Where we left it in Delivery 11:
“And you did not have sex with him?” I asked bluntly as I turned my gaze to her eyes again.
Even as I asked I felt I was out of line. The subject of sex had suddenly appeared in my own mind. I remembered what she had told me about the massage teacher, and how he invited her into his life, and into his bed. And she went there. It was a long time ago, and even before she met me, but, … people do not change. Not really.
I perhaps saw a shadow cross over her face but I could not be sure.
She replied “Of course not, you silly goose. Not every man wants only one thing.”
She began to stroke my earlobes and then she placed my hands against her inner thighs and began to unbutton her blouse. “Come and get your sweetness offering honey, you are the only one it is for”.
I put aside my doubt, given an offer I could not refuse, and began to enter a familiar world of passion and delight. We had abandoned ourselves together in that world so many times before. It never seemed to matter what was going on between us, or not happening between us, the sacred energies took us, even without us trying.
As we came to our bed we always paused for a moment to recognise the divinity in each other, before we lay down naked.
And inevitably our bodies fused, and our minds emptied.
And then as usual, we slept.
Delivery 12 is in 5 parts
One
Stuart suspects Aleena is not telling the truth. She is sleeping with Morris. Aleena always deflects back into “We create the reality we believe, let go of this limiting belief.”
Aleena did not speak of Morris again. For days I had the feeling to bring the topic up again, as I did mull over it at times. I sensed something was hidden. I hoped that Aleena would not have been lying to me when she assured me she was not having sex with him. Perhaps I needed to summons up my courage and ask some more questions.
Finally I asked her:
“Do you have feelings for Morris?”
She looked affronted. “No of course not, it is purely a therapeutic thing. Remember we create the reality we believe in. You are imagining something is going on because of your own doubts about yourself. Let go of your limiting beliefs about yourself.”
I felt chastened. I mumbled an apology. “Sorry, Aleena, I know I get paranoid at times.”
She changed the subject, asking me how my work project was going.
But I could not let go of it. Was I paranoid? Or was I sensing truly? All my life I had wrestled with this conflict inside myself. And now it seemed especially important for me to find out how much my sensitive nature was guiding me into truth. I had a nightmare one night.
I was in a world without Aleena. Nobody was there to take her place. I cannot say there were goblins and orcs in the dream, but the feeling in me as I traversed the dream space was akin to being in such an archetypal projection. I was alone. I had to travel. I could not rest, there was no possibility of stopping. I had to keep going. And why? I could not know. It seemed I was not allowed to know. I felt I was being played. And mostly I felt the presence behind me must not catch up with me. And slowly it was closing the gap.
I woke with a scream of terror. Aleena half-woke next to me, and cried out “What? What?”. I could not speak for a few moments, but soon offered “Only a dream”. She reached out for my hand under the covers and said, “Mmmm”, and I sensed she was already back asleep. I crawled out of bed as silently as I could. I went to the front room, the one that looks over the sea, and I sat in my favourite chair for over an hour, just silently looking and feeling.
I went back to bed feeling much calmer.
Two
In which Aleena finally acknowledges her sexual relationship with Morris.
Over breakfast the next morning I suddenly found myself speaking direct to Aleena.
“It’s time you tell me the truth. You are having sex with Morris on your late evenings of work. I just know this. I know. Stop hiding it.”
I was surprised to hear my own voice standing up for my inner intuition.
She began to reply, “Stu love, you are imagining again,…”
I looked into her eyes. She must have felt something new and resolute in me. She hung her head and went on.
“Yes, it is so. Morris and I are sexual together. I am so sorry.”
I was silent.
She continued.
“I did not want to tell you. I did not want you to be hurt.”
I turned away and left the room.
A few days passed. We were very distant with each other. Small distorted smiles looking at each other obliquely as we ate our breakfasts silently.
I felt though I still loved her. And I could not fathom how this feeling, or intent, could co-exist in my psyche with all the rest. The torment of the betrayal. The anger at her lies over the last few months. The cringe as I realised her lover had been having sex with her, perhaps only 24 hours before me. The insult that she withheld it all from me to protect me from my own feelings. The diminishing of me in that unasked for protection from myself. The demolishment of a dream. The dream that together we could help each other be the best versions of ourselves. And mostly the loneliness. The primal archaic basis in me for as far back as I could remember. The loneliness of having nobody in my life I could fully trust.
Yes I was hurt. Very very hurt. But as I considered my options I found that my relationship with her meant more to me than being able to avoid that hurt. I kept my silence as the days went by, I suppose I was waiting on her to convey to me where we would go from here. And I caught that passing of the decision to her, and I felt tormented when I realised I could instead make the decision – stay or leave – myself. Despite the torment I waited.
And, one morning Aleena came out with her own deliberations she was going through.
“Stuart, I cannot make up my mind. I love you. I also love Morris. My ancient mind tells me that is impossible. My family and church instilled in me the belief that a higher power had made each of us monogamous. I don’t find that is true for me. I can love you both.”
