2 Lovers, A Toilet, and My Selfhood

DREAMBITS: Apparently I’m not quite done with amorous dreams yet, cuz here’s another one, with 2 lovers no less, and a toilet to boot...

The toilet was a step-up one, elevated a few feet off the floor, clean, white porcelaine, constructed in a way I’ve never seen before, although more like a porta-potty, and I sat sideways on it. All went well, and I flushed.

My first lover was S. (a copywriter from the first ad agency I worked for), in his 30s. We were very much in love but when he moved to kiss me, I only just caught a tiny piece of his lip because he pulled away immediately. I was perplexed, but his expression or demeanor did not seem to change otherwise.

He began to tell me about backpacking and hiking, as if to suggest that we ought to do it together sometime...

At some point in this dream I was in a Loblaws store, smiling and telling someone I used to work here...

My second lover was a man in his 60s at least, tall and slender, with thin white hair and a stringy neck of old age. But it didn’t matter because we were in love. I remember getting up from where we were reclined and hooking my arm around his neck, playing at choking him, but caressing his chest affectionately as I let go. When he got up to get some apple pie, he sliced off most of the crust with the spatula as if he’s slicing butter with a knife, easily and smoothly, saying he didn’t want so much crust. I was watching and thinking that there wasn’t much filling in the pie (which I made)...

I asked my dreammaker and Source to help me recall the details and connections of my dreams better and longer, so that I can make the best of the dreamwork, and I make the intention for myself.

DREAMWORK:

The feeling in the whole dream was one of pleasant and tenderly loving flow, like a gentle playful smile, but underneath and very much a part of all of that was also the recurrent coming-together then going-apart dance that the lovers engaged in over and over. The love never diminished even when we were apart, but anxiety spiked a touch in me then.

They were new lovers to me, so there was that hopeful but slightly insecure feeling in the relationships still, the hypervigilance making the intoxication even more potent and thrilling.

I am wondering about the younger lover who was a copywriter in real life, carried the reference to advertising, with its glitter that I still in some way see as gold... I am still struggling with (false) image issues (status quo and acceptance) and this is preventing me from a deeper intimacy with him, my young masculine.

In fact, with both lovers I felt that tiny touch of inadequacy in myself; when he pulled away from what I thought was a kiss about to happen, and when I saw there wasn’t enough filling in the pie... There isn’t total fulfillment in my relationship to the masculine yet. There is courtship, but not consummation. The marriage has yet to happen, but the moment is closer.

As the feminine, I, as the dream reveals, need to let go of my self (ego’s fear and insecurities) more and surrender wholly to love – put more filling into the pie – and move from the passivity of waiting for love to come to me, to actively and assertively responding and receiving love when it shows up. I’ve had enough of being wishy-washy in my life, it is time to take what’s mine without hesitation or reticence or passive-aggression, embrace it fully and not feel self-conscious about it in front of the world. I need to celebrate this love whole-heartedly, whole-bodily, and whole-spiritedly.

But if I may take a step back and observe the scene as an observer for a moment, I see that my feminine and masculine are in the process – the courtship – of reflecting and drawing each other out to confront the issues that still exist in their relationship, and it is up to me – my ego and my higher Self – to pay heed and do the work to balance and heal them, so that one day this courtly dance may become the joyful celebration of matrimony.

One last piece: the part of telling someone at Loblaws that I used to work there... I was smiling when I said this and there was a genuine feeling of acceptance in revealing this fact. I have come to more peace with that whole thing of abandoning the rat race with the status and security that it implies, putting my trust in the stillness I felt I needed to find, so I can better know and allow what the Divine wills for me. It isn’t that I did not know what I am doing this for, but in my darker hours I waver and doubt and withdraw myself out of fear, and it is this diminishing and isolation of the self out of self-defense that I need to shed.

I see myself standing with feet firmly planted on the ground, head held high and aglow with radiant selfhood, my gaze soft yet lively. I hope the day isn’t far when I will become this image of my true and full Self.

Small Dream, Big Message

DREAM: that I was teaching 4 ‘small’ courses (compared to some other guy who was teaching one ‘big’ course) and received in the mail an accordion-fold business card (I think I was hoping it was money) which listed the courses along with my info, but the folds did not match where the blocks of type began or ended...

DREAMWORK:

The accordion-fold, the printed piece, and the business card are recurrent images in my dreams... they are the various personas I am trying on to appear as a legitimate, accomplished, successful and recognized professional.

I am still trying to conform to societal expectations and standards, and I do not feel that I measure up. I am still equating achievement with financial reward. The message is:

What I think I want to be is not in line with who I really am.

I have to give it all up – fears, compensations, ego and all – empty myself of all previous programming and trappings of status quo, be still and quiet, and let the divine fill me up.

Give up trying to be a writer or healer or artist even; give up trying to steer this ship; give up trying to get answers – and just be.

I think I’m just getting an inkling, of how hard this is to do (or, not do) – to be Empty. Open. Still.
_____________

Saturday, September 25, 2010 – first night of the Ghost Dance

DREAM: that I had to pee, so I went into a public washroom which was laid out like a grid of squares, 5 by 5 or 5 by 6. Each square looked like a thin book with a cover printed in yellow and orange. You lift up the square and there’s a vary narrow (1/2” or less) long funnel underneath, pointing up. You sit down on the funnel so it goes up inside the vagina (even though that’s not anatomically the right passage for urination!) and you let go. I was just about to do that when another girl charged into the room and took right over. I could do nothing except let her finish first. When I finally went I wasn’t really sure if I had actually excreted because I couldn’t really feel it with the apparatus inside of me. So I assumed I did and got up. Then I saw that there was a few traces of blood, probably from my period. Somehow a part of my purse strap was there and got slightly soiled by the blood. I left it there but thought I would clean my white leather purse later.

DREAMWORK:

Another menstrual dream... And another dream with ‘pretty’ printed pieces... image, appearance, allure... this time like a cookie cutter... conformity and uniformity, be like everyone else, so as to be accepted by everyone else. But these prettily ambitious (yellow/orange) ‘covers’ cannot disguise my need for an outlet, this time to express my creativity.

I was just about to ‘conform’ to the proscribed and accepted way of doing things, when my shadow sister barged in to tell me there’s some hidden agenda here. She was aggressive, abrupt, and self-absorbed, and that’s how I am when I allow ambition to drive me. I self-righteously railroad anyone and anything in my way. I’ve never seen myself in this light before, having believed my self-image of a shrinking violet all of my life.

The inverted funnel is an apparatus of man-made manipulation, designed to make me think I’ve expressed myself ‘properly’, that this is the right outlet for me, when I couldn’t even feel it. But I bought into it anyway. Like sheep.

To my surprise, there was menstrual blood – stuff of unborn dreams, unrealized potential, unrequited passion – flowing out of my womb, the feminine vessel of creativity. There was only traces, so not much has been wasted... yet.

The purse, I suddenly see now, is an externalized womb, containing what’s essential to me, what I need to go out into the world with. It is white because it is the sacred vessel of a woman’s life force. The strap is my ‘handle’ to who and what I am, and I’m leaving it behind as unnecessary. But I will clean off the vestige of the previously unmanifest and begin anew.

I had brought my wish to be deeply grounded and present in my body, connected to the earth and the physical plane, and fully manifest my true, creative Self to the Ghost Dance, so that I could ask my ancestors for help with being and becoming what I am meant to be in this life. In answer to that, this dream is telling me to let go of all that's preconceived and unconceived, keep myself as a vessel clean, unencumbered, and sacred for manifestation to come.

The healing of my feminine continues...

A Stormy Forecast

DREAM & DREAMWORK:

I have been waking up in the middle of the night for the last few days, after having what I felt to be long, convoluted dreams full of imageries that were difficult to describe once I’m back in this plane. At least that’s my excuse for not forcing myself to record them then and there, so by the morning they are usually quite evaporated. The impression I have been left with is one of great unrest, upheaval, emotional upset, of being uprooted like a younger person without time nor poise for reflection, driven here and there, just tossed about by the current of events. No harm ever come to me in the dreams, but the scenes around me were full of things macabre and ghoulish, the kind I imagine a bad hallucination would be like. Two things seem to press with more urgency on my waking consciousness.

