We began in Delivery 1 with a vignette. A vignette of lingering kisses, stillness and soft murmurings, bountiful cushions on a big, round mahogany bed, privilege taken for granted, and lithe young minds congratulating each other on their own manifestations of abundance. A vignette delivered to us by a much older version of a young man named Stuart.
The older Stuart recounts the first summer in a beach front cottage with Aleena. As that first delivery proceeds, and into delivery 2 to 8 of that older manʼs memories, we follow the formative Stuart even further back in time. We discover his conflicted mind. We discover his meeting with Aleena. We discover the entry into intimate relationship. Clearly a first for Stuart, and – it is perhaps not clear – also a first for Aleena.
But, this is Stuart’s story, told by himself, as he frames the long ago experience, not Aleenaʼs construction of all that.
As we entered into that journey through his memories, perhaps we gained some sense of what the older Stuart is calling his own “Archaic Concept” of self.
We get a sense perhaps that by the time the older Stuart is recounting his entry into intimate relationship, he now holds a very different feeling of who he is. A very distinct experience of himself, than the ideas and feelings of self he had back then. Otherwise why would he be calling it an “Archaic Concept of Me”?
Here in Delivery 9, we continue following the journey towards that first summer in the beach house. And by the end of this delivery, we have caught up with all of that backstory, and are, in the warping of time, in the beach house.
We are almost ready to find out in the next deliveries – from the old manʼs mind – what transpires after that first summer of manifested love.
Where we left it in Delivery 8:
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.
Where we go now, in Delivery 9:
The Pivot
Around that time I had a dream one night, as Aleena lay next to me.
In the dream I was with another woman naked in bed together. I sometimes had those dreams back then, and occasionally still. Usually they cease before the copulative action. But this one went right through to the climax, and, perhaps surprisingly because it was a dream, afterwards, in the dream, I had a conversation with the woman.
In the dream, as we lay in the afterglow of first union, I asked her how that was for her.
She whispered: “You cannot remain joined with me unless you dive deeply into your own soul. Many have tried to meet me there, in those depths, and they have all disappeared. I am wondering if you are the one who will succeed.”
In the dream I determined to try. I began to limber up for the deep dive. I was on a platform like an oil drilling rig, over a wild ocean. But the dream ended there. Before I could dive.
I lay awake for awhile feeling the anxiety that often returned in the night, back then, as I fantasised about possible futures. In the waking state as the dream faded, I felt fear that my relationship with Aleena would not be forever. And perhaps the dream was telling me that.
Reflecting from the me in the dream, to the me now wide awake, I once again summonsed up from inside myself, the determination to try, to really really try, to be the best version of myself, and thus keep my prize.
The Journey Continues
Over the next months the conversations kept returning to the notion that intent creates reality. I wanted to believe it. Even more than that, I wanted to retain her love.
We were sitting in the city square just watching the people go by. Aleena had shopped for a couple of hours without buying anything except a pair of bamboo socks for me, and a little golden elephant for herself.
I had walked around the streets aimlessly. I enjoy to do that. Just turning corners randomly. Heading nowhere in particular except for the intention for us to meet up at 4.
We were both weary from all that, so we just sat on a bench in the late afternoon sun. I had been telling Aleena for a few days that I had a lingering fear that our love would not survive. As we sat silently taking in the activity around the square, suddenly she turned to me and proclaimed: “Fear is not real; ignore its power but donʼt deny it reflects your own intent.”
I recoiled. I felt attacked. Was she accusing me of intending our love to break down? And why would I want that?
Masking my reaction, with a smile, as sincerely as I could, I offered, “I am not sure I understand.”
“Catch and tune your intent.”
Just like that. She almost flung her words at me. As if someone was dictating to her, somebody with authority over her life and mine. Or like a director of a stage show rehearsing a new actor. Putting that actor through their lines.
“Honey”, I whispered. But she seemed almost to be in a trance.
“The world loves to give us what we intend. So that is why we must always remain in our purity.”
