We are moving into Delivery 8, where we discover more about the early adult life of the fictional characters, Aleena and Stuart.
If you prefer to read contiguously from the opening sentence forward, here are links to the previous 7 deliveries onto 2 Rules of Writing.
- https://2rulesofwriting.com/another-world-within/an-archaic-concept-of-me/
- https://2rulesofwriting.com/another-world-within/an-archaic-concept-of-me-2/
- https://2rulesofwriting.com/another-world-within/to-the-future-where-we-know-ourselves/
- https://2rulesofwriting.com/another-world-within/archaic-concept-of-me-keep-going-son/
- https://2rulesofwriting.com/another-world-within/mindfulness-archaic-concept-5/
- https://2rulesofwriting.com/another-world-within/archaic-concept-of-me-shoulder-energy/
- https://2rulesofwriting.com/another-world-within/forget-it-an-archaic-concept-of-me-delivery-7/
Where we began, way back in January 2022
I was young; I was anxious; I was bound to an archaic concept of me.
She smoothed my mind and body with her sunny day thoughts and yoga softened hands.
I agreed to her assumptions and her understated demands.
Where we left it in Delivery 7
We were still very happy together. The concerns seemed like minor ripples in a stream of timeless delight. We did not need to worry about money, I still had the handsome payout from my employment, and she seemed to get paid whether or not she turned up to work. We sometimes ate at expensive restaurants, and whenever we did, I would invariably think of my Uncle, 6 months previously, raising his glass of Chardonnay and toasting me, “To the future – where we know ourselves”.
So much had changed in me in those 6 months. I almost could believe I was on the verge of knowing myself.
Where we go now, in Delivery 8
We walked along the wharf hand in hand. On Tuesday afternoon it was quiet. The few tourists took photos with their smart phones and cameras. We did not say much. The million dollar yachts tied up at the little jetties seemed to reinforce the notion that abundance and good living would be with us wherever we went. They did not need to belong to us; they just complimented our own ownership of the things that make our life interesting.
We stopped to look in a souvenir shop. Aleena wanted to buy me a Drover’s hat with corks hanging off the rim, but I said “No, please don’t. I would just look like a silly duffer in that”. She scrumpled up her eyes in that irresistible way and laughed: “You ARE just a silly duffer, Stu Baby love”. But she put the hat back on the shelf and we moved on to look at the stuffed koalas.
We spied a home-made gelati kiosk with a few tables on a little terrace, shaded from the sun by a canvas canopy. I bought two double-flavoured waffle cones, and we sat down to enjoy them. As we licked the melting icecream, I decided now was the time. I opened my mouth and said: “Aleena, I have something to ask you”. She stopped licking her gelati, tongue still poised in mid air. She turned to face me and seductively slid her tongue through the air. She reached for my hand and looked in my eyes and just said: “Yes, Stuart, I will marry you.”
I blinked. I had been ready to take the huge risk of hearing her usual non-committal kindness. But here was her total agreement.
I said “Lina, how do you know that is what I want to ask?” She said “Oh Stu, you silly duffer boy, women like me just know theses thingses. I was waiting all day knowing today is the day. When you bought me a gelati and we sat down here, I just knew that the moment in the day was fast approaching. How do I know? I don’t know how I know.” She stroked my hand. “Now tell me I am wrong and you wanted to ask me what time it is.”
And here she is sort of implying it had been me all the time, tardy with my own commitment. But no time to analyse myself right now, this is the moment I had been waiting for, for many many months.
I said “Oh, however could I live without you? Of course I want to ask you to marry me but now the whole scenario of me asking formally has been ruined by your all-knowing perfect little brain”.
I smiled and she gave me her melted look.
“Let’s pretend I did not know you were going to ask that and I said Yes. What do you want to ask me, Stuart Harris?’”
Occasionally she used my formal name, and evidently this dignified decorum was called for right now.
We both laughed, and she tickled me under the arms, and I threw back my head and said quite loudly: “Oy, lady, get your hands off me!” The other people on the terrace turned in a moment of alarm, but when they saw two young lovers having such a beautiful time they grinned and returned quickly to their own ice creams.
