ABSTRACT
In the middle of a seven-day, solitary, silent retreat, shortly after my separation from Nicolas, I sat meditating under a Balinese full moon. A single bat kept flying in a linear pattern, deep into the rice fields and then back to hover briefly over my head. Every time the bat paused above me, I let the vibrations it ignited in my body increase. When I felt I could no longer hold the intensity of the vibration, I heard the words, “You never loved him.” Shocked, I immediately wanted to defend myself, my love, but simultaneously a deeper part of my soul understood this to be true. At the time of our relationship, I was not initiated into the deeper mysteries of love. Only many years later did these mysteries slowly begin to reveal themselves to me. These ineffable moments began to find me first through dreams and then in my life. Such as times spent lying in bed, still, for hours, vibrating with a deep felt sense that I can only describe as love, a type of ecstasy not at all unpleasant. These experiences have made me wonder whether the central initiatory experience on the mystery nights at Eleusis was the evocation of an embodied felt sense of love. Whether somehow, the priests and priestesses of Eleusis, through careful preparation and ritual, were able to create in the bodies of the initiates the moment when fear turns to love, when narcissistic love turns to soul love. An instant of seeing beyond all the veils of illusion, the kind of felt vision powerful enough to break the final threads to the death instinct at the core of the demon lover complex. Like the resounding truth of Salomé’s words in her final monologue, “love is stronger than death”—an experience that can call one to life, can call one to be present for one’s life (Wilde 2013a). Moving into the Red Sea This is about faith Body trembling, weak from pleasing 173Mind awash with dark longings for forbidden fruits She steps anyway Suddenly, Eyes drop their fear The knife slices the veil In the silence of a thousand years The bees stir, their song renewed This is about love
