Borrowing Clothes from 3 Sisters

DREAM that I was with a group of young people and we were staying in a house or building for a week. It was the last day or night and I was upstairs looking for my clothes to get dressed for a meal downstairs. But I couldn’t find anything of mine. Eventually I gave up and put on some clothes I found that fit me. I told an older woman who was some kind of authority figure. She listened attentively then called over 3 sisters and said I should explain to them. I assumed the clothes I put on belonged to them. The youngest was only a small child, about 6 y.o. I told them that someone must have taken my clothes, clean ones that I’ve laundered, and dirty ones too, that I looked everywhere and in other people’s stuff, wearing only my underwear. I only had those because I always had them on. Finally I chose a sweater, jersey-knit and light grey, with a cowl neck and pouch pocket in the front, and a pair of calf-length pants. They were short of course but I thought it would be okay with my boots.

The sisters listened to me but didn’t appear to pay much attention, as if the clothes weren’t theirs, or they don’t care. They were distracted by what else was happening in the vicinity. I remember looking at the contents of one bag I searched through. Instead of clothes it had loose sheets of pictures of women models, like fashion shots, post-card sized but on magazine paper. All the rooms were full of clutter, things everywhere. Typical young people chaos.

DREAMWORK:

Clothes… my personas… both are of paramount importance when we’re young and/or immature. In our appearance driven culture, you could say it’s a group dilemma or collective affliction. In the dream I am one of those young people, and bound by my conditioning which said that I had to look acceptable (get dressed, upstairs) before I could get the nourishment I need (meals, downstairs) from the collective (society). But I had lost all of my personas (outer garments), all the resolved and unresolved issues that they carry (cleaned and dirty laundry), yet my ego is still wanting to belong, to be accepted by the standards of contemporary society (still looking for clothes to wear). I still want to be somebody, do something ‘useful’ in the eyes of my peers, earn recognition and rewards. My ego wants validation, inflation.

I found a quick fix with ‘borrowed’ stuff, so I could appear in public. The top was really stylized monkish wear, with a modified cowl and flared sleeves, the pouch was a touch of the peasant incorporated, and it was a colourless light grey. It was comfortable and fit me well. The capris were also comfortable though a bit funny looking when seen above socks, but only because I was indoors. It would be okay when I put boots on to go out (into the world). Capris suggest youthful freedom and optimism to me, like holiday adventure wear. These are what I chose, based on my priorities for what I want in life: vitality, freedom, optimism, adventure, joy, as well as spiritual contemplation and solitude, connection with the divine as well as my own humanness, and with the world. So if it takes borrowing a temporary persona to connect all these dots, so be it. I can face up to it and humble myself to ask the Goddess (woman authority figure) for guidance. What then, is this ‘borrowed’ outfit that I need? The top is a contemporized novice monk/mystic shirt, the bottom is the freedom to explore, dance, leap, and move with vigor and flow. Does this make a picture of someone who is spiritually centred in the midst of humanity? Well that’s who I want to be.

The 3 sisters, I feel, are the immature representations of the 3 stages of the feminine: maiden, mother, and crone. They are as yet underdeveloped in me, the maiden is only a small child, and I haven’t connected to them, so they are not paying me full attention. They are still attracted to and distracted by the drama and sensory stimulations pervasive around them. So with each of these stages of life I have work to do, as I well know. What to do, I do not know. I guess I give them (and myself) time, and keep watching for opportunities to further my maturity.

The ‘fashion plates’ I found in that bag, which looked substantial from the outside at first, puffed up and full, was disappointingly insubstantial. No actual clothes in it, only slick pictures. This, and all the details in this dream were almost painstakingly delineated and vivid, as if of great significance, as if this dream wants me to really get all the nuances of the ‘reality’ of my situation. I have been disappointed by the refinements of the world, but this is showing me that even the refinements aren’t real. They are mere images, constructs of appearances that we are led to aspire to. We make mannikins out of ourselves to put on these outer appearances, and tell each other and ourselves how great we look, how we’ve come up in the world, that this is what we want in life, and inwardly miserable because we constantly measure ourselves and others by it…

I’ve lost count how many dreams I’ve had that carried this same message, that I am still a captive of the mothership society I grew up in, still the slavering dog after the pats and treats from my master, still measuring myself against the gold standard of patriarchy. Why can’t I make the shift? Because I have now labelled them ‘them’, and they and I are of divided loyalty, purpose, meaning, and everything else that matters. I have drawn a deep dark line between ‘them’ and me, so as to show that I am not them, I am not like them, and more subversively, I am good and they are bad. So the split in me is one inch ahead and two inches back… In fact, I am still one of ‘them’, and I know now that I am meant to be one of them in this life, as mine is not the path of the renunciate or hermit.