One is the theme of life and death, not life or death but life-and-death as one ‘thing’, though the flashes of scenes I do recollect are ones of death and dying, often of animals. I was bereft and heartbroken as well as shaken up. I remember most vividly one of holding the limp head of a dying animal (not an earthly one that I recognize but not alien looking, kind of a cross between a bird and a beaver or otter) in my hand, looking at the light fading from its eyes, and not knowing what to do with my grief and distress except to keep it to myself. It did not occur to me to wonder about a cause of death. And yes, there was powerlessness, but it was accepted without special notice or rancour; there was no railing against the hands of fate.

I have accepted life-and-death as two parts of a whole, the parts observable in their states, but interdependent of each other for existence. You can separate an Oreo into icing and cookie, but each part does not an Oreo make.

So what is this feeling of shock, grief, fear, and deeply stirring disturbance? I have the feeling what was happening in the dream was bigger than me, my concerns for my self, but not on an apocalyptic scale. There was still a sense of some kind of boundary close by. This turmoil then, is or will affect those close to me, my personal relationships (though not my family), my spirituality and my worldview, my associations and my home life, my work as well as my livelihood. Parts of these parts of my life are dying or will die, as a series of small animal deaths. And there will be grief and mourning, heartbreak at the suffering and loss, but it will not overwhelm me.

Another piece of the dream is surfacing as I wrote the last sentence... I am in a half-lit room and suddenly notice that the floor is flooded. The water is half way up my calves. Immediately I want to call for help (to a plumber most likely) but a man nearby said something must be blocking the drain and went to investigate. In a moment he returns and says it was blocked but he had just cleared it. The water is receding as he speaks.

So the emotional overflow will find an outlet, with help from my Animus.

The head of the dying animal looked wet, as I recall now, like a beaver’s or otter’s, but I did not feel the wetness in my hand. However, it is the death of my intellectual (bird-like, of the air) and emotional (water animal-like, wet) attachments that I have witnessed in the dream, culminating and emerging into my life in the near future.

The other of the 2 themes is the sense of unrest, a kind of rootlessness forced upon me by circumstances beyond my control, as if there is a war going on in the immediate background, and I am buffeted by the forces of whatever’s erupting from the earth. Although the power of destruction was immense, it did not feel like we were under attack by human enemies wielding military weapons. It was more as if the earth was throwing up, acting out, bursting forth from its depth, and a surface dweller like me could do nothing but run from one discharge to another, even knowing there is no place of safety.

But somehow this is but a personal apocalypse, not a global one. And I feel the same kind of fear as I did yesterday in my dreamwork, when I realized that the changes coming my way will mean changes in my relationships, the very few I still have, and I don’t want to lose them. I hear now from that fear what it is: the fear of being alone. Another ‘new’ fear that I would never have admitted into my consciousness, nicely disguised by my professed love of solitude.

What is at the bottom of this fear then?

I see myself, 7 or 8 y.o., huddled cross-legged in the dark, looking up at a light shining down on me, just big enough to encircle me, and I know it’s telling me that the light is always with me, has always been. I have seen this ‘scene’ many times before in visions and journeys and dreams, but have never felt the comfort it gives me now. It has always been the darkness and emptiness that dominated my attention. That light, my namesake, came into this world with me, will never leave me as even my closest and most cherished relationships sooner or later will.

I have the sudden insight that it was this light that was the ‘something’ in me, that told me to get up off of the kitchen floor that cold October night 10 years ago, and choose living over dying.

So courage, my self; tempest ahead, but I have over me my light, my animus beside me, my shadow sister in the lead, and all of us lovingly held in the palm of the Divine.

Gold Mountain Leads to The Middle Way

I am in a queue for a bus. The corral was a big zig-zagging of gradually inclining concrete path with metal railing. It is an interior space but well lit. There were 3 people ahead of me, a woman, then in front of her a couple. Everyone is around 30, including me. The couple stopped, as if they were discussing which way to go, so the woman ahead of me walked past them. I followed suit. Now we are at the front of the line. Then we had to make a decision, because the ‘path’ ended at another path which went north or south, right or left – it is no longer a ‘mono-path’. I knew that north is 3rd Line, and south is 7th Avenue, in between the 2 is Richmond (I assume, Richmond Hill). We didn’t know which way to go.

DREAMWORK:

In my 30s I did have a big decision to make about which way to go, though at that time circumstances, namely my illness, was very much the compelling force that drove me in the direction I finally went. The 2 options were: Life, or Death. The person I am now would scoff and say, well of course, what kind of question is that??! But the person, or the wreck that I was had to seriously ponder that question, barely alive was I. Living had become synonymous with pain so it was not at all clear to me why I should choose life. But something in me knew, a tiny spark in the ashes...

So I have been guided since then, along this ‘mono-path’ which is one of healing, from the inside out. The path was well-made by others before me, easy to follow and travel, brightly lit and safe, with only a gentle incline. All I had to do was keep myself going. And now I’ve come to another fork in the road, which appears to be 2 opposing directions yet again. I am following my shadow, the woman ahead of me, and she leads me past ‘relationships’ (the couple in front). A small knot of fear begins to converge in my belly, because I think I know what this means, that I have to put my personal relationships behind this calling ahead of me, whatever it may be. It is true I have always put my relationships, especially with my love/life mate, before everything else, although I was not conscious of that until this moment. I would have denied it actually, had anyone asked me, even to myself. So I see where this fear is from. Nevertheless, I know that I must go. The question is, which way?

The answer that comes, surprisingly, also not surprisingly, is neither of the 2. Instead, I have to find a way to get to Richmond Hill, the place in the middle that has yet no path I can see. I have to find the Middle Way. I knew this, of course, amongst the thousand things that I think I ‘know’. But the time has come to make it my priority, put it on my altar and pray for guidance. Considering the Middle Way brings to mind what I have been toying with, turning the box over and over in my hands, not sure whether I should open it. Inside the box is Dao, also Zen, neither of which I know much about, but have had the feeling for some time now that I ought to.

Richmond Hill (and also Richmond, BC) is the manifested equivalent of the Gold Mountain to the Chinese (why it is mostly populated by the Chinese, most of whom are already well-off), alluding to prosperity and abundance of wealth, as well as prestige, status, order, structure, safety in number and community. To hold ‘Richmond Hill’ or Gold Mountain as the middle way means first of all, shedding my prejudice against the money and power mongering image I have of people who align themselves with material pursuits, which I equate with the residents of Gold Mountain. The message to me is not whether I ought or ought not to become one of them, but that I let go of seeing it in black-and-white, me-or-you, friend-or-foe, absolutes (again). The Middle Way is neither way, but being able to see both, and hold both at the same time and space, without conflict.

I have known for some time now that to fulfill my purpose in this life I will have to come out of seclusion into the big wide world out there, from which I’ve retreated to do my inner work. Some part of me is sad that a life of solitary contemplation is not meant for me this time around, at least not on the horizon, but I know that my greatest challenge in this life is in overcoming my difficulties in being in the world, being earthbound, being in the body so ‘I’ can manifest. And the way for me, happens to be Dao, which is my ancestral legacy but unfortunately ended with the conversion to christianity with my grandparents. I pray for help now to find the thread and follow the best I can.

Just realized something: the voice with which my body speaks to me is sometimes much softer than the ‘yes or no’ I demand of it... for example, when I ask whether I’ve gotten everything I ought to from my dream, I am expecting a yes or no answer, which I get, probably because I forced it out of my expectation, but then a detail from the dream would immediately follow to tell me that it hasn’t been looked at yet, which in effect answers my question, and more.

Stop jumping to yes or no answers. Wait quietly for the answer, if it should come.

My Mother, My Ex-Husband

My friend Sue was in my dream, but the details are lost. Then I was in the same house as my ex-husband, he had just gotten out jail or someplace. I’m not sure whether the place belonged to me or the 30-something y.o. man who was also in the scene, but there was clutter everywhere, and the room was dimly lit. I started to put things away then realized that there was no point. Either we were leaving soon, or my ex-husband was. He got into bed and even though it was a big enough bed for 2, I really did not want to get into the same bed with him. I turned and walked away...

DREAMWORK:

Sue, as my shadow, featured previously in another dream in the same role – the self-immured, aloof, observer. I think of how much effort I put into creating distance between me and other people, how I’m always afraid to lose space, time, focus, opportunity, etc. to others. What should I do with this deep fear of loss, so much the cause of my social anxiety? Again, I come back to the knowing that I HAVE ENOUGH, I will always have enough of all that I need, if I am present to my body and follow its self-management instructions. Carry on with this ‘obsession’ with body-presence, it is good for me.