She paused. I began to wonder if I could love two women at the same time. It seemed out of my own experience and out of my possibility. But I had to defer my thinking about this, as she went on.
“I can love you, and love Morris, honey. The practicalities are a little difficult in my thinking but I am confident I could manifest a pathway through all that.”
I sighed. I was so tired of her way of inserting manifestation thinking into everything. I had a moment of regret for ever going to that mindfulness evening where I first encountered all of that. But in the next split second I realised if I had not gone there I would never have met Aleena, and even now, I could not regret that.
Then she let it out.
“But, honey… I know you well, and I cannot let myself hurt you more than I have. I am considering leaving you, so that you can create the life you want with somebody more faithful than me.”
She looked in my eyes directly, for the first time in days.
“Stuart, I am unsure.”
I did not reply. Just nodded, as if to convey my own unsuredness meeting hers.
Somehow we both got up from the table in the same instant and I went to the sink to wash the dishes and she left the room to get ready for work.
She did not come home that evening until almost midnight. She slept in her own room.
The next morning I told Aleena I was going away for a few days. She was not surprised. I packed a small bag and left an hour later in my car.
Three
In which Stuart drives himself to the wild ocean.
I drove out of the city and then 4 hours on a very convoluted route not really knowing where I was heading. South, then East, North and then South again. I found myself on the interstate highway heading towards the state border. Eventually I saw a sign:
Port Alfred 33Km
The arrow pointed South-East off the interstate highway.
I turned my car. I remembered the name of the place. I had never been there but my mother had told me when I was a child that her Uncle Len had been a fisherman and had lived at Port Alfred. He had died in his fishing boat in a sudden storm.
Strange the things we remember against all we forget.
Something inside me told me that the spirit of my Great Uncle Len would welcome me.
I drove down the narrow road and, coming over a hill, the sea stretched in front of me. Not like the civilised sea in front of our house. That one is a sea protected in a big bay.
This sea in front of me was wild, untamed.
And I knew enough geography to know that if I were to travel in the direction I was facing, I would cross the Southern Ocean until I came to Antarctica.
There was a sandy beach that seemed to continue forever to the east, and rocky cliffs to the west.
The town was small. Just a general store, a few houses. One of the houses had a hand-made sign: “Bed and Breakfast”. I pulled up in the driveway. An old lady came out and said,
“Hello. How long you want to stay?”
I smiled. “Just two or three nights.”
She seemed pleased. Perhaps I was her first customer for the week.
Winter was coming on and nobody was around. I settled into a bungalow at back of her block. The old lady left meals for me on her back verandah. I hardly saw her. I walked each day for hours and hours on the beach.
Four
In which, Stuart walks by the ocean. He is torn in how to respond inside himself. He cannot contemplate life without Aleena. He recalls his anguish state before she came into his life.
On the second morning in the old lady’s bungalow I woke early and by dawn I was walking on the beach. I walked perhaps 3 kilometres without pausing, and without seeing anyone else, before I stopped. I looked out over the ocean.
Alone, I called out to the wild waves, “Why do I have to go through this?”
So very alone, I called out, “What did I do wrong?”
No answer, the waves just kept rolling in.
“Why do I have to go through this?”, I again asked the waves.
Seven times I called out.
And then, almost in a whisper, “Why Am I so Alone?”
Unanswered, I flung myself onto the wet sand in front of the monstrous sea.
The sea seemed to be saying, “Each time you ask those questions I am obliged to torment you”.
What had just been revealed to me from deep in my own mind via the intermediary of the ocean?
I began to realise that each time I asked the questions, the waves gave the only answer they knew. “We keep rolling in, knowing our own nature. Do you dare to enter this state?”
I began to let go of the questions.
Instead of praying to any god, I had surrendered myself to the ocean.
Or had I surrendered to something deep inside myself? Some knowing?
“Do I dare to enter into this state?”
The waves washed over me and I arose and stood tall.
I whispered to the sea: “I do, I do dare to enter”.
I recognised my own knowing. My own knowing of my own self and my own courage. And my mind cleared.
I recognised a state of clarity that must have been my own experience of self way way back before I could remember. A primal knowing of self, beyond concept. Void of concept. A clear mind state.
In the moment I was not concerned about the reason or reasons that clear mind state had become clouded and even stormy over the years. I was not concerned that the unassailable experience of self had been covered over by an archaic concept of self, a concept that induced anxiety. I recognised the sublime purity at my core.
I also recognised that whatever happened to my marriage I would be safe. Safe to be me. Safe with what is deep down inside me, even as it rolls in, engulfing me.
I relaxed, knowing I need not manifest anything at all. But I can. It is all happening as it does. And I get to play in that. And it is good.
The waves seemed to affirm my new direct understanding of self.
The waves were rolling incessantly in. Engulfed in their own nature, not seeking anything more, or less, than that.
A newly refreshed clarity of self-experiencing-self arose in myself, as myself.
And embedded in that clarity, an answer to the questions I had put to the waves.
