O Karma, Dharma, pudding and pie,
gimme a break before I die:
grant me wisdom, will & wit,
purity, probity, pluck & grit.
Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind,
gimme great abs & a steel-trap mind,
and forgive, Ye Gods, some humble advice –
these little blessings would suffice
to beget an earthly paradise:
make the bad people good –
and the good people nice;
and before our world goes over the brink,
teach the believers how to think.

- Philip Appleman

Image: Samye Ling – Nagarjuna by *oberonfoto

Is it the night of power
Or only your hair?
Is it dawn
Or your face?

In the songbook of beauty
Is it a deathless first line
Or only a fragment
copied from your inky eyebrow?

Is it boxwood of the orchard
Or cypress of the rose garden?
The tuba tree of paradise, abundant with dates,
Or your standing beautifully straight?

Is it musk of a Chinese deer
Or scent of delicate rosewater?
The rose breathing in the wind
Or your perfume?

Is it scorching lightning
Or light from fire on Sana’i Mountain?
My hot sigh
Or your inner radiance?

Is it Mongolian musk
Or pure ambergris?
Is it your hyacinth curls
Or your braids?

Is it a glass of red wine at dawn
Or white magic?
Your drunken narcissus eye
Or your spell?

Is it the Garden of Eden
Or heaven on earth?
A mosque of the masters of the heart
Or a back alley?

Everyone faces a mosque of adobe and mud
When they pray.
The mosque of Hayati’s soul
Turns to your face.

- Bibi Hayati
d. 1853

trans. Aliki Barnstone

Persian

My Lady Carenza of the lovely body,
please offer sisters your professional advice,
and since you know whats best, tell us precise-
ly what to do. You know. Your ways embody
all ways of women. Please say: shall I wed
someone we know? Or stay a virgin? I’ve said
that would be good. But having kids. What for?
To me a marriage seems a painful bore.

Lady Carenza, I’d like to have a man,
but what a  penance when you have a clan
of brats. Your tits hang halfway to the ground;
your belly is discomforted and round.

My Lady Iselda and my Lady Alais,
you have youth, beauty; your skin a fresh color
and know courtly manner; you have valor
beyond all other women in your place.
Here me. And for the best seed from a cod,
marry the Crown of Knowledge, who is GOD.
and you will bear the fruit in glorious sons,
saving your chastity like married nuns.

My Lady Iselda and my Lady Alais,
remember me and may my light erase
all fears. Please ask the king of glory, when
you enter heaven, to join us once again.

-          Anonymous Provencal

-          12^th century

Trans Willis Barnstone

Voices of light

John Godward (1861- 1922)

garden

When I went into my garden, I found
only nettles and thorns.

The nettles and thorns I threw out.
I seeded some flowering plants.

I found someone who knew his work,
willing to help me in my task.

The tree was in such a hurry to climb,
I couldn’t dig it out in time.

In my dilemma he had a remedy.
Alone he pulled up the tree.

Now I must ask advice from him
or he won’t help me again.

However much I weed and clear,
the poison grass appears.

I’d like to seed lilies on this site
before the day is bright.

If my lover feeds it with dew,
it will richly bloom.

He loves among all flowers,
the lily in its white splendor.

Red roses unfurl.
In their calices burns the pearl.

Then the the pearl is dressed in sun,
The strong heart looks on.

Jesus is the gardener’s name.
I am his. One being, we are the same.

His love is sweetest breath,
beyond all things on earth.

Sister Bertken
1427 – 1514

Transl. Willis Barnstone

Christian’s have often blamed Eve for the woes of the world. The ancient Greeks also liked to blame their women.

The Patriachal world of Zeus’s Olympus reveals a lot about the Grecian ideal women – a cultural milieu that has influenced the modern world.

Olympus had six chief goddesses Athena (Roman Minerva) Artemis, Hestia, Aphrodite, Hera and Demeter.

Three are virgins – is this because ancient Greek men feared full blooded female sexuality?

“We have mistresses for our enjoyment, concubines to serve our person, and wives for bearing legitimate offspring” wrote pseudo-Demosthenes.

Like, women today frustrated at being forced to be an asexual career woman, or Athena, a frivolous sex object, or Aphrodite, or a respectable mother like Hera, the ancient Greeks neatly classified their women.

Meanwhile rape does not even raise censure among the Grecian male divine pantheon. Why the endless catalogue of rapes of women, human and divine, no doubt recorded by men?

Psychoanalysis suggests points out that being carried away and overpowered by an ardent lover is so common that Helene Deutsch called it an indication of women’s innate masochism.

Karen Horney agrees arguing that these fantasies result from  women’s repression in society.

Between 31% and 57% of women have rape fantasies, according to a meta analysis of 20 studies over the last 30 years.  These fantasies are frequent or preferred in 9% to 17% of women – however, most go unreported.

Summarizing possible reasons for this, Matthew Hudson in Psychology Today lists Masochism,  Sexual Blame Avoidance, Openness to Sexual Experience, a woman’s belief that she is so desirable a man cannot resist her, or conditioning that the male rape culture has left a psychic imprint on women.

Husdon also lists Biological Predisposition to Surrender, which is found in the mating behavior of many mammalian species,  Sympathetic Activation, an activating the fight flight response linking fear and excitement, reaction to trauma or  Adversary Transformation.

Adversary Transformation is commonly found in romance novels, writes Husdon, where the rugged and raping male is transformed into a marriage partner.

Archaic Female Divinities?

While Homer begins his narratives from the patriarchal throne room of the Olympian gods, the stories of the Gods before Zeus are recorded by Hesiod, a dour and bitter  Boethian farmer and poet whose misogynist ideas probably reflected the populations attitudes.

Hesiod describes a progression from “female dominated generations, characterized by natural, earthy emotional qualities, to the superior rational monarchy of Olympian  Zeus” wrote Sarah Pomeroy in “Goddesses, Whores, Wives and slaves –Women in classical Antiquity.”

While it is unclear if this fits historical reality, myths and legends shape civilizations for generations.

Ge is the first reigning earth goddess and her children primarily physical features of the earth. Her grandchildren however, do include a few monsters.

Ge’s husband, Uranus, is also her son and jealous of his children hides them insider Ge. Ge persuades her son Cronus to castrate her father with a sickle.

Cronus repeats the pattern, swallowing his children by Rhea. Rhea helps her son Zeus to defeat Cronus and the civilized cultural patriarchy of Zeus is established.

Zeus even takes away the females sole role of child bearing and gives birth to Athena through his head and Dionysus through his thigh.

We see Hesiod’s unsympathetic view of women in his describing the first woman, Pandora, described with a “maidens form- desirable and fair” given weaving skills by Athena. Aphrodite “drenched her head in grace” she is the “lovely curse, the price for fires boon, to other gods and men.”

Pandora can mean giver of gifts – or less benevolently, ‘recipient of all gifts’ the view taken by Hesiod as he describes her with “bitch’s thoughts, and wiley ways” and “a name, Pandora – a pain to hard toiling men’

Like Eve, she is instrumental in releasing evil into the world.

The Patriarchal world of Zeus’s Olympus reveals a lot about the Grecian ideal women – a cultural milieu that has influenced the modern world.

The Female Olympian’s

Olympus had six chief goddesses three are virgins.