So am I to embrace and accept status quo?!? I feel though, that that is not the question nor the point. The point is not to judge, not to create sides so I could take one and declare the other the antithesis. The point is that I stay grounded in stillness and walk the middle way, observe what goes on around me, and be open to receive what the present is telling me, not be distracted by these essentially illusory and egoic tactcs and hoops I put myself through. I don’t have to cut myself off from involvement of the worldly, just pass through it and let it pass through me. Don’t get caught up in the politics of spiritual pursuit. Don’t make politics.

Quartet of Dreams

DREAMS & BITS:

1) I am looking down from our 2nd or 3rd floor home out of the front window and seeing some people walk their dogs on the ground below. One dog I noticed was wearing a very fashionable and tailored outfit. I point this out to my mother who is in the room but she is dismissive.

2) I have just pulled my car into the parking pad outside our house when another car drives by between my car and our front door, deftly turned in front of my car and pulled into a space in the parking pad next to ours, literally a hair away from an identical car already parked there and lines up to it perfectly. A young woman with long black wavy hair gets out and I compliment her on her parking skill. She makes a vague noise or gesture and leaves. I head to our door and notice the dash of my ex-husband’s car is crammed full of garbage like candy wrappers and old pieces of paper. Somehow my car is parked inside his like a car on a ferry boat. I took out some of the garbage to get rid of it.

3) I see a woman stripping herself naked swiftly and pulls a long dress over herself. The dress is of natural fibre like sackcloth and sewn like a wide loop, with a hole at one end for the head and 2 holes at the other for the feet to go through. The sides are of course, completely open.

4) I walk into the house and see my dad’s blueprints on the table (he was an engineer), I wonder to myself whether he got bored with retirement or did the company ask him to work. There was the word ‘Queen’ or ‘Queensway’ on it.

DREAMWORK:

1) I am up in my head looking down again, keeping my safe distance from the general unwashed world out there, down there. Dogs are for me the sociable, eager-to-please faces we put on in public, but a drive for survival nonetheless. I see other people as overdressing their public personas, for acceptance, for ambition, for power, but do I still have that need in myself, even though I’ve distanced myself from that world? My own assessment is that I am less so than I used to be, but how firmly grounded am I? I am not so detached that I have stopped noticing what goes on in the world of achievement and acquisition and vertical growth. I am still comparing myself to them everyday, telling myself that I’m not like them, that I’m following a higher calling, etc. But underneath all that peptalk is fear. I am still shaky in my faith, and my mother in the dream, my shadow and my critic, is less than impressed.

2) The woman in this dream is not unlike my mother in the first dream. They are both dismissive of me, not bothering to look at me nor talk to me. As shadow figures, they are a bit hostile. Perhaps because I am not receptive to them?

I made it home in my car, my personal vehicle and drive, and parked – I have arrived. Everything was just ever so slightly smaller than normal, kind of hobbit-sized, and the parking pad was really just dug out of dirt and crude, a bit primitive and ‘organic’ looking. Everything was also compactly spaced, although it felt more cozy than claustrophobic. The woman, my neighbour, my shadow, drove right around me, coming up from my right and across to my left, expertly. There was just enough space for her car to get by, and she managed the 90˚ corner as only a dream can accommodate. But she went straight to the spot, didn’t waste any time or energy. The car beside hers was a twin, and like 2 front teeth they were so close together. So my shadow is driven by several things? An identical pair, plus a different one off to one side (there was another car already parked there off to one side). Hmmm… I’ve the feeling the 2 identical cars are 2 halves of a whole, a split. She is driven by a split, plus another that has been there longer.

Then to my surprise I discovered that I was actually parked ‘inside’ my ex-husband’s car, his drive, a part of my masculine I had rejected and thought I was done with long ago. What part of me, or my drive, does he represent? Worldly, immature, primitive, crude, an echo of the parking space, and apparently unkempt with old garbage. At the same time grounded in the physical, and relies mostly on survival instincts. Being in the physical and instinctive is not usually my forté, therefore what I need. I need more brawn to go with my brain, but I have old issues with it, which is really just garbage I can let go of now.