I touched her shoulder so as to re-assure her I was still there. She did not acknowledge the touch. She did not turn her head to mine. She sat there, though in silence, and I did not intervene, and soon the sky began to turn dark.
We walked together, still in silence, to the tram stop. As always when we arrived home to my apartment we made love, and afterwards as I was falling asleep I heard her crying next to me, like a child. Like a child who has just found their kitten lifeless in the hessian bag they had tied up with string and dunked in the garden pond.
After an hour I woke and found her sitting in the kitchen eating soup she had heated from a can. She smiled at me, and said, “Are you hungry, honey”. As if all that had been between us in the previous few hours had never occurred. I said, “Yes”, and began to cut up some vegetables for a stir fry.
For weeks after that, it was one day united, next day facing each other as enlightened teacher and weak-minded student.
But always our love-making returned us to softness with each other.
The Wedding
And soon we found ourselves in the chapel with the hundred people that uncle had arranged to witness our union.
“You are now fully together in holy matrimony, equals in the eyes of God and wondrously joined for all eternity”, the minister intoned. She smiled.
“No more do we recognise even death as standing between the love of a man and a woman predestined by God to become one”.
“Please kiss each other in recognition of your equivalence in this holy merging”.
We turned our heads towards each other and kissed each other solidly on the lips. Her arms reached up and clasped my head to her. I held her around the waist and she began to wriggle her hips as if dancing to a distant tango tune. The congregation began to laugh softly, and the minister joined in the fun, proclaiming in a loud voice,
“The wedding ceremony is not yet over, please encourage the couple to wait a few hours before joining together in bodily union as prescribed by the Good Lord for their mutual enjoyment and spiritual solace later this evening. … Later, I said, Later!”
The guests now realised they had permission to laugh solidly and the chapel began to fill with sounds of laughter and clapping and even one or two wolf whistles.
The minister looked at her shoes demurely for a few moments and then softly clapped her hands. “Let us pray for the loving intimacy of this couple and the good works they will do with other souls who come into their life together.”
Heads bowed as silence filled the room.
“Goddess, 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 united 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.”
We hired a car and drove deeply into the mountains for a honeymoon. We stayed for 7 days at an old and quaint wooden cottage next to a rippling stream. It was late spring, so there was no snow on the ground yet, but we could see white patches on the peaks not much higher up.
The ceremony seemed to have broken a spell. We began again to feel consistently aligned. I felt the possibility of abundance continuing, as she had encouraged me to assume. She stopped trying to convince me that my intent needed tuning. And I noticed that she was no longer entering her Guru trance. And the darkness I sometimes had seen in her eyes seemed to have been resolved. We began to take things together much more lightly.
The days of the honeymoon felt to be timeless, but soon our week was up and we drove back to my apartment in the suburbs.
After the Wedding
3 days after we returned from the Highlands, Uncle called me. He spoke mysteriously, but with an unusual tinkle in his voice. I had a slight memory of his visits on Christmas morning when I was a little child, bringing presents for me, and me running into his arms.
“Stuart, meet me tomorrow morning at 11, on the corner of Beach Road and Dylan Drive, in Brighton. Bring your lovely wife. I have a surprise for you both.”
When I told Aleena she frowned. “Oh not on your Nellie, not lunch at the Seaview with your uncle. Once a year is more than enough. You go. Tell him I have my period. Tell him I have left you. Tell him I donʼt like him.”
I smiled. I knew she would come around in a few minutes and indeed she did.
“OK, but we have to leave at 2 for an important appointment with, um, my hairdresser, OK?”
I took her in my arms and smoothed her hair. “He wonʼt believe you. Your hair is already perfect. But, yes.”
We arrived at precisely 11am. Uncle pulled up in his Jaguar at exactly the same time. “Hop in”, he called, through the open window. I opened the back door for Aleena, and she smiled. Not so much because of my gentlemanly attention but for my recognition that she preferred to not sit in the front with my uncle.
