25

Wholemates

It is now seven years later. We have spent these last years in worship. We have made an offering of our hearts. We have lived our love as prayer. Where before we wondered if our ultimate mission lived outside of us, we now recognize that it exists between us. We have become devotees to a greater cause—Us. With unwavering commitment to the union, our love has become our primary spiritual practice, our teacher, our clarifying path.

People find their sacred purpose in many different places. Our love is ours. That’s where the Go(l)d is. It has been the fire that warms us, the fresh spring that invigorates us, the temple that houses us. Even when we lose our way, we always know where home is. With our beloved under wing, we fly our hearts home.

Carved into the door to our bedroom are the words I wear my heart with you in it. On one wall of each room, there is a hand-written poem to the beloved. And there’s also a wall plaque on the hallway landing that reads: When two hearts beat in the same direction, the meeting point is God. She finally gave me that one. Wherever we look, we are reminded of our blessings.

At the same time, it is radically different from our initial imaginings. It is more solid, more human, more real. If anything has held the temple safe, it has been grounding our love at every level on Mother Earth. We mutually accepted that sky-riding was our natural orientation, and that in order to sustain this powerhouse connection, we had to also ground our soles on Mother Earth. We are clearly soulmates—a love connection sourced in essence—but we have also become solemates—a love connection that is grounded in daily life. We had sketched our legacy in the sky, and now we are sketching it in the dirt. As solemates, we stand a much better chance of lasting.

Our solemating demands a genuine integration with the practical world. This means regularly doing precisely what our merging nature resists: staying on top of our chores and obligations, remaining connected to our friends, leaving our love bubble and spending real time in the culture at large. We participate in society not to the extent that we abandon our uniqueness and morph into homogeneity, but in a way that keeps our timeless energy grounded in the flow of time.

Remaining grounded also means retaining our individuality and independence. After Sarah returned, I let go of my mediation practice. Wholemates had become an international bestseller, and I became a professional author-publisher, writing and administrating a small publishing business out of the house I purchased with my book royalties. Sarah was tempted to work with me, but instead got a part-time job as a naturopath in a neighborhood clinic, ensuring that we had the separateness we needed to remain healthy. When we reconnect at the end of a long day, it’s the perfect balance—a fusion of sovereign entities.

Our solemating also has a psycho-physical quality to it. Recognizing our tendency to float into ecstasy, we have maintained a disciplined embodiment practice to keep us here. We practice yoga, dance and holotropic breathwork on a regular basis. And we have sustained a commitment to body-centered therapy with Sally, so we can keep our feet planted firmly on the ground and continue to develop the healthy ego and sturdy boundaries required to hold great love safe. We understand all too well how important it is to have a strong self to come home to, particularly given the fragmentation intrinsic to our merging. The more intensely we fly, the more deeply we ground. The more firmly we ground, the more safely we fly. From sole to soul. And back again.

If you really want to know someone, start by looking at their feet. How grounded is their spiritual life? What is the inner-face between their earthly and their divine life? How fully do they make contact with Mother Earth? How present are they for the whole of the human experience? Do they come crashing back to earth when the truth hits the fan? The eyes are a mirror of the soul, but so are the soles. If you want to gauge how sustainable your love connection to another will be, observe the way they move on the planet. If they come crashing back to earth when reality comes a calling, you know you will have a problem when the romantic phase wanes and the next layer of truth arises.

It’s not about giving up on the fairy tale relationship. It’s about landing it in reality. It’s about giving the fairy feet. It’s about peeling away the prince’s armor and loving the real being down below. It’s about wiping off the princess’ makeup and loving her divine humanness. It’s about finding romance in the naked fires of daily life. When our masks and disguises fall away, real love can reveal itself. Forget fairy tales, the human tale is much more satisfying. We just have to learn how to get turned on by humanness.

When Sarah and I first connected in this lifetime, I was all-too-happy to see our psychological issues as unreal in contrast to our ecstatic experiences. In my mind, there was the soul’s journey and there was the human journey—and they were entirely different. But through a more grounded lens, I have come to understand that there is no distinction. In fact, I believe our unhealed emotional issues and patterns are actually direct reflections of the soul’s state of being. Where does spirit live, if not in the heart of our humanness? It’s all an integrated dance of sacred imagination.

