My sister and I were sitting aside quietly while my dad worked on some kind of task. When he finished he looked at us coldly, as if he was angry that we didn’t offer to help, and now he will withdraw his affection or abandon us…
DREAMWORK:
Patriarchal disappoval and my conditioned fear of it. Fear that I will lose its/his affection and worse, be abandoned, banished from its support and sustenance, which I am also conditioned to believe as my lifeline. This is the punishment, or the threat of it, when I do not do what I’m expected to do, which is to work and earn. His love is not unconditional.
How can I transform this conditioned belief, because something inside tells me that it’s not a matter of letting it go? My shadow sister was there too, so I’ll ask her…
I see us sitting side by side on a low wall. We are little girls dressed identically and looking like twins. I reach out and hold her hand because I am scared. Should we go to our mother for help?? We hop down onto the ground and walk over to where dad is, still holding hands. We begin to circle around him, singing ‘Ring Around The Rosy’, circling and circling. Then I or my sister takes his hand and he is drawn into the circling. He takes our hand that’s free and we make a closed circle, singing and circling, smiling gently.
I realized then that he wasn’t really mad at us or wanting to punish us. He was hurt that we tried to separate ourselves from him first, believing that we can survive without him. I am guilty of that. Even though I know that it is impossible to be whole if I reject any part of myself, not to mention half of myself, my masculine. I don’t have to embrace patriarchal rule, but I shouldn’t throw the baby (boy) out with the water. I’ve visited this issue before, so there must be something else I’m not getting…
He appeared as the stern, Saturnian figure of a father; does Saturn have something to teach me?
He wants me to learn discipline and commitment, not as blind rules or routine, but as a practice that can become a pillar of real strength and fortitude underlying whatever ‘task’ I am to do in life. I admit that this has been sorely lacking in my life so far. Crippling, really, to always trying to balance on a rickety foundation, though it’s taken me this long to own that.
I think, this is my cue to keep on and NOT DROP the yoga and meditation practice I’ve just started beginning of this year.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Saturn, As Masculine Authority
Another sliver of a dream: A girls’ school that is a whole street, that is, all the stores and buildings were the school, although the street was only on one side…
DREAMWORK:
Learning for the feminine, offered as merchandize for sale in a marketplace, which is a frequently recurring theme of my dreams. It is also a reflection of my mental process: wandering and sampling from store to store, stall to stall, room to room, but never getting any deeper into the experiences. I am not getting all that I can, all that I ought to, from what I’m learning about the feminine. Most recently, the feminine has been embodied in my dreams as the little girl child who belongs to me, and by whose wound I’ve come to know her as Vulnerability. My vulnerability. It has taken a while just for me to own her, and all of what that means. Maybe I haven’t yet realized ALL of what it means…
Ah, the other side of the street that didn’t seem to exist in the dream, at least there was nothing there except pedestrians like me. It ought to, following common sense, be the counterpart of the masculine, perhaps a boys’ school? I remember now that this series of dreams of babies and toddlers began with a couple of dreams of boy babies. What happened to them since then? Nothing. I’ve come so far as to find out who the little girl was, but I’ve not gotten around to the little boy.
If the little girl is my vulnerability, who is the little boy that I’ve yet to own? I know who he is, my inner knowing says. His name is Physicality, and I know I’ve denied him most of my life too.
The 2 dreams I can remember most recently with small boys were from Jan. 7 and 8:
Jan. 7: I was holding a baby or a toddler, his face forward. Everything was fine until I discovered that he had wet himself and my arm that was holding him. He said that he doesn’t do this very often anymore. I took him to his mom and she looked for a diaper for him but found the bag empty, because he doesn’t do this very often anymore she didn’t bother to restock. I decided to wash him and noticed that his body was that of a small dog with white hair, now damp.
Jan. 8: I was holding Luke as a small child. I was lying on my back and he was half lying on top of me, in my left arm. Tina, his mom, was a few paces away but attentive. Luke was sick with a fever, flushed but lucid. I smiled at him and said that I was the only one who could stand him because I couldn’t smell, as he was practically mouth-breathing into my face. I looked over at Tina to make sure she wasn’t upset by my having her child.