Athena, (roman Minerva) is a virgin born not of a woman but of a man, the archetype of women who succeed in a masculine world by denying her sexuality.

A Warrior, judge and giver of wisdom, her pregnant mother was swallowed whole by Zeus, and Athena was born, fully clad in armour uttering a war cry, and released by the stroke of an axe by Hephaestus

This, according, to the ancients, proves parentage is patriarchal.

Sociable, she even appears to her favourites as a man, for example to  Homers Odysseus. She is practical; presiding over crafts she negotiates the worlds of men and women.

Less sociable is virginal Artemis or Diana as she is known by the Romans, she shoots arrows from a far, a huntress who prefers the solitude of mountains and forests. Mortal by forms of her persona are found in the Amazon warriors and Atalanta, left to die by her son desiring father, and is raised in the forest by a bear.

While she appears virginal and masculine, she is primarily concerned with female concerns of menstruation, childbirth and death.

Here though is perhaps where the concept of virgin becomes confusing. Artemis, possibly evolved from an ancient mother goddess, had many suitors. She refused to settle into a monogamous marriage. She was independent and in control.

She would eventually marry  a suitor aided by Aphrodite– after many schemes to attachment. Interestingly, there is one chastity loving mortal man known for his devotion to her. Hippolytus, unable to find chastity in male divinities he is forced to worship chastity in female form.

Hestia, also known as Vesta by Rome, was courted by Poseidon and Apollo, she sore to eternal virginity touching the head of aegis-bearing Zeus. The archetype old maid she does not feature in many mythical adventures. She preferred the quietness  of the hearth and is often portrayed as a living flame.

While far from virginal, Aphrodite (Roman Venus) also claims a masculine birth. Born of the foam of the sea released from  the castrated sky god Uranus. Portrayed as frivolous, deceitful and attractively alluring she seems exhibit qualities found in Pandora and Helen of Troy, both favourites of the goddess.

Married to the ugliest immortal, the lame Hephaestus, she is unfaithful, although only mildly censurable for a fertility goddess sacred to prostitutes.

As the Romans claimed descent of Venus, son Aeneas,  it is no surprise that philosophical debate over the nature of love survives through Neo-Platonism and the Renaissance until today, wrote Sarah Pomeroy.

“In philosophical discussions on the nature of love in Plato’s symposium, Aphrodite is said to have a dual nature. Aphrodite, Urania, born of Uranus without a mother, represented intellectual, non physical love” she wrote in Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves.

“Aphrodite Pandemos, said to have been created by the union of Olympian Zeus and the sky goddess Dione, was the patroness of prostitutes, and represented common, or vulgar love”

“Vulgar love could be heterosexual  or homosexual, but intellectual love could be found only in a relationship between two males” she said.

In contrast to the irresponsible Aphrodite, Hera is the long suffering faithful wife.

She is not a walk over, husband and sister of Zeus, she is his equal and although patroness of marriage, Hera and Zeus seem to be at constant war. Zeus constantly threatens to subjugate her but never entirely succeeds.

True, they do spend some time lustily in bed, but Hera is both wicked step mother and persecutor of her husband’s paramours. Perhaps she can be compared to Hindu mother goddess Kali, who is both creator and destroyer of life.

Of course, goddesses are not prescribed by family budgets or restraining husbands. Domesticity restrained the real lives of classical women.  Also, few men could enjoy the polygamy recommended by pseudo-Demosthenes.

The myths do not emphasize the feminine roles of childbirth, weaving and marriage – although features important to female devotees.

Protective relationships of goddess and mortal are usually of the virgin divinities. However, as reserved Artemis attests, being a virgin does not mean – although being a virgin does not mean the goddess is always helpful to humans.

The hierarchical dominance is seen in Zeus and Apollo destroying mortal lovers who discover their. Apollo was renowned for his rationality, except when rebuffed by a woman.

Just as the Grecian society allowed a wealthy man sexual access to his long suffering faithful wife and the servants, Male gods do not go out of their way to help female humans – the exception being Dionysus who rescues the seduced and dumped Cretan princess Adriane and marries her remaining faithful.

And although male gods had homosexual lovers – as did Apollo who loved Hyacinthus, but accidently killed him with a discus jealously directed by Zephyrus – we see no female homosexual liaisons except perhaps with the Amazon warriors.

While, scholars will debate whether the Olympian goddesses stem from a possible earlier female religious hierarchy of the type suggested by Hesiod, or hinted at by the frescoes and figurines of Neolithic Crete or Catal Huyuk, there is little doubt the myths have influenced our society.

As Catholic history illustrates, even misogynist societies can have periods of mother worship, without proving any archaic matriarchy.

In the modern world, Jungian psychology considers the mother goddess an archetypal figure that dominates the ego of the child, who experiences the world as a matriarchy says Erich Neumann a student of Jung.

The Great Mother can be a good mother, giving food and nurture or be Kali like in her destructive, devouring and castrating persona evoking retributive hostility in her child.

The shadow self, that feeds creativity in us all, when Accessed can empower significant transformation and change.

The feminine creative spirit in love and in life can empower and beautify our lives. If Jung is correct, it depends on whether we shed light on our dark, hidden persona and reveal it constructively to the world.

It’s not about Sex

You wouldn’t think so. Yet sex is addictive – I don’t mean the tiger Woods kind of addiction.

I mean the illusion – seeking something better of hoping you will be found in another.

We feel the intensity. We know the instinct attention that those three letters grab and sadly forget that after the initial hormonal rush we are seeking far more and yearning greater horizons.

Growth comes from bridging ever expanding circles, said Emerson in Essays of Circles. In love,  like creativity, takes us across concentric circles in two directions simultaneously.

You are intrigued by the person because they remind you of a forgotten shadow of yourself. You are empowered to reach out, precisely because you have something you can hold onto within.

Unfortunately, as a mirror to our soul, those dearest to us,  have a nasty habit of triggering hidden demons.

This is at once creative and repressive, scary and inspiring. It is transformative; and  like any transformation experience it can be a frightening experience.

To find its transmuting power we must be cavers of the soul, seeking Paleolithic art buried hidden in cavernous tunnels. The passages seem endless, unable to be grasped, deep in the earth like the womb of the divine mother.

It seems in this confined finite space there is infinitude of experience.

Alluding to Jungian imagery, Anton Ehrenzweig compared it to the womb.

A fair analogy: Ideas are like semen. Without fertilizing an ovum they die out. The seed must grow, simmering in the hidden depths refined and eventually revealed.

Gestation is a time of massive upheaval and growth yet this pre-birth experience is so much like the birth of an idea. Fueled by experience, necessity is often the mother of invention. Of course, necessity focuses our energies.

However, the creative juice lay’s deep in an eternal uterus of past meanings and biological compulsions. Motherhood is at once biological, and experiential. Emotions are fueled both by raging hormones, others the product of life’s ups and downs, a beautiful melody or a spousal argument.

Like the Hindu divinity Kali, mothers are seen as elevated extremes of life. She can be an angel incarnate: supportive, kind, cheerful, good cook, neat dresser, humble, sweet, and nurturing at all times.

She is at times demonized as the “hungry sow who devours her young,” at once the image of the “terrible mother,” who gives life and destroys it.  She is connected with the cycles of the moon, women’s menstruation, the cycles of nature that can be at once creation and destruction, light and dark.

