*To keep the writing style as pleasant as possible, I always refer to the essential other as he/male. This can be read as she/woman if desired. This is because it is all about the male and female energy, which in this story does not necessarily have to be linked to male and female.

The quest for love has been described by all kinds of sages for centuries. In Plato's symposium, it is described as a beautiful phenomenon, a force that helps us through life. The love quest is implanted in human beings to gain wisdom, and only through that wisdom can soul love be experienced on earth. Only thus can we step out of our sense of loneliness and return to the consciousness of our state of oneness. This transcends all beauty and all physical attraction, for these are mere fleeting elements that serve as stepping stones to arrive at the inner strength that gives us the ability to create. Love is an all-encompassing passion for wisdom and connection, the passion for the beauty of the soul. No wonder we need to clear the path to her to embody this energy.

How old were you when you felt that there was someone in this world you would meet to be immersed together in an unprecedented deep experience of love unparalleled in history? When did you remember this for the first time and did this inner knowing catapult you towards a search for that great love that actually took place mainly as an inner process of letting go, but sometimes actually became perceptible by entering into various relationships that time and again turned out not to be the embodiment and manifestation of that exceptional energy that you had felt internally for so long? For me, this feeling presented itself quite early in my childhood, at an age when I was still playing outside without a care in the world and was not at all concerned with big people matters. I can still remember the moment when I was singing under the coloured shades of my grandmother's floor lamp and had a kind of vision of love. And in that vision, I saw a man who loved me dearly, but couldn't possibly show it to me because he simply didn't know how because of the illusionary self-image he had built up due to the backpack of pain and insecurity he was dragging with him from his childhood, which was getting fuller and fuller. And I saw myself being sad with the only consolation being that the love was real and the promise that it would be okay. My soul determined that this feeling could already be placed within me while I went on happily being a child. I just knew that love would play an important role in my life. After the meeting with my essential other and the rollercoaster that had gone on for years, it only dawned on me that the whole search for love and the experiences you have along the way are actually meant to end that very search and manifest the connection so powerfully within yourself that the rest can only follow, so to speak, because you are no longer emotionally dependent on it. At some point you get connected to a warm stream of wisdom that gives you the power to be able to feel the love that is there for you, the love you are a part of. You have always known it, but the actual awareness of it does not sink in until later. You were born to experience love in its purest form, stripped of all the illusionary pictures pasted on it that cause so much disappointment, because it in no way awakens the feeling of coming home in you.

This life did not just happen to you, you were destined to come face to face with your essential other, not knowing exactly what this was going to embrace. The process in which your heart was broken many times in a way that not just anyone could bring about except your essential other, was actually destined to throw you completely back on yourself and touch your heart unmercifully deep so that it would break open and allow the flow of love that connects heaven and earth through you and within you. In Dance of reunion I quoted an excerpt from Catherine Cordero's 'Sanft wie Schafe', which described the heart of this process and the reason why it all had to be so painful in a remarkable way. In summary, her wisdom boiled down to this:

'Before incarnating together again, a pair of twin souls made an agreement to help each other further on earth. The male half decided to assume the role of unconscious partner, so that the female half, who assumed the role of conscious partner, was brought to her limits as best she could. He hurt her tremendously, more than anyone else, but he had taken on that role out of love for her. He made sure she did not break free from him for a very long time and again and again he unbalanced her, until she learnt to stay in her own centre! She gave everything and got nothing in return. She kept this up for a long time, with no prospect of getting her twin soul. The grief had to be very deep, because only then would she come to an understanding and be able to make the changes needed for the bigger picture. That way, she could showing others the way who found themselves in similar circumstances. If that goal was, he would only divorce her. His process was that much later he would remember who she was with a jolt and then he would wait for her inwardly. Only then would he actually get to see and know her. To help her in this difficult process, she had a very kindred soul by her side: her daughter, who supported her perfectly in staying grounded.'

And so it happened. The common thread in all the stories is the same, although each one is unique. Those who embody the feminine energy are the first to go through the process of anchoring love apart from the gender roles that were taken over. Your essential other triggered everything in you that you weren't even aware of anymore, but which was unconsciously affecting your whole being. And despite that, the loving just didn't stop. Unwillingly and unexpectedly, from your great service to love, you became a shadow woman. No one knew of your existence, but contacting you reinvigorated essential others to persevere in a situation that actually needed to be broken. And you were heavily confronted with the energy of rejection and abandonment. Primal wounds that needed to be healed. The Kundalini energy that flowed in between and formed the glue to be drawn back to each other no matter what, was not yet experienced from a higher level where the second chakra, or sacral/sexual chakra without interference from the repressed pain pieces.was connected to the fourth, the heart chakra. The contact with you was overwhelmingly deep and could not be entered into by the one who embodied the masculine energy. It made one too vulnerable and that vulnerability made one anxious. There was a lot of noise on the line, a lot of barriers built up against love. All this had to be lived through in order to heal. There was a wait until you reached the point where you were no longer afraid of losing your essential other, the point where you could so connect with yourself that you could no longer deny yourself and your self-love came to fruition, leaving you with nothing left to do but put a halt to your essential other. The halt that is so important, because only this could shift the role of the unconscious masculine energy that had been adopted to support your healing process, painful as it was, from an incapacity to loving recognition and surrender to the connection that could not be compared to anything and through which all addictions and behaviours that testified to your own repressed pain and traumas could dissolve. So it is up to you to anchor and honour your acquired love capacity by not squandering it on an unconscious mind.

