The Gift of the Lovers

Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2010 23:04:39 -0800 (PST)

Subject: [sunrootgardens] Farmer K’s Final Post

Final Greetings from Farmer K:

This is the last piece of writing to be issued by me under the name, “Farmer K”. It is not agriculturally themed, so if you are interested only in farming news, this is not for you. If you are seeking righteous anger, spiritual reassurance, or petty insults, it is also not for you. If you like gossip, it might be satisfying. This piece was two moons in the writing, but for all that work, I expect most people will find it incomprehensible. It might help, when reading it, to imagine that only half of the piece is here, with every other sentence having been mysteriously deleted as I hit “Send”.

Bon Voyage!

“THE GIFT OF THE LOVERS”

• The Precipice
• The Sensual Experience
• In the Beginning…
• Sex
• Love
• Rites of Passage
• No Commitments
• Intent
• Devotion
• The Sacred Marriage
• Nowhere to Go

THE PRECIPICE

I stand now at the edge of a precipice and am about to jump. Either that, or I am already in free-fall, have been for some time, and am just now saying something about it (to myself, as well). Or, nothing has changed at all – ever, in 41 years – and I am just seeing what has always been in process.

In any case, it feels like being on the verge of a Letting Go such as I have not experienced previously during the time I have had in this particular body.

I’m not talking about the giving up to other people of the gardens around the city that I have tended over the last few seasons. Nor do I mean my geographical move away from cities, now imminent. Nor, finally, am I referring to anything that has to do with how I might choose to interact logistically with Society/The Culture in the future. All those things are merely of the material world, and though they are factors which have impacted the function and form of my body – including the operating abilities of my senses and brain – they are of no real concern; in the end, they are details that simply don’t matter.

I was informed this summer by an astrology-minded acquaintance that the Tarot card that marks this year in my body’s life is “The Lovers”. (The card representing my entire life is “The Wheel of Fortune”, chuckle!) I was not surprised to hear this. That has indeed been the energy that has suffused this year’s seasons. It has sparked a birthing in and out of myself, and served as a spring board into explorations of consciousness deeper than I had dared hope to have the opportunity to embark upon.

* * *

THE SENSUAL EXPERIENCE

There are as many doors to Awakening to Life as there are moments lived. This is because in every instant of being alive, one is having a sensual experience; it is through our senses that we experience living. The only barrier to being Awakened to Life is anything that blocks or muddles what is picked up by the senses, and in the human experience, that which usually does so is the Ego Self, typically acting in This Culture through the intellect.

The senses include the five physical – touch, taste, smell, hearing and vision – plus what has been called “the subtle” or the “metaphysical”. These senses are detecting energetic stimuli, each in their own way. What they pick up is passed to the brain, where it enters our consciousness. Most of us also have a “subconsciousness”, which is merely a part of experience being disallowed from entering our consciousness by some mechanism or another. The subconscious can contain many things, including things we know but would rather not think about, and things we sense but would rather not feel. Life lived with a subconscious is a life not fully lived, because it is a life not fully awake. The subconscious is the hiding place of Fear. But if you look at this situation clearly, it really is absurd – the fact that there is some part of ourselves that we are hiding from ourselves because we are afraid of knowing/feeling what is there! Just something that is inside us? Really? And yet it is so.

Any sensual experience can serve as a door to waken one into full consciousness because any sensual experience, when fully felt, is revealing the totality of our existence to us in that moment. With full awake consciousness, we see that life is perfect. “Perfect” in the way a circle is “perfect” – whole, complete and entire. Eating food, smelling a flower, staring at the sky, touching the sand, listening to insects – most people have experienced a moment of calm, easy transcendence in one of the above ways. Then they disengage themselves and “get back to business”, narrowing to a consciousness that is no longer fully feeling the moment but is once again now worrying about something that happened or something that might, fearing this and hoping for that, running to catch up to some imagined goal, measuring self and works against some standard and judging themselves as doing well or badly at any given step: straining for a consistency in personality and action and for a meaning in life. All bothersome nonsense, and all of it held up as “responsibility” by the Society at large. Every bit of it a distraction from the sensual experience of living.

