🦄 Transcendent, worn‑in love
Domesticated wildness and other tensions the heart never fully resolves
“We are not soul hunters or unicorn hunters. We are love hunters.”
— CLAIRAUDIENCE, JUNE 30, 2026
I thought it was either-or. I thought there was higher love: transcendent, expansive, euphoric. And then there was earthly love: entangled, karmic, complex. I thought at some point higher love would arrive from outside me, riding in on a godlike man who did everything right, said everything right, loved me unconditionally, and taught me how to do the same.
But it is the Unicorns that are teaching me that this higher love streams through each of us individually. That something can be both real and mythical at the same time. That higher love is not something that arrives from outside of us, but something we access and remember within ourselves.
I think this is what the worn-in unicorn I called into my living room on the back of a rainbow was showing me. Yes, it was a mythical, magical being, but it had lived. It had gathered life. It had been in the mud, in the muck of it all, and it was still holding on to its transcendent beauty.
Transcendent love moves by higher principles. It is expansive rather than limiting. It creates possibility. It lets the people we love change. It encourages growth, distance, transformation. It is open-palmed. Never grasping, with no chains and no claiming.
This kind of higher love is forgiving and loves unconditionally, yet it does not let itself be drained, used, or taken advantage of. It can say no very clearly, and as a complete sentence. It can say it for the highest good of everyone involved. Transcendent love says no when care is not being taken.
Because that is what we do for each other. We do things with care, intention, and mindfulness. We keep each other in mind. We carry our loves in our hearts through our days, even when we are apart. We try to shorten the distance between us by reaching out. We let them know when we miss them and when we are thinking about them. We create moments of connection and experiences for each other because we know this life is so short, and this brief embodiment deserves to make memories with the ones we love.
I am learning that transcendent love wants to be worn in. What is mythical wants to become real, and the spiritual wants to materialize so that it can make mistakes, correct them, learn, heal the wounds it creates, survive uncomfortable conversations, and grow through the friction rather than stay above it.
This is the kind of love I am learning to recognize. Not one or the other. Not a higher love that floats above the human messiness, and not an earthly love that has forgotten its own divinity.
There is a famous Rilke poem about the unicorn as the animal that never was. He writes that the unicorn is fed, not by corn, but by the possibility of being. I think this is what we are supposed to do for each other. Feed the ones we love with the possibility of being. Make space for the mythical within them. Make the transcendent worn in.
This is a paradox and a tension that might never resolve completely. One does not become the other. Instead, the heart learns to hold both as possibilities, and to let every action be rooted in that knowing.
There are other paradoxical tensions moving through my consciousness right now. Domesticated wildness. Locking transparent doors. Empty backpacks as symbols of what we carry. And a reminder that solid ground is supposed to shift.
🐅 Domesticated wildness
At a rest stop, I spot several sophisticated, mature women walking giant wild cats on leashes. I have a deep desire to become one of them.
There is a message here that I can feel inside of me, about calling forth my own wildness and learning how to walk with it. About how wisdom walks the Earth, and how I want to walk the Earth. This kind of sighting in a dream is a transmission. I feel it in my bones. It changes the way I stand, and the words that come out of my mouth.
It is not an idea I am trying to understand. It is something I am learning to embody.
The paradox of domesticated wildness shows up again in a dream a month later. In a forest clearing, I see a cultivated soccer field where wolves and coyotes are playing with dogs.
The longing I feel is painful because I do not know who I want to be. The beloved dogs who have a home to go back to, or the wild animals who retreat into nature at night, some of them solitary and alone.
But nothing needs to be resolved here, and no choice has to be made. It is the playing together that is the message. These opposite poles of nature come together and show me that what really matters is not domestication versus wildness, but the embodiment of aliveness.
🎒 The empty backpack as a symbol of what we carry
I am being driven by someone from my past. He drives from the passenger seat while I sit in the back. I realize I still have his backpack. I had been borrowing it for some time. I open it to empty out my belongings so I can give it back, but there are none. I have been carrying an empty backpack.
I don’t feel foolish, but I do feel that this exchange is long overdue. I think about the invisible weight of carrying something that does not belong to me, and how it is time to take stock of the other empty backpacks I might still possess.