Although I don’t have memory of reactivity to the noisy drama and tension that must have gone on in my childhood, my mother being a bigger-than-life, louder-than-most, wannabe-matriarch who always had to have the last word, given my vulnerable nature it must have been disturbing at the very least. There would have been no escape of course, and little reprieve since it wouldn’t have been possible to protest against so much fierceness. I must have learned to shut down and shut out the world with my books, or art, or daydreams, to survive the tumult around me. This remains my primary coping mechanism.

It made me cherish solitude and silence, and I try to create oases of peaceful contemplation and quiet bliss whenever I can in my life. But the fear I do not need. How do I heal the breach in my vulnerability from the effects of a shrieking, hysterical and overpowering mother?

Well, the screaming is a way of scaring off any potential enemy for the banshee, a tactic employed by many animals when they feel threatened. A lion roars, a snake hisses, a dog barks. It is passive aggression, a show of retaliative power before having to trot out bigger guns (if you have them) and get actively violent. So it is with my mother.

But I have known this before, and it hasn’t relieved my terror. I remember once, during a trance-inducing demo by a Peruvian shaman, I nearly flipped out with sudden rage and terror as he came closer and closer to me with his chanting and rattling that seemed to pierce my skin. I thought I would jump up and deck him if he came any closer. Afterward, other participants reported a profound and loving bliss they felt during the session, a feeling as if they were back in their mothers’ wombs. I felt in shock for quite some time.

It isn’t that I haven’t been held with tenderness by my mother as a child, I know I have, but there was also the other kind of embrace, the smothering, constrictive, and anger-driven kind that punched holes in the walls of my placidly trusting psyche. An emotional overwhelm repressed into an unconscious trigger. I close my eyes and feel a knot in my solar plexus, where I usually feel fear, but this goes deeper into the body, in the intestines. As I release the knot I can feel the energy radiate, mostly downward, and a few throbbing cramps in the pelvic floor, just left of centre. I hold my belly open, and keep letting it go, until my insides are calm.

I like this intentional holding open and letting go feeling in my body. Perhaps this is a better way for me to ground and connect to the earth, to myself, to my body, than just dropping my awareness down into my belly. I tend to do the touch-and-dash, not staying down long enough to deepen all the way.

SLOOOWWW. DOOOWWNN.