THE SONG OF LOVE

Inspired by King Solomon's Song of Love, Kate Bush sings in her 'Song of Solomon':

'Song of Solomon
Everyone's song
Who walks the path
Of the lonely heart
The soul calls
Hear a woman sing
I don't want your nonsense, yes
I just want your sexuality
I don't want any excuses, yes
Write me your poetry in motion
Write it just for me, yes
And sign it with a kiss
Just take any line
Comfort me with apples
For I am sick with love
His left hand is under my head
And his right hand...
Embrace me
This is the song of Solomon
Here is a woman singing
I don't want your nonsense, yes
I just want your sexuality
I don't want any excuses, yes
Write me your poetry in motion
Write it just for me, yes
And sign it with a kiss
And I will do it for you
I will be the rose of Saron for you
I will do it for you
I will be the Lily of the Valley for you
I will do it for you
I will be Isolde or Marion for you
I will do it for you
Ooh I'm coming in a hurricane for you
I will do it for you
I don't want your nonsense
I just want your sexuality'

The Rose of Saron has no thorns and a special charm emanates from it. This rose symbolises awakening to the energy of divine love. The feminine energy will transform through a purification process and become a Rose of Saron. She speaks the language of love, not the language of seduction. The male energy also has to go through an inner process to be able to see its real beauty, because "because of the Fall our eyes were blinded and we became too engrossed in transitory things", according to the Bible, which fascinates me enormously because of its symbolism regarding love and the process of awakening, rather than the religious aspect. The depth in ourselves had to be found, our source connection restored to embody the wisdom that comes from it. If you have become the Rose of Saron, you have rid yourself of the noise and barriers you have formed internally against love and are open. As a Rose of Saron, you are able to allow and give love, without wanting to possess it. You release it, and then experience from that energy of being that everything is there for you and you don't have to lack or pursue anything. The overwhelm has given way to surrender to love itself. A love that liberates, inspires, nourishes and is fulfilling on all fronts, because 'in being able to spiritually see this rose and feel the love, the sad and torn heart is comforted and healed'. The Lily of the Valley referred to in the Song of Songs symbolises the depths and trying circumstances you go through to arrive at that surrender of love. The Lily symbolises the path that leads to unity in hearts. The path leads to a divine love that transcends all logic and knowledge. It is the soul that longs for the earthly manifestation of connection. You see, what you are going through is all for a reason. It leads you to who you actually are, so that you are recognised by the one who has also actually found himself and with whom you form a complete soul-match.

HALT

And yes, it's done with the bullshit, which may have served a purpose, but is not destined to continue like this endlessly. You reach that point through everything you have lived through and at some point you call a halt to your essential other, because you accept where the other stands on his path, but also know very well where you stand and what love means to you. You see the indecision of the other coming across as a denial of the connection and of the love you share, and you feel that you have outgrown this phase. Not from a protection mechanism, but from connection with yourself. You are done with your position as shadow woman. It is a position that no longer suits you, because through your inner growth you can now take on the role that reminds your essential other that his time has come to turn inward and transcend his old self to be able to come to surrender the wisdom and power of love.

And then begins the profound process of those who embody the masculine energy. As if by a bolt of lightning, the heart tears open. The tower energy strikes and the pain of abandonment and separation comes ruthlessly to the surface. This primal wound too may be healed by and for the masculine energy. Your essential other no longer knows where it stands, tries to pick up its old life and make the best of it, but it doesn't work. You don't need to check all this, you don't need to check where the other is and how far he has progressed in the process. You will know. You are not just anyone, your energy cannot be denied, because you are the complete soul match. You begin to see that you were not rejected, your essential other rejected himself. You know it's time to connect with that soul energy, precisely because you no longer condemn anything, no longer take anything personally, but stand strong in your own connection and are willing to truly let the other go, while continuing to cherish love as a gift that has opened you and provided access to your soul's wisdom. You have sacrificed your willpower and your healthy ego supports you to guard that inner treasure. Not by putting up walls, but by staying fully in your own alignment.

