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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Soulmate, Myself:
Omega Point

Kairissi & Elenchus:

IX
 

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I am dying, forever trying, to be with you, to be free   Celtic Woman, The "Believe" Tour   I am dying, forever trying, to be with you, to be free    Sailing Sailing, I am sailing Home again, 'cross the sea I am sailing, stormy waters To be near you, to be free I am flying, I am flying Like a bird, 'cross the sky I am flying, passing high clouds To be with you, who can say Can you hear me, can you hear me Through the dark night, far away? I am dying, forever trying To be with you, who can say We are sailing, we are sailing Home again, 'cross the sea We are sailing, stormy waters To be near you, to be free...

Kairissi. This is a great song, Ellus. And the visual effects of Celtic Woman on stage are just beautiful. I look forward to going to concerts with you.

Elenchus. A simple pleasure we never had.

K. But it strikes me just now – there’re so many songs like Sailing: somebody is missing somebody, somebody has lost somebody, somebody got mad and made somebody else go away, and now somebody is trying to get back to somebody.

E. I can think of a few songs in that genre. How about One More Day, I Will Wait For You, Five Hundred Miles, or Trying To Get Back To You.

K. Or, I Call Your Name, Things I Should Have Said, Last Date, or Pay You Back With Interest.

E. We could list quite a few more, but maybe it'd be easier to list the songs that don’t speak to problems between lovers.

K. And I think that’s the point I want to make here. While Sailing is a great song, where're the songs without "stormy waters"? I mean, where's the song that says, “We fell in love on the first day of first grade, never had a squabble, never had a misunderstanding, didn't steal candy from each other, no pulling of pigtails, he was never infatuated with other girls, never got distracted, and then we got married the day after high school graduation.”

E. (small smile)

K. “We were always 'in-phase' with our thoughts. We understood each other perfectly even from the first time he borrowed my crayons. We never had a situation where she matured faster than he did, where she wanted to talk about their relationship while he was still playing with marbles.”

E. I still like those big cat-eye shooters.

K. Uh-huh. But we don’t see too many songs like that. Instead, it’s heavy melodrama, songs like “Trying To Get Back To You” and “Things I Should Have Said.”

E. You know, Kriss, there was a time when I thought that what happened to us was totally new in the universe, that nobody could have had such a messed-up start as we did. But, in many aspects, it’s all very ordinary and commonplace…

K. … found in 100,000 love songs. Sometimes I worry… that you and I are “sailing,” trying to make our way back home to that good life with each other which, we sense, we should have had, and were meant to have.

E. Ok.

K. But, there’s also an old proverb, “You can drift so far away from home that you might never find your way back.” It’s been such a long time now -- could that happen to us?

E. (silence)

Kairissi. Ellus, I've been thinking about the "Celtic Woman" performance. You know what this is really about? -- all the "I am dying, forever trying, to be with you"?

Elenchus. What do you see?

K. It's like a chrysalis. A butterfly needs to fight its way out of a chrysalis or it won't survive. You've heard the stories about cutting a chrysalis, trying to help a butterfly escape, to spare it some suffering -- but the butterfly dies as a result.

K. The butterfly needs the gauntlet-experience of fighting its way out to strengthen itself; and I think we needed to fight our way out of this. I think we were required to "sail stormy waters" to get "back home" to each other.

E. It feels like we've been on a very long voyage.

K. Long, dangerous, and lost at sea. Look at how it started. Look at how we failed to value each other in those old days. Look at how those little egos were so easily offended, so willing to delete each other at the smallest grievance.

E. As I recall that time, something that bothers me a lot was the lack of ordinary, I mean, even small gestures of friendship and kindness. From either of us, there was not a smidgeon of "offering benefit of the doubt," no common courtesy or modicum of effort to salvage a friendship, not an atom of grace extended. It's really kind of a savage thing. (sighing) What does this say about us and our level of development then?

K. More like the lack of it. We were like little children throwing fits. And then we fancied ourselves "all grown up, good and proper," ready to choose some other "pretty fish in the sea." But someone should have christened our voyage as we left town with, "good luck to you on that."

E. (silence)

K. And today we look around and notice that we're "dying" for each other, "forever trying" to recapture what we lost. But, the fact is, we hadn't yet come alive to each other back then. Even if we had married then, we would have been miserable together with the whiny and touchy "false self" running our lives.