P.S. will check from time to time and see if trigger and fear of loss of personal space are gone.

~~~

My ex-husband, a part of my animus/masculine I am still rejecting. I don’t hate or resent him anymore (or do I?) but I don’t want to be anywhere near him either. What repels me?

He represents an unpleasant time in my past, one that I’m only too eager to put behind me forever. Clearly there is something still needing attention there...

I’ve just recently let my previously condemned masculine out of the jail I thought he deserved, and I have also made a commitment to nurture and take him back in to myself. I am not doing this wholeheartedly, for I cannot find genuine affection for him, if I ever did before. And if it isn’t shame or guilt that prevents me, what is in the way of me accepting this part of me that he embodies?

I see him as somewhat immature and under-developed, like a primitive being, all brawn but no brain. In other words, not as sophisticated and evolved as ‘I’ am. I would be ashamed to admit this is a part of myself. My arrogance can hardly permit such undifferentiated oafishness in my self-image. Okay, so there is a part of me that has been denied growth and shunned like a leper... my instinctual self. The ancient, reptilian drive that is entirely earth-bound, wired for competency and survival in this world. The body-centred drive that knows innately how to do things, fix what’s broken, build according to need, hunt and gather material, with complete self-assurance and body presence. I had forgotten that this was something I relied totally on him for, and once again, poised to throw the baby out with the bath water. It would appear that Judge Judy Baby-Out-With-Bath-Water is very fast with the gavel...

I need to embrace the Neanderthal, the Instinctive Man in me, but something holds me back still... Forgiveness. My marriage to him had felt like a disgrace to myself, because I had done it against my true Self. I had used it as a ticket out of the confines of my family. I need to ask for his forgiveness, soul to soul, and for having judged him so cruelly. I go back into the dream, to the bed where he was sleeping, and I wake him to apololgize for the harm I have done him. He chuckles softly and tells me that he knows all of this already, and he does not blame me for it. It always takes two, doesn’t it? I feel a bit sheepish still, but I think now that we can be friends, soul to soul.

A Warning from the Great Feminine

DREAM:

I am with Diane and 2 other native women on their land. We are at a table and I am very curious to know how a certain game is played with 2 dice. I wanted them to show me. But Diane said, “No, Judy, please don’t.” She has an addiction to it.

DREAMWORK:

This is about my addiction to risk-taking, to going with a whim so as to avoid doubt. It is this doubt that is the weak link, the shaky joint in my foundation. (this brings to mind the young man swinging his sledgehammer at the concrete foundation from my dreamwork yesterday...) It is not risk-taking with clarity and discernment and wisdom, but out of an addiction to stimulation and pleasure in order to avoid the opposite, pain. Doubt, is a painful place for me to be in. If I keep going, keep changing the scenery, keep the action happening, my senses preoccupied, I’ll never have painful decision to make, never have to clean up the mess I’ve left behind, never be subjected to the pins and needles of boredom.

But I know what stillness is now, a whole world inside without pollution of thought, the clear blue sky of vision, and the earthy solace of true knowing. Yet I have one foot in the fast boat of hedonism still...

An uncomfortable feeling is telling me that the 2 dice I saw in the dream has an important message. They are the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers of muscle-testing, something I do all the time. It has become a game I play with myself to stave off doubt, because I do not remember or bother to slow down on my chase for the answer, to drop into my body first.

Diane Longboat, Leading Earth Woman, has brought me this warning from the Great Feminine. I will heed her words and I am grateful.

P.S. funny how I just wrote a poem called "How To Meet Your Body" first thing this morning... http://thehealingspiral.blogspot.com/2010/09/poem-how-to-meet-your-body.html

Mirror, Mirrors in the Hall...

Saturday, September 18, 2010

DREAM: I am with A. in public, we are a couple but I do not allow myself to show as much of my affection for him as I feel. He looks pretty serious too and wears something like a trench coat. I touched his leg at one point and it was like steel cables under his pantleg, as if there was no flesh, just a hardness that will not give in at all...

DREAMWORK:

Here is a side of my masculine that is still undercover, hidden from me, the face of cold, impersonal, aloofness. Yet I know it is just a cover-up, that underneath is a badly hurt but passionate heart, an exuberant spirit which dared to plunge into love, and gave unstintingly. Under this cloak of dark mystery, he is hiding an even darker truth: malice, jealousy, and vengeance, hatred hardened into unyielding indifference. Where in me is this part of myself? I want very much to love him, but I cannot reach him.

It is a dead part in me, and I cannot bring it back to life. I can only let it go. Yet I cling to it... Why? Because I still love the grim melancholic dark knight in pain of my own projection, because the feminine in me still harbours her not-so-secret desire to ‘fix’ him, to melt him with her love, to change him, for this will be her power over him. Ah, it is my narcissism.

How do I let go of it then? My body tells me that I have to shatter the image, but I do not feel that I can. I’m afraid it’ll hurt too much, as if it is a piece of my flesh I have to excise. I suppose it is, but knowing that does not lessen the fear. I suppose too, that I do not really understand why I have to lose him, he still feels so real to me.

Why this attachement then? Because what I need to do with a projection is to reel it back into myself, from which it was displaced long ago, when I needed someone to love. But that was a projection too, when I stopped loving myself. So if I bring him back into myself, will I love myself then? Yes.

Something still resists in me, for I love seeing the image of him, tantalizingly out of reach. What is in this gap between us that feels so full of dark meaning to me, a melting pot of pain and pleasure like molten bittersweet chocolate, an aphrodisiac to me (I had no idea this is in me!)

I feel like I am standing in a hall of mirrors, panic and frustration rising... don’t know what to do... my body is refusing to help me for some reason, a condition I have not met...

Omigod I have not surrendered to my body! So caught up in this sticky, messy web. I surrender to you now, my body, I shall be quiet and empty and wait...

I see myself as a young man wielding a sledgehammer. He is shirtless, in khaki shorts and boots, a bandana ‘hat’ on his head. He begins to swing the hammer into the mirrors, with just enough force to bring them down. His boots crunching on the glittering shards as he moves on to the next one, until none is left standing.

It is a bit hard to believe, even for me, but that compelling attraction that tied me to the image of my dark knight is not there anymore. His face seems very small and far away, and I don’t feel like recalling it anyway. It is turning away and there is just the dark space of distance.

I had no idea I was so spellbound, although the story of Narcissus should have clued me in, but as they say, you can’t see yourself. And as was foretold in that story, looking in a reflective surface only made it worse, fatally so.

But it is not over, my body informs me, there’s the young man to consider now. He is the much purer energy liberated from all that cover-up, and he’s ready to do some work. Arms akimbo, feet planted, he’s just waiting for instructions, but I’ll let my body be the instructor, and I’ll rest for now...

P.S. Actually I just had a glimpse of him taking the sledgehammer to a concrete foundation, and I just can’t watch anymore...

Three Coins

DREAMBIT: My sister and I are picking up as we are about to leave a restaurant after a family meal, and I see 2 very small silver coins and one a bit bigger that have fallen under the table and chairs. There is the same engraved head on each of them, though I do not recognize who it was, just that it was a man’s face. I had seen another set, with a different face I think, earlier in the dream. I think they were my brother’s. I ask my sister why I don’t have any? She says that they were given to them by our grandparents (my grandmother was alive in the dream), but because I don’t go to church anymore, I wasn’t there when they were given out. I wanted them too.

DREAMWORK:

This is a dream about how I feel disinherited by the mainstream collective – wow, I never thought of it like that – because I do not conform to its beliefs and conditions and expectations, I miss the chance to collect what is due to me. They do not actively reject me though, I am the one who rejected them, made myself absent. I am the prodigal son. But even though I do not regret leaving them, I do not hate anyone either. I know in my heart that they still love me and remember me as one of their own. It is only my own belief that I AM SEPARATE. In the bigger picture I am always part of the tribe, no matter how far away I go from it, or what I do to denounce its ways.

I belong to a family and tribe far bigger than my kin and their church and community, this I know, but my tendency to (again!) throw the baby out with the absoluteness of black-and-white is what disinherits me from my legacy, my birthright, and entitlement. The world did not say to me, if you leave us and do not follow our rules, you will not get anything from us – you will be disowned! I assumed, out of my own fear, that punishment in the form of banishment (because I abandoned them first) would be the consequence. But the world simply went on, old and wise, it has seen much, including the messes that we have made in it.

The world is not guilty of dispossessing me; I cut myself off from it to make a point, but I impaled myself on that point. I recall now, that I had done this once before, 10 years ago, on a smaller scale, but for no less extreme of a reason. I was certain that I would be disowned by my family when I left my marriage, divorce for no just cause was not only unacceptable but a disgrace to the family. But it never happened. After the histrionics died down and the dust settled, we all went about picking up the pieces in our lives, and life went on. In fact, we have become closer since I took on healing as a priority, and as it is true that you do not heal without it happening to your family too, no matter where they are, we have seen much healing in our family, including, quite necessarily, our relationship as a whole.

Oh me of little faith that I did not apply this lesson to how I have been relating to my bigger family, the world...

Perhaps I had this very healing dream because of this talk I went to last night, and what it brought up for me... see section below.

P.S. the coins are a legacy from my family, gifts bequeathed to us from our lineage (funny how I was just half-joking to Michael yesterday that my family hasn’t given me much interesting material to write a memoir with, after reading about a Chinese-Canada writer who just published a memoir which involved visits to her villages in China where her parents came from, and how her father came to Toronto to work in the Chinese laundry probably as indentured labour, etc. etc., when my dad was just a plastics engineer who worked for DuPont...)

The 2 smaller coins are actual financial inheritance though modest, but the larger coin which appeared apart from the other 2 is the true legacy. It is the gift given each of us to develop, to use, to expand as the purpose of our life, what our heart truly desires, and what we are in pursuit of.