While, I am not Hindu, I think the metaphor of Kali powerfully captures the forces hidden deep within the creative soul. We all are creative, it’s just some capture that essence, and women embody it.

Queen Mab - Gustave Doré (1832 - 1883)

Such powerful earthy psychological forces can frighten us and in the past have men have harshly judged the ‘neuroses’ of women. Or  fearfully harangued as by Mecutio in Shakespeares Queen Mab speech.

However, when these powerful forces are accepted, and integrated, they can be powerfully inspiring and transformative.

Building stand high because they have harnessed buried energies of a deep, unseen foundation. Sadly, we often ignore what we don’t see –until we start to design a structure for ourselves. Our ideas lay dormant, unfertiliised by the gestation of experience, and die out.

There is direction,  of course – you know a baby is coming you prepare with focused anticipation. However, the creative foundation lays in the unconscious waiting to be harnessed, like a buildings foundation unseen and often forgotten, it is still there.

Similarly, our lives are built on foundations that include the stories and metaphors of generations that came before us. The power of religion and art allows us to access the unknown through metaphor.

Hidden beneath our public success are hidden pasts. stories, and meaning fed to us by culture and experience, religion and rationalism.

The effect is far deeper than existential mumbo jumbo

Clifford Geertz in Interpretation of Cultures decribed mankind as “incomplete or unfinished animals who complete themselves through culture.”

“Our central nervous system – and most importantly its crowning curse and glory, the neo-cortex – grew up in great part with culture” he said, explaining that the neo-cortex ““is incapable of directing our behavior or organizing our experience without the guidance provided by systems of significant  symbol.”

This is why women’s influence is so powerful – and at once frightening to some men who feel shunted to the sidelines of their children’s lives.

Women have leaned the power of being. However, like Kali, that means enduring the rollercoaster of experience. Unlike a man, a woman cannot compartmentalize motherhood.

The child is both in her and part of her. Even as a newborn grows into adulthood there remains a connection.

She knows that happiness, romance and love – true love – means connecting. It means giving your all for your child.

Yet, there is something messy about motherhood. Nappies, cleaning and, even before that, the profound changes of pregnancy.

Motherhood  is frightening. You are expected to be the calm embodiment of perfection. At once you yearn for the poetry of courtly love of chivalrous knights, or the poetic embellishments of Shakespeare.

No women can manage the romantic delusions and get on with life. The huge emotional; investment tears at the soul and sometimes weighs heavily on child and spouse.

No wonder, Kali’s metaphor is so powerful an expression of the grief, anger, fear, despair that can over shadow womankind. She can embody so much beauty or be destructively dark.

However, metaphoric death need not be so final. A child dies to her naivety as she is forced to fit a role, no doubt driven by mother, to fill.

Death to the past is like the corn seed scattered in death and resurrected as Osiris or Bacchus. Cast into the primordial ocean of a creative womb the new birth is both painful and rewarding – unless we abort the process of self transformation.

Here is where masculine and feminine energies must meet, not just in a union of passionate souls, but also in the process of selection.

It is like a gardener who realizes she must prune off dead wood and at times remove whole plants so that the hardier shrub has room to grow.

The butterfly - Luis Ricardo Falero

But then motherhood, like gardening, is holistic.

You stay part of this connection because you and your child are connected – even after decades.

What women know instinctively, or at least learn, men must learn through trial and error.

He soon learns that his trendy, zippy hatch back may be a chic magnet but he finds he is among strangers who one admired the same, now faded chariot.

A few scratches, the novelty gone, and one day he discovers that true love, and true happiness, means looking at your life-long lover and being willing to put your life on the line for her.

It’s not about scattered parts of the soul – each demanding supremacy, each afraid of being caught out.

A scattered mind, and a scattered love, cannot really care. Below the romantic façade, scattered unrealized shadows cannot truly connect.

When the façade is penetrated, our truth discovered, it’s no longer about me. Then you have the capacity for honesty, decency, consistency, and personal leadership.

You realize, finally, that you are indeed one, that beyond the limits of flesh and bone, we are, through our mirror neurons a greater collective whole bound in your soul mate.

When  you find the hidden Paleolithic art deep in your psychic cave, is revealed to the light, your fragmented psyche is made whole once more. Now whole you become able to give more to your soul mate that

The power of love is made whole, not by isolated analysis or fleeting passion, but by connection.

A second sample  the Djanggawul Cycle, a major ritual work consisting of multiple songs in a narrative sequence, follows the wanderings of the djanggawal Brother and his two sisters, Bildjiwuraroiju & Miralaidj who came to Arnhem Land from  Bralgu (Land of the Eternal Beings).

As they pass through, they people the land.

The narrative describes the ‘heavy ripeness, the swelling & bursting of a teeming life source, colours and Australain views of creation.” We read of the body of the sacred sister, heat around the clitoris, the bussing tree roots, spray & blood and a swarming sense of life emerging – not two-by-two but swarming.

Song 159

Go,  take the hot stone, and heat it near her clitoris:
For the severed part is a sacred djuda ranggI. Covering up the clitoris within the mat, wherein the mat, wherin its transverse fibre, wherin its mouth, its inner peak …

Go, thepeople are dancing there, like djuda roots, like spray, moving their bodies, shaking their hair!
Carefully they beat their clapping sticks on the mauwalan point … Go, stand up! See the clanfolk beyond thetransverse fibre of the mat!
They come from the sisters womb, lifting aside the clitoris, coming out like djuda roots  …
Into the scared shade, the rangga folk come dancing from the inner peak of the mat …
Only a few people will be left here: some we shall put into the course grass.
We are putting the rangga clansfolk ….

See also Sacred Union Arnhem Land Australia

Expalanatory notes

Rangga is a sacred emblem, identified with the penis of the Djanggawul brother.

Rangga folk initially emerged from the Djanggawul sisters ancestors of the Ahrnam Landers.

Mat, or ngainmara mat- conically shaped, belonging to the Djanggawul sister a symbol of the uterus.

Source Ronald M. Berndt, Djanggawul: An Aborigiginal Religious Cult of north East Arnhem Land (Philosophical Library, 1953) quoted from Technicians of the Sacred – A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe & Oceania” edited by Jerome Rothenberg.

A major ritual work consisting of multiple songs in a narrative sequence, the Djanggawul Cycle follows the wanderings of the djanggawal Brother and his two sisters, Bildjiwuraroiju & Miralaidj who came to Arnhem Land from  Bralgu (Land of the Eternal Beings)

As they pass through they people the land.

The narrative describes the ‘heavy ripeness, the swelling & bursting of a teeming life source, colours and Australain views of creation.” We read of the body of the sacred sister, heat around the clitoris, the bussing tree roots, spray & blood and a swarming sense of life emerging – not two-by-two but swarming.

Go, put out the rangga, making it big: open your legs, for you look nice!
Yes, Miralaidj, my sister. Yes, the mouths of the mat is closed.
Yes, go, rest there quietly, for the vagina is sacred, and the rangga are hidden there, like younger siblings, covered up so no one may see.
Thus, climb up, put it into the mouth of the mat!
What is this, blocking my penis? I rest above here, chest on my her breasts!
Do not push hard! The sound of her cry echoes.
covered up, so no one may see, like a younger sibling ….
Do not move what is within, for it is sacred!
For it rests there within, like the transverse fibre of a mat.
Blood running, sacredly running!
Yes, they, the rangga clansfolk, are coming out like djadda roots, like spray ….
Go, digging within, causing the blood to flow, sacred blood from the red vagina, that no one may see!
Very sacred stands the rangga penis!