E. So, your point is -- you can't lose what you never had; it's not so much that we lost each other back then, but that we failed to receive the true person in the other.

K. We failed in this because, more fundamentally, we'd not yet recognized the true person in ourselves. We were very much like the unspiritual Landon with his smart-alec talk to Jamie -- he thought he had her all figured out, that he knew everything about her. But, as she asserted, "You don't know anything about me." That's what happened to us, too.

E. Effectively, we were total strangers.

K. Total strangers with a long history. Our petulant and bad-tempered spirits needed the "chrysalis" of losing each other, of entering a time of "endless nightmare" regarding what we gave up; a chrysalis of "forever trying" to get back to each other, of "dying" every day, each for the other. Though it pains us to admit, we needed this stern classroom to gain sacred awareness to prepare us for what comes next -- our "real lives," our eternal romance, in Summerland.

Elenchus. I like your analogy of the chrysalis. It explains a lot; and I don’t want to detract from it, but… as I listen to Sailing, I feel there’s more to say… My heart feels so heavy as Celtic Woman pours out fervent lamentation of “dying,” “forever trying,” “to be with you, to be free”…

Kairissi. (softly) Let’s talk this out, Ellus… just let your heart speak what it feels.

E. Why should I be “dying” for you? Why should I be “forever trying” to get “back home” to you? I think the oddest lyric in the whole song is, “to be free.” Why this sense of liberty lost or threatened? Minutes ago we spoke of “good luck" to us finding another good “fish in the sea.” But why should this be difficult? – no, impossible! Why were we not “free” to forge a new life with another pretty face? And now, so long after “the scene of the crime,” why should I be compelled, and more than compelled, with “dying” and death haunting me daily, to return “home” to you?

K. Poets, mystics, and afterlife-researchers have been asking these questions for a very long time.

E. Doesn’t it seem a little bizarre that finding my way back to you should be a matter of life and death?

K. “Dying” and “forever trying” seem strange only within a materialistic paradigm. But when we inject concepts of soul pledge, godly purpose, destiny, and spiritual evolvement, then “one particular woman loving one particular man” closes the circle.

E. And so, tell me… what does it mean not to be “free” until The Sacred Beloved is won?

K. Spiritual teachers inform us that Woman cannot become all that she was designed for until the advent of Man – a particular one for her. He is meant to be, for her, unique catalyst to growth and development. As we learned in The Wedding Song, until he arrives, she must suffer existence as mere Female -- not Woman.

E. Living without the love we were meant to have is more than difficult -- I will attest to that. But our best teachers say that it's worse for her. Love is her natural domain, far more than his, and to live without it invites an emptiness of the soul, a severe existential crisis, an endless nightmare of haunted aloneness, which might easily border upon madness.

K. (deeply sighing)

E. And so, we're are not “free” because we're compelled to fulfill our destinies -- for lovers, a joint-destiny…

K. …which is, to become a mature daughter or son of God; and then to enter the ultimate joy and intimacy of the One Person status.

E. Our true freedom is about being unencumbered to receive all that's good.

K. And remember that long-ago discussion with Senbar? We talked about how cypress trees and eagles had no freedom to become rosebushes. And so it is with us. We are not free to morph into Peter Pan, the Easter Bunny, or to marry whomever "the fever" selects this week. Each of us was meant for a particular person. And if we defy our spiritual DNA, then we will enter the “endless nightmare,” the interminable “dying,” the “forever trying,” to make our way back “home” to one particular lover -- no matter what, in our anger, we said a long time ago.

E. I mentioned that incident of the phone-receiver being put into my hands, and suddenly, after hiatus of many years, I was speaking with you. And then… even against my will… I found myself being pulled under, overcome by waves of a sense of “coming home” to you.

K. And now you know why this happened; your own soul was testifying on my behalf… The pretty girls you’d been with were only Female to you, not Woman; and you, to them, merely Male.

E. (sighing)

K. (very softly) I am your “home,” Elenchus; not that I've given you so much evidence of it; to date, I've not done so well toward you. But, if you are still willing, let us “reshuffle the deck,” as our friend Elizabeth put it, and this time I will offer you a better result.

E. Krissi... I should have told you back then... I should have told you every day... how wonderful you are... but I didn't fight for you... I let you leave my life... I should have gone to you and made things right... I should have told you what you mean to me...

that's a very intimate detail

Quantum Leap (1992), episode "The Leaping of the Shrew"