It would be easier to maintain the connection if we were at a collective stage in humanity where we truly understood the expansive role that intimate relationship can play in our spiritual lives. Relationship is not just a manifestation of the divine: it is also a fertile field for the soul’s expansion. It is a breeding ground for the soul’s emergence. It is where many of the soul’s lessons are harvested. To the extent that we learn the heart lessons intrinsic to our love connections, we expand in karmic stature. To the extent we resist them, we delay our own expansion.

When we turn away from our lessons, the universe jumps into action, orchestrating our return—a symphony of self-creation dedicated to our unique expansion. This is the nature of karmic gravity—we are returned to our path until we fully walk it.

Of course, converting our loss into expansion requires great courage and an adherence to a sustainable healing process. We have to go into the fire for as long as we need to transmute the suffering into gold. This means staying with our feelings until they are truly done with us, no matter how uncomfortable it is.

It also means being careful not to confuse analysis with healing. Dude was right—there’s a meaningful difference between a cerebral interpretation of an experience (“I know why this came into my life”) and an embodied awareness of it (“I feel why this came into my life”). Unless your knowing arises from your felt experience, it’s meaningless. Stay with the emotional process until your soul food is digested. It will be difficult at times, but the feelings will only hurt until they transform. Once they make it all the way through the conversion tunnel, the lesson takes root. Divine perspiration.

Sacred Loving

At the deepest level, honoring our union has been a journey into wholeness. There was no other way. When we kept it partial, it turned against us. Like many early life trauma survivors, we had overdeveloped certain threads of consciousness and avoided others. When we met, Sarah was an expert bliss-tripper. She wanted the light without the shadow it illumined. There were many ways I too was unwilling to own my shadow. In our own ways, we were both playing hide-and-seek with our own essence. Yet to honor this love right, we knew that we had to embrace all elements of reality. We had to turn on the light in every room, particularly those spaces that hadn’t seen the light for decades, perhaps lifetimes.

Perhaps the most important question you can ask a potential love partner relates to their relationship with the shadow—their own, and the shadow that emerges in the relationship itself. That is: “How much work are you willing to do on yourself and the relationship when the s*#t hits the fan? Are you willing to go as deep as we have to go to work it through, or are you only interested in a breezy, low-maintenance relationship?” Few people ever talk about this during the romantic phase, because they are not envisioning the challenges to come. But it is an essential inquiry. I have known many people who were shocked to watch their ‘great love’ walk out the door when the connection required personal accountability and therapeutic work-through. Some of us will brave the journey; others will flee the fire. Some of us will do the work to transform our stories into the light at their source; others will run away with their ‘tales’ between their legs, only to find out later that their tales go with them everywhere they go. If you can determine someone’s willingness at the beginning, you can save yourself a lot of trouble later.

With a quest for wholeness in mind, we agreed to work deeply with the challenging emotional material that our tremendous love excavates. We made a commitment to stand firmly in the bond, no matter what storms are passing through. Consequently, we have faced our demons in ways we never could the first time together. When our abandonment and engulfment wounds close in on us, we now bring them right into therapy. We have worked our stuff hard, massaged it, revealed it, owned it, and sometimes even healed it.

And, just as important, we have refined the art of authentic right-lessness, not caring who is right, but mutually caring for what is true. This shift seems to have transformed our dynamic the most, moving us from the egoic need to win that was borne in our warring childhoods and past life history, to the recognition that victories are a shared experience, manifest in the strengthening of the bridge between our hearts.

It’s not about someone winning our heart. It’s about restoring its aliveness. It’s about softening its armor. It’s about filling it up with light. When real love enters, it doesn’t take anything from us. It gifts us with the everything.

This is every human’s birthright: to know the universe that love reveals.

Our sexuality continues to transform on many levels. We had been profoundly alive to each other years ago, but there was a way in which our armor was still on when we made love. There is a meaningful difference between taking off your clothes and taking off your armor. Clothes come off lickety-split but armor can take a lifetime. I think both of us are beginning to understand this now. Intense soul-gazing has been replaced with a deepening vulnerability, one undress rehearsal after another. There is still an innocence in the field between us, but it’s an informed innocence now.