Song 160
Arnhem Land, Australia

In the passage the sister is wearing an arm band that hinders coitus, breaking this causes blood to flow.

See also Song 159

Explanatory notes:

Rangga is a sacred emblem, identified with the penis of the Djanggawul brother.

Rangga folk initially emerged from the Djanggawul sisters ancestors of the Ahrnam Landers.

Mat, or ngainmara mat- conically shaped, belonging to the Djanggawul sister a symbol of the uterus.

Source Ronald M. Berndt, Djanggawul: An Aborigiginal Religious Cult of north East Arnhem Land (Philosophical Library, 1953) quoted from Technicians of the Sacred – A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe & Oceania” edited by Jerome Rothenberg.

I offer obeisance to the God and Goddess,
The limitless primal parents of the universe.

They are not entirely the same,
Nor are they not the same.
We cannot say exactly what they are.

How sweet is their union!
The whole world is too small to contain them,
Yet they live happily in the smallest particle.

These two are the only ones
Who dwell in this home called the universe.
When the Master of the house sleeps,
The Mistress stays awake,
And performs the functions of both.

When He awakes, the whole house disappears,
And nothing at all is left.

Two lutes: one note.
Two flowers: one fragrance.
Two lamps: one light.

Two lips: one word.
Two eyes: one sight.
These two: one universe.

In unity there is little to behold;
So She, the mother of abundance,
Brought forth the world as play.

He takes the role of Witness
Out of love of watching Her.
But when Her appearance is withdrawn,
The role of Witness is abandoned as well.

Through Her,
He assumes the form of the universe;
Without Her,
He is left naked.

If night and day were to approach the Sun,
Both would disappear.
In the same way, their duality would vanish
If their essential Unity were seen.

In fact, the duality of Shiva and Shakti
Cannot exist in that primal unitive state
From which AUM emanates.

They are like a stream of knowledge
From which a knower cannot drink
Unless he gives up himself.

Is the sound of AUM divided into three
Simply because it contains three letters?
Or is the letter ‘N’ divided into three
because of the three lines by which it is formed?

So long as Unity is undisturbed,
And a graceful pleasure is thereby derived,
Why should not the water find delight
In the floral fragrance of its own rippled surface?

It is in this manner I bow
To the inseparable Shiva and Shakti.

A man returns to himself
When he awakens from sleep;
Likewise, I have perceived the God and Goddess
By waking from my ego.

When salt dissolves,
It becomes one with the ocean;
When my ego dissolved,
I became one with Shiva and Shakti.

-Jnanadev (1275 – 1296)

“One of the most striking and surprising things I observed among traditional Hindus was how bright, happy, and psychologically healthy their children are” said American Robert A.Johnson, a Jungian analyst who lived in both India and Japan.

“ Children in Hindu families are not neurotic; they are not torn within themselves as so many Western children are. They are bathed constantly in human affection, and they sense a peaceful flow of affection between their mother and father.

They sense the stability, the enduring quality of their family. Their parents are commited permanently; they don’t hear their parents asking themselves whether their marriage is “going to work out”; separation and divorce do not float as specters in the air”.

He is of course, describing the traditional Hindu family.

Here he contrasts the West – a West though that has made inroads into the sexual mores of India:

“Dr. Jung once said that medieval man lived by either-or, but that modern person cannot go off to a convent or the Himalayas exclusively to search for spirituality; nor can she /he pour herself/himself exclusively into the family, profession or practicality” said Johnson.

“It is a true task of a truly modern mind to endure both the spiritual and practical as the framework for the life.”

Of course, this more family oriented focus that balances both masculine and feminine dimensions of the psyche is not limited to Hinduism. It is found in torah and Quran, from Taoism to the Hawaiian Islands.

However, in say Islam and Christianity, as in other religions, masculine control of institutions easily crushes the spiritual soul of some.

But the Kavita reminds us that tat thefeminine us of these very same traditions are being used to empower social change.

We are always chasing something in the West and forget that the word for happiness comes from the Scandinavian hap which relates to luck.

“Happiness steams from the the root verb to happen, which implies that our happiness is what happens” wrote in He: Understanding Masculine Psychology.

“Simple people in less complicated parts of the world function in this manner and exhibit a happiness and tranquility that is a puzzle to us. How can peasant in India wich so little to be happy about be happy? Or how can the peon in Mexico, again with so little to be happy about, be as carefree as he appears?”

He criticizes what the calls the Western “misconceptions” of happiness as something external.

Johnson mentions that Alexis de Tocqueville, who came to the early USA to study its democracy.

de Tocqueville “said that we have a misleading idea at the very head of our Constitution: the pursuit of happiness. One cannot pursue happiness; if he does he obscures it. If he will proceed with the human task of life, the relocation of the center of gravity of the personality to something greater outside itself, happiness will be the outcome.”

The point is that it is already there – not waiting to be chased down.

In chasing things down we risk being an archaeologist of the soul. In seeking the depth within, we risk partly destroying the very thing we seek to discover.

When it comes to marriage the external approach to love and happiness has Western couples looking in two different directions, neither seeking their united spiritual soul.

“One may view a marriage as two people standing back to back , each protecting the other in a particular way” wrote Johnson in She: Understanding Feminine Psychology.  (She? Whenever I addressed someone as she my mother corrected me – “She is the cat’s mother”)

“When a marriage begins the partners are like two discrete circles overlapping a little. The division between the two is great and each has a specific task. As the marriage partners grow older, each learns a bit of other’s genius, and finally the two circles overlap more and more.”

Consider the spiritual direction of the feminine psyche:

“It is the feminine task to protect not only herself but her man and her family from the dangers of inner world; moods, inflations, excesses, vulnerabilities, and what used to be called possessions.

“There are the things a woman’s genius can manage much better that a man’s. Usually he has his own task in facing the outer world and keeping the family safe” he said.

“There is a particular danger in the modern attitude in which both people face the our world, both spend their time in outer things. This leaves their inner world unprotected and many dangers creep into the household through this unprotected quarter.”

It is for this reason I am concerned that Indian youth is, for the moment at least, bent on chasing  Western freedom as sexual mores.

The dynamic masculine energy of the West seems al conquering.

The delicate flower of  the sensitive soul is crushed waiting for an opportunity of regrowth.

Let us not forget the advice of Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee:

“This is why the wisdom of the feminine is so important, because the feminine understands the dynamics of relationship, how to listen and be receptive” he said.

“Feminine consciousness is more attuned to the life of the body, and so knows the rhythms that belong to the cycles of life, rather than the systems imposed by will that are presently strangling our world. The feminine is more instinctively and naturally attuned to life, its patterns and powers. And feminine consciousness is less dominated by reason, more open to the mystery of the symbolic inner world. The feminine is vital in this work of awakening”

- Alchemy of Light: Working with the Primal Energies of Life

Perhaps this is part of the message of spirituality.

