Leaving Paladin...
I was losing my dreams of community, the dreams I'd held for ten years. Perhaps I just wanted to live with Paladin, alone. I wanted him to find work and support me. I wanted him to be a raw foodist. He wasn't meeting my needs, and feverish and sick, I finally demanded more.
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Simultaneous thoughts occurred in my dream, as they always do, but for the first time, I carried back an accurate record of multi-dimensional existence to my waking life. It was before seven in the morning on July ninth of 2015 that I wrote this accounting of my dream and realizations about my dream:
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Layer four, or "layer organization," was a deep, three-dimensional experience of cube-sorting. The cubes were translucent. They were the plastic cubes from my board game, and yet they were also crystalline, magical, tactile, light and also weighty. Touching them and moving then was divine. So divine, it was almost physical.
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The clear ones were the best. They had deep resonance with the issue at hand. What made them "best" was their relevance. They associated with the thoughts I was having, and so I was touching them, and connecting them with the other clear cubes by bringing them into a pattern, an alignment, that assisted my thoughts.
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Layer five, or "layer rationalization," or "layer logic," was a place of human-connection and interaction. The background was not important. It was the people that were crisp, and their words were rich with tone, emotional, nuance... It was a place almost physical, it was so rich in multiple senses. Yet lighter, more airy, more 'supposed,' and of instant invention.
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I was speaking with Paladin. We were having friction about money and food.
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"We could fast," I said, putting it out there simply. No big deal. Going without food was easy, I was thinking. This was simultaneous to the moving of the cubes on another level, the feel of them on my fingertips, yet moving them without touching them.
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Paladin groaned and made a face.
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"Why are you so resistant to fasting?" I said aloud, and yet I wasn't asking, because I immediately continued with the answer, "It's because you're resistant to your spiritual growth."
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Paladin made a frustrated face of exasperation.
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"I'm serious. I'm not saying so arbitrarily. I have strong evidence for saying so." And on another level, another dimension I was not able to bring back with me, I was running through that evidence. Several memories were playing through my mind.
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These memories proved to me that resistance to fasting was resistance to spiritual growth. Some of that proof came from passages in Autobiography of a Yogi. Some of that proof came to me from experiences I had with Oryx and Hare while staying at Rooster's house.
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Layer six, or "layer of underlying patterns and sensations," was mostly an experience of flavor. I was sucking on a Jolly Rancher. But the candy was a place-holder for an entire representational system; the system of taste. It was a place-holder for my thought to revolve around. While I have not had a Jolly Rancher in my waking life in about sixteen years, (that is, since I was ten), in the dream, the flavor was exactly as it was then.
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It was a Jolly Rancher because I never liked Jolly Ranchers. And yet, at some point, I turned against my authenticity and began eating them anyway. I knew that I hated them. I knew it consciously. I could tell that there was no part of the flavor I liked. It was a whole-package of 'disgusting' and yet, I was eating them.
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The Jolly Rancher flavor in the dream held space for concepts:
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Turning against my authenticity.
A time period in my life as a child where I began to turn against myself, my energy folding inward like a lie.
It provided the sensation of powerful, overwhelming sweetness.
My throat hurt, in the dream as well as in my sleeping body. I felt that, and I kept thinking, "Why am I sucking on this candy when it is making my throat hurt?"
Doing something that was hurting me, yet feeling powerless to stop.
Being on the undercurrent, feeling the pain and yet not being able to communicate with myself.
Awareness of self-damage in the name of short-sighted, self-pleasure that was not even pleasurable on most any dimension of my existence.
Bafflement. A sense of "Why?" that was both emotionless as well as loaded with anguished, cherished desperation. Desperation is exquisite - it is desire that is held, and held, and held. It is anticipation on another level, a level we can not usual access or perceive. Desperation is not possible without the time-delay of three-dimensional existence.
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These three layers happened in the dream at the exact same time. When I woke, I had to recount them separately with my conscious mind, yet I knew that just seconds ago, I had been having all three thoughts simultaneously. I thought, "Why am I sucking on this candy when it is making my throat hurt?", while I was saying to Paladin, "If you were not so resistant to your spiritual growth, you'd be willing to fast," while I was moving the clear cubes away from the blue cubes and feeling their touch, their lightness (and weight).