I said “Aleena Beamont, I request your hand in marriage. I know I am unworthy of your magnificence but I am sure over time I can learn to meet your standards of spiritual purity. Please do say yes, or I will go back to the tourist shop, buy myself the yobbo hat with the hanging corks, and leave the city to wander amongst bullocks and ‘roos and disappear from your life forever.”
She laughed. “Well done, that’s the best marriage proposal I ever had. Let me check my prior commitments and I will get back to you” … I raised my hand as if to strike her in fury but turned the gesture into a soft stroking of her hair.
“Yes, beloved man, yes”, she said, “Of course yes, I will marry you, you are mine and I am yours”.
A small tear came to my eyes. She reached across to wipe it with her finger tip. “I love you forever” she said.
We sat for awhile in silence looking deeply into each other’s transparent souls.
Revealing My Worth
We set a date for our wedding. We were wanting it to be soon, and we decided 3 months away was not too soon and not too far away.
Would it be a traditional wedding?
I asked her, and she looked confused.
“You mean me in white and a flowing… what’s it called, a cape?”
“I think you mean a train, honey. A train is what flows out behind you.”
“I don’t want that. How about I wear a sarong.”
“A sarong? My Uncle would Not Be Pleased.”
“Your uncle will be at the wedding? I assumed it would just be you and me and the registry clerk.”
“I have family obligations.”
“Since I have known you, you have hardly even mentioned your family. Except the time you woke up in the darkness of the night calling out, ‘I can’t do that!’. And I woke, and murmured, ‘just a dream, what is it about?’ And you sleepily replied, ‘My family, they wanted me to live in a box’. And promptly you fell asleep again.”
“Oh did I really say that?”
We were silent for a time, then I realised I had better tell her about the Family Trust and the inheritance that would come to me on our wedding day. She did not blink when I mentioned the amount. Again we fell silent.
“I will always love you for who you are, Dear Man. You know that. I also have money to come to me, I am not a security-seeker.”
I balked. Had I really insinuated that was a worry for me?
“Honey, I know that. We will get by, money or not.”
She looked at me and again I saw a darkness in her eyes. I still had little notion of what was behind that darkness. Something to do with money? There was a place inside her that she keeps hidden from me. Sometimes she seemed totally transparent and then…a dark cloud over her inner reality, hiding that from me.
Perhaps we all are entitled to a private place. I reached out my hand and said gently, ‘we trust each other, that is enough’.
I could see some discomfort in her, as it was in me. We seemed to be saying things that were very different than what was deeper in our minds. But, I needed to let that rest.
We agreed my Uncle and his companion were to be invited, even before we began to consider the rest of the guest list.
I rang my uncle to tell him.
He answered the phone and said, “Stuart, good to hear from you”.
I replied, “I have something to tell you Uncle”.
He laughed softly, and said: “When is the wedding?”
“Was it that obvious?” I thought.
“September, Uncle.”
“Big or little? We can arrange an appropriate venue.”
“Little, Uncle, please. We want you and Imelda there, and just a few others.”
He was silent. I could almost hear his fingers tapping on his table. Finally, he said: “I will tell the Trustees to prepare the bequeathment papers”.
He paused.
“But look, I actually think we need more than a few at such a significant occasion. I will arrange for the Gala room at the Crest. I will of course pay all costs. September 15 will work for us.”
I did not feel to argue with his vision management of our wedding so I thanked him and put down the phone. Did money come into everything? Was it me? Only doing things for money? I sat for a few minutes. “No, I am doing this because at last someone loves me for who I am.”
Later Aleena asked me my uncle’s name, as up to now I had called him Uncle. “What should I call him when I meet him?”
I was a bit confused because I always just called him Uncle. “Uncle Harris, I suppose.”
“I mean his Christian name.”
“Oh, his name is Stephen. But he hates it. Please don’t call him Stephen. Not even Uncle Steve. No, especially not Uncle Steve.”
“OK I will ask him what he wants me to call him.”
I considered this. “No, that would not be polite. We are expected to just know these things.”
She frowned. She threw her hands up in the air. “Your family is Hopeless. H. O. P less.” I laughed at her expression. My “hopless” family. I could not disagree.
