designers
of programs and processes focused on
the alignment of inner awareness with outer action, the development of
congruent conscious behavior, and the activation of purposeful living;
facilitators of personal
growth opportunities that combine enriching study, practical application,
focused disciplines, and creative techniques;
educators devoted to the
embodiment of wisdom;
authors of
books
and articles on identification with the True Self and development of
the power to observe and direct personality expression.
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC: “SOUL MATES SHARE BOND”
On Wednesday, May 18, 2005, The Arizona Republic ran an article entitled
“Diane & Arleen: Soul Mates Share Bond,” by Barbara Yost as part of an
ongoing series on relationships. This particular series focused on how
couples met.
“Sometimes love calls for a vocabulary that hasn’t been invented yet.
“In 1971, Arleen Lorrance was working on her master’s of fine arts degree
from City University of New York when she began a series of five paintings.
The actor, poet and photographer says she found a face taking shape on the
first canvas, something more skeletal than concrete.
“‘It was a spiritual painting,’ Arleen, now 66, recalls. ‘I was following
my inner direction and allowing it to happen.’
“In each subsequent painting, the face took on more detail until it was
recognizable in the fifth as a woman with full lips and blond hair. A
psychic friend told her that it was a woman she loved, that they would one
day work together and that the woman in the picture was Arleen’s ‘spiritual
godmother.’ At the time, Arleen was moving with her husband to San Diego
from New York to attend a workshop at the National Center for the
Exploration of Human Potential.
“At one of the workshop sessions, she felt drawn to one of the
participants and found herself inviting the woman to see her paintings. The
woman’s reaction when she saw them: “My friend Diane needs to see these
paintings.” Arleen responded, “You mean Diane Kennedy Pike?”
“Arleen had just read excerpts from Pike’s book Search: The Personal
Story of a Wilderness Journey, which chronicled the disappearance and death
in 1969 of Diane’s husband, Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike, in the Judean
wilderness. Arleen had never met Diane and had no idea she was living in
Santa Barbara, California.
“The woman of the workshop persuaded Diane to view Arleen’s paintings.
They both realized it was Diane in the pictures. When Arleen and Diane met,
Arleen says, ‘My heart opened. I loved this person.” It would be only one of
dozens of coincidences that have marked their long friendship.
“In 1972, Arleen and her husband parted ways. She won’t call the amiable
break a divorce, but rather a “success completed.” Arleen and Diane, now 67,
formed a partnership beyond friendship. It’s a love match, yet platonic.
From the beginning, people assumed they were gay. They explain they’re a
same-sex couple without the sex. They’re frank about their bond, Arleen
says, hoping ‘to open people to this kind of union.’ But they’ve given up
trying to invent a label.
With so many women delaying marriage or never marrying, Diane says, ‘I
think this is a possible relationship of the future.’
“Arleen and Diane have lived together in Scottsdale for 12 years and run
the Teleos Institute, an association that teaches self-awareness and
unconditional love.
“They share a home, finances, domestic chores, a love of tennis and their
taste in men, although neither dates anymore, finding most men they have met
lacking in spirituality. They have named each other as beneficiaries and
exchanged powers of attorney.
“Although they’re polar opposites – Arleen is the short one from a
nonreligious Jewish family in New York; Diane is the tall Midwesterner whose
family was religious, loving, and close-knit – Diane says, ‘I feel
completely like she’s my partner. . . . We experience being in a union the
way married couples talk about a union.’
“‘We share it all,’ Arleen says. ‘I have affection, I have caring. I’m
not left wanting for anything. I wake up every day asking, ‘What did I do to
be so blessed?’
“Diane says, ‘We both feel that way. … She’s a ray of sunshine from
morning to night.’”