You can be the Rose of Saron. You can be the woman who doesn't have to rely on her seductive skills, the energy that manages to temporarily bind the other person to you through seductive looks, lust and temporary fulfilment. However, you don't have to hide your sexual charms, but it takes more than lust. Deep soul longing must be intertwined with it for it to come to an open love, a love that brings out the best in each other. You are the woman who has connected with the divine energy of love, the love of the soul, the woman who has come to know herself better and cannot deny herself. But your essential other must be able to find you on his own within that alignment, guided by the soul's calling. He may enter into his process, the inner compass may be followed, he may heal himself as you have done, without having to be perfect. And he will meet you there in the fertile valley of love where the Rose of Saron and the Lily of the Valley bloom. You have become that Rose of Saron, you want to share your sexuality in connection with the heart. Sexuality means not just sex, but your discernment, your creative expression, your service, your purest ability to feel. You want to allow the Kundalini in all its power so that two worlds become one and the connection in all its magnitude can finally ground. You can harness your love and your sexuality to warm the heart, offering the soul a safe landing place simply because of who you have become.

KING SALOMO

We know King Solomon from the judgment of Solomon, the Biblical story describing how King Solomon had to determine who was the real mother of a baby boy, as two women claimed to be.

King Solomon, son of David and Bathsheba, became king quite young and the plain of Saron formed part of his kingdom. Saron is a region in Israel and is located south of Nazareth. The plain is known for its fertility, beauty and majestic wealth of flowers and trees, including the Rose of Saron, a hard-to-identify flower that appears only in the King's Song of Songs, and the Lily of the Valley. King Solomon was praised for his wisdom obtained from God to support him in ruling his country. However, the young king had a new wife every two or three weeks. He reportedly had some 700 wives and at least 300 concubines and yet he never felt like coming home. He wrote of this:

'Who will ever find insight? I have sought knowledge with all my heart, but what I find is always another woman who is more bitter than death, who is a trap. Her heart is a clap net and her hands are chains. A man who pleases God will escape her, but a sinner allows himself to be snared by her. All in all, that is the conclusion of my research. I have searched with heart and soul but still not found. Among a thousand people, I found only one who was actually human but it was not a woman.'

According to scribes, by "the one who was also actually human but not a woman" he was referring to Jesus Christ. After his fornication with God, however, he met a shepherd girl from nearby Salem. The Song of Songs is a dialogue between King Solomon and the shepherd girl that poetically describes their ardent love for each other. Their love for each other transcended everything, but they too were taken through the process that inevitably starts when love wants to share you with all its fullness and purity. And so it also showed itself to the king and the shepherdess. they were absorbed in the rollercoaster that swung them back and forth between ultimate happiness and despair. The attraction and repulsion, the deep soul longing, led to the inspiration for writing the song of songs 'The Song of Love'. The metaphors used in it, the whole range of imagery, will be understood through the eyes of your heart.

‘She has the beauty of a new morning, the purity of the luminous moon and she shines like the sunlight itself. A power and strength emanates from her.
I belong to my lover, I long for him.
Let's go to the field together and see if the vines are already sprouting, if the buds are already bursting open and the pomegranate trees are already blooming. There I will give myself to you.
I can smell the scent of love apples and the most delicious fruits grow everywhere. My love I have saved them for you.
Hold me close to you, I want to stay in your arms forever, because love is as strong as death. Passion won't leave me, any more than the realm of the dead does.
The fire of our passion burns with hot flames kindled by the Lord. No water can quench that love, no river can wash it away.'

The king recognised her as the one out of all the women he had in his life. She was different from the others because she was his soul mate. And despite her dark appearance, which was apparently considered less beautiful at the time, there was an irresistible attraction about her that went beyond mere physical beauty. But they too were not exempt from the healing process that irrevocably starts when this divine love knocks at your door that long feels so devilish because of all the pain that comes to the surface. It is for this reason that Solomon concluded:

'Don't run far ahead of love, don't rush anything. Let love reveal itself when the time comes.'

The process is also beautifully described in the Song of Love:

'In my sleep I looked for my lover, I searched and searched but could not find him. I clung to him. Emerge from the lion's den.
You are now still like a garden without access, like a well covered with a lid, a spring sealed. But what emerges from you is an orchard full of pomegranate trees with beautiful ripe fruits and flowers and nardus plants.
You are the fountain that waters the gardens, the spring that gives clear sparkling water.
I unlocked the door for my lover, but when it opened, he had disappeared. I went looking for him, but couldn't find him anywhere. When I called his name, I got no answer. The love for him became too much for me. My lover has gone to his garden. He is enjoying the fragrant herbs and plants.'