The Gift of The Lovers is that it provides a sensual experience that includes all the senses, physical and metaphysical, offering particular rewards for putting oneself fully into a moment of its expression,

The energy underlying The Lovers is that of connection and creation.

* * *

IN THE BEGINNING…

One theory of the evolution of Life on Earth goes like this: Volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean were releasing clouds of heat into the water. The pull and release of the orbiting Moon’s gravity, meanwhile, drew up and then let go of this heat. The resulting mix of influences in the medium of the water led to chemical reactions that eventually became self-replicating organisms of the very simplest type. These spewing heat vents, which still exist at the bottom of the ocean today, are phallic-shaped.

Here we have a classic yin and yang relationship. Yang, the “male” energy, pushing or expelling. Yin, the “female” energy, pulling or drawing toward. There is no opposite in these energies; they are complementary. Therefore, every living creature on the planet today is “the created”: the product of yin and yang interacting together. As humans, we are a dioecious species, meaning our male and female reproductive parts are on different individuals, not both on one (with rare, generally non-reproductive exceptions). Other species that are dioecious are Gingko, Cannabis, and Spinach. So as individuals, we are each of “the created” – and so are made up of both yin and yang – and we are each expressions in our bodies of one of the creating forces – either yin or yang.

The Gift of The Lovers is to find and explore expressions of these complementary energies in oneself and with another person, while simultaneously awake. One might feel the heat of the earth rising up and flowing through oneself, eager to be released, or one might feel the pull of one’s own gravity drawing another person towards oneself for enveloping embrace. The rhythms of these energies find their forms physically and metaphysically, and you can join their flow, seeing that you have always been there anyway, only being “out of it” in your perception. The subconsciousness dissolves into lucidity. A joy outside the bounds of happy/sad fills you entirely.

I’m not talking about getting laid, although I am certainly referring to sexual acts among other things.

* * *

SEX

Much ado is made in The Culture of sexual identity and activity. In my years in this body, I toured various facets, from mainstream to edgy, not limiting myself to a particular gender, race, religion, age difference (other than “of legal age”), or any other “type”. What I found was the same thing: superficiality, fakeness, and ego-games, all dressed up as somehow special. Religions called their games “tradition” and the counterculture dubbed theirs as “liberated”, but both (and everyone in between) were – and are – full of shit. The “traditions” turned out to be recently invented and the “liberation” was only a knee-jerk contraposition of them. Nowhere in the lands of gay/straight, monogamous/polygamous, open/closed, did I find anything Real, Sincere, or *actually* based in Love.

As some of you might remember, one personal response of mine to this whole mess was to marry myself in August 2006. I did it up, with an ordained minister, written invitations, gift registration, wedding photographer, best man, maid of honor, and all other roles filled, topped with a raucous reception, from which I saved one slice of the cake until the 1 year anniversary. The idea was to employ every wedding tradition anyone could think of, and play the thing out for all it was worth. There was even a performance during the ceremony of a song by The Carpenters (“On Top of the World”)! Originally shaped as a prank, I soon realized that I had cast some sort of spell on myself, but didn’t know what kind, or how it would play out.

I’m sure many married people would agree that one of the best things about marriage is being out of The Dating World, with its dramas and heartaches. I certainly found that to be the case. But my own vows had included nothing about monogamy, so a door was open to having any kind of experience with anyone else. But this was not an opening for anyone looking for a life-partner, since I was officially and publicly “all set” in that area. So now I had a filter for holding back the people looking for that, which turned out to be nearly everyone, regardless of how outside-the-box they claimed to be. If I was nobody to “land”, then I was nobody to share intimacy with. This was fine with me; the lack of game-playing was refreshing and freeing.