When I used to go to bed with a woman in my younger days, I didn’t realize there were so many of us in the bed at the same time. There was her and me, her parents, my parents, our past lovers, and anyone else we had unfinished business with. That’s the thing about being unconscious, we can’t help but bring our unresolved baggage into every relational encounter. Talk about an unwelcome orgy! It’s a busy bed when we are unconscious. Hard to move around freely with so many projections on the mattress. One of the reasons we do the work to heal our past is so we can actually create more space for intimacy. With our patterns fallen away, we stand a much better chance of holding love safe. With our projections worked through, we can actually see the beloved with clear eyes. Finally, it’s just the two of us.

Where before we had a love, now we have a relationship. Or perhaps it would be better to call it a Realationship, a connection that cuts a swath through all manner of authentic terrain, not only the pleasant landscapes, not only the mired, murky swampland of endless triggers. All of it. This doesn’t mean we don’t argue, or feel at odds with each other, but it does mean that we are committed to finding the love everywhere we can, going deeper and higher into the heart. Peeling away layers, ever deepening. Now we don’t only pray to our union when it tastes sweet. We also pray to it when it tastes bitter. In its own way, it has all become sacred—every trigger, every conflict—because we recognize that it has the capacity to grow us to the next level of awareness. Holy shit.

It’s a different thing, to make a relationship sacred. When it’s just the love you honor, you are still in two different worlds. You love her, she loves you, but what stands between you? What of the bridge between your hearts? What of the world you become together? Conscious relationship is all about the third element—the alchemical combination of two souls merging, the living breathing world that you co-create in love’s cosmic kiln. It’s the difference between loving and serving love. It’s the difference between the narcissistic quest for ecstasy and the joys of deep devotion. You serve loving. You are a devotee to the dance. The conscious-nest is a world unto itself.

Our connection is much like a never-ending mine. Although we feel so complete together, there is always the sense we’ve only scratched the surface of divine possibilities between our souls. Once we fully extricate the gems from one level of the mine, more are waiting at a deeper level. The deeper we go, the more brilliant the treasures we find. And the treasures aren’t static, but dynamic and flowing, actively informing the next stage of our mutual expansion. Alone on my meditation cushion, the treasures had been so limited, but with my beloved by my side, an unlimited karmacopia of delight has revealed itself. Such magic.

On an individual level, I now know true peace. I see how no time was lost or wasted. Everything that came before—my early life challenges, my unresolved issues, Sarah’s departure—makes perfect sense in the context of my own soul’s journey. I came into this life with an armored consciousness and I needed exactly what I received in order to open it. I needed the harsh upbringing. I needed the great love. And I needed Sarah to leave so I could learn how to open my heart without being dependent on another. I am now at the point of every return.

Although I’m individually broadened and transformed, I recognize that it is fundamentally intertwined with my love-relationship. Two trees side by side, separate but connected at the roots, always connected at the roots. Two human beings sitting side by side, hearing the raindrops beating on the temple roof, feeling the presence of the other everywhere. Grateful and gracious, jointly whispering IU.

There is a path at the heart of each love connection. Each has its own karmic blueprint. It is seldom what we imagine. You just have to find the path and follow it wherever it leads you. Some connections are meant to last a lifetime, and many aren’t. Expectations are like quicksand. They keep us from arriving at our true destination. Wherever we land, may we arrive with our hearts wide open.

Birthdays

Two years after she returned, Sarah asked to go to the cave. We hadn’t been there, together, for more than 16 years. It was time.

“Let’s write together there, Ogdo. On the cave wall.”

“Yes, let’s, sweetheart. Let’s.”

The cave of remembered dreams, with my beloved in the flesh. What could be better?

We set out early in the morning. Spring was just beginning to peek through winter’s deep slumber. There was a certain fragrance in the air, a hint of rebirth and renewal. When we arrived at Goshen, we found the park open but no one there. It was all ours. There was still crunchy snow on the ground and the air was chilly. Sarah grabbed her knapsack from the car and we began our trudge through the snow. Halfway to the cave, a large heron flew over our heads, its left leg hanging so low that it almost brushed Sarah’s head. A welcoming party?

When we arrived at the cave, we stood in silence for a moment, paying homage to the memories. Some of them were still there, written on the wall. Time had protected them.

Sarah asked me to sit down against the wall. After a few moments, she came over and blindfolded me. “Just trust me, Lowen. This is not a sex thing. Too cold for that this morning. But I do have a sweet surprise for you.”

