And Yes There will be Treachery

She was seventy years old and she was getting married (again). And to a much younger man; a man half her age. Theirs was a most peculiar arrangement and relationship. The reasons why this is so will unfold, but will that shed light on this couple’s dynamic? We’ll see.

It was her spontaneous urge to pull off the road and park at what was discovered to be a trailhead. They decided to hike up the mountain, perhaps all the way to its peak, and there declare their vows to each other. It was a challenging hike, the day was warming, and the views brought them closer to the red rock formations that they had looked up at, at the beginning of the trail. They rested from time to time and admired the local wildflowers that were blooming en masse on the rocky hillside. They laughed and felt their love for each other, and the promise that that love held for each other. They had no adornments that couples that were about to be wed wore. She was wearing a ring that he had given her a few days before. It wasn’t a conventional ring that a man gives a woman to acknowledge their love for each other. She had asked him to give her a ring, “something artistic and fun, nothing expensive.” He had presented her with a ring that was in the shape of a dragon’s head laden with small jewels. She had accepted the ring and his pledge to her also on a walk – a walk that had ended at a waterfall in a national park. Walking was what she liked to do and so he enjoyed taking walks with her. They walked up the trail, and as they gained altitude, they stopped at times to take sips of water, catch their breath and take pictures. She also loved taking pictures, and throughout her life she had owned many cameras and had taken millions of photos that she created her art from, but now she just took pictures from her iPhone – it proved adequate for her needs.

She wondered what her friend was feeling at times, and when she looked at him, she could see her love gladden his face, and that warmed her to know that what they were doing was what they both wanted. She felt herself to be in a strange play of their own making, for who would approve of such an arrangement, such a show of love between two unlikely strangers? The unlikeliness and unconventionality of the relationship would not win them any approval from family members or the society in general. When people saw them together, they assumed that they were mother and son. At times, some people would have the nerve to ask them how they were related. There were two answers to that question, and they could not decide which one to answer at any given time. That they were lovers? Was that the easier? Or that I was his spiritual teacher – his guru – and he was my devotee, as our answer. Which answer would be more socially accepted and less shocking? Over time my love and I thought that our relationship as Master and devotee was the more shocking answer, so we would allude to our relationship as close friends. At times we were confused by our own relationship. He came to me having watched my videos – my talks about enlightenment and the ‘how to’ of spiritual practice. He was drawn to enlightenment – the latent spark to Self recognize his true nature was coming alive and it was attracting him to me. I wanted to serve that spark, and aid him in his impulse to awaken from the limits of self-imposed personal identity. This is when the treachery or trickiness began. An attraction began that I felt was a plan of clever deception; a plan that originated from a deeper impulse that neither one of us was informed of up to this point in our lives.

She was used to following her attractions and quite capable of it. She could get easily bored at times, and always pushed the boundaries of conventionality to find out why everyone was doing what they were doing. She could read the patterns of people’s lives, and the hidden codes of people’s lives were obvious to her. No dream was hard for her to understand. She was and is an intuitive being, and so she knew without knowing how or why she knew. Sooner or later her intuitions moved her into a play, into life, and today hiking the mountain with her friend Prem to take their vow on the mountain peak was another intuition that moved her into life, and like a strong current – a current that was so powerful that it couldn’t be denied or metered out in small doses – it was a full force that contained both human and spiritual elements to it. They were both overwhelmed by this current, this force, and wondered what kind of insanity were they engaged in? Whenever she wondered at its potency, she wondered who or what was behind the maddening urgency of it? Granted she was aged, and aging people always feel the Goddess of mortality as their companion. Perhaps, she argued, now or never. And as she always wanted a rough gem to come to her so she could polish it to its bright light state – perhaps this was her wish being fulfilled. Besides the Goddess of mortality that served her awareness of the finality of her embodiment, there was another Goddess that danced and played with her in the realm of her internal life – a place which was a vast realm of white light wildflower beings that were engaged in beautiful (and treacherous) acts of creation. Was her Goddess friend playing a wonderful trick on her right now? Creating this love attraction between her and her devotee, and that was why they were toiling up the steep trail to the mountain top, to exchange vows of serving his two-fold desire – that to be initiated into the deeper knowing of his true self and nature, and to be her close heart companion in life? Whenever she doubted him – his need or ability to love his own light and to love her – her Goddess friend that has gone by the name Lakshmi, always danced a jig. She was dancing in the internal realm of her heart, and kept repeating, “Don’t worry, it will all work out.” She wasn’t sure what that meant, but it encouraged her to continue to follow the edge of her attraction and where it would lead her. Now it was leading her to the top of the mountain, where their marriage vow to each other symbolized that they both had decided that they were all the way in. How can anyone know what that means?