ALUNA TEMPLE MAGAZINE EDITION No5 'ALCHEMY' | Page 61

I’m excited to report that this week we’ve gone beyond this
exhausting pattern – just a few times, but it feels revolutionary.
The challenge for me is to not believe the literal content of what
she says. To not defend it or make her words ‘about me’.
Even though they impact me greatly because I have such deep wounds around
being rejected or criticised by ‘the woman’ (my Mother?) for ‘not being enough’
or ‘not what’s wanted here’, I have to let those waves pass through me, feel
them, and then look deeper, see behind her complaint into her pain.

I need to stop believing her words and realise that what she’s saying,
even though it feels ‘true’ to her in that moment, is really her mind’s
strategy to not feel her deeper trauma and vulnerability of desperately
wanting to be held in that moment as her old wound discharges some
pain.
Something raw is moving in her, and she needs me to hold her, love her,
above all and simply be present with her, despite all her ‘pushing away’.
This takes a lot of presence, breath, and steadfastness.

The last thing I want to do in that moment when I am feeling so
unfairly treated, so painfully rejected, is to love her, hold her or
comfort her.

But this is what is asked of
me, as a man, on a deeper
level.
To breathe through the selfpity and the urge to escape
and to go to her, dissolve
through her illusory wall, and
wrap my arms around her,
communicating with touch,
with my whole body, that love
is here. Presence is here.

I am here.
Embrace © Alex Grey
61