Reframing Patriarchy

Winter Solstice + Full Moon + Eclipse

DREAM that I was meeting my dad to catch a train or a bus. We were supposed to meet at this house, a communal house or rooming house, but he wasn’t there when I arrived. I waited and asked some guys there but no one had seen him. Finally I decided to go to the station and see if he’s there. He wasn’t and then boarding time came, people were leaving, he still didn’t show. I went back to the house and tried to call home (I remember dialing our current home number, but it was forwarded to another number, the number of the communal house) finally got a voice mail message from him that said he had to return some picture frames because they weren’t right.

In another part I was inside a room looking at a telephone or cable wire that had come loose around a door frame. I said or someone said something about getting a stapler to fix it. I knew I had accidentally pulled it and the staples had popped off…

DREAMWORK:

Both parts were about communication problems, missed or dislocated, though not severed. Miscommunication or disconnection with masculine authority, not in sync on many levels it seems. Well, I’m certainly familiar with that one, having had problems with authority all of my life. In the dream we were meeting in a shared space, not personal to either of us, a transient kind of place that we were just passing through. A temporarily shared common ground. But the only people I saw there were young men on the go. We had agreed to meet there, but my dad, symbolizing patriarchy (for better and worse), never showed up. He was detained or distracted by some problem with framing.

Which part of me is my dad, is patriarchy? The part that sees only absolutes, that judges and rules with might and force, ruthlessly rational and unforgiving. Well, whatever it is doing, it is framing pictures the wrong way. I am framing some picture the wrong way, and quite possibly fooling even myself with it, as I am an accomplished reframer of pictures I don’t like. Also the wire cable that had fallen off the door frame. Something about the way I see patriarchy is wrong. That I see it as only bad, harmful, overbearing and destructive. That there’s nothing good about it. Okay, so what’s good about it? This requires a little digging, as nothing jumps into view immediately…

Rules and laws to live and govern by, order and structure… Hmmm, this is not resonating... Drop down deeper...

At bottom I am still afraid of it, oppressed by it, resentful of it, struggling with it. It still has me in its clutches, squirming and screaming. How to balance this? How do I stop blaming it for all the ills in the world? How do I end the victim story? Empowerment, the answer comes. How? Through acceptance. Accepting what is, accepting that patriarchy still rules, accepting that there are injustices, accepting that fear and anger and guilt and shame and victimhood exist. But not forgetting that the great wheel is also turning, slowly but surely, and that love and kindness and goodwill and wisdom and oneness and joy also exist. And feel the gratitude that comes from this acceptance of everything that is, the bigger picture, as big as I can take in. Then feel this gratitude open and expand my whole being to let in loving compassion and a greater vision of life. Patriarchy may still be the rule of the day, but life is much bigger than that, my life is bigger than that. Accept, and open the door, don’t try to keep anything out. Let everything come, and go, of its own accord, according to the Great Spirit.