“And the Mother,
the prototype
of all existence,
is the Eternal Spirit,
full of beauty
and love.”
- Kahlil Gibran

“The paradise is under the feet of mothers.”
- Prophet Muhammad

The Valley of Spirit never dies. It is named the Mysterious Female. And the Doorway of the Mysterious Female is the base from which Heaven and Earth sprang. It is there within us all the while; Draw upon it as you will, it never runs dry.
- Tao Te Ching 6

“God is never seen immaterially; and the vision of Him in woman is the most perfect of all.”
- Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi

“I can see as clear as a daylight that the hour is coming when women will lead humanity to a higher evolution.”
- Hazrat Inayat Khan’s vision in the year 1914-18

“We have denied the spirit of the earth, and that spirit of the earth has to appear in woman. The meeting of the spirit of the earth and the spirit of the other world is one of the great moments that, I believe, will come in the future history of culture.”
- Cecil Collins

He who has realized God … perceives clearly that women are but so many aspects of the Divine Mother. He adores them all … Women are, all of them, the veritable images of ?akti.

Do you know how a lover of God feels? His attitude is: “O God, Thou art the Master, and I am Thy servant. Thou art the Mother, and I am Thy child.” Or again: “Thou art my Father and Mother. Thou art the Whole, and I am a part.” - Sri Ramakrishna

O, Mother of the Universe, those who praise you by the words: Ambika, Jaganmayi and Maya, will obtain all.
- Kalika Purana

O humanity! … revere the sacredness of the womb that bore you.
- The Quran, An-Nisa (The Woman) 4:1

Perhaps we can again reflect on Robert A. Johnson from hisbook  We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love

So much of our lives is spent in a longing and a search – for what, we don’t know. So many of our ostensible “goals”, so many of the things we think we want, turn out to be the masks behind which our real desires hide; they are symbols for the actual values and qualities for which we hunger.
They are not reducible to physical or material things, not even to a physical person; they are psychological qualities; love, truth, honesty, loyalty, purpose – something we can feel is noble, precious, and worthy of our devotion. We try to reduce all this to something physical – a house, a car, a better job, or a human being – but it doesn’t work.

Without realizing it, we are searching the Sacred. And the sacred is not reducible to anything else.

In the beginning of time,

there rose from the churning of God’s dream two women.

One is the dancer at the court of paradise,

the desired of men, she who laughs and plucks the minds of the wise
from their cold meditations

and of fools from their emptiness;

and scatters them like seeds with careless hands in the extravagant
winds of March, in the flowering frenzy of May.

The other is the crowned queen of heaven,

the mother, thronedon the fullness of golden autumn;

she who in the harvest-time
brings straying hearts to the smile sweet as tears,

the beauty deep as the sea of silence,

-brings them to the temple of the Unknown,
at the holy confluence of Life and Death.

- Rabindranath Tagore

From the love of Kamadeva and Rati, to the lovers in Solomon’s Song, stories of sacred love have inspired the love, imagination and spiritual yearning of couples for millennia.

There is something hidden and transcendent in truly satisfying love. Not that all sex is spiritual – It  can be pure animal passion. Nor is all spirituality sexual.

Its spirituality is akin to the hidden order in art.

As Michael Newberry pointed out in his excellent tutorial on artistic symbolism:

“Representational painting, such as  landscapes, people, and  furniture, is normally  viewed at face value. A flower is just a flower; a chair a chair. But the manner in which an artist uses shapes can convey more than the literal content of the painting.

Once you grasp how an artist plays with shapes to convey another layer of meaning  it can open up a universe of deeper insight and, sometimes, powerfully erotic subtexts. You may never see art again in the same way.”

I, however, prefer to see love as a flower – delicate, yet blushing delicately and full blooded with passion and delicacy.

The floral illusion of love is not without precedent.

O'Keeffe, 1923, Grey Line with Black, Blue, and Yellow

As can be seen in the 1923 painting by Georgia O’Keefe is an excellent “detail of a flower but it is also an excellent visual symbol of an open and flushed vulva”

Then there is the Latin word orchid – used in medicine for the testicles. It is so much more delicate than the military Penis and Vagina – meaning sword and sheath.

Art has for millennia cleverly realized that we see our world with more than one form of attention.

As Rubins double profiles attest, we have no choice but to see one reality at a time. An artist may highlight the positive or negative shape of form.and leave us to decide which way we see its reality.

So it is also with flowers.

There sensuous beauty mazes and transfixes us. The majesty of a landscape and the delicacy of a flower, releasing its delicate perfume at the rising of the sun can both amaze and subdue us.

It can be, all at once, full flushed and passionate, and yet intimately personal and sensuous.

But stop and take a closer look. Look beyond the powerful lavender hue or the French gray, or an egg yolk center flush is a circle of daisy petals.

There is great comfort in the earthy mulch of a forest floor. Its fresh broken smell reminds us of something homey and secure.

However, that is only part of the picture. In some ways it is even opposite to the divine reality that the flower offers to the greater world.

There is the bluntly, and well less romantic view. After all, what we see is the light that is not kept by an object. In other words, the object looks more like a far from romantic photographic negative.

However, even the beauty that joyously blesses the world is far greater than our primary senses allow us.

The flower is interested in attracting the pollinating agency of the bee and pesky mosquito. It’s range of colour and the delicacy of its hues reaches far beyond our visual perception into the ultraviolet.

Chlorophyll absorbs wavelengths of violet-blue and and orange-red. Because ancient plants evolved deep in the low light ocean under aquatic bacteria claim some evolutionists.

They did not need to need to use the light frequencies available on land, leaving these colours to be enjoyed above the oceans.

So the 25,000 species of bees , big, small, stingless, aggressive, social,even solitary  are known for their ability to remember, and to  see at much shorter wavelengths

Wavelengths that allow plants sensually lure the bee with the intoxications pollinations in the dance of love.

There is a greater hidden reality that we are only beginning to appreciate.

However, according to Sharman Apt Russell a bee experiences ultraviolet, “reflected back from an object, the bee sees “bee-white,” a color we might not recognize. To a bee, most human-white flowers look blue-green, while the green leaves of this daisy probably look gray‘

For us the bees world would is beyond comprehension – its is byond our understanding like flying blindly in an imperceptible light.

In amany ways, being beyond our range of experience, it may as well be in the dark – a frightening and dark reality that is beyond our comfort.

But then should we be surprised that the dance of pollination be experienced differently by a bee when we as men and women differ in the most intimate merging of souls?

Few of us like to go beyond what we know.

Perhaps it is from the bee and flower that we can learn the lesson of what is truly sacred in sexuality.

The juncture where two can share in a reality that is greater than the sum of the two celibate parts.

Sensual experience so much depends on our ability to access our body and how we are able to view the world.

Yet we have narrowed our focus – especially men, whose experience is highly genital and focused.

We so easily reduce our ability to feel by habitual sexual experience.

The delicate face of a Russian woman, her only feature revealed under  her heavy garb was one of most intensely erotic scenes I have ever witnessed. Her cheek offered to a  gentleman was almost embarrassingly titillating that I had to look away.

I hope we can begin to again balance the freedom of sexual expression with like intimate sensitivity.

Then there are the ritual purity laws found in Islam and Judaism, seen by many as repressive, to others they are a chance for a couple to reconnect on an intimate, non sexual level. To communicate as whole beings and to again reawaken a passion as like a on wedding night the first time each month.