The dream is showing me what’s going on with my feminine, what my shadow wants me to know, as well as what needs to be done for my masculine. These are personal level, close-to-home stuff that I can take care of, although I am at a loss to say what the split is in my feminine. And why isn’t she living with me, but next door? Is she a part I’ve rejected? The long black wavy hair suggests a romantic freedom, perhaps an ideal I’ve disconnected from? She was wearing a dark thick winter coat, so maybe to do with depression and a cold indifference? I certainly got that feeling from her. I am reminded suddenly that that’s how I was when I was married to my ex – young and idealistic to begin with, later hardened into bitterness and indifference. I have never brought her back into my embrace, even as I healed those old wounds, never loved her back into life. She is stuck in that image I have of myself then, all I’ve done for her is admit that she is a part of my nature. I know her, but I do not love her. I call her The Bitch, as in Bitch-on-Wheels, which she definitely was in this dream, ha ha…! The unconscious can be so subtle and blunt at the same time… The Bitch is impatient, brusque, cold, and immune to flattery because she is so jaded and toughened by her bitterness. Most of all, she hates men, and my ex was definitely the prime target for all of my venom.

So there’s old garbage I need to clean up, old beliefs like stereotyping the kind of man my ex was, and stereotyping men in general – the insensitive, inconsiderate, tunnel-visioned, infantile meatheads that they are – as my rantings went yesterday on my way to the grocery store. I know very well that biologically men are women are made for different functions but ALL serve Life, so why do I still cling to the old conditioning that ‘women and men are equal’ means we can all do and excel at the same thing? We don’t, just as one person does not necessarily excel in the same thing as the next person. I need to see through that unforgiving way of looking at gender equality through the militant feminist lens, which is often extreme and just as biased as what it tries to balance against. This is what lurks in my shadow, and that’s the split in my feminine. In my heart I have learned the truth, though my head is still crammed with old garbage.

3) Woman in a simply and ingeniously designed sack dress… hmmm… Is she a monk? A penitant? I can see how I’ve wanted to become someone like that, detach from the ties that bind, and trade it all in for the drastically simpler and more single-minded way of life of the retreatant. The loop form of the dress is significant, because it suggests a circle, endlessness. The retreat does not end with time, it is a state of mind, a way of life that continues even when I move on to do something else in life, even when I go back out into the world, even when I am busy doing something else besides contemplation. I don’t have to renounce the world in order to live in sacred contemplation. But why the open sides? It leaves me vulnerable from the sides, because I need that vulnerability, that openness, as I’ve only lately discovered.

4) My dad, my masculine authority, has chosen to come out of ‘retirement’ and accept work in his old trade (engineering). But the prominence of the word ‘Queen’ tells me that this time the authority is also feminine. I am coming back out of my retirement from the world and returning to my old work. Healing? Design? No… Creativity. I am coming back as my creative best.

Gift of Vulnerability

1) I was in the kitchen feeding the cat, an orange cat, and discovered that a bag of cat food had been infested by mice. Chewed right through the top of the bag, and there were clumps of white fluffy things puffing out of it when I was just about to reach in, like cotton stuffing from a futon. I freaked and ran downstairs into the basement where a couple of groups of young people were gathered. I went to the first group in one room but they were too busy to give me attention. I went to the second group and said to the girl closest to the entrance, softly but urgently, “I have an emergency!” But she just turned back to the group and ignored me. I became angry because this was my house they were in, how dare they ignore me!

Then I saw on the floor a mouse running by, which I announced to a girl beside me, but the mouse was not running but lying on its back and propelling itself with its long tail spinning fast, like a windmill, or the propeller of a boat. There was a fraction of an inch of water on the floor.

