To Belong, Or Not To Belong

DREAM that I was in a dimly lit house and I heard someone complain about me from the back of the house. It was a little stringy old man and he said, “If she wanted to build the house anywhere but on her own land, she should’ve said so.” So I charged up to him, full of indignation and said, “If I didn’t tell you something, it was because I didn’t know. Okay? Thank you!” Then I stomped away again.

At another point I had to go into the kitchen but it was jampacked with people, people who were Amazon-sized. The little kitchen was dark with so many bodies in it. I couldn’t get to the cupboard so I said to a girl in front of it, “Sandra, can you pass me a knife?” She did and I left.

DREAMWORK:

This is stuff below my awareness… The small stringy old man is an embodiment of my Animus, whose grievance against me is trying to tell me something in this dream. Apparently I had instructed him to build a house for me, but he had found out somehow that it is not to be built on my/our own land. What does that mean, building a house anywhere but on my own land? I didn’t even know that myself, even though I ordered it. It must’ve been a higher order. So I am supposed to build my s/Self on someone else’s land, not my own. But there is some disconnect in communication, between my ego and other parts of my s/Self, so we are all being informed of this now.

My pride, my ego, is prominently featured here, which overpowered and overruled my aggrieved Animus, who appeared as a life-long labourer, overused, and if not actually abused, was not exactly well-treated and cared for. Again, the message is that I have not nurtured and tended my masculine very well. Basically I used him like hired help. Perhaps this will give me a clue how to make amends. First, respect. Second, gratitude. Third, love. He is a bit cantankerous because of the years of undernourishment and disempowerment, and never cherished for himself. He has skills that I rely on him for and wisdom of the aged, yet I’ve never asked him for it because I’ve always looked down on him. He has stuck by me because he cannot survive without me, but he is resentful. He is my loyal warrior but I am his less than benign master.

Respect, Gratitude, and Love. How I would want to be treated. My dear Warrior, how could I have been so ignorant and arrogant as to have mistreated and taken you for granted all these years? Please forgive my immaturity and let me redress my wrong. Help me elevate you to your rightful place, my right-hand man, and never forget how precious you are to me.

But what is my land? It is what I have claimed as my place in the world. That is, at the moment, here in this city, in this country, with Michael, with all the knowledge and experience that I’ve had. As I dig down for this I see myself in my ‘place’ as a lilly pad, floating on a current, not anchored by anything but gravity. Rootless, yet it gives me a feeling of quiet joy and contentment. There is a time to be anchored, there is a time to drift. Do I have the wisdom to just allow?

I have become much more rooted in my relationships these past few years, at home, with family, no close friends to speak of, and much closer to nature. It has been the most stable and ‘at home’ I’ve felt in my adult life. Is this to end soon? Or is the building on other land a metaphysical manifestation? Whatever shape it is to take, change is afoot.

In the other part of the dream I had the sense that it was my kitchen. It was full of big people who towered over me, their shadowy presence made the tiny room a bit sinister looking. But I didn’t get any bad vibes from them, it was as if they were just hanging out, like people do when they are at a house party and there’s more people than space. In the dream, I knew these people.

The kitchen is the most friendly social setting to me, a place of warmth, easy conversations, intimate relating. You can eat, drink, be creative, and just relax. You can be yourself even with outsiders. Feelings and expressions flow easier in the kitchen. So why is mine crowded with people who overshadow me, in my own space? They are ghosts of society that still haunt me. Friendly and harmless ghosts, but taking up space.

Who are they? They are the expectations that I still carry from social conditioning, that tells me I ought to be friendly and sociable, approachable and charming, be a part of society, be nice. If I don’t I will never belong. If I don’t I will never reap the rewards of public recognition and acceptance, even when its due. I will always be an outsider, even from my own kitchen. Was that what the knife was for, to sever my ties to these ghosts of my social past? Now that I don’t have any actual social ties anymore, there are only the ones in my mind, embedded in my fear of ostracism.

To belong, or not to belong. That has always been the question for me.

It seems to me that this might be connected to the ‘I and thou’ divide I was exploring yesterday (and agonizing over most of my life). To have boundary or not, to have a separate self or not. But why can’t I have both? Like a cell in a body. It has its cell wall as a boundary, and it belongs. It has its unique functions and life, within the larger functions and life of the whole body. It does what it does without question or doubt. It does not try to be different, it does not try to be special, it does not fear conformity and cooperation with the greater whole, the way I do. There may be illness and imbalance going on in the body, rampant malignancy and toxins galore, but the cell goes on obeying its code, serving its purpose, manifesting its function for the body collective. It knows no discontent even if it is breached, it fights until the last, as it was design to. But always, it lives for and under the directive of the whole.

If I am that one cell within the body of creation, would I not have been encoded with my purpose, to live and function for the glory and joy and fulfillment of my own little life as well as the greater Life that holds us all? What and who am I fighting against? And what for? Isn’t that what a cancer cell does, attack itself and its neighbours, having lost sight and connection to the whole? A cell wall can differentiate, just as I can discern, but there is no need to pass judgment or take sides – good or bad, right or wrong, them or me, friend or foe. No need to take it personally, as they say, it is just business. The business of Life.