So one of the results of my marriage was a period of no sexual activity. This too is a tradition of getting married, I’ve heard! <wink> This years-long period was not intentionally a practice of “celibacy”, yet when it ended, in the late Spring of 2010, it was clear that that’s what it had been. I mention this because I can honestly say (and herein am honestly saying) that I had no complaint whatsoever during that entire period. I was not lonely or wishing for anything to be different. I daresay I came into a state that evokes words from Byron Katie: In talking to a young woman who was unhappy because she didn’t have a boyfriend, Byron Katie asks the young woman what she would be like without these feelings – that she wants a boyfriend. The answer Katie had was that “you would be your own perfect partner and anyone else would be a bonus”.

Perhaps, then, it was something like that which I had come to be experiencing by the Spring of 2010: being my own perfect partner when a bonus arrived.

* * *

LOVE

“The Gift of The Lovers”: With this phrase I am not referring to only one thing, but to a bouquet. This bouquet has many blossoms, and it is nothing new at all. References and clues can be found throughout history, from some of the oldest texts in existence (which have been preserved in India), through the stories of the Greeks, the plays of Shakespeare, and even in some modern pop songs: “Don’t you know that it’s a fool / who plays it cool / by making this world a little colder.”

Every human being who has ever lived has had the capacity to receive The Gift of The Lovers. (The only exceptions might be those who have received a brain injury of some kind, pre- or post-natally, and whose functioning is therefore impaired.) No absolute impediments to The Gift are provided by any culture or life event, since the ability to receive this gift is inherent in human consciousness. The key word here is “absolute”, since all Culture acts to impede human consciousness for the purpose of imposing control through conformity. (Terrance McKenna: “Culture is not your friend.”) In fact, one could say that Culture is the biggest impediment, second only to the Ego Self. Alternately, one could say that the *only* impediment is the Ego Self, which Culture incessantly feeds. Regardless, no one individual can be said to be absolutely incapable. In other words, there are no excuses!

The experience of the Gift of The Lovers strips away excuses, lays bare the fears that made them, and exposes the naked being underneath the mask of the Ego-Self. In this nakedness is revealed the pure and free expression of love.

Before we go on, we must for a moment examine the word, “Love”, which is possibly the least understood and most often misused word in The Culture. Generally, “love” is considered to be on the spectrum of “like” to “dislike”, with “love” being the strongest form of “like”. In conversation, one might “love” a band, a television show, a cafe, a food, a piece of furniture, a car, a bike, or a person. In these cases, when someone says they “love” any of these things, what they really mean is that they *prefer* them over other things of the same kind. “Preference” is a luxury of those with choices; not everyone is in such a position of such material wealth in the world today, nor has that been the historical norm. In other words, this type of “love” that people talk about in our society is the aberration of a pampered existence that is ignorantly taken for granted. So in 21st Century America you get to drive the car you love or ride the bike you love to see that band you love at that bar you love with those booths you love where they serve that appetizer you love with that beer you love. All this with some people you say you “love”.

Which brings us to “loving” other people. In our culture, people say they love their family, their friends, and their partners. Even that bitch of an aunt they hate, they “love” because she’s “family”.Even that moody jerk of a buddy, because he’s a “friend”. Even that asshole of a man, because he’s the “husband” or “boyfriend” or – with trendy modern flair – no title because “we don’t use labels”. Doesn’t matter if you do. It’s all the same.

The labels don’t matter, be they “mother” or “best friend” or “girlfriend” or even “bee-atch”. In this society, all these relationships are limiting in the same way because they are based on ideas. The fundamentalist Christians who marry and the gays who marry are the same. They’re both getting married, which means they’re both making an agreement about the shape of their relationship; the exact details of the compromises and limitations and mutually-held fantasies about “forever” don’t matter. As a legal institution in Western Culture, marriage is a contract originally intended to make paternity and property ownership clear, and was for centuries only practiced by the wealthy, mostly royalty. Serfs just shacked up. The much revered “tradition” of legal marriage among the non-ruling class citizenry is a recent trend that didn’t really take off until the 19th Century. In short, marriage as a cultural institution is and has been an expression and tool of Patriarchy, and is undeserving of the respect it receives. If one is interested in Love, not Culture, then one can dismiss institutional marriage without a second thought.