2) I was in a drugstore shopping. The final item I was looking for was natural toothpaste. I couldn’t find any so I asked a store clerk for help. She was a young East Indian with long black hair parted in the middle. She pointed to the display in front of the checkout, but there were people in the line-up obscuring it. I got in there and looked, but there was nothing left. I went to checkout but there was no one at the station, so I sat down in front of the cash register and tried to do it myself. I scanned the items from my bag, but not thoroughly, some may have been missed. I intended it that way, as a way of compensating myself for not getting what I wanted. I hit ‘subtotal’ at the end and saw that the screen said ‘small circle’ and ‘large circle’ in Chinese (the same character can also mean ‘coin’), as if they were options. I didn’t understand but continued to slide my credit card in the slot. Then the cashier came and asked if I was finished, I told her I was just paying. She said “Oh no, you don’t have to pay because we have inconvenienced you. You are to go to the back. We have something for you.”

My sister, who was also there, came and escorted me to the back room where it was full of small stalls, like a public washroom but without the toilets. More like change rooms but without doors. The small space was full of people, women I think, chatting, hanging out. It was like a lounge but crowded and shabby because the décor was outdated. But everyone seemed content and relaxed, happily engaged in conversation. In the centre was a grouping of chairs, and those were mostly occupied too, but on one chair I saw a nicely wrapped package, like a gift. I thought that was what I was getting, but my sister led me to a stall nearby, and it was decorated with party ware. Shiny streamers, bows, balloon, with a larger gift package sitting on a chair.

DREAMWORK:

In both dreams the light was not full, as if it was incandescently lit… subconscious stuff…

1) Feeding my personal drive and ambition (cat, orange) but the ‘food’ has been infested by fear (mice). This fear has seriously undermined me, beaten the stuffing out of me, literally. I ran to my unconscious (basement) for help but the two groups of people in the two rooms were too preoccupied to spare me any attention. They each seemed to be having a serious discussion of some kind. There was an intensity in the rooms, and everyone was very focused.

My knee-jerk reaction to fear is still one of avoidance, of stuffing it down or pushing it away. I don’t always have the presence of mind to own it, embrace it, stay with it until something else happens. Especially this fear of going back out into the world, of vulnerability. This fear that comes of not being rooted in my Self, and overly invested in personal ego, that shows up as lack of self confidence and assertiveness, as self-consciousness.

Yet when I did get up the nerve to look at my fear (the mouse), it was doing the most unlikely thing! Totally hilarious once I got over the shock. The fear is capable of navigating emotional water, shallow as it is, really nothing to worry about, and seems to be quite self sufficient (self propelling!) and resourceful. It appeared to be enjoying itself. This certainly took out most of the terror-induced adrenaline explosion for me.

Embrace my vulnerability? Admit I have thin skin and high sensitivity to anything abrasive? I’ve tried so hard for so long to appear the very opposite, jaded and tough old girl that I am. I, who have always disdained the showing of weakness and fragility, have to face my own share of them underneath the stuffing and the shirt… Do I even know how? I don’t feel that I do. It occurs to me suddenly that this fear, this vulnerability, has something to tell me. Being so open to all things external is a gift. It preserves innocence because it experiences everything anew, it sees with new eyes, feels with new skin, exclaims with wonder, is moved and cleansed by pain and joy, and finds a new perspective, each time, time after time. It is not so much an act of courage but an inability to close itself off.

Hold gently this vulnerability, and cherish it like a gem, for it is from this place of rawness and tenderness that I can best express the depth and authenticity of my Self.

2) Another dream on the self-help or self-serve theme… Searching for natural ‘cleaning product’ for my teeth, keeping them in good condition until the time when I can sink them into something worthwhile. But now I am prompted to ask some basic questions, such as: What does shopping mean to me? What does a store mean? What does a checkout?

These are recurrent symbols in my dreams, and very commonplace in waking life, but why are they so significant for me? I’ve always related it to my core personality of the enneatype epicurean, who inclines toward variety, options, thrills, hedonism, excess, pleasure, optimism, insatiability, jack-of-all-trades & master-of-none… A store symbolizes abundance to me, with its seemingly endless display of options and variety, possibilities for stimulation, the pleasure of the hunt and the fulfillment of gathering. This is heaven, where my personality and ego wants to go when it dies. The checkout means the point of gratification, when I claim the objects of my desire, the height of fulfillment. After that point everything’s downhill. Quite often I don’t even need those objects anymore, except in the sense of having something to try and sustain satiety. They may sit in a box in a corner for decades and never get used.