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There was no separation of time between these thoughts. There was no separation of distance between these thoughts. All three had color and imagery. I saw all three at once, yet none of the images distorted or overlaid one another.
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The Jolly Rancher was bright green, and I saw it in my mouth even as I felt is rectangular shape in my mouth. It's angular shape and translucent green color was a perfect resonance with the green cubes in the other dimension where I was sorting cubes. The cubes were in translucent gray-clear, navy-blue/baby-blue, sea-green/neon-green.
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The cubes moved on a flat plane that was white and smooth. There was a perception of height-depth despite none of cubes stacking upon one another. This represented the limited planes I was able to arrange in for this concept that I was working with.
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I spoke to Paladin within a building. His resistance was a perfect mirror for my own resistance. My proof was his proof. My resistance was his resistance. It could have just as easily been him saying to me, "Why are you so resistant to fasting?" In another reality, it was him saying it to me. And in another, it was me saying to myself, "I don't know why and I do know why you are so resistant to fasting. I am exasperated with you. You know you want to fast. I've been sending you messages through the interweb of insects, humans, thoughts and emotions. You've heard it in e-mails, in spoken-words, in articles and in your heart. When will you be ready to listen? I know you're not there yet, but you're close. Let us come closer. Let us align with it now. See your mirror in Paladin. See it in Lilac."
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As I wrote my nose was running. I wiped it on my hand-made snuggy hem, since no tissues were nearby and the snuggy was more gentle on my tender nose. Beside me was a quart-sized mason jar full of very hot tea. Pau d'Arco from the previous night with fresh lavender added sat in a metal-mesh tea-ball on a metal chain. Also, a tea-bag of lemongrass. All three teas came from Lilac.
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I was in Lilac's and Heron's home. As I wrote, I was birthing one realization after another: The secret to it all is becoming soft-focused so that we can become more hyper-focused. To be "left-brained" or analytical, like Lilac and I, is to be hyper-focused consciously. Yet our subconscious minds still simultaneously have their own thoughts. To be more "right-brained" or empathic, like Paladin or Heron, is to be more soft-focused and sensory-based. Yet even as they have multifaceted-focus, they also hold individuated attention for each aspect of their reality.
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I sipped my hot tea through a glass straw. The quart jar, glass straw and plastic lid were my own. The lid had a little hole cut in it by Paladin to allow the straw to perfectly fit through it. The lid distorted slightly where the metal chain of the tea-ball went over the lip of the quart jar. As I wrote, the tea cooled and I drank more of it, savoring the soothing of my throat at times, and hardly noticing at other times - I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts. I was three-dimensional again, "lost in thought," and unable to perceive my own inter-dimensional existence.
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My hands were cold. Why is their home so cold? I wondered. Perhaps they don't use heating unless they absolutely have to. Or perhaps it is just because nobody remembered to close the windows last night.
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Paladin and I had left Basket Bear's home on Monday, July sixth. We had been there a total of twenty-one days, or more easily conceptualized - three weeks. Basket Bear and his wife had returned from Africa on Friday, July 3rd. We'd spent three days with them, mostly doing our own thing, but also eating together. For me, this meant eating my own creations while Paladin and Basket Bear enjoyed the creations of the lady of the home.
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I was growing more and more acutely aware of how "not right" for me it was to be sharing meals and time with people who didn't share my dietary values. It wasn't that it was wrong on a level of morality. It wasn't that it "wasn't logical" or even that it "wasn't practical," despite elements of that appearing in my thinking. The bottom line was that it didn't feel pleasant, and I had yet to honor the part of me that wanted me to drop out of "cooked food culture."
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I fantasized about founding a raw food community, and yet I felt farther and farther from actually doing it. The idea of buying land was too scary. It was a huge commitment, and not one I was sure I could endure and remain emotionally whole. I wanted it because I believed that it could bring me into new levels of authenticity with myself through connection with nature and expression of freedom.