I have carried invisibly weighted backpacks before. In a psychedelic vision, I enter Freya’s afterlife hall believing I have someone with me. The Valkyries point out that my backpack is empty. The person I think I am carrying is a ghost.
There is a distinction here that I can feel. Some battles are communal. They belong to the tribe, to the living, to the people who are actually standing beside us. Other things are personal, invisible to the collective, and ours alone to carry.
I ask the Valkyries what I should do with the empty backpack. They tell me that it is up to me whether I want to keep carrying it. Eventually, I decide to give up the ghost.
🚪 Shutting transparent doors and building a framework for closure
I kept having repeated dreams about a friend I was avoiding. She kept showing up unexpectedly and forcing me to face her. I would wake up bothered, tugged on energetically. Then I would shove it down and repress it in favor of real life, where she was not present.
Finally, I dreamed that I shut and locked a door on her, only to find that it was see-through. That’s when I realized I could no longer avoid what my soul was asking for. I needed to be transparent with my friend.
I asked her if she could meet for a Zoom chat, knowing this would be a very uncomfortable conversation for me. I told her about a moment of broken trust from years ago that I still carried around as an injury, and about how it had been keeping me at arm’s length from her.
I was nervous and embarrassed to bring up something so old. She apologized, and we both laughed at ourselves for being so conflict-avoidant.
The conversation itself was a balm. It instantaneously mended the rift between us, and I felt so lucky to restore this nourishing bond with a lifelong friend. I promised her that I would not be conflict-avoidant again. And I promised her that there would remain transparency between us, because the health of our relationship matters to me.
This dream taught me the difference between real closure and trying to shut a door that is meant to be see-through.
Six months before the transparent-door dream, I had been building a door frame.
I didn’t know what the door frame was for, but I knew I was on a deadline to build it. I was responsible for choosing the wood, the measurements, the bolts, and the screws.
Later, the frame would reappear in another dream as I slammed a wooden door on a closed chapter of my life. What I understood about this symbol was that closure had to be built by my own hands. Framed and measured by my own understanding.
From here on out, if I close a door on someone or something, I want to be in full awareness of what I am doing. Whether it is an end, a pause, or a boundary. Whether the door is opaque, symbolizing genuine closure, or transparent, asking for something hidden to be made visible.
🏗️ Foundations are supposed to shift, and it is okay
The foundation shifts underneath our home. There is a downslope, and when I poke at the land, it gives way. Everything begins to slide downward.
I stand on a balcony and, from that distance, start to readjust and configure what has shifted. Most of the debris is made up of everyday objects, symbolizing our hobbies, interests, and passions, the things that help structure a life but also change over time. My husband walks out and says, “It’s okay.” There is an understanding that I will figure out what needs to be moved.
Foundations are supposed to shift, and it is okay.
This dream arrives before a series of real-life events that shake our stable ground. Because of the dream, I feel prepared to stay elevated enough to see the changing landscape of our lives, and to meet chaos and crisis as events that need attention, not as evidence that everything is ruined.
If I hold a higher perspective, I can see what has shifted. I can see what needs to be moved. I can stay out of the debris.
Stable ground changes over time. Erosion and cracking are inevitable. But what matters is that the things that structure a life can change and still remain the things that hold it up: what you love, how you spend your time, what absorbs you, and what makes you feel alive.
🏞️ The real beauty is deeper in
At the entrance to a national park, I stand in awe of the hoodoos, the natural beauty, and the fact that I have access to it at all. This wild is not tamed or cultivated, yet it is welcoming and majestic.
A man at the entrance scoffs at my amazement. “This is garbage,” he says, pointing all around him. “The real beauty is deeper in.”
I am turned off by the man’s audacity, and by his need to diminish the beauty that is right in front of me. But I also know this is an invitation.
There is access to real wildness here, within us. Never before tamed, waiting to be discovered. All we have to do is walk further into our unknown.
The real beauty is deeper in.
THE SOUNDTRACK FOR THIS ISSUE HAS BEEN “ANOTHER EARTH” BY GONE GONE BEYOND ON REPEAT:
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