Looking at them again now, I can see that in both boys there was something wrong. But that’s not the point, says my inner voice, ever the wiser one. Okay, so what is the point? The point is the discharge, the expression of water as flow, and the expression of fire as breath. And if Vulnerability is the fear of receiving, then this is the fear of giving, of expressing, of creating, of making manifest the inherent nature of my Self, including my raw, animal nature, which has always intimidated me, in myself and in others. Boys are harder to handle, we all know that as women, they are like little animals.
So he is the Physical Animal, full of life, and the energy rearing to burst forth into life. His is the power of water needing to go (water always wants to go somewhere, said John Daido Loori), and the power of the fire needing to burn. This is formula for creativity, as far as I can tell, and manifestation of that creativity.
And I have yet to embrace, own, and love this awesome and unruly energy in myself. I feel up to the task of mothering him, but he needs a father too, so I hope my older and wiser masculine (my animus, maybe?) is stepping up to the plate… Apparently I ought to access this mature masculine in myself now (I wasn’t sure I even had it)… *Saturn, the Taskmaster, whose lesson to us is to teach us to own our own authority. I have trouble with that, and all authority, I’ll admit.
Age 7, rebeled against/succumbed to authority. Age 14, rebeled against/succumbed to conformity. Age 21, rebeled against/succumbed to conventionality. Age 28, rebeled against/succumbed to more conventionality. Age 35, rebeled against all of the above and became fed up with it all. Age 42, surrender in progress. Age 49, surrender complete, having risen out of the ashes, hopefully…
In the meantime, this feels like a tough lesson to learn, from a harsh master and father. My personal experience with him has never been an easy, or pleasant one. It seemed to me that he’s always trying to trap me in a box, and I’m always trying to escape, or kick him in the crotch. I know now that he’s been trying to teach me about myself, not least through my Saturn in Aquarius and Saturn in the 9th house.
Saturn in Aquarius says that I need to have clear limits with who I call my friends and my community. Who are the friends true to my heart, who are my spiritual familiars? That’s been a process I’ve become much more aware of in the last decade. At the moment I’ve winnowed my friends down to the ones I live with, although if I am quiet and listen, I can hear the faint calls of those kindred spirits out there, ones I’ve yet to meet. I know they’re there, these searchers of truth. My tribe, as I call them.
Saturn in the 9th house is about my quest for truth, the truth that can only come from experience for me. This is Saturn as a teacher that says to me, get out of the books and get out there, the only truth you can rely on is your experience. This is a necessary kick in the ass for me, I must admit. I’ll also say a big thanks to Saturn now, for cracking that whip over my recalcitrant butt, and pushing me out of the nest.
We’ve had such a history of love-hate for so long that, even as I thank him, I do not know how to love him. (Knowing Saturn, he’d rather have respect than love.) Perhaps I can start by surrendering myself to him, opening to what he has to teach me, the little boy in me who carries the power to incarnate, and together we can bring him up into a truly responsible adult flourishing under my own authority in the world.
DREAMWORK:
Learning for the feminine, offered as merchandize for sale in a marketplace, which is a frequently recurring theme of my dreams. It is also a reflection of my mental process: wandering and sampling from store to store, stall to stall, room to room, but never getting any deeper into the experiences. I am not getting all that I can, all that I ought to, from what I’m learning about the feminine. Most recently, the feminine has been embodied in my dreams as the little girl child who belongs to me, and by whose wound I’ve come to know her as Vulnerability. My vulnerability. It has taken a while just for me to own her, and all of what that means. Maybe I haven’t yet realized ALL of what it means…
Ah, the other side of the street that didn’t seem to exist in the dream, at least there was nothing there except pedestrians like me. It ought to, following common sense, be the counterpart of the masculine, perhaps a boys’ school? I remember now that this series of dreams of babies and toddlers began with a couple of dreams of boy babies. What happened to them since then? Nothing. I’ve come so far as to find out who the little girl was, but I’ve not gotten around to the little boy.
If the little girl is my vulnerability, who is the little boy that I’ve yet to own? I know who he is, my inner knowing says. His name is Physicality, and I know I’ve denied him most of my life too.
The 2 dreams I can remember most recently with small boys were from Jan. 7 and 8:
Jan. 7: I was holding a baby or a toddler, his face forward. Everything was fine until I discovered that he had wet himself and my arm that was holding him. He said that he doesn’t do this very often anymore. I took him to his mom and she looked for a diaper for him but found the bag empty, because he doesn’t do this very often anymore she didn’t bother to restock. I decided to wash him and noticed that his body was that of a small dog with white hair, now damp.