While blindfolded, I heard her rustling through her bag. And then I heard the ever-so-familiar scratch of her writing on the cave wall.

“I thought we were supposed to do that together, baby.”

“We will sweets, just give me a few more minutes.”

When she was done, she kissed me and removed the blindfold. I looked at the cave wall directly opposite me. In green florescent chalk, she had written:

I want to be inside your footsteps and walk with you each day.
I want to rest within your quiet breaths at night.
I want to whisper in your teardrops and live within your laughter.

My eyes teared up, as suddenly the contrast between her physical presence, and my memories of isolation in the cave overwhelmed me. I stood up to hug her, but she motioned me to remain seated.

“I’m not done, my love,” she said with those smiling eyes of hers in full bloom.

I sat back down, as she got down on her knees in front of me. Reaching into her knapsack, she pulled out a small marble box. It looked like a family heirloom, elegant and timeless, with stories of its own. She placed it down in front of me. I reached for it and opened it to the most beautiful, simple ring of white gold.

“What’s this for, Sarah?”

“It’s my way of saying sorry.”

“For what?”

“For all those birthdays I missed.”

Now I remembered—she was reciting my original marriage proposal.

“And it’s also my way of saying that I want to be there for all the rest of them... for all your birthdays to come.”

Before I could respond, she looked into my eyes and said, “I love you as God loves. With nature as my chapel, and the divine as my witness, I ask you—will you marry me, Lowen Cooper?”

A surge of radiant elation filled my heart. I felt ecstatic that she asked me, too. How very beautiful—a woman asking a man. Why not—what is tradition in the face of love itself. I smiled and slid the ring onto my finger gleefully.

Then she reached back into her bag and pulled out the ring I had given her many years ago. I hadn’t seen it since our reunion and hadn’t asked about it. I always assumed it got lost somewhere amid our years of separation. Clearly it hadn’t—she had kept it safe.

I took the ring from her hand. Two perfect hearts intertwined, forever fused. I slid it back on her finger. Still a perfect fit. And then she smiled and said, “I do.” I kissed her lips softly.

We spent the rest of the afternoon writing on the cave’s walls. And, when the afternoon sun warmed the day, I took out my pen-is and wrote my love inside her. What would a visit to the cave be without a little lovin’?

Coach House

The next winter, we went looking for Dude. Our spring wedding was imminent, and we wanted him there. We checked out all the places he would frequent when the weather got bitter. No dice—we couldn’t find him anywhere.

We finally found a social worker who knew him from one of the neighborhood shelters. It turned out that Dude would drop in to give pep talks to the homeless, but never actually slept at the shelters. He had a makeshift house of his own in one of the Kensington Market back alleys. She didn’t know where, but there were only so many streets to choose from.

On a particularly icy day, we began the alley search. Checking behind the residential homes first, we found nothing. Then we searched the alleys behind the retail stores. Just before giving up, I spotted what appeared to be Dude’s weathered Rumi book lying in the snow. We worked our way toward it and stopped dead in our tracks. There, pushed up against a fence between two fruit stores, was what appeared to be a yellow pagoda. It was made from pieces of old wood and covered, for the most part, in flattened coffee cups glued to the entire structure as a kind of protection. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of cups. Quite a sight.

Outside the door was Dude’s dilapidated street sign, half buried in snow: $5 Dollars per Dudism. No deferral plan. Pay or adios. Something was askew.

We knocked on the coffee cup door. No answer. I pressed it open, but there appeared to be an interior latch. I pushed harder, until the latch gave way. Inside, I found Dude lying on the cold hard ground, apparently unconscious. His face was red and splotchy, his whiskers icicles, his breath shallow. I called to Sarah to go get help. While she was gone, I covered him in my winter coat and rubbed his back. He didn’t budge at all. My pushcart guru was near dead.

I looked around his place. There was little to see: a small messy cot, a toboggan with two blazers hanging off it, a giant bottle filled with untold amounts of cash. And a drawing of a young him with a long beard, and a woman donned in a bonnet. On it, were the words “Micah and Elizabeth Rasmussen’s wedding.” It appeared my push-cart guru was Amish. Wonders never cease. No wonder he lived such a natural life and had so little draw to civilization.