So what is “love” then? The best definition I have heard is that “love is what you are when you are loving”, or more briefly, “Love is the Lover”. In this way, the word “love” only makes sense as a verb with a subject in a sentence when one is presently experiencing “love” with that subject. The statement “I love you,” when *truly* experienced, cannot be a way of sealing a contract or fulfilling a family/friend obligation or of marking some promise or negotiated status. More accurate than “I love you” is “I *am* love with you”.

“Love” is not something you do – it is something you are. Love is an experience. The experience-in-a-moment of being Love with someone else is not forever, because nothing is forever. At the same time, nothing ever ends, because Life is an uninterrupted, singular flow. Jiddu Krishnamurti said: “Love and Life and Death are all one”.

This is another of The Gift of The Lovers: The shared, sensed, awake consciousness that every experience is finite, yet that the moment of loving is infinite.

I’m not talking about clock-time, and for the vast majority of human existence, neither was anyone else. We in the industrialized world have forgotten how recently the clock was invented, and we are mostly unaware of how our conscious reality has been squeezed by it. Non-wealthy people didn’t start wearing watches until the second half of the 20th Century. Now everyone has at least one, and often several time-keeping devices on their person. I remember when digital watches first came out in the 1970’s, and how at first it was considered a joke to say something like, “It’s 8:13”. “Quarter past eight” had been good enough up until then. Who needed to know the time that specifically? Nowadays, it seems like everyone does. This fractionalization of time has led to a fracturing of the consciousness, and an obsession with duration. “Forever” has come to be misunderstood as nothing more than a clock-time concept, with true understanding of “The Infinite” having become lost.

The Gift of The Lovers reintroduces a pair of people to the timelessness of pure present experience. Here, they can experience the universal, complementary nature of being, free of the clock and the culture of the clock.

* * *

RITES OF PASSAGE

Most people in this Culture have not engaged in enough self-examination of their inner and outer working to know what the Ego Self is, or how it operates. Pop-psych Freudianism and other pseudo-intellectual trends have run amuck, muddying the picture with half-baked and contradictory truisms, leading people far astray. People speak of “having their needs met” when they are talking about whims, not necessities. Usually when someone says “I”, they are referring not to their entire being, but only to their Ego Self, and its collection of impulses and definitions.

The Ego Self is one component of the Wholistic Self, as are the physical and metaphysical senses, the reflexes and autonomous actions (such as breathing, circulation, digestion, etc.), the thinking/calculating functions, etc. I have heard that the human brain is the most complex organ in the entire animal kingdom. Testaments to its computing power are apparent in language, architecture, mathematics, rocket propulsion, economics, etc. Some functions – such as using tools, teaching young, living in structural hierarchies, etc. – are not unique to the human animal. The Ego Self, however, seems present only in the human (with the possible exception of the domesticated cat).

The Ego Self is the part of the Wholistic Self where fears and hopes are fueled. I don’t know why we have those two separate words, since they mean essentially the same thing. Each refers to a want: what one wants or what one does not want. The Needs of the Body – food, water, sleep, shelter/clothing – are not wants. They are necessities. “Fear” as paired with “Hope” is not the instinctual animal fear, which is a reaction marked by the release of chemicals in the brain, with attendant biophysical changes and sharpened senses. “Fear” as paired with “Hope” is the wish that something in particular won’t happen, and “Hope” is the wish that something will. Both are wishes, and the difference between them – that one is allegedly negative and other allegedly positive – is insubstantial. Allegations are not facts. The Ego Self is that which makes allegations, regardless of what the senses are picking up or the thinking brain is calculating. Allegations are immaterial in nature.