True love forces us to go beyond ourselves, we are at once responsible for our own experience and yet use our experience to help another grow.

For a man women kind are a bit like the divinity Kali  “Kali-Ma, the Dark Mother, holds the two edge sword; she has the power to slay the demons as well as the ability to be compassionate” wrote Starck and Stern.

They then add “At a certain point it becomes necessary to take Kali’s sword and cut through the illusions that protect us from seeing and acting on the truth.”

Yes, emotional sensitivity can bewilder, confuse, delight and fascinate men. Just as the single minded male focus seems one dimensional to women.

However, it must be cut through.

Yet it is rarely cut through alone.

It s all too easy to hold on to what we know – what we are good at. We fear that if we let go we will lose that too.

But that is the lie – we do not lose ourselves. Rather our insecurities die in the mulch of renewed compassion from which springs new life.

The mad professor insecurelyhordes knowledge, never publishing for fear of being wrong. Yet his greatest success comes from sharing ideas – and being corrected, readjusting, refining and growing.

A woman who seeks the delicacy of her inner world empowers it when she finds a companion with whom she can find her soul reflected in love.

Each must accept the mirror of the other in themselves. The shadow we deny in our self is the very thing that fascinated us in our lover.

So in her or him we find completeness, allowing us to recognize a hidden part of ourselves.

A flower is still a flower – but as O’Keefes are demonstrates, you can style the reality of life with new meaning.

If men are strong and women sensitive, then cannot he be sensitively strong and she strongly compassionate?

I recently enjoyed the majestic beauty of a bougainvillea arched pathway – blooming in a throbbing intensity.

Yet, I remember, half a life time ago, bewildered by the ugly metal frames, holding a few growing stands newly planted for queen Elizabeth.

I remember wondering if she ever enjoyed seeing the finished product ogf the many gardens she opens.

Then I remembered how the Lords and ladies planted estates that were still young a generation after the landscaper’s death.

There is something beautiful in seeing that far beyond what is known in the present.

Yet like the busy bee in the flower real work requires that we get on with gritty skeletal frame work of now.

The delicate flower and harsh metal frame merged opposite natures to become one beautiful decoration.

So it is with us when we seek to find the beauty in our lover opposite us. This renewed sensitivity allows us to find the beauty in ourselves.

Doubt becomes surrender, Impatience endurance, blame becomes self responsibility, shame becomes  honour, Guilt forgiveness.

And as we stand and accept the truth of ourselves, love meets judgment and becomes compassion. In this transformation we mirror a reality that is greater than ourselves.

The synergistic care of bee and flower is shared in our own love life and in the greater realm of spiritual divine truths that stand up and apart from us.

Or is the division of heaven and earth just another illusion?

The frequencies of light enjoyed by a bee are part of the same electromagnetic spectrum enjoyed by us. It is part of a greater unified whole.

Our viewpoint compartmentalizes reality. True, science is broadening our ability to understand and giving us new metaphors to expand our knowledge.

Yet like religion, science is rooted in its own traditions, However, these traditions will expand and grow.

In that sense, I see spirituality like science – it grows and develops as we have more experiences to understand the world of another.

But like a religious tradition, we must look into our past to learn the lessons that will fuel our future.

We need to approach our r spirituality scientifically and our science spiritually – or at least with sensitivity and moral rectitude .

In microcosm, the world of our lover allows us  become increasingly sensitive and altruistic. We can in turn transmute that sensual refinement to empower our world and discover even greater realities.

For most of the year, Kounoniya is a peaceful place. But in winter, religious ritual joins with drunken delirium to create one of Japan’s most extraordinary sights – the Nude Festival.

Conveniently chosen for what must be Japans coldest day of the year men of all shapes, sizes , saggy and bagginess run stripped to their fundoshi loin cloth freely fueled by Sake while trampling over each other.

Why to purify the sins of the city.

“In temperatures close to zero, a designated ‘Spirit Man’ is stripped and beaten by the crowd” reportd Australian ABC reporter Mark Simpkin. “The ritual, which dates back over a thousand years, is meant to absorb the city’s punishment and brings good luck.”

The idea of thousands of Japan’s normally conservative ‘salarymen’ shedding their suits to cavort virtually nude is hard to believe. however, despite the freezing cold thousands let it all hang out in a mix of religious fervour and drunken delirium.

It’s been going on for over a thousand years – and even in today’s modern industrialised Japan there is no shortage of participants – all welcomed, as long as you are male.

“When the weather turns cold it seems many men are compelled to prove their manhood by exposing it” muses Simpkin from the midst of the thonged throng.

As one participant admits: “It’s more important than my wife.”

While in the West, I could imagine a public outcry by some (and gleeful secretive delight by others)  this is done in the name of Shino purification. In some cities groups meet before hand, and with group support run round the neighbourhood in their fundoshi yelling “Washoi”

This is not a male revue where muscle bound models seek cash stuffed down their loin cloth, nor is it to enjoy  the company of ladies – who remain by highly supportive bystanders.

Starting with Hadaka in February and ending with The Honen fertility festival in March, these events held throughout Japan are a sake drinker delight.

Whilst there is a lot of joy and delight, there is a serious side. This freezing festival requires that the spirit man be purified, shaved of all body hair, fast, be beaten and eventually recued.

I do wonder what sociologists would make of it.  Is this an example of of psychological forces balancing the conservative soul of Japan – much as the highly sexualised USA has responded to its puritan roots?

What do you think?

Does your culture have its own purication or sexual ceremonies?

Let us know, we’d like to hear about it.

However, love has its phases. At first, lust drive phases referred to by Fisher, fueled by Phenethylamine, intense longing and romance drives our need to curiously explore our lover.

Then more and more oxytocin encourages a cuddling, snuggling security. All things good for a long term relationship.

Evolutionary psychology highlights the first stage of attraction and the need to reawaken passion in long term love. While, women also experience the unconscious pull of lust, they are culturally conscious of the need for long term familial security.

Is this an evolutionary survival tactic or a divinely beautiful gift?

Evolutionary psychology argues that since humans experience does not like being viewed as breeding machines, biology has conspired to repackage reproduction in the seductive dressings of moonlight evenings and passionate romance.

Give a young lady candles and roses and she feels special and that candle lit dinner becomes a biological trick that gives meaning to survival. She becomes pregnant and natures work is done.

Kabbalah recognizes that there are primal forces and laws beneath our perception. It does not deny the biological needs we experience.

Rather, these are seen as part of a teleological greater goal to experience our divine purpose.

Now to be fair, the kabbalah is not a sex manual. What I am alludingto is more a psychological model inspired by the divine qualities that our emotional is a poor reflection.

It is important to ask if our emotions are manifestations of organic forces propelling us like characters is a computer game. Or, as Kabbalah believes they are expressions of these forces are repeated in world beyond our experience.

Uunlike the computer world, we also have a separate ability to chose and experience.

If, like some computer literate angel, I manipulate a world below, I cannot know what it is like to be the character that is killed by the hero, or the hero as he achieves victory.

If you could see the world from the characters perspective he would not believe he is a 5 minute digital clip. Rather, he would imagine himself as a twenty five year old who has been at battle perhaps for years. His sense of time and reality does not march mine.

