I sank into the warm bath with Carlos without a second thought. A little reckless, some might argue. It had been maybe 6 or 7 years since I had last indulged myself in his embrace and so much had changed. And yet it felt like coming home.
Sunday morning. A thousand pressing "urgents" and yet my cup was so empty that there was nothing more important than a warm fragrant rice-milk-magnesium bath. With Carlos. And fresh green tea. My soul demanded it.
Like my other deep, compelling loves, there was nothing really dramatic that made me walk away from him last time. Distraction. A lack of time on both our parts. Fear. The complexity of language and the feelings which defy it. Other people's needs. Other seemingly sexier love interests. But mostly, it was simply that I wasn't deeply ready for him. In that tantric ready-to-enfold-hold-fly-sigh-pray-die kind of a way.
When I saw him briefly last evening, I had no intention of starting again. He just arrived in my world in a gentle way, not actively sought out but as if he had always been hovering and waiting for the reconnection.
And so I yielded. Impulsively, even though there were others who felt I owed them that privilege. I yielded in that warm-wet-comforting timeless space that renews me so deeply. His words were so familiar that it was as if my old Being had underscored things in ink on the page. And I thought I would simply slip back into that well-worn space. But I was amazed at the new things I found, like new freckles or new scars on familiar skin after a long journey. He surprised me, Delighted me. And I realized again that each time we return to an old love - be it a physical lover or the writings of a profound spiritual teacher - that WE are different. Energetically changed. Renewed. Open to different things. And able to receive - and give - differently.
Today, after many years, I reconnected with Carlos Castenada and his writings in The Art of Dreaming. He arrived perched on top of a mountain of old kitchen things and books and papers from an old friend who has moved into a nursing home. She will never be able to enjoy him again, and so he is welcome to move into my world and linger on, and in, my bed. To be savoured and enjoyed in the wee small hours when my body won't sleep and my heart is restless. Or to be relished in a warm bath on a Sunday morning.
Self Care Sundays always make me think, want to write and enable me to see and feel things differently.
Profound gratitude for the lovers - and the timeless writers - who enrich and renew my Being.