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Yet parts of me had strong doubts. These doubts asked, What if you fail? What if you invest money, and it is wasted? What if you try to found a community, but nobody will join you? Worse, what if the 'wrong' sort of people join? What if there is terrible friction and you have to ask everyone to leave? What if you're not ready? What if community isn't even what you really want? What if you've been chasing this dream for ten years for nothing?
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"I think I'm letting go of my dream of community," I said to Paladin two days prior to dream. It was Tuesday and I was deep in a cold and a fever. I was highly consciously aware of my subconscious reasons for creating the fever. I didn't know all of the factors, but an hour didn't pass without my conscious mulling over the factors I was aware of.
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"Okay," Paladin said, in his accepting way. "Why?"
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"When I look back at the past six months, the parts I enjoyed most were the two and a half weeks we spent together that was just you and me at Basket Bear's place. I mean, okay, the dogs were there too." My tone revealed how much I wasn't keen on "the dogs" aspect of that experience.
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"In Snowland I get sick of dealing with my parents," I continued. "At Redbud Community there were constant politics going on, which I didn't enjoy. As soon as Basket Bear and his wife returned home, my peace and authenticity with myself were pulled out of alignment. I enjoyed the space we'd had to just be our true selves. I'm not yet strong enough to stay in my authenticity when other people are around. I want to connect with myself more deeply. Sure, it was lonely at times. But now I've learned better. Loneliness is part of the path to my awakening."
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Then, as I was speaking, I felt my argument shifting. "Of course, being with just you might sometimes feel lonely, but I know that's easier than all this traveling. But not really. It's just perception. It just seems easier through logic and perspective. Everything is always just as difficult. It is just a matter of perspective and level of resistance. The more resistance, the more struggle. The less resistance, the more peace, even through pain."
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I thought for a moment. Paladin sat on the carpet beside the bed, sipping his tea. His throat was sore too. We had both caught whatever Basket Bear and his wife came down with on the airplane home. We were a vibrational match to becoming ill, and so we became ill. I was particularly a match, because I was ready for deep internal work, and I was at peace with the fact that illness brought me closer to myself. It was my chosen method of connection with myself in this lifetime as Nuria.
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Illness was my subconscious mind saying to my conscious mind, "Please stop picking your nose long enough to take care of this." And through much nose-picking, I'd begin to find myself again. [Irony.]
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"So maybe founding a community wouldn't be any harder. Yet I'm afraid of it. And because I'm afraid, I must not be ready. And because I feel afraid and not ready, I'm not able to manifest it without being in resistance to myself, and so it would be more suffering."
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"Hmmm." Paladin listened quietly, holding space for me, as usual. No judgment, no rapid-fire responses being hurled at me. I was given space to have my own process aloud with him as my witness. I took this for granted. I was used to it after five years of marriage.
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"My desires have been changing a lot recently," I said at last. I was feeling nervous. I didn't know why, but I felt tension in my body, my words and in the air. It was subtle, but it impacted my behavior. It led me to not look at Paladin as I spoke. It led me to lose myself in my internal reality. I stoked my courage, because I felt I needed it, yet I didn't even know why. After all, why hadn't I been keeping him abreast of my desires in the first place? What was holding me back? And why was I choosing then, as I was feverish and under a pile of blankets, to reveal to him the inner-workings of my transformation?
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"I want to live somewhere, just you and me. I'd like us to get our own apartment. We could just pick a place and move there. Somewhere warmer. I want to live in zone eight or nine. I want our own place, separate from so many other people. You could find work. I want you to be a raw foodist with me, and you could afford it if you had your own income."
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"Nuria . . . I couldn't be a raw foodist if I had a job. I would be surrounded by people who ate cooked food every day. That's a lot of pressure. It's the same sort of pressure you want to escape," Paladin said.
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"Oh," I said, feeling crestfallen immediately. "I could pack you really tasty lunches. You did it before, when we lived in your apartment, before we moved to Snowland."
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"No," Paladin said. "I still ate cooked food away from home sometimes. And I could still eat raw food at home, so you would never have to see me eat cooked food."
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I felt like crying. Yet I wasn't crying.
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"If I worked from home I could do it," he offered.
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I latched onto that thought immediately. That thought felt like relief. But then, some part of me said, it's false relief.
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"You don't really want to be a raw foodist though. You like cooking. And, for whatever reason, you're resistant to getting your own income."