The Ego Self is the part of the Wholistic Self that casts judgment; that is, which calls things bad or good. “Discernment” and “Judgment” are often conflated in this society, but they are not the same. Discernment is the product of sensory input plus brain power. Discernment accurately reveals the dangerous, the safe, and the unknown. Judgment is always anchored in “should”s and “shouldn’t”s and is a mental, moral call. Discernment is simply seeing what is there: “What is”. Judgment lays claim to “What ought to be”. Discernment at its most refined reveals the perfection – the wholeness, completeness, entireness – of the world. Judgment “splits the whole world in two” – as J. Krishnamurti put it – dividing everything into “good” and “bad”. Discernment is perception; Judgment is pretense.

The Ego Self is the maker of all suffering. Buddha: “Pain is inevitable, suffering is not.” “Pain” is merely the result of an effectively functioning sensory system, sending out an alert that something has occurred, possibly an injury. Suffering is mental. The Ego Self seeks to find “meaning” or “answers” and employs Judgment to do so. The result is a constant dissatisfaction with Life, with unnecessary punishments for alleged failures and frivolous celebrations of alleged successes. For the Ego Self, just living is not good enough; no, one must be constantly measuring oneself against imagined standards in order to “feel good about oneself” and “not feel bad about oneself”. The rest of the Wholistic Self is concerned only with feeling good or feeling bad, as in, “touching that thing made me feel bad” or “eating that thing made me feel good”. The Ego Self, then, deals with nothing that is actually vital to the survival of the creature, at least, of the adult creature. Suffering is not necessary. Pain is; one might soon injure oneself, perhaps fatally, if one did not experience Pain.

Which brings us to “Rites of Passage” as were and are practiced by human beings in non-industrialized cultures. According to one theory, rites of passage existed to put the Ego Self in its place so that a healthy adulthood could be experienced. That is, the Ego Self develops around the age of five or six, and acts as a form of self-protection: a sense of selfness that helps the creature take care of itself. However, when one becomes a mature creature, the Ego Self is no longer needed in the same way. Rites of passage were for the boys and girls who were physically coming into adulthood and the goal was for them to become men and women whose Ego Selves were relegated to a non-leading role. In some practices, the rites involved challenges to help one find one’s abilities and inclinations. Sometimes people took new names.

In this culture, we have no meaningful rites of passage, and the result is an entire society of children in adult bodies, being led around by Ego Selves that have never been put in their place. No one has actually experienced wholistic maturation, so they go about *playing* “Grown-up”. It’s easy to see if you open your senses to people’s energy. It’s obvious that they’re pretending to care about what they say they care about and that they don’t really want to be doing what they’re doing, but they don’t know how to question it, or simply refuse to do so. They are easily manipulated because their Ego Selves are in control, and their Discernment is not functioning. In this way, there are no men and women in this society; only boys and girls, fighting and fussing and being grabby. Everyone acts busy while they don’t do anything. Desperately, they cling to a childish sense of entitlement, and try to fit in. The “counter-culture” is as much a part of this as the mainstream culture. By choosing to identify oneself in terms of Culture *at all*, one is playing the game. In this Society, there is no real rebellion, no actual break with The System, in any cultural choice. There is no self-actualization and no Adulthood. No one is being legitimately “responsible” – only obedient. “Passive Compliance Disorder (PCD)” is what Deva calls it.

Being that the Ego Self is merely one component of the Wholistic Self, natural like the others, it is neither good nor bad. However, the way it has come to function in the Society causes suffering, and is ultimately at the heart of what is called “War”. This is how the key to “peace on earth” starts with peace within; this peace has nothing to do with “civil disobedience”, “non-violent communication”, or Gandhianism or any other idea or political action. This peace is deeper than ideation, and cannot be measured against any standard of behavior, whether sacred or secular. No “code of ethics” can be applied. No method can be followed, no matter how revered the tradition or magnetic the teacher. This peace has no rules or limitations.

Every one of us is, in this way, alone. No one else can bring us peace within. Each of us has their own path. That’s not a path that is followed; it is the tracks left behind.