Jan. 8: I was holding Luke as a small child. I was lying on my back and he was half lying on top of me, in my left arm. Tina, his mom, was a few paces away but attentive. Luke was sick with a fever, flushed but lucid. I smiled at him and said that I was the only one who could stand him because I couldn’t smell, as he was practically mouth-breathing into my face. I looked over at Tina to make sure she wasn’t upset by my having her child.
Looking at them again now, I can see that in both boys there was something wrong. But that’s not the point, says my inner voice, ever the wiser one. Okay, so what is the point? The point is the discharge, the expression of water as flow, and the expression of fire as breath. And if Vulnerability is the fear of receiving, then this is the fear of giving, of expressing, of creating, of making manifest the inherent nature of my Self, including my raw, animal nature, which has always intimidated me, in myself and in others. Boys are harder to handle, we all know that as women, they are like little animals.
So he is the Physical Animal, full of life, and the energy rearing to burst forth into life. His is the power of water needing to go (water always wants to go somewhere, said John Daido Loori), and the power of the fire needing to burn. This is formula for creativity, as far as I can tell, and manifestation of that creativity.
And I have yet to embrace, own, and love this awesome and unruly energy in myself. I feel up to the task of mothering him, but he needs a father too, so I hope my older and wiser masculine (my animus, maybe?) is stepping up to the plate… Apparently I ought to access this mature masculine in myself now (I wasn’t sure I even had it)… *Saturn, the Taskmaster, whose lesson to us is to teach us to own our own authority. I have trouble with that, and all authority, I’ll admit.
Age 7, rebeled against/succumbed to authority. Age 14, rebeled against/succumbed to conformity. Age 21, rebeled against/succumbed to conventionality. Age 28, rebeled against/succumbed to more conventionality. Age 35, rebeled against all of the above and became fed up with it all. Age 42, surrender in progress. Age 49, surrender complete, having risen out of the ashes, hopefully…
In the meantime, this feels like a tough lesson to learn, from a harsh master and father. My personal experience with him has never been an easy, or pleasant one. It seemed to me that he’s always trying to trap me in a box, and I’m always trying to escape, or kick him in the crotch. I know now that he’s been trying to teach me about myself, not least through my Saturn in Aquarius and Saturn in the 9th house.
Saturn in Aquarius says that I need to have clear limits with who I call my friends and my community. Who are the friends true to my heart, who are my spiritual familiars? That’s been a process I’ve become much more aware of in the last decade. At the moment I’ve winnowed my friends down to the ones I live with, although if I am quiet and listen, I can hear the faint calls of those kindred spirits out there, ones I’ve yet to meet. I know they’re there, these searchers of truth. My tribe, as I call them.
Saturn in the 9th house is about my quest for truth, the truth that can only come from experience for me. This is Saturn as a teacher that says to me, get out of the books and get out there, the only truth you can rely on is your experience. This is a necessary kick in the ass for me, I must admit. I’ll also say a big thanks to Saturn now, for cracking that whip over my recalcitrant butt, and pushing me out of the nest.
We’ve had such a history of love-hate for so long that, even as I thank him, I do not know how to love him. (Knowing Saturn, he’d rather have respect than love.) Perhaps I can start by surrendering myself to him, opening to what he has to teach me, the little boy in me who carries the power to incarnate, and together we can bring him up into a truly responsible adult flourishing under my own authority in the world.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
An image of the rearview of my ankles was the only thing remained of my dreams… there were vertical lines of writing on either side of the lower calves and ankles, in English, as if tattooed…
DREAMWORK:
My Achilles’ heel, my deadly weakness. Although I don’t recall what the words were in the dream, perhaps I can try and access them now.
What is my Achilles’ heel? Apparently Achilles was invulnerable except for that heel, interesting, that I’ve been working so much with my own vulnerability lately. Furthermore, he became invulnerable except where the water touched him (his mother Thetis dipped him in the river Styx while holding him upside down by the ankles, which remained dry). I take this to mean that my Achilles’ heel is where I am not touched by emotion (water), where I’ve avoided getting wet, avoided flow of emotion, which, I’m just beginning to learn, has been the keynote symptom of what ails me my whole life. “Never well since, denial of this or that emotion.” as homeopathy would say for my case. And the ‘red thread’ symptom, again in homeopathy, would be my lifelong denial of my feeling of vulnerability, deeply repressed, until recently.