In this dream, it is a drugstore where one goes to get health-related product, so this is about healing. But I couldn’t get what I wanted, toothpaste, even after seeking help from my shadow. No spontaneous fulfillment of desire here. I cannot have control of my health, I cannot cure myself of every ill. I cannot prevent my teeth from falling out of my head if the Great Spirit wills it, no matter how much preventives I use. It’s true I have been actively, sometimes aggressively even, hunting down anything that ails me, digging into wounds, lifting scabs, and directing most of my energy into healing myself. But like everything I’ve ever sought after in life, I get caught up in the thrill of the hunt, and don’t know when to back off, when to stop. Is it time to take a breather, sit down and cast a level eye at where I’m at and what’s around?

In the dream I even tried to check myself out, cheating a little no less, self-indulgence self-served. The option of small coin or large coin in Chinese I didn’t understand while in the dream, but it seems to mean ‘win small or win big’ to me now, or ‘get small or get big’. Which do I go for? Somehow I’ve never dared to ask for the big win, to really dream big, to put all of myself on the line. But the time has come for me to consciously and decidedly make that choice, on the threshold of this momentous time of my life. Dare? Dare! If it be your will, Great Spirit, bring on the big!

I see now what I did not realize in the dream, the small gift on the chair in the back room, then the big gift in the decorated ‘stall’. Back room again too, this is the 4th dream with reference to ‘the back’, I think. This time I was directed to the back room, by my sister, my shadow familiar, who I trust. This is the 2nd dream in which I’ve won a surprise gift – is it a gift in myself that I’ve not recognized? In the previous surprise gift dream, the gift was my vulnerability, as was the message from the first dream I had today (see #1 above). Is the gift, which was wrapped and remained unseen in this particular dream, also vulnerability? Or something else? Perhaps another aspect of it? I don’t know, but the setting suggested a celebration of joy, and although the space was tight and outdated, a humble no-frill kind of place, it was clean and tidy, and full of the warmth of people and harmonious energy. Each group was doing its own thing, relating in its own circle (or stall, a ‘stall’ being a physical separation or division for the purpose of grouping and sharing, not to alienate or segregate), but all are safely held and connected within the whole space as one. It was like a speak-easy in the back of a bar under prohibition. It’s where life really takes place, where we are our true selves, relating to each other authentically. It is in the back because this way of living is still the ‘alternative’ style, not mainstream society where what’s true is often prohibited.

Can’t wait to see what this gift is, and what I will do with it, or, what it will do with me.

Drycleaning by Archangel Michael

DREAM that I was at a drycleaner and the woman behind the counter was telling me that it is better to have heavier items like bathrobes drycleaned. She was folding some dress shirts but I remember seeing a white bathrobe like Michael’s. I wanted to know why, was it economics? It seemed to me cleaning shirts yourself would be more complicated. So she handed me a pamphlet but it was purple type on black background, and near-impossible to read, though it was glossy and nicely printed. I stepped into more light but it was no use.

DREAMWORK:

Interesting that before I had this dream I was in that halfway place between sleep and waking, a time when things just float into my half-consciousness. This time it was about prescriptions for cleanses:

Heart Cleanse: Gratitude
Liver Cleanse: Forgiveness
Kidney Cleanse: Trust
Colon Cleanse: Surrender
Whole System Cleanse: Prayer

I scribbled this down in the dark, then went back to sleep.

So I am going to go with the ‘cleaning’ angle, but drycleaning is not do-it-self cleaning. It is hiring a specialist to do it for you. The specialist in the dream, my shadow figure(?), was giving me professional advice: have heavier articles cleaned professionally instead of the lighter stuff. Do I need to take my bigger and heavier issues to the professionals, instead of trying to resolve them on my own? Who are the professionals? Somehow the human variety doesn’t seem right… Professional spirits… I didn’t know there were such thing… or category… Emissaries of the Great Spirit, such as angels, animal spirits, and elementals. I am feeling a strong pull toward angels suddenly, even though I’ve never been before, and do not even celebrate Christmas.

I am to take my big issues, my core fear of being trapped for one, to an angel. Just one, not a whole choir. I don’t need to know who or when or where or how. I don’t need to analyze or compare or research the subject, they will not enlighten my mind, no matter how extensive, explicit, glossy and sophisticated the information is presented.