The Gift of The Lovers is that it sensually reveals – so very vividly – the experience of the Wholistic Self and the Ego Self finds itself in the back seat, no longer driving the course of events. “Make love not war” indeed!

* * *

NO COMMITMENTS

“Falling in love”: Whether it is pheromones, or DNA, or the stars, a pair of people will feel themselves drawn toward one another. During this initial spell, people might feel themselves open up emotionally or try new things or break old habits. This spell is an actual opportunity to meet oneself by meeting another, and its reality is awesome. The heart provides an opening to oceans of infinite depth. Like a psychedelic, it expands consciousness. This spell can be marked by a temporary disarming of the domination of the Ego Self. Everyday worries and cares can disappear. Fears can retreat. Confidence can emerge. All of these things can be pleasant, but if they are not experienced consciously, they disappear again, and no growth happens. But with consciousness, this spell can be an amazing springboard.

However, hardly anyone ever dips into its potentialities, even a little bit: the Society propagates a million cliches about the falling-in-love experience, rendering it into syndrome and sentiment, and domesticates it, which destroys it.

Couples will have their cherished “how we met” stories, and together create a narrative that makes them feel unique. They act like they are special but that is an illusion. Almost every single time, every couple is doing the same thing: Simply taking a ride on a wave of energy without knowing what it is, and then continuing to act non-consciously when it ends. If one is out of touch with one’s senses, and so is not present with their experiences, then The Gift of The Lovers cannot be received. One might “have a good time” or get some “great sex” but will still be stuck living through their Ego Self. No personal growth has happened; no maturation. For acting like this – that is, by pushing away a real chance for wholistic self-actualization – the Society rewards couples. They live under the illusions that compromise is respectable, that promises are meaningful, that structure is necessary.

This is the deepest set Lie of The Culture; that which people are most hesitant to question. “The Couple Cult” we could call it. Its nearly absolute pervasiveness across class, race, and religion reveals the power of Patriarchy. Patriarchy thrives on ownership, and The Couple Cult is all about ownership-based roles. By refusing to explore and observe and actually use their own senses, people shut themselves off from the present experience of Living. I don’t know if I have ever observed an exception to this in my time of living in this body. Over the years I have also observed – in my own experiences, and in those of people around me – that Three Months is about the maximum length for the “falling in love” experience. Hundreds of times I have seen it: when a couple has been hanging out for right around three months, something changes, and people react to it in a few (and not very many) ways. One gets interested in somebody else, or one gets scared and calls it off, or one just stops answering the phone. Worst of all is when both begin institutionalizing their relating, and draw up lists of conditions, and make promises. This is called “Commitment”, and it might be the number one killer of the Gift of The Lovers.

“Commitment” is two people agreeing to relate Ego Self to Ego Self, and to avoid exploration of the Wholistic Self. And to do this “forever”. For this they get the respect of their friends and family, a feeling of being “grown up”, and maybe a tax break.

In any of these cases, the people involved are not being true to themselves, which is to say, to Love, and are sidestepping (or stomping on) an opportunity to receive the Gift of The Lovers. The actual time-line varies with each situation, and can be as short as two weeks or one encounter, but rarely does it seem to go past the three months. Whether cut off or institutionalized, an experience without consciousness is then followed by another, perhaps of even less consciousness.

Is this sad, this state of affairs? I have no idea how to ascertain that. But I have noticed – again, in my own experiences, and in those of people around me – that selling yourself short always hurts somewhere sometime. All around us, we see people reacting to this pain by burying it, denying it, or sentimentalizing it. Psychoanalyzing it almost inevitably leads to further avoidance of the Wholistic Self, since psychoanalysis doesn’t question the dominance of the Ego Self. “Couples Therapy” is a particularly egregious offender. This state of affairs – sad or not – is a condition of The Culture, changeable only person-by-person, and no support exists for that.