Quite possibly, one of the words written on my ankle in the dream was ‘vulnerability’, because as I remembered it, the word on the left was long, which was on the outside of the left ankle, the word on the inside of that ankle was short, like a 4-letter word, probably ‘fear’. I can’t recall anything about the right ankle at all.
I take it then, as the next step (pun!), that I ought to get my ankles wet. Soak them thoroughly in the immortal waters of the river Styx, which borders this world and the underworld, the realm of the Subconscious. Hmmm, perhaps that’s why I’ve not been recalling dreams much lately, instead, I’ve had more nudgings of information and insights during the hypnagogic and hypnapompic periods of subconscious awareness.
Moving up from the unconscious into the subconscious… does that mean I will wake up to the conscious world soon?!? Spring is coming, and with it, Jupiter returns to its place of my birth. Amen! to that!
DREAMWORK:
My Achilles’ heel, my deadly weakness. Although I don’t recall what the words were in the dream, perhaps I can try and access them now.
What is my Achilles’ heel? Apparently Achilles was invulnerable except for that heel, interesting, that I’ve been working so much with my own vulnerability lately. Furthermore, he became invulnerable except where the water touched him (his mother Thetis dipped him in the river Styx while holding him upside down by the ankles, which remained dry). I take this to mean that my Achilles’ heel is where I am not touched by emotion (water), where I’ve avoided getting wet, avoided flow of emotion, which, I’m just beginning to learn, has been the keynote symptom of what ails me my whole life. “Never well since, denial of this or that emotion.” as homeopathy would say for my case. And the ‘red thread’ symptom, again in homeopathy, would be my lifelong denial of my feeling of vulnerability, deeply repressed, until recently.
Quite possibly, one of the words written on my ankle in the dream was ‘vulnerability’, because as I remembered it, the word on the left was long, which was on the outside of the left ankle, the word on the inside of that ankle was short, like a 4-letter word, probably ‘fear’. I can’t recall anything about the right ankle at all.
I take it then, as the next step (pun!), that I ought to get my ankles wet. Soak them thoroughly in the immortal waters of the river Styx, which borders this world and the underworld, the realm of the Subconscious. Hmmm, perhaps that’s why I’ve not been recalling dreams much lately, instead, I’ve had more nudgings of information and insights during the hypnagogic and hypnapompic periods of subconscious awareness.
Moving up from the unconscious into the subconscious… does that mean I will wake up to the conscious world soon?!? Spring is coming, and with it, Jupiter returns to its place of my birth. Amen! to that!
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Just managed to salvage a couple of dream bits… first was an image of paintings or coloured photographs on stones, apparently my sister had made them. I was very impressed and thought it a great idea to silk-screen photos onto stones… second was a scene filled with mud, deep, sucking mud everywhere, and a yellow digger was trying to dig or move itself out of the spot it was in. But instead of a scoop it had 2 prongs like a forklift. It moved forward so the fork sunk into the earth, and I thought for sure it’s gonna get stuck, but it managed to push up and out somehow…
DREAMWORK (4 days later):
First. I’ve been fascinated by stones since meeting them on the beach last summer. Something about them awes and expands and delights me. And I’m still not quite sure why. My sister, my shadow familiar, had put these beautifully and meticulously rendered images of people on the stones, perhaps for the sole purpose of wowing me. It is Miss Artifice again… alas, and I fell for that scintillating first impression, again. Then I take that first impression and blow it up into a fantastic possibility, pushing the limit as far as it can go, feeding on the brain candy of the thrill of sky’s-the-limit, getting high on the soaring and the speed and the rapid firing of the synapses in my head. How fortunate I am that my brain can produce the substance I need to supply my addiction. Is there an AA group for this, I wonder?
It’s pathetic really, like baiting fish in a bowl. Something catches my eye’s fancy and I fall hook, line, and sinker. I think possibly I came back to working on this dream after watching a couple of movies last night that were cinematically sophisticated, but not much else (The Illusionist, and Orlando). They were like strings of TV commercials, nice visuals to look at, lovingly birthed from the artistic director’s ego. But the thing is, the thing that my dream wants to remind me is, that I used to, and still do, fall for that skin-deep glam and glitter. In my advertising days, which included my art school days, that was the milk of superficiality we not only grew up on but venerated as a source of genius.
