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I can relate to Wendy’s posting below about sleeping alone. With every woman I’ve slept with I’ve noticed the intertwining of dreams. At first I found this quite confusing and disorienting, and later, as I became more savvy with dreaming and spiritual lore, recognized it for what it is, just a natural energetic interaction.
I’m sure I’ve learned a lot from that, but also found that often, after cuddling and love making, I really just wanted to sleep and dream alone which at the moment I’m glad to be doing.
The other day I read an interview (in the saturday Toronto Globe and Mail) with Leonard Cohen, the Canadian poet and songsmith. At seventy two he now lives with a lover in his Montreal house, but they have separate bedrooms, which they both prefer, giving each other space and solitude, and they work around each other with a light touch. This comes across as odd within the western mold, sleeping alone when you have a lover, but I think it is desirable in many respects, and in former times it was quite common (though of course was often tainted with christian wierdness).
On the other hand I can see the possibility of a pair sharing the same approach to sleep and dreams complimenting each other’s sleep pattern, and occasionally have had interesting communicative exchanges in dreaming with lovers even who weren’t as into the dreaming process (but then, you don’t need to be in the same bed for that, nor lovers, strictly speaking).For anyone interested in astrology: The book Cosmos and Psyche by Richard Tarnas is a must have. It’s a comparative study of historical moments and outer planet alighnments. Tremendous scholarship.
Simon
Simon,
I read that interview with Cohen too (are you in Canada? I’m in the Niagara region of Ontario), and what I really liked was this quote: “And what a ruse that desire for completion [through sex] is…because ultimately, you’re still left with yourself. I like that he is looking for completion with sex as that is so Taoist, but am sad that his Buddhist terminology just leaves him with his self, not a Self that has grown larger through that experience. He clearly has grown through those experiences but, for me, his terminology doesn’t concur.
My wife and I sleep together in a big king-sized bed with separate mattresses so we don’t disturb each other with bouncing and kicking. When one of us is ill, I move downstairs. We sleep better when apart, but miss that intimacy of being in the same space. Our house life is a bit chaotic, so it is good to have that quiet time of sleep for our energy bodies to connect.
I see your point about Cohen. But I have a lot of sympathy for that guy, his poetry, his wisdom. It’s a different path he’s on, not really strictly a meditation oriented–it’s an aesthetic path mainly. He’s reaping the fruit he’s sewn and I find what I glimpse of it both grounding and mind expanding. He doesn’t actually consider himself a buddhist.
I also have mixed feelings about sleeping alone. It can be awfully nice to drift off together. I’m thinking of having the discussed option and wherewithal to sleep alone easily makes sense, you know, not fixing anything in stone but having options. Sounds like you and your wife have worked that out well.
Simon
There again it’s hard not to be affected by the person lying right next to you, who’ve you’ve just made love with, and will wake up with.
Pros and cons. Naturally it depends on each other’s mutual stage, each other’s trajectory.
I recall experiences sleeping with women where the dreams were really quite odd, where I found myself feeling like I was on some kind of peculiar subtle drug in the morning; a deep mixing of two different styles of being. Both glorious and dangerous I guess.Simon
I have always come back to this poem whether sleeping alone or apart as it makes me be in wonder about the nature of relationships especially the ones we choose to have side by side.
The Third Body
A man and a woman sit near each other, and they do not long
at this moment to be older, or younger, nor born
in any other nation, or time, or place.
They are content to be where they are, talking or not talking.
Their breaths together feed someone whom we do not know.
The man sees the way his fingers move;
he sees her hands close around a book she hands to him.
They obey a third body they have in common.
They have made a promise to love that body.
Age may come, parting may come, death will come.
A man and woman sit near each other;
as they breathe they feed someone we do not know,
someone we know of, whom we have never seen. Robert BlySimon,
Of course we are going through a process now, which puts us, after 25 years, on our own two feet. In this process we defined we needed space to find a growth we could not accomplish together. This is not only true for our awake life but especially true for our dream… I would say unawakened state. In that realm there are the seeds of our new reality and those need space and attention to let them grow. For that we need solitary time, definite.Although we still enjoy each others company in many ways, every time he leaves I swallow my tears, as he does too, yes the love is not dead, never was, never will be but the paths take us to different shores…. at least for now, maybe for ever.
We surrendered ourselves to a far greater wisdom than we can possibly imagine and we accept what it has to offer us. For that we need to listen in silence, for that we need that space.
Well, I can relate to that from my own life.
My philosophy is to maintain friendship if at all possible, over and above any changes in the ‘offical status’ of relationships. It’s always great to see when that is possible.My wife and I read that poem at the end of our way-out wedding 16 years ago!
It brings back strange memories reading it now. Back then, we thought our relationship was great. Now, I feel a bit sick remembering how things actually were between us back then…and how much clearer and deeper and loving they are now.
I couldn’t help but interject this ambiguous but beautiful Leonard Cohen poem on the topic of love:
Dance me to the End of Love
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Yeah dance me to the end of loveLet me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
And dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of loveDance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We’re both of us beneath our love, both of us above
And dance me to the end of loveDance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
And dance me to the end of loveDance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand, touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
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