The Gift of The Lovers is a real exit from all of this. Instead of “Commitment”, it offers “Intent”. This is one lesson of the Three Moons.

* * *

INTENT (The Lesson of the Three Moons)

I don’t know why the initial chemistry between two people often lasts about three months; perhaps it is simply part of the biological imperative, that this many moons are a good number for causing pregnancy, or for the DNA to give a trial run to a particular match-up, or for the stars to play their games. Or for the Wholistic Self to gain enough experience to make a clear discernment.

Put in botanical terms, perhaps the Three Moons is a flowering, which is an opportunity to pollinate and create fruit, from which can come viable seed. In the everyday of the plant world, not all blossoms are pollinated and not all that are set fruit. Some fruits are aborted by the plants. Of the fruits that survive, not all go to full maturity and set viable seed. In what we call the next generation, not all the viable seed germinates, and of those, not all survive. A kale left to go into its second year and reach maturity will produce hundreds, if not thousands, of seeds. (Few people have seen this happen because most “gardeners” cut down plants when they climax. I have come to believe this is an action of the subconscious, which is uncomfortable with the “untidiness” of sexual reproduction, and doesn’t appreciate the exuberant expression of it in their backyard. Yep, the Puritans who started this country left their mark!)

In the case of humans, the Gift of The Lovers is the conscious sensual experience of the flowering, fruiting and seeding of their own yin and yang energies, as played out physically and metaphysically. So if Three Moons indeed marks a change in chemistry, “commitment” is not the conscious response: “Intent” is. “Intent” as in, I am observing this with intent, experiencing this with intensity. The “free ride” is over, and now comes only what is *intended.* The Couple Cult’s “commitment” – played out as so “adult” – is a perversion of the “intention” energy. This is also not the “living with intention” that the New Age puffs up; those folks are just talking about wishes, and the studious, formal efforts they make – often accompanied by culturally-appropriated mumbo jumbo – are no more effective than blowing out candles on a birthday cake.

The Gift of The Lovers is that there is no “How”.

* * *

THE SACRED MARRIAGE

No lie of the Society is made up from nothing; every one is a mutilating twist on on something real. Institutionalized marriage, whether legal or not, is a perversion of what we could call, “The Sacred Marriage”, or, “Real Marriage”. The Sacred Marriage is not an agreement, or a commitment, or something which is made. It is a state of relating that people find themselves in together in the moment of loving. This “state of relating” is a mutually sensed energy which is discovered, not created; experienced, not guided. It is not what The Culture calls a “relationship” which is a thing made and broken on the whims of the Ego Self. “Relationships” and “Marriage” are promulgated in the context of clock time; the state of consciousness of the Sacred Marriage is finite, but this is only because all states of consciousness are finite.

I know someone who went to a conventional wedding and saw the bride eating a large amount of cake at the reception – what would be called “more than her share”. When someone said something about it to her, making a joke about “keeping her figure”, the bride replied, “I don’t have to worry about that – I’m married now.”

Whether the bride was “making a joke” or not, her reply reveals one of the primary attributes of institutionalized marriage in The Culture: that it is a goal achieved, an end, perhaps the capturing of something long pursued. The Sacred Marriage, by contrast, is a Catalyst. It is a spark from which a fire can start. As is the case in the physical world when volatile ingredients are mixed, what follows Catalyst is Activation. A phase change can result, or the bringing into being of new energies and materials different from the original ingredients. “Stability” – the goal of institutionalized marriage – is exactly what is not present in the Sacred Marriage, which exists in a state of dynamic equilibrium, like every other healthy thing in the living world.

The Gift of The Lovers is Catalyst and Activation. Here is freedom, in which no judgment is brought to bear, no answers given to questions that haven’t been asked and might never be. Here is Love, which can only be experienced by Letting Go.

* * *

DEVOTION

Osho said there are two paths to enlightenment: Awareness and Devotion. The Gift of The Lovers offers Devotion, bringing in Awareness quick on its heels.