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Paladin did not deny these things. I began to cry. I began to cry long and hard. Some part of me worried that Heron and Lilac and their six-year-old son would hear me crying, and so my screaming was nearly silent.
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I held back my growing authentic desire because I knew it would be rejected. I needed courage to share it, because I needed courage to face rejection. And yet, in the face of that rejection, I crumbled. I was raw. I was closer to my authentic self. I was pain, embodied. I was a tide of rising grief.
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Paladin said, "If we could work on my issues, I could move past them and be more of what you want." Paladin was specifically referring to his stuckness in a place of despair. He had only just come to this realization the previous night, while listening to Teal Swan's episode called, "How to Cure Apathy." Just a short way into the video Teal gives a list of needs not being met for a child when the parent is rejecting every emotional state the child has. During this list Paladin began to shake with hard tears. His resonance was strong. I had paused the video to hold him and cherish the beauty of his genuine anguish.
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"You're so wonderful when you cry," I had murmured. "It's honest, and pure and real."
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It was the night after having this realization about his struggle with apathy, despair and depression that I was expressing my desires to him. I was coming from a different emotional level of readiness for life than he was.
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"I need to work on my despair. As Teal said, I need to address it directly. Can we work on that?"
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"Yes. Let's do that," I said, feeling slightly mollified.
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Somewhat later that evening I had a video ready and waiting on Paladin's tablet, a video I believed would help address the issue of despair. Yet Paladin didn't come back into the room. He was in the kitchen with Lilac. I knew that, and yet I couldn't just go grab him because I was so dizzy and feverish. Getting out of bed was an ordeal I already had to do more than I liked in order to relieve my bladder.
I waited for ten or so minutes, but grew tired of waiting. I selected a different Teal video. It was called "The Zeebra and the Watering Hole." I chose it because I had no idea what that meant. I had no way to judge whether or not it was what I needed at the time, or what Paladin needed. It was something to fill the space, and also, because it was first on the list of "recommended" or "Up Next" videos on youtube on the right-hand panel.
I only made it a third of the way in before I paused the narrative to consider. Teal was saying that we should be like animals who go to water and grass, wherever water and grass is. Animals in the wild go directly to their needs. They don't stand in place hoping, wishing and praying that their needs come to them. They go to them.
Why was I telling Paladin my needs and hoping, wishing and praying that he'd adhere to them? Why didn't I just leave Paladin for someone who wanted to be what I wanted? Why didn't I just leave Paladin for someone more passionate, more inspired, and more self-directed? Why not find a raw foodist who made a good living who wanted to support me?
After all, there were no wrong choices. After all, leaving Paladin wouldn't be wrong. There is no "right" or "wrong." Morality is invented. Concepts such as modesty, or age, or appropriateness - all invented. All in the mind. All a matter of perception. Culture. Subjective.
I could make any choice and it would never be wrong, because all choices are simultaneously wrong and right, because both polarities are embodied in love, the one truth that encompasses all things.
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As I had these thoughts I forgot to acknowledge that I still believed in morality because I still felt morality. This lack of acknowledgment for where I stood was a small self-denial, a small step away from my alignment with myself, but I ignored that. It slipped right under the radar. I was on a roll with my thoughts, I was on a spiral; I was to spiral out of control by trying to stay in control. I began a pattern and had to play it out.
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I should manifest someone better. I could do it. I found Paladin five and a half years ago. I'm a different person now. I keep growing faster than he can. He can't keep up. I should find someone who can keep up.
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Part of me began to rebel. It firmly sent out the vibration of: stop this nonsense. You don't want to leave him. You're considering breaking your own heart. Do you not recall watching Teal's video on Heartbreak ever so recently?
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This part of me was more subconscious, so I was able to squash it out of my conscious awareness and keep contemplating how life could be different if I left Paladin. I contemplated it further and further, in more and more detail. How could I make it work? What would he do? What would I do?
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Perhaps I'd relationship-hop using OKCupid to find people. I could move in with one person, and then if that didn't work, move in with another. I'd leave Paladin living with my parents in Snowland. Then he could fulfill his internal obligation to "fix that house" and when I visited again it would be a more comfortable place to live.