It sickens me a bit now to remember that I thought Orlando was a movie I liked from those days, I couldn’t even watch the whole thing last night. I guess it’s true that I have to find out where the outer limits of something is before I can know where I stand. It is the learning style of the boundary-less.
Second. Mud, is water and earth. The emotional blended with the material. It sounds like a good thing but I am afraid of it, afraid of being mired in it, afraid of the difficulty of moving in it, even though I am a digger in the dream, made for the task. It is sticky and messy, threatens to swallow me whole, and there’s no end of it in sight. What, in my life is like that? My debt. (which I wrote about 6 days later, 4 days before working on this dream) But even though I seemed to be equipped to dig myself out, I was surprised to find that I didn’t have the conventional tool used for the job. Well, I shouldn’t be surprised really, so few of the bones in my body are conventional. The real surprise to me was that the tool I had, which shouldn’t have worked, worked. And it struck me this very moment that my intent in the dream was actually to ‘lift’ myself out of the mud, not to ‘dig’ my way out, as one would assume automatically on perceiving a digger. In fact, digging would have made me sink deeper. So what happened, though unconventional, was the best thing that could have happened. I have the best equipment for the job after all. And I am a forklift, not a digger.
This last discovery bears some contemplation. If the field of mud is my current financial outlook, at least how it presents on the surface, as a quagmire of anxiety and fear and threat to survival, then what does it portent if I am to lift instead of dig? Ah, I see… instead of digging down into my psyche, the way I have been, to get at the ‘source’ of the fear and whatever block there might be, the better way to attain the desired result—freedom—is to lift myself up and move on out of there.
What might that look like in my waking life, to lift myself out of the sucking mud of financial woes? Do I need heavy machinery such as a forklift, some seriously heavy-duty strength to equal the gravity of the job? But I AM the forklift, I have it already in me to do this. But, oh but, I am not the driver/operator, therefore I have to wait for the moment when the juice is turned on and flow begins. So I wait, as the tool, as the vessel that I am.
DREAMWORK (4 days later):
First. I’ve been fascinated by stones since meeting them on the beach last summer. Something about them awes and expands and delights me. And I’m still not quite sure why. My sister, my shadow familiar, had put these beautifully and meticulously rendered images of people on the stones, perhaps for the sole purpose of wowing me. It is Miss Artifice again… alas, and I fell for that scintillating first impression, again. Then I take that first impression and blow it up into a fantastic possibility, pushing the limit as far as it can go, feeding on the brain candy of the thrill of sky’s-the-limit, getting high on the soaring and the speed and the rapid firing of the synapses in my head. How fortunate I am that my brain can produce the substance I need to supply my addiction. Is there an AA group for this, I wonder?
It’s pathetic really, like baiting fish in a bowl. Something catches my eye’s fancy and I fall hook, line, and sinker. I think possibly I came back to working on this dream after watching a couple of movies last night that were cinematically sophisticated, but not much else (The Illusionist, and Orlando). They were like strings of TV commercials, nice visuals to look at, lovingly birthed from the artistic director’s ego. But the thing is, the thing that my dream wants to remind me is, that I used to, and still do, fall for that skin-deep glam and glitter. In my advertising days, which included my art school days, that was the milk of superficiality we not only grew up on but venerated as a source of genius.
It sickens me a bit now to remember that I thought Orlando was a movie I liked from those days, I couldn’t even watch the whole thing last night. I guess it’s true that I have to find out where the outer limits of something is before I can know where I stand. It is the learning style of the boundary-less.
Second. Mud, is water and earth. The emotional blended with the material. It sounds like a good thing but I am afraid of it, afraid of being mired in it, afraid of the difficulty of moving in it, even though I am a digger in the dream, made for the task. It is sticky and messy, threatens to swallow me whole, and there’s no end of it in sight. What, in my life is like that? My debt. (which I wrote about 6 days later, 4 days before working on this dream) But even though I seemed to be equipped to dig myself out, I was surprised to find that I didn’t have the conventional tool used for the job. Well, I shouldn’t be surprised really, so few of the bones in my body are conventional. The real surprise to me was that the tool I had, which shouldn’t have worked, worked. And it struck me this very moment that my intent in the dream was actually to ‘lift’ myself out of the mud, not to ‘dig’ my way out, as one would assume automatically on perceiving a digger. In fact, digging would have made me sink deeper. So what happened, though unconventional, was the best thing that could have happened. I have the best equipment for the job after all. And I am a forklift, not a digger.