___________

Tossed and turned in the night again... it occurred to me that I’ve had tension in my head for over a day now, then this morning I woke up to rain and the tension’s gone... so it wasn’t psychological after all ☺. I tend to believe there’s a non-physical cause for everything – though that does not exclude a physical one – headaches, car accidents, cancer, leaves falling... at the very least, these things all came into being because of intention.

At The Introduction to the Secret of the Golden Flower last night, Sonam Gayatso, the Tibetan Buddhist Lama who gave the talk showed us a book called “The Self-Aware Universe: how Consciousness creates the material world” by Amit Goswami, in which he postulates that matter came into being because Consciousness ‘willed’ it, and not the other way around. My body though, does not agree. It tells me that both Consciousness and Matter existed at the same time from the very beginning, and like yin and yang, they played into and off of each other. Consciousness is masculine, and Matter is feminine. Our mistake is, as usual, that we see them as 2 separate things, paired perhaps, but still 2 distinct ‘entities’ in our minds. In the same way we see an arm as distinct from the rest of the body, not convinced that it is in direct communication with many other parts, or that it has a relationship with our psyche far more intimate than we realize.

If an arm is cut off and lies cold on the floor, is it an arm anymore? It may look like one and feel like one, but it can no longer function or move or heal itself the way it could when it was Body.

But, did the tension first happened in my head when the barometric pressure became too much, or did it happen because of that AND because I was already driving myself too much to achieve, not to mention I am pre-menstrual, thus creating a susceptibility or weakness for the external pressure to get into my head? Homeopathy makes much of this pre-conditioning, as the terrain that diseases can take hold of in an organism. When conditions are right, things happen, whether we can see them or not. Perhaps that’s when we call it synchronicity, or bewildering tragedy when what manifests is not what we desire.

I’ve begun a practice of simply checking to see what’s left on my ‘doorstep’ each morning, and this is what I found today.

A Dream for Michael

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

On a ship’s deck, I see the captain standing there, a good-looking man in his 30s or 40s, serious but not mean. He is looking straight ahead into the distance. His hair was blondish brown and longish. Beside him was a small boy huddled in a squat on top of a section of a tree stump, like a round block of wood, just to the left of the captain. He was hunched so I could only see the top of his flaxen head. It was not safe where he was so I went around behind him and picked him up, stump and all, and carried him over to the right of the captain. I remember seeing the captain’s name ‘in print’ in my mind’s eye; it was William St__rn, and where the space was, was a symbol for passageway, or bridge, or viaduct, shaped like 2 square brackets but turned outward. I ‘knew’ the letters that were supposed to go there were “ea” or “ia” – Stearn or Stiarn.

DREAMWORK:

I talked to Michael about this dream, seeing that it was meant for him. (A few days ago I had asked whether there was anything I ought to do to help Michael with what ails him – physically, it is the crippling pain in his right knee, and the guidance was that I ought to dream a dream for him.) In the telling I realized a couple of things:

First, the captain’s last name - Stearn, and my impression of him – stern, which is also the rear of the ship where the rudder is. (Why wasn’t his name Stern, I wonder? Because that’s not exactly how he is, even though he looked that way?? He is what he seems...?)

Second, the boy is on a tree stump – he is stumped, blocked, hence the resigned or withdrawn, and inert posture.

Now I drop the dream into my body...

This is the voyage of Michael’s life, the way he sees and feels it. Alone in the big, wide ocean, alone with the responsibility of a ship with no one except the little boy (they are closely related somehow). He has set his sight on higher things, and he is very preoccupied by them, even though at the moment he’s just standing there. He is man with much on his mind and no time to lose. He does not feel he needs help, not having had any. He’s used to doing it alone. You can focus better alone. It isn’t that he doesn’t like or want the boy, he just doesn’t know what to do with him. He cannot find it in himself to communicate to the boy, for fear it brings out problems he can’t handle. He doesn’t like not knowing what to do.

The boy has pulled inside himself, there was nowhere else for him to go. He is also stuck, like the captain, trapped and incarcerated on his own little ship – except his is even smaller, only a stump of wood – in the middle of the cold, indifferent ocean. He wants his mother, he is only a little boy after all, that’s why he’s sulking, and that’s why he was on the left side of the captain. But that’s not what the captain can give him. He is a man, and what he can give the boy is mentorship, guidance and knowledge about the world, discipline, the confidence to do things, to build, to destroy, to hunt, to survive, and to protect what’s yours. How to steer your ship. That’s why I moved him to the right side. Perhaps I am to steer Michael to the ‘right’ side, the side of the good masculine, the Good Father.

This morning (2 days after this dream) I had the feeling that he ought to talk to someone about what troubles him. Someone who is meant to help him with it. I felt quite strongly it could be Sonam, a Tibetan Buddhist Monk who he met a few years ago and has much respect for.

But what about the symbol of the bridge or passageway in the middle of the captain’s last name?

It is indeed a passage he will pass through to get to ‘the other side’ of this place where he feels trapped, stumped and blocked at. It cuts through the heart of the ‘sternness’ of his outlook of life, the joyless austerity and the inflexibility of discipline, and the barren isolation inside those walls where he is alone in his pain.

Lies I Tell Myself

I am in a house just visiting and I noticed that there seemed to be a lot of people, young adults, living there. I asked someone and she said there were 25 of them living there, on 3 floors. That’s 8 people a floor, I said, that’s a lot. They were okay with that, things seemd peaceful and orderly.
_____________

I don’t remember if this was in the same house, but I asked 2 of the girls if they wanted some help; they were each doing a chore or task. After a moment of thought, one of them said, I know what you can do, you can dig out Jennifer’s info and write it out on a card because we’re always calling her and have to keep looking for her info. I agreed to do that but then didn’t remember it until after I left.
____________

I was in the main chapel of a church, much like the one I grew up in as a child, and a funeral service had just concluded. A wedding was to take place immediately following, the wedding party was already there. I was a helper and wore a dress in the style of a very young girl – no waist with little puffy short sleeves – pink and so short it barely covered my ass. I was a bit concerned that my lace underwear was showing, the back was actually down below my cheeks. In the meantime I noticed amongst the wedding party standing up on stage was a girl whose lower legs were swollen and thick, almost elephantine, so I said I’ll go get a high stool for her to sit on. I found one to the side that was made entirely of clear acrylic, with a full back like a chair, but when I tested it out by sitting in it, I found that the right armrest was cracked. I ran to find something else. There was a sense of urgency and need to be of service because it was my duty.

DREAMWORK:

More numbers and more math! I really would like to know why and what they mean...

It means my dreams are becoming more precise and specific as to the messages they wish to impart to me... The house of my self is able to accept more people now than it used to. I am allowing more people to get ‘into’ me without my usual kneejerk reactivity to feelings of invasion and insufficiency of space for myself. Peace, order, and community are co-existing in me for the first time in a long time.
___________

My shadow sisters have something to tell me. Jennifer is the ‘pseudonym’ I use when I don’t want to tell people my real name. It’s something I hide behind to keep others out of my affairs, my life. It’s a lie. Most likely my shadow(s?) had tried to speak to me about the lies I tell many times before (always trying to look me up and reach me), to no avail, because I would acknowledge it but then shove it back down and forgot about it.

The worst thing about my lying is the lies I tell myself. This is always done out of fear.

I lie to myself that I can lose my padding of fat eating the way I do. (It’s spiritually caused, nothing physical...)

I lie to myself that I do not need love, passion, and ecstasy the way I did when I was younger. (Again, deny the physical.)

I lie to myself that I do not fear death, only the dying. (Somehow, I am denying the physical here as well, even though I’m not sure how...)

I think I get it: I lie about my body, my body’s needs, the misuse and abuse I subject my body to, and worst of all, I deny its expression, as if it doesn’t deserve to.

How do I stop lying? How do I balance the fear? What am I afraid of?? Pain and suffering, of course. The original wound of Type 7. Once again, it is simply critical for me to connect and ground to my body, to the earth, to the physical and the manifested plane. Is this also something I ought to ask my ancestors to help me with? YES, another emphatic affirmative from my body. That makes 3 things on my wishlist for the Ghost Dance:

1) ask for help with recovering my selfhood: self-confidence, self-worth, self-assurance
2) ask for help with fear of aging and dying and death
3) ask for help with fear of pain and suffering

In fact, all 3 can be under the umbrella wish of “ask for help with grounding and connecting to my body, to the earth, to Life, to manifestation. It is a tall order, as tall as I’ve ever made one, but I feel sure my ancestors can handle it.
___________

The last part of my dream is usually the darkest and least pleasant, I sense this one is no exception...

The funeral (a rite of passage for the many small deaths I’ve died to so far in my life) is over, and the marriage (of my masculine and feminine) is taking place on sacred ground. I am the self-designated helper and I have made it my responsbility to make sure everything works out right. Except I am dressed like a child (immature), looking like an ass (yes, pun, sadly), and acting like a fool (trying to please). Worse, sitting on a transparent ‘high’-chair with a broken arm. The image is, as it was meant to be, painfully clear to me. It says, get off your lie of a high horse (or throne), your self-importance is apparent to me (your true Self), and stop trying to help because you think it’s a noble thing to do, because you need to have something to do, to control, to be acceptable, to feel useful, to feel worthy. Best you get out of your own way and let the divine take over, you are on sacred ground already, after all.

The bridesmaid with the heavy, swollen calves? She didn’t need my help, she was showing me the help I need: anchor myself as if I have heavy legs, settle down and stop flitting around so the sacrament of marriage can take place, for goodness’ sake!

Try and be still, and wait in solitude, like Kafka said, for the world to offer itself to you.

p.s. I should change the name of this blog to “Diary of the Recalcitrant Dreamer”... I hang my head in shame, and vow to be more still...