Something I am still missing about the dream… Michael’s bathrobe. Archangel Michael. That’s specific enough. Without doing any research I recall that he wields the sword of truth, and is ruthless and unsentimental when it comes to cutting out any manner of bullshit or falsehood. Hmmm… this will be cleansing indeed…

I am open to meeting and receiving Archangel Michael into my life. I am ready, though a little afraid. Thank you, Michael, my dreams, and Great Spirit.

The Milk of Forgiveness

DREAM that I kept avoiding eye contact with an ex-boyfriend who was hovering near me. I was sitting down, keeping busy doing things, he was standing to my right…

DREAMWORK: This is a recurrent theme, in dreams and waking life, of avoiding eye contact with someone. There is in it aloofness, arrogance, vulnerability, resistance, and my core fear of being trapped. It says I am unforgiving, I want to be separate from you, I don’t want to change my attitude about you. I reject you, because you have rejected me, because you might reject me. I won’t accept you, because you’ve not accepted me. Still that split of ‘me or you’, ‘me or them’. And I can’t face it because I fear the pain of rejection, because the pain had been too great.

How to heal this pain of rejection? I can’t make it go by will, it is too deep. I can see its jagged red roots like blades embedded in my abdomen, and I’m afraid to try and pull it out lest it creates more damage. It has to be melted, and I can do that with intention. It melted into nothingness, leaving root-shaped empty space where it used to be. It needs to be filled with something else. A milky white substance appears and slowly fills the space. It is the milk of forgiveness. I let out a big exhale. I have forgiven you, just as I feel forgiven by you. I have forgiven them, those who have transgressed against me, and I am forgiven my transgressions.

I recall the people who have hurt me, the pain from which I carried to this day, those I loved, those I hated, those I didn’t care about, those I depended on, those I passed by. I think of a few of them, a few of the stings I am familiar with, and I see that they rejected me because I had rejected them first, even though I hadn’t meant to present it that way, I hadn’t meant to hurt them. Although I am not accountable for their reactions, I can allow myself to be more loving, kind, and generous, by opening my heart to these energies. I can choose to be a channel for these, and keep this floodgate open, instead of keeping to myself out of fear.

What an immense gift, this milk of forgiveness, when I had little idea I still held grudges against so many, for so long. Honestly, it was like self-induced amnesia! But now I thank the Great Spirit and my dreams, as always, for this healing, for this day, for this life.

Sneaking In The Back Door...

DREAM that I was in an apartment building or condo complex, but for some reason I was sneaking around, trying not to be seen. The light was dim. I wanted to get from one apartment to another, and predictably there were many obstacles, like people, doors, walls, balconies, fire exits. Somehow I got through them, but towards the end of my escapade a father – dark skinned like an east indian – saw me and held the door open for me, because he knew my name from some fame I had.

Eventually I ended up on the ground floor, there a Chinese mother with a young daughter stopped me and wanted to set up an appointment with me for the girl. I was a teacher or a healer or something. I decided to go along with this and sat down in a chair in the hall. The mother was running down the child’s schedule to decide on a time, I was only half listening, still a bit shaken at having been discovered. She gave me some money and said that’s for the first 20 minutes of the 100 minutes. I looked down and saw that there were rolls and loose bills lying on me, from the father I ran into before. Then they were ready to leave, so I got up to walk them to the front exit, and the mother said “So we’ll see you Thursday at 10”. I realized that I wasn’t paying enough attention and didn’t know whether she meant 10 am or pm. I smiled and asked the girl with pretended casualness whether it was am or pm, and she said pm. I thought that was late but had to go with it now. All the while in the back of my mind I knew I was coming back to my work that I had taken leave of for a time, and had not planned to come back to, but I also felt a determination that I will not let it overrun me this time. I felt capable of drawing the line now.

DREAMWORK:

If this dream’s portent is telling me what I think it is telling me – that I will be going back to healing work with children – then my first reaction is one of fear. But I know that’s from old baggage. I have done a fair bit of work on the issues that caused me to withdraw – my fear of being trapped in responsibility for others, my lack of boundary, my lack of self confidence and self assurance, plus a bit of wisdom and insight that I did not have then. Although when I think of the how-to in addressing certain situations that will doubtlessly come up, like mothers calling all hours of the day for help, I still feel mired in helplessness, caught between empathy and self-sacrifice.