The ambulance pulled up, and we rushed Dude to hospital, in the nick of time. Just as he had always appeared when I most needed him, I had arrived to return the favor. Clearly we were part of the same soulpod, inextricably linked.

After he recovered, he finally told us a little of his story. He and his beloved Elizabeth were together for seven years, living and running a feed shop in northern Pennsylvania. Tragically, their first child died during childbirth. A little girl they had named Robin. His wife Elizabeth never recovered from her grief. After falling into a dark depression for several years, she finally fled Micah and the community to live with a man she had met during Rumspringa, the period when Amish adolescents get to explore the world. It was her way of running away from her pain. Dude was so heartbroken that he fled the US and landed in Toronto. He had been living on the streets here for over 20 years.

We invited him to live in the couch house on my property, rent-free. He had several health conditions, ranging from type 2 diabetes to arthritis to gout—he simply couldn’t continue to live outdoors. He protested mightily—“I want to earn my way”—until we agreed to accept payment in the form of snow shoveling and property maintenance.

He has been living with us for some time, tending to our small property with great pride. Now and then, when the wisdom business is booming, he leaves some cash in a rusty old can at the front door. We don’t tell him, but we go right out into the world with it, loving it forward to other houseless people.

In every great love dance, there is a whole soulpod of contributing influences. It begins with the family of origin and ripples outward from there, into a whole tapestry of meaningful faces, each of them playing a necessary role. They call to us, we call to them, and our angels broker the deal. Some will be remembered as supporters, some as lite-dimmers who impede, but all are essential to the lovers’ ultimate dance.

In the sunroom of our home, we created an altar that honors our love. On it are a colorful array of symbols of our connection: cardinal feathers, a birds’ nest, green chalk, stones, cards. There’s also a special section of pictures of everyone, alive and dead, who somehow contributed to our journey home. Every now and then we hold an early morning prayer ceremony to express our gratitude to them. Seldom are we alone. Our new squirrel friends usually appear in the window, perhaps drawn by the candle, or perhaps because they are determined to be included in our circle of love. There was a time in my life when I would never have included bushy rodents in my family—but it all makes perfect sense now. When you find a love like this, you are swimming in magic. Nothing is excluded. And, nothing surprises you anymore. Everything serves the Beloved in its own sweet way.

Today

I wasn’t quite sure where to end An Uncommon Bond, the story of mine and Sarah’s journey. The story of love lost, yet never lost. The story of the journey from soulmates to solemates, from woundmates to whole-mates. The story of a love so true that it birthed a universe of eternal enchantment.

How do I end that which will never end?

I will end it with today.

Today, just as I was about to finish this last chapter, we decided to go for a bike ride on Toronto Island. It was a beautiful spring day, with a soft and fragrant breeze. On the way back, we stopped to pick up some groceries at the St. Lawrence Market. There were too many bags to ride with, so we decided to walk the bikes all the way home. Instead of taking the main streets, we went down quieter back alleys as graffitists often do, looking for a good wall or two to ruin. When we took the last turn, we came across a young couple heatedly arguing about their relationship. They were clearly, dearly, sparklingly in love, and yet completely submerged in a trigger-fest of great intensity.

Sarah looked at me, “Oh Lord, those triggers. God protect them.”

“Should we warn them, honey?”

“No. Life will take care of that,” she replied knowingly.

“Think they’ll make it?”

“So few do,” she replied. And then her eyes lit up. “But, yes... maybe. They do have a lot of fire. That can be useful.”

We stood and furtively watched them for a while. They would never have known that we were sending prayers their way.

So few couples make it at this individualistic stage of human development. I mean really make it, in the deepest and truest sense. But many more will as we continue to evolve beyond our perceived separateness and embrace relationship as a path to wholeness. It’s not an easy path, and it’s not the path for everyone on their soul’s journey—but it is a gateway to wonder for those who are both destined and willing to brave the journey.

At this moment we are sitting on the couch. As I write these last words, Sarah is eating a bowl of her favorite coconut ice cream. We just finished a large dinner and both of us are feeling sleepy. And how fucking perfect it is. Because she is sitting beside me. Because her feet are touching mine. Because my heart has found its home.

I am right where I belong.

Return to Sender...

Address now known.

Our temple of mutual delight.

Here we shall pray forever.

THE END