I don’t know if this was in answer to my request last night for a dream to see my True Self, but this is what I remember:
In the dream some guy was telling me that I got a big ticket (parking?) but if I could get 10 reference letters from 10 people then maybe I could be ‘spared’ in some way…
I was with a large group of people and we were waiting around for a ride after an outing. I remember being on the phone but not what it was about. We were in a meeting hall kind of room, the ceiling wasn’t very high and the lighting was a bit low. There was a well-used, long, wooden table which took up most of the space. Alongside the table, I was trying to walk and balance on at least 3 pieces of wooden ‘steps’ the size of footstools, like a kid trying to balance on the edge of the sidewalk or a traintrack rail. One of the pieces was convex and wobbled from side to side.
At the other end of the table, tea was available from a side table. But I didn’t like any of the flavours. Nevertheless I chose one, without looking at the label I knew it was cinnamon. It felt like I did it just for something to do, conforming to the norm but begrudging it.
DREAMWORK:
I woke up from this dream feeling that something was ‘off’. As I start to probe around inside, it tells me that it was something emotional… loneliness… This was a surprise to me, because I’ve rarely felt loneliness in my life. More often it’s been the opposite—that I crave solitude and felt I couldn’t get enough of it. Althought strictly speaking loneliness and solitude are not truly equivalents, certainly not emotionally. So if there is loneliness in me, it has existed unfelt, except for times during Guided Self Healing sessions when I went into other lifetimes and/or planes of reality, and accessed stories of feeling utterly abandoned by the entire universe, completely alone in an interminable dark void. Those were the closest experiences I recall of existential despair. There wasn’t even physical pain to distract me from it.
Is this my True Self then, this utterly lonely being in despair, cut off from everything, even her own feelings. Particularly her own feelings. I am completely alone in this universe, stuck in a timeless, hopeless, helpless place of nothingness. The darkness around me could be endless, or it could be 6 inches thick, it made no difference to me, because I am in it. But somehow every time I experience this ‘state’, I saw myself being shone on by a small circle of intense white light, like a stage spot light, the circumference only slightly larger than my body. Perhaps that contributes to my ‘blindness’. I wasn’t able to develop night vision, even if I could.
I think now that this spotlight is my self-absorption, and self-limiting, because underneath the deep, wrenching despair there was always a thin veil of romanticism over the whole ‘scene’—the most lonely but innocent girl abandoned by all, how tragic! Such unjust and cruel fate! As if this is a play staged in my innermost life, and the tragic heroine languishes and awaits rescue…
But this ‘spotlight’ also wants me to see the yearning on the face of my True Self (and I thought our true selves are always happy and helpful and loving!) which is turned up towards the source of the light, even if that cannot be seen. The yearning is of connection, as if connection is her salvation, the key to her doorless and cell-less prison. As if there needs to be a cell so there can be a door, then she can find a way to get out of the spot she’s in. I guess this cell is loneliness, and for the first time in my life it takes form as a tangible emotion.
I am compelled to go and get my bottle of cinnamon essential oil and take a big sniff…
Back to the dream for a moment…
The big ticket is like an offense against known and accepted authority in society, and apparently I’ve committed a big offense. I see how I’ve done that by turning my back (and my nose) on the rules and expectations of the status quo, by leaving the rat race, spurning the climb up the corporate ladder, flipping patriarchy the bird. I wasn’t very gracious in my leavetaking, even though I pretended to be. Mostly, I was reactionary, out of the hurt I felt. I can, and must, own this little truth now. And it will take the making and cultivating of 10 relationships to bring me back to neutral ground, to peace, to centre. Well, I think I’ve a sense of some of those 10… One is my relationship to my Self, one is with M., with Am., with my grandfather (though not with my parents, for some reason), with my dead grandmother, with my ex-husband (again?? still?!?), with ex-friends Sara, Mark, Tony, and Yvonne. Wow, I didn’t expect to know all 10 right away. This is going to be my work for at least the next month, I see… Reconciliation and completion of unfinished karma…
In the next part of the dream I am in my frequent state of waiting—waiting for God, the real control and driver of our collective, the mothership—after this phase of our journey. I am about to enter a new phase of my life, though I cannot see what it is yet. In the meantime, we are invited to go down into the basement (the dimly lit hall) and do some work. I chose to challenge myself physically with balancing on the 3 wooden rectangles. The 3 are similar but not the same, and as I said, one (in the middle) was convex in shape and moved from side to side as I tried to land on it. I think that one is the meditation practice I’ve begun recently, and still feeling shaky doing. The other 2 are yoga and qigong. Those have been easier to get into because there is movement involved, though I am aware that mastery is when movement becomes a state of stillness and oneness, as with meditation.
So, I have a chance to work on my personal practice and grounding while we wait for the big bus to come… in 5 months…
The last part of the dream is also something for me to do while ‘waiting’: to refresh and soothe myself with something healing. In this case, cinnamon, not a flavour I would normally choose. Not my usual cup of tea, but apparently one I ought to ‘resign’ myself to. It will relieve some tension and constriction in me, expand my senses and perspective. A cup of comfort for frayed nerves.
Going back to my earlier contemplation, and exploration, of that inner lonely place in myself, it occurs to me that if I allow myself to go all the way with feeling, and wanting, then I would want to experience a few relationships that touch me deeply, deeper than any I’ve ever felt. A new and amazing place in me that I’ve never been to, perhaps never even knew existed. I would want to feel so deeply into another person that it sets off an echo resonating deep in myself. I don’t know if it will be a place of profound love or bliss or meaning or union, but I know it will be connection. I want to feel that connection, not just know it. Perhaps then, too, I can truly connect, relate, and love myself.
It’s more than mere irony that I dream so often of being part of a large collective, and that I’m always safe and belonged in it, no matter what’s going on, when in my waking life I feel very much the opposite…
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