Barefoot in the World

DREAM that I was in an enormous auditorium/amphetheatre packed with people. I had taken my shoes off and now I can’t find them… As I was searching a couple of guys came up to me and 2 other girls to inform us that we were chosen for the contest or competition. One guy handed me a paper to sign and asked me if I would take his team with me, as if it would be an act of charity…

In another dream I had a sexual relationship with G., although I knew he had at least one other woman. I was tidying up and came across stuff he left behind, clothes and personal items. There was a zippered toiletry bag with surprisingly many compartments – I opened a zipper to find another one. It was made of thin material like a windbreaker… I was longing for his return…

DREAMWORK:

Back in the great collective of learning life… I wonder if it has to do with discovering Dao through Osho’s book “Tao, the Pathless Path” which I finished last night. I felt as if a part of myself had been found to have a door, and the door just opened a crack… so, back to the dream…

My shoes are what I put on to go out into the world with, and now I can’t find them, I can’t go out… which reminds me, I had a dream a while ago that I went out in barefeet because I couldn’t find my shoes but I wanted to stay with my group. Which begs the question, do I need shoes to go out? No, it is ideal, conventionally speaking, it is safer and more comfortable for sure, but not absolutely necessary. In a way, shoes are objects of empowerment that we have been trained to put on, like a power suit, or an armour, to hopefully impart to us a sense of power and confidence we don’t actually feel we have. So it becomes an excuse for me to not go outside because I can’t find my shoes.

And why do I resist going outside? The answer is illustrated in the next part of the dream. Two guys (the masculine) came to me and two girls (the feminine; making 4, the number of wholeness), informing the women that we are the chosen for the race. Whatever the race or game or competition was, it felt like a matter of survival to me in the dream. Women, the feminine, are the chosen for this race. One guy asked me to take his team, his men, under my wing. I suppose to give them a chance too, whatever the objective was. In essence, to be responsible for them as well as my own. This is a big issue for me all of my life, having had responsbility for my siblings since a tender age. I loathe responsibility, especially responsibility of anyone and anything other than me and mine. There were times when I used to fantasize about not having to be responsible even for myself.

Going out and being in the world means taking on responsibilities of all kinds to me, and that thought alone makes me feel like the Titanic in its final hours. So I’m still dragging around that anchor of an issue, inside, where it’s safe. The big, wide, world is more of the trap for me than in my pared down little life.

I guess this massive little ailment of mine also stands in the way of uniting the feminine and masculine in me. What needs to happen then? First, I need to get over the idea, and conditioning, that I have to wear shoes (or anything else that will speak for me before I speak for myself) to go outside. Dorothy never really needed those shoes, she could’ve made her wish come true by voicing it and clicking her own heels. She already had courage, heart, brains, and eventually wisdom to be whatever she was meant to be. Most of all, she had love, from her family, from Toto, from the spirits of Nature. But it took the heroine’s quest for her to realize all that she already had.

And so did I. Except I have the delusion that I cannot handle responsibility, that it will snare me and drag me down, that it will mean the end of me. If I click my (bare) heels now, and ask for that fear/delusion to be lifted from me, will it happen? In my mind, I see myself not only clicking my heels, but stomping my bare feet on bare earth, stomping solidly, in a circle with the 2 women and 2 men (are they split because I am?) We hold hands and raise them to the centre, stomping and chanting. In our palms we lift up the burden of our fear of responsibility and offer it to Source for renewal. I let go of this fear now. But it did not lift off, instead, it sits heavy in our hands. We knelt down on the earth then, still holding the weight in the centre, our foreheads kiss the earth, and the weight seems to slide off onto the earth, freeing our hands. We stood up and danced in a circle, our voices rose higher, lighter, and we began to spiral around the boulder in the middle. Several spirals later, we danced off down the hill into the golden distance.

In the other dream my masculine/Animus is what connects me and my feminine/shadow. Perhaps he’s trying to bring us together, for she is not my enemy, though I feel threatened by her. My insecurity is soothed by the fact that I have his most personal belongings, I know him intimately, and he will always come back to me. The pouch, his innermost sanctum, his true Self, was under several layers but easily penetrable to the core, and available to me. My Animus was in the figure of G., a most unlikely source of help in my opinion, the unlikely hero, because I’ve always believed him to be weak, misguided, and cannot help even himself. Yet in the dream he appeared to be reddish and robust, his upper body filled out nicely, an image of red-bloodedness and strength. My masculine is stronger than I thought, and I need him very much.