What if you could both understand those biological forces as well as experience the view point of the character? What if, instead of viewing sexual behavior like a biological program, we are forced to face life’s paradoxes and be empowered by the differences between the sexes?

Human life is a love affair between the soul and G-d. The spark of G-d in all creation yearns to reunite with the creator. Like lovers driven to distraction who may act in ways that can even harm their love, man’s search for meaning has often crossed the bounds of sanity.

These patterns are believed to repeat in all levels of creation – including the emotional realm. True love transcends our neurological drive and ego. Rather than deny these desires they are cultivated and elevated to a spiritual level.

The universal forces, or manifestations of divine light, are described in as masculine and feminine. The spiritual root behind these laws each balances the giving and receiving pleasure that drive sexual creativity of human behavior, literature, art, society and relationships.

Sex drives our species existence, how we communicate, our aspirations, desires and how we give and receive pleasure. The greatest pleasure includes the act of giving and more sensitively attuning to our partners spiritual growth.

Because our human experience allows us the possibility of choosing actions, we yearn for more than just satisfying a sexual itch. We yearn to experience a greater meaning in life.

So while biology describes sex as reproductive, Kabbalah describes sexual attraction as driven by a completely different force: the search for our divine image, our quintessential self.

Humanity is seen as one entity that is a singularity of male and female forces. This is metaphorically described in Genesis chapter 1, where “G-d created man, male and female he created them.’ Later, in chapter two, Eve is seen distinct and separate from Adam.

They were once one divine being, and in Kabbalah it is taught that your Soulmate was separated from you, to find again here on this earthly realm. Hence, we have two energies yearning to be made whole.

Long before modern psychology, Kabbalah recognized that male and female energies exist within us. Even G-d is said to have a feminine energy, or shechinah, a feminine dimension of godliness.

Sexual union is part of mans search to be part of a larger whole, seeking an even greater reality.A loving couple are completing the divine image in which we were created and reproduction is a byproduct of this. This recreation of the divine image empowers the creation of new life.

Hence, sexuality and marriage are holy and divine experience. This is why in Jewish law, the marital religious practices apply even when children are not possible.

In Kabbalah, love is fostered by mutual spiritual giving and commitment. This is greater than mutual attraction or chemistry. Rather, mutually spiritual satisfaction results in a deep spiritual oneness that enhances emotional and sexual satisfaction.

In Shakespeare’s play, Juliet explains “I look to like if looking liking move.” In love, we must do the same, other wise familiarity degenerates into lack of respect.

A Kabbalist looks to like and find the good in life and embrace life’s contradictions. He believes that everything is ultimately good you must accept life’s contradictions to see it.

In the same way, total acceptance of our partner makes it possible to help our partners grow. We are not blind to their faults, we just chose to work with them and enhance our partner’s strengths and inspire them by working on ourselves. By the reflection of ourselves reacting to our environment our family and lover we become develop greater unity.

It is the intention behind our actions that elevates our physical desires to greater more fulfilling pleasure.

While, we enjoy the satiation of our lust, we can achieve even greater pleasure when we hold ack our own pleasure and see our lover in ecstacy. This is a principle behind Tantric and Taoist sexuality that teaches us to enjoy the greater sexual delight in pleasing our lover with longer sensual lovemaking.

We begin to realize that there is greater pleasure in altruistically serving our lovers pleasure. We are responsible for our own pleasure, and by being sensitive to our own bodies we can channel our increased delight to please our lover.

We at once take charge of our own pleasure and hold it back to give more and in turn receive a greater sensual investment.
It is because pleasures reward is measured by its perceived value, that Kabbalah can help us to learn to experience not just our own reality, but be sensitive to our lovers reality as well.

However, Kabbalah claims our ability to perceive the divine forces behind reality is influenced by experience, individually, culturally and historically. These give us the metaphors that allow us to explain reality.

So while biology may excite passion which in both men and women, a woman is both attracted unconsciously to by her desire and as a relationship becomes established her concern for long term family security is effected by the values of her society and peers.

As men’s value is historically measured externally, his value may outlast his physical prowess. He may learn for the social latitude given women to enjoy the child within, but he knows his value by a potential mate and society comes from his external influence.

While, the increasing economic power of women has shifted how men value a future bride, a woman may enjoy many suitor’s and suddenly find she is replaced by a younger, competitor if she does not settle down in her prime.

The physical and emotional costs of motherhood cause parents and friends to measure a mans worth on how well he can provide. In the office, a man may be compared by how valuable a gift is. At the same time, other women may judge a less favorably if she appears to be more sexually available,

It is not just the value of the gift that counts, it is the effort and thought that shows a man is genuinely caring. A gift card is less impressive than a thoughtfully designed or carefully chosen item. It shows that he has carefully listened to the man hints she had s given about what she wants.

Chances are she hasn’t stated what she wants directly since that would only show the value of his wallet. It would not prove that he cared enough to find out.

Of course, by becoming sensitive to both our masculine and feminine sides, a man begins to realize that his wife needs the value implied by his carefully listening to her and discerning what she wants in a gift.

The woman in turn realizes that she may need to apply the kabblistic quality of gevurah, loosely translated victory, and be more directive in some communication or less sensitive when he doesn’t quiet ‘get it.’

The subtle differences should be enjoyed and caressed lovingly. How often has a woman delighted in finding out about the extensive effort her lover took to satisfy her desire for an elusive hard to buy handbag?

This is why flowers are so special, they are impractical, temporary, even useless. They are not an investment. Their power comes from no other reason than because your lover likes likes them.

You bought them just for her. She is special. You do it just for her. Contrast that with lingeries – who is hoping for pleasure when he gives her that slinky outfit? No wonder, it is the most returned gift after new years.

These contradictions of the sexes empower love. They reflect different attributes of the spectrum of divine love.
Electricity seeks the shortest route. However, it power am engine because of facing resistance. the shortest route and often miss the greatest passion achieved through restraint.

Unrestrained, electricity short circuits. Constrained by wires, electricity can face a resistance and achieve results.
In the same way, where there are no limits, passion burns out. The challenges of love heighten by mystery.

While Tantra and Kabbalah have differing, in some respects, contradictory world views. Thet both dismiss selfishness as the drive behind sexual pleasure.

For example, in the realm of sexuality, Tantra enhances passion by lengthening and feeding on pleasure to an almost spiritual ecstasy. In contrast, Western society promotes instant gratification where nudity is so common place that the mystery of love is lost.

However, when a couple seek to fulfill each others deepest purpose, to feed their partners soul, each is propelled to greater heights.

Where a man may seek to feel complete by expanding his realm, the feminine world accommodates and includes.
A man is empowered to conquer with the loving support of his wife, and she enjoys the security to nurture her own realm. From this security, he can reach into himself to seek nurture and she can enjoy the support that allows her to conquer.

You have ever seen those older couples that live in sync with each other? A simple glance across the room can give them as a young couple on that first night.

How can a couple be so close, that they can experience a divine passion at a mere glance accross a room?

Perhaps it’s to do with those mirror neurons that have made the news of recent times.

The power of mirror neurons is that we can sense and subconsciously respond to a persons emotions and intentions even if they are so instinctive or subtle that other person is not aware of their real motives.

How often have you seen a guy, so detached from his feelings, that he doesn’t realize why his girl is getting totally different messages.