“Perhaps Uncle Harris might be best. Yes, let’s see how that goes.”
Aleena’s increasing absorption in manifestation thinking
In the months between expressing our commitment to each other, and actually tying the knot, we had many many conversations about the nature of our relationship and how we wanted to live our lives together.
Sometimes we spoke of how we met, at the mindfulness workshops. Usually though when we recalled those evenings we did not call it mindfulness, but rather, “The Manifestation Process”.
In one such conversation I expressed some fear that perhaps we could not really ever know that we would be together forever.
She had come into the room and noticed me staring out the window vacuously.
“Tell me your thoughts, dear one.”
“I am wondering about certainty.”
She looked at me with that fully attentive look that always made me feel I was the luckiest man in the world.
“I mean, how do we actually KNOW that we will be forever together?”
She continued listening attentively, not interjecting. So I shared what was trickling up in me.
“I suppose one of us will die before the other. I hope it is not you, for I could not live on without you. And I hope it is not me, because I could not be so selfish as to leave you alone.”
I turned to her, and expressed more clearly my concern.
“I want to live without this constant nagging feeling. That just around the corner everything we have together will fall apart. I want to live without this underlying current of anxiety that seems to have been in me forever. I want our life to be just like the manifestation master began to teach us so many months ago. Mindfulness is nice but it never really clears away the doubts. They just come back when I open my eyes.”
She took my hand, and whispered, “I Love you Stu. We will make it happen”.
Tears came to me, and I did not try to hide them from her. She continued to hold my hand as I wept. She waited until the sobbing lessened, then again she quietly spoke.
“I will always love you. Change your thoughts to this new reality.”
She took me into the bedroom, still holding my hand.
Later, as we lay together, nestling our satiated bodies, she began to whisper in my ear. Almost poetically. Or perhaps very poetically. Like her words were being delivered to her from another realm. Like she was in a trance.
“We just have to recognise our total immersion in infinity.”
She paused. I listened to the pause. She began again.
“From that state of pure wonder and acceptance abundance arises.”
Again the words paused, as if transmission had ceased, and I felt the body-warmth between us. She continued.
“We need to mindfully get in touch with our underlying intent for every part of our lives, and tune it. Then we acknowledge the sure thing that will come about as we relax and let the universe work out the how to do’s.
It is so easy. So very easy.”
Maybe she could feel the skepticism in me, because her voice changed as if coming out of trance. And I felt a coldness passing from her body to mine.
She raised her head from the pillow and looked directly into my eyes. The darkness peering into my soul again.
She insistently asked, “Don’t you find that the world moves closer and closer to how you want it to be? I do.”
I did not know how to answer. My future wife had laid down the ground rules for our collaborative venture. Affirmative intent. My own doubts seem insignificant and needlessly negative against her bristling confidence and trust. And my own wavering mind seemed impotent against her demand that light and positivity be always our guide.
I wondered if perhaps I could let go some more of who I had been in the past and expand my mind to meet hers more fully. I said “You have so much trust. I admire you for that. I wish I could say the same about me. But I want it. I really do. I want that manifestation ability you talk about so often.”
She nodded her head, “Yes, you do. You want it and I want it for you too.”
As she slept in my arms I looked at the sweet beauty of her face. It seemed to me a perfect angel was laying with me. Her words about letting go of all fear swirled around in my head. I determined to give her what she saw possible in me, and make myself into the man she apparently imagined I was.
Coming up Next: Delivery 9, Due Out Mid-September
Heads bowed as silence filled the room. “Lordess, we know we are imperfect reflections of our holy eternal higher-beings, so we rely on you to bring forth our most loving intents and actions. Stuart and Aleena are now one in your eyes, guide them to greater and greater magnificence as they seek and follow your ordained purpose for this unified life they are entering together. Help them to see others as holy beings such as themselves and to show those less fortunate the compassion that you showed so long ago when you too were just a human lost on this planet. Goddess, bless these pilgrims and may the light shine forth from their hearts forever more. I ask this in the name of the Parent-Energy, of the Child-Energy, and of the Holy Magnificence present in us all. Amen.”