“Why do I have to go through this?”
“What did I do wrong?”
“Why Am I so Alone?”
“I have feared exposing myself. Or more exactly, I have feared exposing my unconscious to myself. And in recognising that fear my history of anxiety makes sense to myself. The mechanism of hiding from the depths of my own deep and primal consciousness is the driver of anxiety. And is the driver of my less than perfect ability to relate and hold love.”
I committed to going home and telling Aleena that I still loved her, I will continue with her. We can make a new beginning. Or she is free to leave if that is what she wants. I will feel very sad and lonely but that is okay.
I walked further along the beach until I came to a small village. At the edge of the beach was a tiny cafe. Nobody seemed to be there. I rang a small handbell. A young boy came prancing down from the embankment. He shouted before he got to me. “We only have Coke today. And lamingtons. My mum made the lamingtons. Do you want 3?”
I smiled at his enthusiasm. “Just one will do, and a small coke.” He seemed disappointed as if this would be his only sale for the day. He shoved a lamington onto a saucer and poured a glass of coke and put it on the only table. I gave him a $5 note and he looked at it. He did not offer change. I sat down. He ran back up the hill.
I sat there a long time. I thought about the entire timeline of my relationship with Aleena. The Mindfulness meetings. The getting to know each other. The growing of love. The confusion in me as we did not quite always meet. The marriage. The gift of the beach cottage. Our years of living there. The discovery of her lover. I thought of all this as detailed as I could and,
I sighed. I sighed and whispered to myself. It is all good. All of it good. And the tears began falling down my face unrestrained and I was glad the young boy had left and I was alone.
I felt myself accepting the deep part of me alone in the world, as I sat by the wild ocean, and for the first time in many years I prayed, “Thank you Father, I am blessed.”
I ambled back to the bed and breakfast, and arrived around dusk. I ate the meal the old lady had left for me, and watched a movie on the tiny TV in my room.
I slept for a few hours, and at 3am I woke and put my things in the car. I left a good tip and a thank you note on the back verandah. I drove peacefully through the night back to my marital home.
Five
In which Stuart receives his prize.
I arrived just before dawn and found most of Aleena’s things were gone.
And on the kitchen table a letter:
Dearest Darling Boy
I love you still and will love you forever but I find I have to go. Morris has my heart now and a torn heart is no good for anyone. I will carry our love with me in a secret place as I move onto the next phase of my life. You have blessed me with your presence and only the great beyond knows what will endure and what will pass away. I really do wish only the best for you and I know you will eventually go beyond the limiting fears you hold onto right now. I am leaving 2 of the china cups and taking 2 with me. The glass fig bowl I present to you even though strictly speaking it was mine because I saw it first in that funny little gallery. I have closed your access to my accounts and expect you to do the same. My solicitor will be in touch to arrange other financials with you. Stuart, this really is for the best; I know you will pine for a time, as you are inclined to do, but do perk yourself up, get out and about, and trust that your life has only just begun. Be positive. Morris always says the best is being formed for us right now in the mind of the gods and will be delivered as we become willing to accept it. I know you try my dear, I know you try.
My love and respect,
Aleena.
I put the letter down and the last sentence resounded in my brain for a few seconds. “I know you try my dear, I know you try.” I know you try. I know you try.
“I am being given the Tryer’s Prize in Intimacy”, I reflected, as tears began to flow.
Even though I cried, I knew that the concept of me, embedded in the Tryer’s prize, given to me by my first love, was indeed how I had presented myself to myself and to others, for many years.
And I felt that concept of me, the now archaic concept of me, the concept of me as a tryer, would not be anything like the me going into the future. I began to find in me a place perfect as is.
And as I felt the refreshed experience of me I could recognise the self, the me, was beyond any concept at all. The concepts rolled away, through my mind, but not stagnating there, and I was unbound.
And yet, as well, there was a lot to do, for still, I knew that having tasted this less than durable intimacy, with my first love, I would never rest until I found a perpetual version.
End of the 12 Deliveries that tell of the Journey of Stuart and Aleena.
There will be a Delivery 13. A Postscript or Bridge.
Watch for it mid January 2023.
From that postscript / bridge:
As the story reached towards its inevitable conclusion Stuart did not
“The sea is the favourite symbol for the unconscious, the mother of all that lives.”
— Carl Jung; Special Phenomenology; Part IV; Psyche & Symbol.
first pray to a god, he fell down on his knees in front of the Ocean.
He uttered, “I do, I do dare to enter”.
Not a question. Not a seeking of help. A statement of his power. A statement that he knows now that he is entering into his own individuation. And yet, his own expression surprised himself. Where did it come from?
He gradually realised the answers were coming up unhindered from his own unconscious.
And only later did he thank his childhood God for the journey through his own consciousness he had taken, alongside Aleena’s.
“The sea is the favourite symbol for the unconscious, the mother of all that lives.”
— Carl Jung; Special Phenomenology; Part IV; Psyche & Symbol.
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