_____________

“Do not even listen, simply wait, be still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you, to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” ~ Franz Kafka

Feminine Healing & The Ghost Dance

DREAM:

I have my period and had just changed my napkin in the bathroom. Everything was normal except the ‘blood’ was a yellow-brown colour, and had 3 thin strips of what I assumed to be sloughed off uterine tissue on it, but lying crosswise and pretty much parallel to each other. I folded it up and put it in a garbage can outside, and tried to wedge it under something else so it wouldn’t open up.

I was amongst a moving group of adults but I can’t remember where we were going. A woman in her fifties with grey hair and glasses said that her food (a sandwich? in a ball shape and inside a string bag) smelled off, but a man (her husband?) said that she had just been to the dentist (meaning her smell and taste would be off). She appeared to give in but said to me, “If you don’t see me for ages and ages, come look for me.” – something like that – meaning if the food was indeed bad and she gets sick or dies. I said, “Ages and ages??!!! Please!”, meaning that she’s exaggerating, that it wouldn’t take that long.

DREAMWORK:

It occurs to me that this is another discharge dream (at least the first part) like the toilet dreams. So if the toilet dreams are about discharging everything that’s no longer of use to me – wastes – then this menstrual dream (I am a week from my next period) is about discharging what’s no longer useful from my womb – actually ‘shit’ from my womb – the centre of my creative and regenerative power, my connection to the Great Feminine.

I sense that it was some residue from my past of hatred and resentment for the masculine as well as the feminine (which on the physical level manifested as cysts and fibroid, amongst other things). For the first time in my adult life I can say honestly that I do not hate men nor resent being a woman anymore. The world isn’t mended yet where all of that’s concerned, but I can see and feel it now as what needs to be healed, not what needs to be hated, scorned, and rejected.

Ought I to understand what the 3 strips meant? Yes. They were ‘fallouts’ of a natural process, as with menstruation when the egg causes the uterus to swell and thicken into a ‘nest’ in the event fertilization occurs, a fetus can readily feel at home in it. When time is up and there is no fertilization, the uterus sheds the now ‘extra’ tissue of the nest – skin, blood, cells – and discharges it as menses. It signifies the potential of the feminine to create, that all of us, even men, carry within us the archetypal energy of creation. I digress...

3 pieces of nearly identical and parallel ‘fallouts’ from the seat of my creativity... something (or 3 things) that didn’t get ‘fertilized’ into being that has to do with my creativity... Are these potentials I knew about? Yes. Writing is one. Calligraphy is another (this one just dropped into my mind as if from nowhere). Singing is the last one. These are things I’ve always loved doing or felt very drawn to, though there are many others that I feel the same way about, these ones are different in the sense that I feel a certain level of confidence – an I CAN feeling, even though I don’t believe I am great at any of them. (I’m only starting to write again; I haven’t done calligraphy for decades; and my singing voice is reedy and untrained, yada yada...) There’s a kind of uplifting energy, instead of a shrinking back that I am more prone to. They are nearly identical ‘strips’ because they are all ways I can express my creativity, but why parallel? Because they can be manifested concurrently... I am getting a twitch that there’s more to the singing... it’s a specific kind of singing... it’s poetry that is sung (funny how I just came across the book title “Song Yet Sung” by James McBride this morning), like Rumi’s. Now I am beginning to feel a bit intimidated... like this is all too much too big for my little self to accomplish in one lifetime.

Writing, calligraphy, and sung poetry seem to converge as an image of devotional life to me, not something I feel I know much about from the inside, but has a lot of appeal as well as a certain amount of mystery, and needless to say, trepidation. My creativity is to manifest as a devotional way of life. This feels like such a huge revelation to me, yet so familiar, all the pieces had already attracted my attention deeply and recurrently for most of my life, and only just now come together into one piece. I cannot see the entire picture of it yet, but feel the possibility of it very strongly in my blood, especially in my arms and legs.

I suppose my lack of confidence in myself to manifest these things is why I tried to hide (deny) their evidence in the garbage can in the dream.

Is it for me then, to ask my ancestors for help with recovering my selfhood at the upcoming Ghost Dance? A very clear and strong YES.

Next part: I am with the collective on the journey of life, we are all going in the same direction. The woman is my shadow, in the guise of someone a bit older, informed, and conservative. She suspects what she’s about to eat – to take in – is rotten, a potential poison to her wellbeing. When in fact, the doubt and suspicion are the poison to my wellbeing, hidden in my shadow and presented (or misrepresented) to me as a reliable, wiser, learned (because she’s older) source. The voice of authority and concern and “this is for your own good”. But my masculine pointed out the cause, the distorted sensory perception due to the effect of anesthesia. Your senses are numbed as well as the pain. So whatever I was killing (and avoiding) pain for, is throwing off my ability to discern and judge what’s danger and what’s not.

What is that that I fear the pain of, that I’ve shoved down into the shadow? Aging, is the answer that comes to me, another surprise. I am afraid of aging, of confronting the negative images of aging. I have to admit now to myself, that this is so, and I don’t like it. I know there are many wonderful things about getting older, as I can attest to myself, but my ego is not convinced that slowly falling apart is a ‘good’ thing. Just a couple of days ago I was telling Michael about how I feel sad seeing old people standing as if totally lost for a long time in the aisles of Loblaws, so lost they can’t even ask a question, their mouths hanging open and eyes huge like an animal frozen in headlights. And that I want to be dead before that happens to me.

Do they still enjoy life when they’re like that? Is there enough left in there to register much? I don’t know. My grandfather who will be 98 this year has always been terrified that he will lose his mental faculties this way, yet he is afraid of death, of dying alone. Clearly I have this fear of my mortality too, even though I would swear to anyone that I do not. I would say, as many would, that I am afraid of the pain and suffering leading up to death, but not of death itself. But even if I could be assured of a quick, painless death, would I meet it with perfect aplomb when it comes? I’m not so sure now... What is it that we are afraid of about death exactly? Perhaps it is the ‘untethering’ of everything that we know as ourselves from our body, the only one that we know, to be freed, yes, but also cast out into a great unknown, like an astronaut whose line with the mothership has snapped.

We are, at least I am, afraid to be totally lost, and disconnected, like those old people I saw, from the Life that has given birth to me, nurtured me, and supported me all of my life. To go to what? And where? What if there isn’t a loving warm white light to welcome me after I cross over? What if there is just a big NOTHING, and I am forever cut loose, on my own, in an eternal lifeless and deathless existence, looking forward only to insanity?? Nihilism, at any age is not cool.

Whew. This is another piece I need help from my ancestors with, emergent exactly 2 weeks before the Ghost Dance, a ceremonial dance to honour our ancestors, roots and traditions, to re-member as a way of healing and becoming more whole as human beings, as people in community.

But what’s with the ball shaped food in a string bag? The word that popped up when I dropped the image into my body is ‘bolus’. According to the Encyclopedia Britannia Online, a bolus is food that has been chewed and mixed in the mouth with saliva. The term bolus applies to this mixture of food and solutions until they are passed into the stomach.
So pre-chewed and partially digested food, the kind that animal mothers sometimes give to their babies. This food, to me, is truth. Food that is already partially broken down so it’s easier for me to assimilate. It is complex food made simpler, but because it seems so simple I suspected it as good for me. As I recall now, the string bag was suspended as if in mid-air, as if from heaven. I see, manna from heaven. Simple, nutritious, easily digestible food from heaven. Wholesome, and freely given. Always enough and not more. I am being provided for, yet I do not trust what I am given.

“ages and ages”... was that pointing to the ‘aging’ issue I didn’t know I have, or something more?

It has to do with what I stuffed into my shadow, again. Aging, and death. More specifically, the mortal fear of death. I’ll go back up to the paragraph which ended with my grandfather’s fear of death... Have to revisit that point, because I see now that I’ve squirmed my way out of facing that again, as I’ve always done... probably why my shadow in the dream told me to come look for her if she disappears, that is, if I deny her existence again. I scoffed at her seeming exaggeration, because I have been paying active attention to this work, the shadow material in me that need healing, and I will not let myself off the hook if I can help it, not for long anyway.

5-Stall Toilet Dream

DREAM: Another toilet dream... a 5-stall filthy, disgusting one...

DREAMWORK: Well, it is true that I had to go pee very badly in the night, and my encounter at the public washroom yesterday at the beach was rather unpleasant, but the dream also had something else to tell me... the toilets, stalls, and floor were so vile (at one point I was actually on the floor for some reason, how I managed not to get any on me was a miracle that only dreams are allowed) that desperate to go as I was, there was NO WAY TO GO... There are that kind of blockages in my life that I have not cleared, in 5 areas, to be exact.

1) Food:
a. Food I should not eat – coffee (iced or otherwise), ice cream (soy or otherwise), oranges, wheat product, potato chips, salmon (this was a surprise),
b. Food I should eat – white fish, oysters (!), mineral complex liquid, silica (tissue salt)
2) Sleep: 11pm to 8am + nap if necessary – sleep on couch occassionally
3) Work: the block is in not being able to stay with a job or task, because of:
a. Distraction – I can be distract by 6 different things at once when I’m doing something already. There’s a fear that if I don’t chase them down, nail them down even in part, I will lose them. Fear of losing exciting opportunities, so I stuff myself. A lovely 7 trait. I need to SURRENDER CONTROL TO THE DIVINE, and hold the simple peace and trust that all will be taken of.
b. Inferiority – believing that I’m not good enough for the job, therefore either shrink back from it, or resort to pretending that I know how to do it when I don’t, instead of being upfront and ask for more information or training. I ought to choose work that I know I am good at, that I have a gift for, and be honest and upfront about work that are not my strength. Express my feelings about it so no false expectation is set up from the start; ask for assistance and clarification. Most of all, accept myself for doing the best I can, and that is good enough. Smile from my heart.
4) ????: for some reason I am not to know this one yet...