Then you see some people who are so in tune with themselves that they can relate to others with such empathy that people just melt in their presence.

Rather than curse this experience, we can use it to refine our personalities, be more successful and be better lovers and carer’s.

So what are mirror neurons?

It seems that in macaques  monkeys a set of neurons in the brains ventrolateral premotor cortex responded the same way as if the monkey had a treat or he saw someone else do it.

Italian scientist Rizzolatti, called them mirror neurons.

This is why I can experience your pleasure, or pain, why some people experience phantom limbs, or why meditator’s can have transcendental experiences, said neuroscient Vilayanur Ramachandran.

While mirror neurons have not been found in humans, therapies based on their presumed human existence have  successfully relieved phantom pain and synesthesia, and autism. They can even be used to induce synethesia and  phantom limb pain.

(Ok for you science buffs, it is believed that the human equivalent of this mirror system in humans is the pars opercularis ofthe inferior frontal gyrus (area 44) and the rostral part of the inferior parietal lobule is believed to function like monkey mirror neurons. However,  Molenberghs , Cunnington, and Mattingley found that the superior and inferior parietal lobules are equally activated during imitation.)

Mirror neurons “allow  us to learn complex social behaviors, some of which formed the foundations of human civilization as we know it” said Ramachandran, who suggests that mirror neurons may neurologically explain the  universal oneness explained by Eastern philosophy and kabbalah.

So what is it about Kabbalah, Mirror Neurons and Marriage?

According to Kabbalah we have our own mirroring system that mirrors the spiritual and physical laws.

Perhaps, even more importantly, it helps us learn to mirror and merge as one soul with our one true love.

“As (when looking in) water, face reflects face, so does one’s heart find reflection in another’s” states Proverbs 27:19.

The surest way to learn about yourself is through the relationship of your closest and dearest relationships, says Kabbalah.

By observing your relationship with your lover you can sense the purity of your motives both consciously and unconsciously. At the same time we can monitor how our intentions, even the unconscious ones, turn out.

To the extent that we engage with others, states Kabbalah, the more we are able refine ourselves by observing the the way we are treated.

This is particularly true in committed and intimate relationships where we are confronted daily by our and our lover’s eccentricities.

Kabbalah teaches that we are one human soul needing to be conscious of our universal humanity. Family love repeats the pattern in microcosm. The goal of a relationship is to experience a celestial oneness with your Soulmate.

Ultimately, the more this oneness is experienced the close mankind comes to experiencing mankinds universal soul.

Let’s look at this with a practical example:

Because we enter relationships often with faulty ideas fueled by our imagination we often have to ‘recify’ our viewpoint. We don not change others, we change how we view and respond to them, and they will respond differently to us.

Imagine a man entering marriage with a fantasy view of an ideal wife. His wife senses that he is chasing a dream girl that she cannot ever measure up to and feels resentful.

If he does not sense his wife’s feelings, then they will live as two separate souls living parallel lives. She will feel alienated and may lose interest in being the best spouse she can be.

Once the husband begins to respond to the reality of the relationship – and not his imaginary one – he begins to redirect his attentions toward his wife’s needs, and the reality (not the illusion) of his feelings. His experience is based not on an illusion but on how both are responding to each other.

Just as you navigate your ship by trimming the sails to constantly keep on course, you can measure your life and refine your personality by the responses of your lover.

This requires practical action on his part. He does not just note his mental failing and remember it for next time. He tries to adjust his actions toward his wife, she responds, and from that he again re-shift’s his focus.

The marriage becomes a biofeedback loop of experience – an experiment where unity is the desired outcome. He begins to take responsibility for his feelings and thoughts and how they affect those he loves most. Although, it may take time, she will sense his efforts and respond in turn.

Soul mates have a deep love and respect for each other. Kabbalah is not teaching that we should fearfully crush our identities

Rather than submerge our identities into mindless conformity, there is a harmony of opposites, a balancing of harmony and dissonance like an orchestra separate parts that sense the perfection of a performance inspiring even greater perfection than the sum of its parts.

Kabbalah teaches that we grow spiritually, and even romantically, when we connect our different natures for a greater spiritual goal. This results in a greater intimacy when each is happy and ready to give without expectation of return.

If he seeks to find that common soul that joins them she will sense the indivisible oneness between them and then as “face reflects face“  she will respond with total devotion to him.

However, this is only the first step in learning appropriate relationship dynamics.

As a greater partnership develops an existential togetherness grows as you unitedly share common goals and genuine love . Your sensitivity to each other grows and respect increases. There is something continuous and binding about this sense of unity that transcends time and space.

At this point “consciousness and emotional boundaries have expanded to encompass each other; each spouse considers the other a part of himself” said Kabbalist Rabbi Harav Yitzchak Ginsburg.

“As a result, physical proximity or the lack of it does not affect their togetherness. They have transcended space and exist together in time. As they experience time’s cycles together, they focus on how life’s varying moods impinge on their common consciousness and react productively to them together.”

The mental distance that once distanced the couples at the beginning of our example is diminished. Neither of them can picture his or her life apart from the other.

However, Kabbalah states there is a deeper third stage that is possible in love.

In this stage, the couple experience themselves as a single entity. They live on earth as they were before they arrived in this earthly passage, a single collective soul.

This is not a dutiful or fearful worry of loss. This can only occur when both parties have consciously and willingly become one because they both desire it. This what is really meant when Genesis said man and wife should become ‘one flesh’.

This is not just a merging of sexual bodies. However, all Eastern spiritual schools agree that in a state of spiritual oneness, sexual fulfillment can be incredibly fulfilling as barriers and resistances melt in a state of spiritual and ecstatic oneness and shared collective consciousness.

Rather than see each other as two individuals working for each others good, they are a collective soul thinking and working synergistically.

On a spiritual level, the couple have surrendered themselves to the infinity of G-d’s reality and developed in to a purer version of themselves.

A Kabbalistic Exercise in Oneness

While it may sound great, even sexually ecstatic to merge our souls as one with another, 90% of our responses are automatic. so asking how to become one is a very reasonable question.

Kabbalah is experiential, so here is a simple exercise you can do even when you are on the run.

Imagine your favorite food – a chocolate cake with whipped cream, a pavlova, what about a nice cool beer on a hot day?

You want it, you hunger for it, you NEED the sugar rush or the cool refreshment.

Chances are, that you experience and immediate and urgent need to satisfy your desire. Usually, we rush to satisfy that hunger without even stopping to appreciate it.

What if instead, you stopped and just for a minute or two you stopped. As the voice is telling you “Come on, eat it” just wait. Every time you hear that voice simply tell yourself to ‘just wait’ until the voice dies down and it is you – and not your biology that CHOOSES to partake.

Another exercise, is to stop and imagine that someone else will enjoy the food. You  couldimagine giving it to a homeless person. (If you’re in a public place you could give charity ever time you eat out ). The food may even seem to taste different. It is no longer just being lustfully consumed.

This is why some traditions suggest stopping and blessing food before eating. The meal is no longer a lustful experience, it is spiritual.

The point of the exercise is to experience the power you can have by simply stopping and acting by choice and not impulse.

This teaches you to have pause in your actions with all things and all people.

You are then better able to reflectively evaluate the cause, effects and the benefit of all your actions with other people.