time for my bed, learning or no learning. As my mother also used to say;
Tomorrow was another day. Tina was definitely involved in all of this somehow, was my last rational-thinking thought as I headed for the bedroom and bypassed the shower. But yet, there was still something else; something to remember about the trance. I suddenly felt drained of all mental, emotional and physical strength, and thought only of beautiful, restful deep sleep and knowing also, somehow, that for tonight, at least… no tigers would come.