WILLINGNESS TO LET EACH OTHER GO

To truly find each other, it was necessary to embrace the periods of separation, regardless of the pain and confusion it often caused. Every millimetre of what presented itself in there had to be lived through. How else could access to your own heart and the treasure hidden within unfold? Deeper you had to dig, deeper than you ever imagined yourself.

Both you and your essential other had to come to a willingness to let each other go, in love, that is, rather than from a boundary protection that did have its function earlier. The love that is so deeply embedded and even forms the basis of your existence had to be stripped of the improper images that camouflaged its true quality and functioning. What you experienced in interaction with your essential other strengthened you to rise in its true glow and power.

You learned to love yourself through the love that was just there between you and your essential other, but did not just take the form determined by what you knew and by the expectations you had regarding your intense interaction with each other. You learned to keep returning to your own centre and to step out of the emotional dependency that characterised the phase when you did not yet know yourself sufficiently. You learned to love deeply without claiming the other as your possession and catching them in the nets of your own insecurity and fear. As a result, you became like the Rose of Saron.

This is all that can now begin to penetrate your essential other. He too will have to let you go through the halt you have reached with regard to what you have shared with each other so far. Insights follow that could not sink in before. There follows an anchoring of an expanded consciousness that has only now been granted space by the path of soul-love that has already been walked. Here where you stand now has determined everything that will follow. Here where you stand now, you are absorbed in the divine glow that makes no concessions when it comes to the invitation of true love. You can handle it, you are able to connect with your origin and return to it again and again when the illusion of sense perception makes you believe otherwise. Your essential other is also greeted in this attunement.

MEET AGAIN

A new beginning actually follows for the connection to further unfold earthly in a way that has so far proved impossible. Remember that both you and also your essential other have gone through a shift that has mainly triggered inner images and feelings that set in motion a different flow and direction.

The heart will face less opposition to open further because of the courage and strength built up during the journey so far. Do not underestimate what has already been processed and achieved, but certainly also what is yet to come. The one who embodies the feminine energy became more female and the one who represents the masculine component became more male by surrendering to the energy that balances both more and more through all possible facets of resistance in order to invite awareness of the complementary qualities intertwined.

You are now invited to recognise your essential other within yourself and the same applies to your soul love. Find it in yourself and feel how this oneness is already working internally. This is the energy that makes itself perceptible towards the end of the painful process and continues to work for a while during the first new steps you take. There where you still felt objections or disappointment about the way things went, you are taken along in a current that pulls you away from it without you feeling you have any say in it. It just happens to you.

Anything wrong between the two and not based on love itself seems to get less hold on you. No matter what has been, no matter if there is distance now. The depth of love that first still inexorably broke your heart sinks in powerfully because you can now handle its energy and your body will not burn up because of its magnitude and effect. You can handle it, as can your essential other, who, however, is only now learning to rely more on his feelings and allow for the further transformation that lets him get used to how he is carried by this love while also experiencing safety. Just like you. You are taken beyond the boundaries set towards each other.

THE FLOWER OF LOVE NEVER WITHERS!

When the time comes that both the male and female component have undergone the purification process, and that moment comes, allowing the consciousness of love to sink in more fully, then your essential other will stand before you in all sincerity. It will be a moment when you don't actually count on it anymore, because maybe years have passed, maybe the hopeless interaction has repeated itself endlessly without any significant breakthroughs, and contact always came down to the same thing by falling back into the same patterns again and again. The passage of time does not matter when you have truly let go of every expectation. The inner process you have gone through results in this, it is not your own decision, it is who you have become. Your essential other feels this as an invitation to open further, for you have freed him from the energy of having to comply with something before he was ready for it and before he was given the inner green light. The energy he felt from you is no longer palpable, so he will have to search internally to find you again, and he will find you when he surrenders to his true self. When he sees you, his search also ceases.

It is only from that intention that the connection can manifest, it is from embracing the other in the self that an unexpected turn can come that transcends all your hopes and images as to how it could be between you. Your essential other will bow his head for love, for you, for what you share. You were ready to give everything and the other begins to realise that this is what he wants too. Vulnerably, he will approach you, wondering if it is still feasible to walk a new path together. You stand in your power and are surprised by the sudden frankness, because only now everything can be shared that was previously held back. Then trust your feelings. Are you still somewhat reserved? Then restraint is exactly what is needed. Can you not open up completely at that moment? Then that too is necessary. Take your time, let it sink in, should that be what you feel. Enough has happened, you have had to process enough and you have already reached the point where you can move on without your essential other. Not as a grieving, broken woman, but as a woman who can express her authentic energy, dare to follow her passion, and beyond the limits of all that is known, can only surrender to a love story taking place between two present and devoted hearts.