5) Self loathing: I didn’t realize that I still hate myself... quite this much... things that I do not accept about myself, things that I am ashamed of... things of the Shadow...
a. I hate that I am a shrinking violet, not speaking up or stepping forward when I really want to
b. I hate that I am short and fat in the wrong places and flat-chested and flat-footed – I have problems relating to my body
c. I hate that I lied, cheated, stole, and still have the potential to do so

But when I was lying on the floor I did not get dirty... GET GROUNDED! The body, the material, the physical – manifest, actualize, realize!

A New Status Quo

DREAM: that I am in a camp for training of some kind, and my mother (looked like her too) was one of the people in charge there, although she was wearing her nightgown. I am writing a test that’s like a glossy magazine or booklet, and couldn’t remember the answers to most of the questions even though I knew that I knew them. When I saw my mother I said, “what’s the point of knowing these numbers, they are useless!”, then I threw the booklet down and stormed off. I don’t remember if I said this to her or just thought it to myself, but I felt that the way spirituality is at the Fire and never tests you was a far better way. The light was dim in the dream.

DREAMWORK:

Of course, I wish my mother had taught me about the measure of real self-worth and I did not have to pass tests to be considered acceptable by society. But I bought into the glossy, colourful marketing and alluring promises of status quo, only to find that I’ve grown small from the conditioning fed to me like mother’s milk. I’ve become disenchanted with the way we have enslaved ourselves to masters of our own making, numbers and values and bottom lines that we have to live up to or we are worthless in our own eyes.

I still carry some bitterness and resentment about this ‘damage’. I still feel like a victim. And I've still got one foot stuck in that trap of seeking social approval and validation. I am still angry at myself for all of the above.

I have found healing from being with the people at the Fire, being in community with them, in the moment-to-moment ordinariness of daily life. Together, we are building a new status quo, one that does not require you to be chopped up into pieces, weighed and measured and squeezed into a mould. For the first time in a long time (not since I played in highschool bands) I want to be with people living and working and serving communally. I felt belonged and accepted and loved, even though I’ve done little. No one was measuring me or testing me. This I have not found anywhere else in my life.

This dream solidifies all of this and brings it upfront and centre for me, this truly great healing in my life. I have much to be grateful for.

My Body Knows Best!

DREAM: I am working in an ad agency and we are all gathered around a table (again!) for a meeting. There were many of us and it was a tight squeene. One of the young guys was the boss and he was calling out names, as if he doesn’t know who everyone is. He called my name and I squeezed myself forward so I could show myself. I don’t remember who, but someone informed him that I was a part-timer, implying that that’s why he doesn’t know me. I looked like a young girl with a sweet, fresh face and short pixie hair, a bit shy but with a direct gaze. Later, I found some hanging displays of who’s-who of the principals of the company, pictures and names of them. I browsed through them. I only remember seeing men.

I am shopping in a store and came to the cosmetic and accessories aisle. It was quite narrow and already packed with people. I tried to go down nevertheless. The place was brightly lit with artificial light, and everything looked bleached.

I am sitting on the toilet pulling off toilet paper, which looked like regular paper folded into tiny pleats and dyed a deep red. I pulled off too much and decided to rip it into small sections, but it was difficult finding the ends because the whole thing was messed up. I made one rip anyway. Then I tried to roll up what was left on the roll, although it wasn’t much. It was like toilet paper but also dyed a deep red. Then I realized the end of my skirt has fallen in, so I pulled it up, but with too much force and I splashed myself. It was even in my lips and tasted salty, that’s all. It looked like melted butter or ghee. I thought I would just strip down and put everything in the washing machine outside. Cindy was walking by.

DREAMWORK:

I’m still having that fractious feeling of the last few days, unsettled, scrambled inside, as if something is wrong with my writing and what I’m doing day-to-day. I feel tired after writing and it doesn’t give me that good feeling that I used to get from writing. It feels like effort and much less enjoyable. My body agrees that I am using my head too much, even though I had said I would let my body do the dreamwork, I hadn’t completely. So I will now. I will also go back and do that with dreams of the last few days that I haven’t worked on.

This is the collective of my creativity, each a different manifestation, and there are many. I don’t know them all. The young girl is what I am manifesting now. She is just starting out, part-time, but full of promise, just waiting to grow into herself. The principals were all men because it is the masculine in all of us that leads, initiates, and goes out into the world. I was a bit timid and humbled in the dream, but felt I belonged, and happy to be part of the group, ready to do the work.

Next part: Deep down inside I am still buying into superficial cover-ups to make myself more attractive, believing that sex and beauty still sells. What I did not realize is that in the cold, harsh light of the world of artifice, everyone looks dead and hopes to deceive otherwise, but no one is.

I’ve got to let that go, that belief that others won’t like or accept me if I don’t look good enough, that I have to look for ways to contrive and deceive and entice. I let go of that fear now, and I welcome the expansiveness and loving feeling of knowing I am good and beautiful and loved by all, just as I am. Uncover, and let my light shine through.

Next part: The mess of toilet paper that weren’t toilet paper is how I feel inside. I’ve pulled so much, too much, out of my head, my dreams, ideas, beginnings of trains of thought, lists of to-do’s and to-try’s. It’s just a big jumbo of a tangled disorder. It is deep red because I had put a lot of passion and love into it, but now it’s out of control. This creative output was supposed to be an expressive, cleansing, and healing outlet for me, and it had started out this way. In my neglect I’ve become soiled with my own waste – what I no longer need – as things backfired on me. I backfired on myself.

Mercifully, there is a little bit of ‘real’ toilet paper left on the roll, deep red, as I still feel passionate about this work. I will now strip and wash and let go, and start over again. Cindy, guard and guardian of my spirit and rightful action, is always close by.

I need to write from my body, work from my body, decide and plan from my body, eat from my body, live from my body.

This way of working with my dreams, by taking each chunk of the dream whole into my body – down into my belly, so it doesn’t float up to my head – and just leaving it there to sit, and wait for what I need to know to rise up into my consciousness. I do not feel drained or tired, in fact, I feel alert and energized, and emptied out.

Higher Journey, Lower Self

DREAM:

I had won a chance to higher education elsewhere, and I have to make several transfers of vehicles to get there. The thing was I didn’t really know how to get there, which bus to take, etc. Jen (my assistant in Sunday School years ago) was there and willing to help me. She gave me several pieces of paper with numbers on them that were supposed to help get me there. I remember one divided into equal squares (12, 2 rows of 6, I think) with large bold black double digits printed in each square. I didn’t know what it meant exactly but felt it was important. But Jen only took me as far as she was going, and as she was leaving, she gave me a little smile and said, “You’ll be all right.”

Somehow I got on another bus and I wanted to ask the driver whether I’m going the right way. We stopped for a short break as it began to get dark, in an area where there were picnic tables. While I was getting off the bus I noticed I was wearing an outfit like a Catholic schoolgirl – white shirt and a mini plaid skirt. As it was getting chilly I put on a sweater.

The first guy I asked was young and small in stature, with a lively glint in his eyes and an abundance of sunny hair down to his shoulders, a braid beside each ear. I asked him for directions but he grabbed me and tried to kiss me. I twisted so his lips landed on my right eye instead. I was irritated but saw an older (middle-aged) black guy was sitting down a few tables away with a couple of younger people. He seemed fatherly and benign and I decided to approach him.

DREAMWORK:

I wonder if this dream has to do with the doubts I started having yesterday about applying only to one job, and whether I received the guidance correctly, etc. My resolve was weakening...

This is a dream about the journey to higher learning that I am on. In the first leg of the journey I was aided by my shadow, repped by Jen, who was my assistant when I was in charge of Religious Education in the church my family belongs to. My own faith and spirituality came to a point of crisis as my own life fell apart in my thirties, and it was as good a reason as any for me to make a break out of my religious ties following my divorce. I divorced a lot of things then. The practice of christianity in our time has never sat right with me, even as a child I could not reconcile and swallow most of what I saw and heard in the church. I have since found out about God in a way that includes everything and everyone in the universe, even the church my family still belongs to, but have I perhaps written off everything about church-going (not christianity) too absolutely, unforgivingly? Is it pertinent to this dream, to me?

I can see in my mid-life hindsight that church is what the gatherings and ceremonies at the Six Nations Fire is, the sacraments for fasting, cleansing, renewal, healing, and acts of sacrifice; the rituals of worship, teaching, prayer, singing and music making, offering, feasting; and the community services in the initiations and milestones of life. These structures are all in place and common in their purpose; what’s different are the focus of intent in each house of spirituality.

The christian church focuses on God the Father in Heaven, and even though the Catholics revere Mary as the Mother, she is not on the same level of the pedestal as the male godhead. The indigenous way of life focuses on Mother Earth, the love and nurture of mother nature, and although the Creator is referred to as a ‘he’ in English, it is generally known that it is not gender-specific, certainly not heavy on the masculine. Women are given places of their own in society, family and community, and empowered to take charge of their roles as elders, clan mothers, caregivers, healers, dancers, healers, teachers, etc. In christian churches, and many other organized religions today, women have only begun to regain their footing and expression as fully human as men, and only after thousands of years of enduring and resisting patriarchal oppression and mistreatment.

I sense this fundamental difference in the way that christianity and other religions like it, ‘aspire’ to heaven – the energy and longing is upwards – heaven is ‘up there’, not to mention hell is ‘down there’ – the realm of the elemental air and ether; knowledge, intellect, ambition, and analytical mind. In its shadow there is hell, the earthly, the soiled, primitive, unrefined, the physical, and the material – the flesh is weak and burdensome and disease-ridden, therefore needs to be denied, hidden, shunned, suppressed, shamed, denigrated, and punished. And the original sin was born. Human beings are split down the middle, saggitally as masculine and feminine, transversely as body and mind. Heaven and earth (or hell), black and white, light and darkness, right and wrong, good and bad. Divorce all around.