This last discovery bears some contemplation. If the field of mud is my current financial outlook, at least how it presents on the surface, as a quagmire of anxiety and fear and threat to survival, then what does it portent if I am to lift instead of dig? Ah, I see… instead of digging down into my psyche, the way I have been, to get at the ‘source’ of the fear and whatever block there might be, the better way to attain the desired result—freedom—is to lift myself up and move on out of there.
What might that look like in my waking life, to lift myself out of the sucking mud of financial woes? Do I need heavy machinery such as a forklift, some seriously heavy-duty strength to equal the gravity of the job? But I AM the forklift, I have it already in me to do this. But, oh but, I am not the driver/operator, therefore I have to wait for the moment when the juice is turned on and flow begins. So I wait, as the tool, as the vessel that I am.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Lyndon Johnson, JFK, in Oz
Dreamed about a dark-haired young woman named Lyndon Johnson Somebody… there were a couple of other women with her…
Lyndon Johnson succeeded JFK, that’s about all I know about him. So he moved up in position because the beloved head of state was killed at the height of his power and popularity. What is the JFK in me? He was the part of me that loved and cared fearlessly his subjects, especially the underdogs—my lesser nature and qualities, my shadow parts.
Have I the courage to love my shadow ‘subjects’ openly, into the light of day? Or am I embarrassed and ashamed of them still? I do believe it’s easier to accept someone else’s faults than one’s own, but then again, the faults I see in others are the ones in me. Furthermore, does my courage extend to actively and publicly working to find balance of ‘justice’ for the underdogs in me, as JFK did, flying in the face of established mores of the time? Or do I continue to suckle at the teat of public approval and reward?
My god, I just realized that I am all of the characters in the Wizard of Oz (not just the Cowardly Lion, as I thought), each believing himself to be lacking the one thing that prevents him from ultimate happiness and fulfillment. When in fact, brain (intelligence), heart (feeling), gut (courage), and the wisdom and power that Dorothy discovered in herself, therefore in the 3 friends, were always there within. Never missing, never even had to be earned or acquired elsewhere. It was in us all along.
All we have to do now, is take off the green-tinted glasses of pre-conditioning, and believe in the beauty and abundance we see, in ourselves.
Lyndon Johnson succeeded JFK, that’s about all I know about him. So he moved up in position because the beloved head of state was killed at the height of his power and popularity. What is the JFK in me? He was the part of me that loved and cared fearlessly his subjects, especially the underdogs—my lesser nature and qualities, my shadow parts.
Have I the courage to love my shadow ‘subjects’ openly, into the light of day? Or am I embarrassed and ashamed of them still? I do believe it’s easier to accept someone else’s faults than one’s own, but then again, the faults I see in others are the ones in me. Furthermore, does my courage extend to actively and publicly working to find balance of ‘justice’ for the underdogs in me, as JFK did, flying in the face of established mores of the time? Or do I continue to suckle at the teat of public approval and reward?
My god, I just realized that I am all of the characters in the Wizard of Oz (not just the Cowardly Lion, as I thought), each believing himself to be lacking the one thing that prevents him from ultimate happiness and fulfillment. When in fact, brain (intelligence), heart (feeling), gut (courage), and the wisdom and power that Dorothy discovered in herself, therefore in the 3 friends, were always there within. Never missing, never even had to be earned or acquired elsewhere. It was in us all along.
All we have to do now, is take off the green-tinted glasses of pre-conditioning, and believe in the beauty and abundance we see, in ourselves.
Shadow Artifice
Friday, February 4, 2011
Vaguely recall an impression of a dream:
I was working in a huge hive of a place, where people were at their specific tasks in groups like departments. A young woman I knew in the dream (but not in waking life) came running up to me, excited with good news, she said, that she had found someone else to take my place, which happened to be ‘last place’. “Two negatives make a positive,” she beamed with positivity as she said this.
So I am ‘saved’ from being in last place because two negatives make a positive? I don’t get it.