Consciously and mutually experienced, gazing into a lover’s eyes is a mirror. The Love so obvious in their face is what they are seeing in yours. With Devotion, both the Devoted and the Devotee are receiving a gift. The Devotee can transcend the Ego Self through their focus on another; the Devoted can transcend it by the discernment that their Ego Self is not the focus of the other. Both *become* Love through this experience of Wholistic sensation; they are both alive, and nothing else is desired.

Devotion has no check-lists. Devotion does not “work with” someone to “improve” them. Devotion doesn’t have “issues”. Devotion has no concerns about appearance. Devotion is free of desires for a promise or longevity. Devotion has no conditions. Devotion has no place in the Couple Cult, and indeed is discouraged there, as is Awareness.

Awareness is the state that every creature in the world except people lives in. Watch how the cat will be stalking something in the garden, every bit of its energy focused on its target, body tensed and twitching, eyes focused, ignoring you calling its name, and then – suddenly – it sits back on its haunches and starts licking that particular spot on the back of its shoulder. Whatever was stirring the leaves in the bed – whether it was wind, an insect, or a rodent – is no longer a concern. Gotta get that itch. Then, just as suddenly, he might be back in the crouch as if nothing happened, or alternately, now stretching and going for a saunter to the catnip patch. Throughout the sequence, one thing was constant – Awareness. Put another way: an intensity of the senses, with corresponding actions.

The Gift of The Lovers is that each person has the experiences of the Devoted and the Devotee. The beauty of merely being, being Wholistically, is enough to be both. “Enough”? That’s all there is!

* * *

GOING NOWHERE

With their Intent on the chemistry that exists between them, those experiencing the Gift of The Lovers do not care “Where did it come from?” and “Where is it going?” These are just questions of curiosity and their answers don’t have any relevancy. The experience of the moment is sufficient, entirely satisfying, leaving no hunger for more.

“No conditions, including the condition of ‘no conditions’.” This is the only phrase I have come up with to describe the how the Gift of The Lovers has manifested itself in my own experience this year. “Unconditional love” is a nonsense phrase. There is no such thing as “conditional love”. Love is free of conditions.

Ego Self to Ego Self, a pair of people are free to make whatever arrangements they would like to protect their illusions, avoid their senses, or form an economic partnership. They can dress it up any way they’d like, traditionally or radically, but whenever there is a goal or standard in mind, spoken or unspoken, there is no room for Love. There may be affection, appreciation, and some type of satisfaction. But not depth.

Life is not big enough for both Alive Awareness and for a bunch of Ideas About Life. Either you are conscious of how you are sensing your presence, and you are experiencing life as it is, or you are not. It can flip back and forth from one minute to the next. What we see around us is an entire Society stuck in Ideas, pushing away consciousness of the senses so effectively that any alternative is vigorously denied. This is where we are: we have made a fake world and insist on calling it “The Real World”.

“But what if, what if, what if…?” I have suffered through moments of that question. It’s the one that holds us back the most from Letting Go, from stepping out of The Culture, from finding our authentic Wholistic Selves. With my lover, I have made no promises, nor have I demanded them. This includes not promising not to be hurt by anything that might happen later! Allesister Crowley had it right with, “Do What Thou Wilt”. What else is there to do, and how can you know what it is until the moment of choice arrives? I am not interested in anyone’s pledges about future actions; they don’t mean anything.

The Gift of The Lovers, when consciously received, is a doorway to the *real* Real World, to Letting Go, to living without seeking any guarantees.

That is view I have from the “precipice” I see before me: the world of the fears and hopes still lurking inside me, threatening to hold me back from Consciousness, from Freedom, from Love.

* * *

If, after reading this, your conclusion is “Oh, Farmer K is ‘in love'”, then you have completely missed the point. It is you, everyone reading this, who is “in love”, since that’s where we all are, all the time: in Living, in Consciousness, in Awareness. There is nothing that distinguishes me from you, so why say so?

City of Roses, Cascadia
20.11.2010