Will we survive this deepest split in ourselves and in our world, or is the necrotic festering too great in the wound, and we are beyond redemption? I don’t know the answer to that, although both scriptures and indigenous legends prophesy a new heaven and new earth after much turmoil and catastrophe. But will there be human beings in this new world, when the dust settles?? And if there isn’t, is that such a ‘bad’ thing in the big scheme of things?

My goodness, how I digress... back to the dream...

What was in my shadow? If, in the beginning the Goddess, the Great Feminine ruled the world, then it is natural that at some point that balance of power began to shift in ‘favour’ of the Great Masculine, as the Great Wheel of Life is in perpetual turning and changing. To say that it is a Great Wheel is to say that it takes thousands (or more) of years to reach the end of a full revolution, something a tiny human life of 4 scores in years cannot possibly conceive by intellect and reason alone. There is a feeling amongst the New Agers that the end of this cycle of masculine dominance is near, just as at one point in history, thousands of years ago, people must have felt the end of the feminine rule upon them. Whether we will live long enough in this life to see enough evidence of this changing of the guard to convince us that it is indeed happening, no one seems to be sure. But if I trust what I feel and sense and how I am compelled by the energy that’s all around me, inside me, then I have no doubt this is so.

So in the scope of this vision it does not matter which place of worship I go to, which faith I align with, as long as I continue to do my own work to heal that split, I am serving Life, in all of its tides. We can stop blaming church and christianity, fundamentalism and patriarchy, wars and famine and cancer. It is far holier that we let go of the resentment, the resistance, and rejection, for everything is as it should be, as IT wills. I can begin to make this change in myself.

I don’t know the significance of the papers my shadow gave me, nor what the numbers mean, except that they were important for me to have.

With little in the way of knowing, I got on the bus anyway, with much trepidation and doubt, not unlike how I feel these days. During a rest stop, perhaps signifying these last 3 months of ‘retreat’, I saw an opportunity to find some answers, or better yet, guidance. The first person I encountered was my Animus, but an immature, trickster-like character whose game was seduction. His charm backfired and I was repelled instead of attracted. I needed guidance, not romance. Although to be fair, I may have made myself out to be ‘in the game’, by dressing in the Catholic schoolgirl come-get-me outfit when I started the journey.

The older, wiser and darker (more depth) man exuded integrity, magnanimity, and patience, like a good teacher, mentor and father. Exactly the man (masculine) I need.

Here’s a couple entries for my personal dream dictionary:

Hair: charm and beauty and attractiveness; image and appearance; seductive quality. I equate beautiful hair with an idealistic attractiveness.

Skin tone: darker the skin, the more ‘cooked’ the character – more depth, wisdom, more solid and earthy.
_____________

Saturday, September 3, 2010

DREAMS:

Someone had made a weapon out of a club or paddle, and put some long, vicious looking metal coiled blade on the fat end to hit another person over the crown, to cave their head in. I’m not sure now if the intended victim was me, but I was desperately trying to get away or trying to help that person get away. I woke up in a fright and the backs of my thighs were aching in a big way, the same way they would in waking life when I see something too viscerally painful to watch, but about 25 times more intense.

I was in a place with my siblings and my cousins. The light was a bit dim, as if it’s a cloudy day. There were potted plants of various kinds and sizes everywhere in the room. I began to move one of them, a big one, to the window ledge, to make some room on the floor, to clear a path.

I was looking down and saw that I was pregnant, at least 6 months along. A guy was with me. I thought it was Michael even though it didn’t look like him.

DREAMWORK: (from the body)

Run! Run! Run! The fear screamed, when I dropped into the memory of that pain in my hamstrings, You’re about to get killed! The ‘blade’ was serpentine-coiled and rusty because it’s ancient wisdom and mystery that’s about to descend on my head and pulverize my brain like a meat-tenderizer. Some drastic, ‘home-made’, but brutal measure needs to be taken to ‘cave’ my head in, and my ego is terrified of this upcoming fate. Is it not better to surrender nicely on your own, Ego??!

Next part: My kin, my familiars, my own generation, we are growing and nurturing hope and life for the future ‘at home’. The plants were a bit straggly, how plants get when they’ve had to live through periods of neglect or trauma but survived, and none of them flowering. The whole scene was a bit gloomy and drab, as if we were desperate to keep it going, and just barely hanging on. This is a pretty accurate and revealing picture of my generation of kindred spirits, who are trying and doing the best they know how to reverse the red tide that threatens to wipe us out. But so many things are against our efforts, even ourselves, unwittingly, and without any visible sign of progress our hope begins to dwindle, our energy sapped by resistance. I was not really conscious of this state of despair until now.

It is up to me to make a move myself, one action at a time, to make a path through this disordered scene, move one plant at a time into the light. It was a living room but the plants have taken over, because we have allowed it to become that way. Our intentions were for the good but we have not followed it through with work on ourselves, to heal and move towards balance. We are those slightly crooked plants that still bear the wounds of our trauma and disease, trying to survive in the insufficient light of the room. We are house plants that have stayed sheltered all our lives, afraid to go out into the world and face the harsh dangers as well as the tender beauty. And we have become complacent, indifferent, and lifeless. Another warning.

But there is hope, real hope – I am pregnant! There is new life inside of me waiting to be born, and my masculine is with me. Happy ending!

Dreamwork with the Body - A Better Way!

DREAM: that I am a tourist on a dock area, then suddenly I am working in a warehouse there, on the upper level which overlooks the ground level. It was near closing time, and we were (mostly women) sorting different kinds of hair accessories – hairbands, bandanas, elastics, etc. (but not hairclips or barrettes or bobbypins) – on long work tables. There were thousands and thousands of them, and in the end there were small mountains of each type on the tables.

Then we had to decide what to do with them, because when the place opens tomorrow they have to be on the tables downstairs. I am discussing this with another woman, about whether to do it now or leave it until tomorrow. If we do it now we’ll need to tell people to stay a bit later (labour management). Also the problem of how to transport the goods from up here to down there. I can see over the railing that they’ve already put away the tables down there.

DREAMWORK:

The thought came to me that I need to do my dreamwork in a different way than I have been. I need to take my dream back into my body (or maybe it’s more like leaving it in my body) and let it sit until messages, etc. emerge on their own. More and more lately, I have been chasing my dreams, and driving them ‘upstairs’ to my head, which is not the most reliable interpretor or reporter... I shall let my body inform me...

So, it is about “work as problem solving”, and showcasing my goods – my gifts and talents – at work.

The different hair accessories are dual-purposed: decorative and functional. A bit like wearing different hats (as in different roles) but in a feminine fashion, with feminine choices. It is about function but also just as much about feminine beauty and creative expression. There were literally thousands upon thousands of choice of hair accessories, each one would ‘showcase’ a subtlely but distinctly different gift or talent of the wearer. Are there really that many ways to present my gifts and talents? Yes. Wow. Unbelievable.

Hair, is also one’s “crowning glory”, the best of what we present to the world, if what we desire is approval and status quo and a sense of belonging. Somehow I do not feel ashamed now to admit that those are also what I desire, amongst other things. I want to be recognized and respected and loved for my gifts and talents and qualities of glory, as like everyone else, even if it is the first time I can admit it. I want fulfillment even if this is only mostly superficial. I want to feel I belong in the world out there, where I’ve never felt I belonged. I need all of this seemingly shallow gratification for my ego so I can begin to blur and obliterate that sharp line between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ worlds, even though my deeper knowing says there is but one world. The separation exists only in my mind.

I want to experience the kind of acceptance and love and fulfillment that I have had in the ‘sacred’ world, out in the ‘secular’ one. I feel that it is possible, because it is possible to carry the safety and inner peace of the sacred world with me when I go out into the outside world which I believe to be frought with danger and suffering.

It is my task now to do just that: take what I’ve learned and ‘earned’ from working on myself, the stillness, balance, the wisdom grounded in truth, out into humanity, show my goods (display on tables) and let them sell themselves to whoever needs them.

So this is a dream about how to get my work out there, and the problem solving is literally the way to do this.

As I sit with the dream in my body, images in the dream continued to play out. I have an idea on how to transport the goods – the mountains of hair accessories – down to the ground level, and it wouldn’t require a lot of labour. We put big boxes on the floor below the tables and scoop the goods into them. Close the boxes and tie a rope around one. Lower the box carefully over the railing as a couple of us hang on tight to the other end of the rope as counterweight, and drop the box unto the table below. It is definitely easier and safer than trying to carry the boxes down the stairs.

This part is about the process of ‘getting the goods out there’, and that I need to approach it as problem solving, in the sense of finding a solution from an intuitive and objective place. It won’t be as difficult or painful as I anticipated if I go about it with this mindset. I shall set my intention as such and trust in the greater power.

But there’s more to it than aligning myself with the intention. In the situation that arose in the dream, I had to come up with a solution on the spot, after taking a quick inventory of what resources I had at hand – tables, boxes, rope, manpower. So “spontaneity” – thinking and working on my feet – and being fully present in the moment is the other ingredient to finding the successful and creative solution.

Problem solving as a creative expression... hmmm... that IS one of my gifts, and one that I enjoy very much. And I think this dream is telling me that it is also a marketable one, as it was ‘showcased’ to me from the dream.

Thank you, my body, my heart, my mind, my dreams, and Source, where all of this come from. I thank you from all of my being.