Her piece of news was rather a shock to me, I had thought I was trying for first place. Being in last place was not even in my awareness, obviously. This is a clever way of breaking bad news to someone, I’ll admit, to wait until there’s an improvement on the situation, and deliver the message all at once, kinda like a shit-sandwich.
Being in last place definitely implies failure, but, I notice now that the woman in the dream never said which place I had been ‘promoted’ to. I assumed it meant second last place. There were so many people around, competition would be fierce. Again, I assumed that.
Was she my shadow, but one that I had met before, as she was familiar to me in the dream? She was certainly the epitome of positiveness herself, almost too much so, like a salesperson who congratulates you on winning a prize, when you both knew that the ‘prize’ is just a gimick or a ploy of marketing.
Was she ‘artifice’? And was she showing me how I use artifice to deceive myself? By using cliché and blind logic like ‘two negatives make a positive’, pun on the ‘positive’? The cliché is definitely not always true, in fact I can’t think of any instance where it is true, other than the purely mathematical/logical. Perhaps it’s tellling me that much of what I hold to be true is only ‘true’ on the rational plane. I can feel the truth of that (ha!) and while I am quite capable of intuitive thinking, so often I am kidnapped by self-doubt on the way.
~~~~~~~~~~
I dreamed
the Little Mermaid had stayed
in the Piscean realm
of the ocean of boundlessness,
mutable,
fluid. I wish
I had never been told
that we are separate,
limited,
insignificant,
mortal puddles
of defenseless
tissue. Even though
I now know
that
Paradise Lost is
nothing but a man-made
smoke screen, and the
Garden of Eden is
only
a belief away, I
have yet to
penetrate
to the other
side.
The question
isn’t
whether
I have the power
to bring Heaven
to Earth, but would I
allow
Heaven on Earth to come
to me, into my life.
Heaven
is always
knocking
on our door
—do we
open the door?
Earth is
just there
outside
my door
—do I step out
now?
Vaguely recall an impression of a dream:
I was working in a huge hive of a place, where people were at their specific tasks in groups like departments. A young woman I knew in the dream (but not in waking life) came running up to me, excited with good news, she said, that she had found someone else to take my place, which happened to be ‘last place’. “Two negatives make a positive,” she beamed with positivity as she said this.
So I am ‘saved’ from being in last place because two negatives make a positive? I don’t get it.
Her piece of news was rather a shock to me, I had thought I was trying for first place. Being in last place was not even in my awareness, obviously. This is a clever way of breaking bad news to someone, I’ll admit, to wait until there’s an improvement on the situation, and deliver the message all at once, kinda like a shit-sandwich.
Being in last place definitely implies failure, but, I notice now that the woman in the dream never said which place I had been ‘promoted’ to. I assumed it meant second last place. There were so many people around, competition would be fierce. Again, I assumed that.
Was she my shadow, but one that I had met before, as she was familiar to me in the dream? She was certainly the epitome of positiveness herself, almost too much so, like a salesperson who congratulates you on winning a prize, when you both knew that the ‘prize’ is just a gimick or a ploy of marketing.
Was she ‘artifice’? And was she showing me how I use artifice to deceive myself? By using cliché and blind logic like ‘two negatives make a positive’, pun on the ‘positive’? The cliché is definitely not always true, in fact I can’t think of any instance where it is true, other than the purely mathematical/logical. Perhaps it’s tellling me that much of what I hold to be true is only ‘true’ on the rational plane. I can feel the truth of that (ha!) and while I am quite capable of intuitive thinking, so often I am kidnapped by self-doubt on the way.
~~~~~~~~~~
I dreamed
the Little Mermaid had stayed
in the Piscean realm
of the ocean of boundlessness,
mutable,
fluid. I wish
I had never been told
that we are separate,
limited,
insignificant,
mortal puddles
of defenseless
tissue. Even though
I now know
that
Paradise Lost is
nothing but a man-made
smoke screen, and the
Garden of Eden is
only
a belief away, I
have yet to
penetrate
to the other
side.
The question
isn’t
whether
I have the power
to bring Heaven
to Earth, but would I
allow
Heaven on Earth to come
to me, into my life.
Heaven
is always
knocking
on our door
—do we
open the door?
Earth is
just there
outside
my door
—do I step out
now?
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Healing PTS
Woke up this morning from what felt like a long, extended dream, and my ex-husband was with me the whole time… I wasn’t particularly thrilled about it, but there was some kind of process or objective we had to accomplished, but I just wanted to get it done and over with.
DREAMWORK:
I’ve had dreams about my ex-husband now and then, but the question that remains is a basic one: Why him? I am not aware of unresolved issues where my relationship with him was concerned, yet I know there must be something—that he represents some part of my own psyche that I’ve not come to terms with…
I went into sleep last night with thoughts about what my life would be like without my nemesis, fear of insufficiency, and its underlying cause of The Split, the dualistic view of life. I didn’t know that this fear is so big it blocks any possibility of even imagining my life without it. It is that glass wall again. And I am nose to glass, so close to it that I cannot even see where it ends. Perhaps this dream brings some light to that…
What my ex represents that I reject is the primitive nature of man, particularly of men, the masculine manifestation. It is also the earthiest part of human and animal nature. I can see that by denying and disowning it, I am cutting myself off from the earth, its support and nurturance. Aahhh! It is my vulnerability again, afraid to get dirty, afraid of possible violation and trauma, afraid to be invaded, overpowered, plundered.
The breach of that trauma has penetrated my sense of safety so deeply and violently, I have not been able to get close enough to the open wound, because I’ve been too busy screaming from the pain and anguish, still. I think I’m simply(!) stuck in the impression or image of the events—primary symptom of PTS—and do not have the wherewithal to get myself out. I’ve worked on this every time it came around on the healing spiral, and it has healed to the point that I am conscious of all of this now, which for most of my life has been filed under ‘phobia’ and left like an inoperable tumour. So it’s time to let go of these frozen memories, these stories of my life, at least this layer of it.
I surrender them to the Oneness of Life, from which they came, to which they shall return, and become part of the flow of life again. I wash them from me, into the ever-moving and living water of Dao. I immerse myself in it and let it wash out my wound, calm and soothe it, love and care for it. Dress it with the healing wisdom of plants and minerals, fill it with vital, raw earth. Drench me in showers of prayer and blessing so that I take root in this earthly life, this beautiful and abundant life where fears come and go, but love is always there. Here. In me. With me. In and with everything. In and with the 100 Huskies killed by their employers yesterday. In and with the employers.
Love is like the sun. It rises for everyone.
DREAMWORK:
I’ve had dreams about my ex-husband now and then, but the question that remains is a basic one: Why him? I am not aware of unresolved issues where my relationship with him was concerned, yet I know there must be something—that he represents some part of my own psyche that I’ve not come to terms with…
I went into sleep last night with thoughts about what my life would be like without my nemesis, fear of insufficiency, and its underlying cause of The Split, the dualistic view of life. I didn’t know that this fear is so big it blocks any possibility of even imagining my life without it. It is that glass wall again. And I am nose to glass, so close to it that I cannot even see where it ends. Perhaps this dream brings some light to that…
What my ex represents that I reject is the primitive nature of man, particularly of men, the masculine manifestation. It is also the earthiest part of human and animal nature. I can see that by denying and disowning it, I am cutting myself off from the earth, its support and nurturance. Aahhh! It is my vulnerability again, afraid to get dirty, afraid of possible violation and trauma, afraid to be invaded, overpowered, plundered.
The breach of that trauma has penetrated my sense of safety so deeply and violently, I have not been able to get close enough to the open wound, because I’ve been too busy screaming from the pain and anguish, still. I think I’m simply(!) stuck in the impression or image of the events—primary symptom of PTS—and do not have the wherewithal to get myself out. I’ve worked on this every time it came around on the healing spiral, and it has healed to the point that I am conscious of all of this now, which for most of my life has been filed under ‘phobia’ and left like an inoperable tumour. So it’s time to let go of these frozen memories, these stories of my life, at least this layer of it.
I surrender them to the Oneness of Life, from which they came, to which they shall return, and become part of the flow of life again. I wash them from me, into the ever-moving and living water of Dao. I immerse myself in it and let it wash out my wound, calm and soothe it, love and care for it. Dress it with the healing wisdom of plants and minerals, fill it with vital, raw earth. Drench me in showers of prayer and blessing so that I take root in this earthly life, this beautiful and abundant life where fears come and go, but love is always there. Here. In me. With me. In and with everything. In and with the 100 Huskies killed by their employers yesterday. In and with the employers.
Love is like the sun. It rises for everyone.
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