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Perhaps I'd manifest the right person and wander off with them, meanwhile leaving Paladin with Oryx. If he were with with Oryx then she could help him process his baggage in a different way and he could finally grow instead of being stuck with my limitations, agitations and sensitivities.
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I started making lists in my mind of the things I wanted in a partner that Paladin didn't provide for me, as well as the things he did provide for me that I was conscious of. The key points I wanted to manifest in a mate:
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Passionate
Authentic and spiritual
Raw foodist
Polyamorous or at least authentic about intimate desires no matter where they lead
Wealthy and wanting to support a stay-at-home-partner
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As I stewed in these thoughts I considered putting on another Teal video. No, not another one, I thought. I couldn't even finish the one I was watching. I need to think about this. I need to think it through. I need to talk to Paladin. But he's not here. I'll just go to sleep. I turned off the light. I stewed in the dark.
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Ten or twenty or forty minutes later, Paladin opened the door. I heard him come in, but I didn't move or open my eyes. My thoughts jumped to, I hate you. I hate you. How dare you? Who do you think you are?
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Anger and contempt raged in my mind, while another part of me held all of it captive. I was frozen solid, unable to move or speak.
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He got in to bed quietly. He touched me gently. I opened my eyes and looked at him. He was gentle and sweet. But I couldn't speak. I hate you, I thought, and I couldn't speak. I was divided. I was broken. I began to sweat. My authenticity broke at the same time as my fever... What does that mean?
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For a long time I couldn't speak, but eventually I found something I could squeak out; "I'm sweating down. My fever broke. I'm getting these sheets all wet. I need a shower."
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Paladin helped me into the shower. He was so kind that it made me cry. Every kind thing he did made me cry harder. If I left him, I'd never experience this again.
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Deeper and deeper into a well of despair I fell. I can't get my needs met with him. But to leave him is to break myself. . . . But don't I need to? I'm stunting his growth. I'm co-creating his limitations. He's holding me back. We'd be better off apart.
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My sobs came in waves. Different parts of my perspective bubbled to the surface only to be pushed back down again by other parts. To say I felt "torn" would be an understatement. I dried off from my shower. We got into the guest room bed together in the dark. It was very late at night.
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The duplicity within myself and against myself hit a breaking point and my thoughts began to leak out, words bubbling to the surface: Why he'd be better off without me, why I'd be better off without him. Perhaps we could take a break, learn some things on our own, and reunite at some later time. I let my thoughts form aloud, sounding detached.
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I felt his energy leave as he lay beside me. It became dark beyond dark. The absence of him was suffocating. My perception of reality warped. My fever went up. I began to shake uncontrollably.
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Dimly, I was aware that Paladin kept asking me what was wrong. "Don't leave me," I whispered.
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"I'm confused," he said.
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"Please don't leave me."
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"I don't get it," he said.
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"Please, don't leave me. Don't go. Please don't leave me." I clutched at him. "I can't find you!"
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He held me as I cried and cried and cried.
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He began to cry too, and as he did, I felt his energy return. I felt so relieved that I cried of relief. We went through nearly an entire box of tissues.
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"You must be feeling my stuff," he said.
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Some part of me, deeply, knew he was right. Yet it felt like my stuff too. It felt real. I said nothing in response to his whispered remark. I just held him, shaking, shaken. I felt like I'd been scraped to the bone; hallowed and harrowed.
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Later, when slightly less frantic, I said, "I see my love for you in my heart like a glowing ball. And around this glowing ball is black gunk that orbits it. Over time, so much gunk . . . so much resentment and disappointment . . . built up around my love that I couldn't feel it anymore. For now, the gunk seems to be in a pile somewhere else, instead of blocking my love. I can't believe I'd forgotten how good it felt to touch you."
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The following morning I woke in the same space of blissful love. I sang spontaneously as I looked out Lilac's and Heron's living room windows. "There is water on a mountain," I sang, looking at the lovely pond beneath a cloudy sky. "There is water on a mountain," I sang again. I felt free and alive. My fever was gone.
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A few days later I made Paladin a list of expectations, things I needed him to do if our relationship would continue to function at all.