But I am assuming it is going to be the same work, with the same set-up, though there’s no reason it needs to be. I didn’t have a clear sense of the role I was playing in the dream, whether I was a teacher or healer. The parents seemed to look at me as if I was a teacher. Perhaps my mind cannot accept that because I’ve not taught children except in church years ago. Seeing the dream this way seems too superficial, perhaps I ought to look at it from more of an inner perspective…

Dim light, something from the unconscious or at least subconscious. I was trying to get away from having to relate to people and all their relationships. This is true of me in waking life. There were many obstacles, or so I thought, but I got past them. But a part of my masculine, from my unconscious, so a part I am not aware of, saw and recognized me, by a persona that I had. He engaged me in that role again, and I went with it. Why did I go with it? Why did I not say no, again? I was taken by surprise, as I said, and didn’t have time to ‘think’, so I did what seemed natural and went with the flow.

My attempt at staying out of sight of others, incognito, was like going in the back way in the other dreams I had. I was, I am, trying to disappear from public view, public life, surreptitiously, to escape judgment or being trapped. That’s my self-consciousness acting out. But Life caught me, and brought me back into the light, wanting me to go out the front door.

The father and the mother are the parts of my masculine and feminine that want me to grow up, to be educated in wisdom, nurtured, and brought to live out my full potential. In fact, they have already invested in me, paid me an advance to get me started. They believe in me and trust in life. The children are of course parts of me too. Everyone’s ready, just waiting for me to rise to the occasion. Well, I did in the dream, because I had no time to be afraid, I was too caught up in the flow of events. I am to ride along that current of trust, let my fears come and leave me, feel the wind and sun on my face, and enjoy the scenery and whatever may come.

Yes, I fear deep down that it may be too late in the day for me to start over, that I don’t have enough formal education, or inner resources, or any number of things I lack, but late is better than never. I am still here, stronger and healthier than I’ve ever been in my adult life, and I know what I did not know when I was younger. I know who stands behind me now, and has always caught me when I fell. I am never alone, even when I am most afraid. This is that core of tensile determination and earthy resolve that I feel, in spite of the fears buzzing around my head like flies to garbage.

Something’s still missing though, I feel, something still needs to be done… about the fear… more than just allowing them and letting them go, I need to give them expression. Hmmm… I don’t think I’ve ever done that… I’ve certainly given my anger expression, but my fears I’ve kept like fireflies caught in a jar, contained and ‘safe’. I need to treasure and cherish my fears just as I do with my joy and pleasures. Hold each one in my hand and see close-up the beauty of how they are made, the intricate miracle of this piece of life, for it is a part of life too. I have given it life, I have put a part of myself into it, a part I judged to be bad or wrong or ugly.

If I look at my fear of being trapped now, I can see even with my limited vision, that it is a fear born out of my belief that death is an end to life, an end to all things, to all connection, and that pain always precedes death. The pain that we feel day to day from living are the million small deaths that eventually kill us at the end of life. Under the dome of this fear, I cannot see that life is much bigger than this, that life and death are one seamlessly revolving cycle.

It is our biological determination that motivates us toward survival, to always put up a fight against harm, to rally an effort to stave off death, and that motivation is fear. So I’m supposed to have this fear of death, this aversion to pain and suffering, this vulnerability to danger. It is animal instinct. But an animal also accepts death, when the moment comes, it does not rail against fate, it does not sit at home immobilized by fear. It still goes out to hunt, to forage, to gather, to mate and rear its young. It does not stop living the life it was meant to, even though death could descend any moment. It follows the higher directives that it was born with, its potentials and its destiny, in spite of its instinct to survive, because this instinct is not higher than its destiny.

Those immobilized by fear, will surely die. Those who keep moving in spite of fear, have at least half a chance to live. This may be patently obvious, but somehow it is hitting me in the gut. It says I can’t hide from life. If I persist in letting fear prevent me from going into life, I will surely die, in more ways than one. I have to come out of hiding. I have to pronounce that intention and allow it to happen. In fact, fear does not prevent me, it is me who uses fear as a blindfold, a shield, an excuse not to move from the trap. And even though I do this consciously, the deepest part of me knows this is not good for me, it sees me stuck in this trap, and is afraid. I guess this is what they say about fear being the core issue of enneagram head types, that we fear fear itself. I’ve felt this to be true, but I have never understood it on the level of insight until now.

Great Spirit, help me come out of hiding, help me walk into the light, help me open to life. I thank you for everything.

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.