I sat next to my uncle as he drove silently and fastidiously through the narrow streets leading down to the bay. He pulled up outside a Victorian beach cottage on a prime site facing the water. A For Sale sign adorned the front white picket fence. And across the sign, a large sticker, “Sold”.
I turned to my uncle. He was pretending to look at the bay. I made a sound. “Umm…”. He looked at me and almost sang, “Yes it is yours. My wedding present for you and your lovely bride.”
Aleena almost screamed. “I knew it! Iʼve been manifesting this moment for a long time!”
My uncle frowned, but long years in business consultancy had enabled him to quickly recover decorum. He swung his head towards Aleena in the back seat, and said “Congratulations then, your manifestation seems to have worked.”
He handed me a key. I reached over and put my arm around him for the first time since I was just a little boy. He recoiled a little, he was not welcoming of touch between adults, but he allowed my embrace for a few seconds then said, “Well, letʼs go and look inside.”
As we walked up the garden path I whispered to my wife, “Care to cancel your hairdressing appointment, my love?” She grinned. “Hmm, yes maybe.”
Getting Settled
A month later, after arranging furnishings, and decorations, and sacred objects of Manifestation, we woke up on our first morning in the cottage.
We had slept most of the night with her in my arms. It seemed that my uncle had hit the right note. Aleenaʼs energy was wide open to me. And mine to hers. We had prepared breakfast in bed, the night before. We sat looking at the bay from our big new bed.
She murmured: “You and I are co-creators of a beautiful reality.” I replied dutifully,
“I see myself as I can be when I let go of my final limitations.”
I grinned as she took the little coffee spoon from the saucer and tapped me on the temple with it, as she pronounced a benediction: “Arise Sir Stu, and look your goddess in her eyes.”
I thought she had just needed to receive the gift of a home in order to relax her own mind from the constant conviction that she had to control her own thoughts in order for life to be good. Her mind had done its job. Or so she conceived it. But, I felt no need to correct her, I felt her love, and I felt our blessing state together. And I felt at last a conviction that I had it in me to come into the life I deserved.
Spring turned to summer. She smoothed my mind and body with her sunny day thoughts and yoga softened hands. We still spoke of abundance. It became much more relaxed. Not so much as something we were heading towards in the future, but something with us right now.
That first summer we gloried in the eagerness of our interconnected loins. Each morning we smothered each other in kisses that lingered after the passion had moved in the way it must. As our climaxes led us into stillness and soft murmurings we settled down with our pre-breakfast habit of Figs and Rooibois tea. We sipped the tea from hand-painted china cups. We chose the figs from the hand-blown glass bowl that always stood on the bedside table. We lay propped on a dozen bountiful cushions on our big round mahogany bed. We sighed in contentment as yearnings became satiated and bodies became still.
We marvelled as rays of fresh sunlight entered our bedroom window from over the bay. That light reflected from our crystals and dream catchers and from our eyes as we gazed lovingly into each othersʼ souls. We knew ourselves as privileged in our balconied and engardened beachside cottage.
And yet we took that privilege for granted, as our due, through our affirmative mind-states, and we congratulated each other unceasingly on the manifestations of abundance we continued to achieve from our lithe and positive young minds.
Our married life had begun. Summer turned into Autumn. I continued with my freelance work at home, Aleena commuted to her office most days, the leaves fell down around our little front garden, and slowly, winter returned.
Where we Go in Delivery 10
A business card – on it was written a name “Malvern Brahma Soul-Dancer”, and the information “Consultant Mystician. Private Studio or House Calls” and a phone number. The text golden on a black background with the very faint impression of rain drops filtering down through the words. On the back of the card, a handwritten note: “Aleena, Call me, you wonʼt regret it”.
I put the card back down into the letter box. I came back inside. I sat at my desk unable to work. Around 6pm I heard Aleena come in the front gate, and the letter box open and close. I composed myself, and began typing randomly on my keyboard.
If you prefer to read contiguously, from the opening sentence forward, here are links to the previous 8 deliveries:
