April, 2009 - Walking in the Woods
April, 2009
Dream: I am walking in the woods. It is winter but it is a warm day. There is no one physically there. It is all familiar and at the same time it is all alien. It is like I have landed on another planet and I am exploring. Even though I am physically alone, I do not feel alone. In fact I have never felt so held in so much presence.
Having this kind of grace inside of me is something I have only ever felt for fleeting periods of time. A few months once, and a few days here and there spread over a lifetime. I am learning now to live with this grace, day in and day out.
It is funny to say but it is excruciating to live in the world with his presence in this way. The outer world is so full of pain and disappointment. I have always wanted to find a place in the outer world where it felt safe to have a bit of grace, where I wasn’t physically alone, where some one else gave me permission to be true to myself.
June, 2010 - Receiving the Blue Chrystal
June, 2010
It is a real stretch for me to write about receiving the blue chrystal. To say out loud that I know his love in this way. It is one thing to let it in, in some internal, private way & another to really own it publicly the way it is in the dream.
Marc asked me about a moment at Cat Balcos wedding when I received communion. He asked what was happening for me when I knelt after communion.
The simple answer is that I sat and did my homework. I was with Him in a river of blood (my homework at the time). For me this is what communion has always been, to be with Him, to literally allow myself to become the body & blood of christ. There is a prayer over the bread & wine that says: "Do this in memory of me". For me this is not about remembering him, it is about remembering what he taught. He was not asking us to receive him, he was asking us to receive God as he received God.
I Dream of Carl
I Dream of Carl
first publishing in Pank Magazine - www.pankmagazine.com
I arrive, alone, in Vermont in the middle of March. The painters and writers and sculptors who got here two weeks earlier already know each other. I don’t know anyone, but before me stretches two weeks of no cooking, no folding laundry, no helping anyone with homework. All I have to do is write. My husband and teenage sons are home in Missouri, and finally, I have time to myself. After the welcome tour and quiet unpacking of my suitcase, I go to my studio. The heavy door closes behind me, and I turn the deadbolt. I arrange my books and pictures and lists on the shelves. Just out the window unfolds a view of the snowy banks of the frozen Gihon River. I sit at the desk and open my new, empty notebook. And I am already lonely.
To read the full essay, go here:
http://www.pankmagazine.com/i-dream-of-carl/
August, 2008
August 2008 - I am a devotional girl who loves God and I have a pathology that hates God. The devotional girl who loves God is who I am. I know her and am re-remembering who she is in me. I am re-becoming her and I have a pathology that hates God and wants to keep me from her.
The Pain of Being Split in Half
I have lost my self in the world, and am beginning to find my soul again through the dreamwork.
Dream:
I am looking in the mirror, and one side of my head has straight hair and one side of my head has curly hair. I feel the pain of being split in half, torn between two different ways of living my life.
The side with straight hair is the little girl who always did things right to please a mother who wasn’t there. The curly haired girl laughed at the grown-ups who were trying to stifle her, tell her to be quiet and polite, and be more “grown up.” I want to find that little girl again, let her be free, and feel her connection to the divine.
Another dream:
A large boa snake is hovering over two girls, one 5 years old, one 12 years old. The 12 year old is terrified of the snake; the five year old is mesmerized and feeling its sensuality.
The Promise of the Rose - December, 2010
Dream:
I am at one of my childhood homes but it is like the mass rape scene from the movie Blindness. It is ruled by 18 year olds, one in particular. He has a gun and is threatening to kill me and others if we do not submit. I am terrified – not this again. I realize that he is lying, that there is no one at the gate that keeps us in. I go to the gate and it opens and I leave. I find another 18 year old man. He has a gun, but I know him. I can trust him. I feel the difference between the two young men.
Dream:
I am underneath the stories with Him, with body and without body. He is showing me, teaching me, telling me in ways I do not know. It is a vast physical space – the stories like dense fog above us. He tells me – The healing is not just about your healing. As you heal the split in you, this in turn heals downward, to here. There is a split here, too. The dreaming needs healing too.
Dream:
April, 2008
Dream: A woman comes to the house where I am living and tells me to pack a few things, that I’m going with her. She is sexy and funny and she rides a motorcycle. Ok! I say. But why pack things? She says, trust me. As we leave the house through the basement, we are talking like kids about the things we hate. I see ants on the banister and say, I hate ants. Then I see roaches on the door and say I hate roaches. We are laughing – it’s funny. Outside, we get on her bike and she takes me away from the house.
She takes me, surprisingly, to a classroom. There, a man is teaching about writing and poetry. He gets right in my face and says, I did MY MFA thesis on Sonnets and Soliloquies. I can feel He is asking what I did my thesis on, but I do not say. Surely, I say to myself, this is not what I am supposed to be doing – this can’t be right.
Commitment - April, 2009
April 2009 - The root of the word commitment comes from com- “together” + mittere “to put, send.” To put together, to send together.
“Commitment is God’s love returned.” Marc Bregman
I have been doing the work of following my dreams for over eleven years, facing into each dream, facing into my resistance, facing into any trauma that came up, facing into the hurts I have received and the hurts I have caused. I have felt my resistance and then moved through it, I have felt my fear and moved through it, I have spoken when I did not want to speak. I have been incredibly obedient to the course of the journey through learning my story, learning how I keep separate from the Divine that my dreams have laid out.
The Fall Line - Spring, 2011
Horse comes to me before I wake after a nervous night tossing and turning
Thick coated horse kneels down before me
Horse muzzle nuzzles me in my neck, deep in
Shall I Climb on his back, let him take me
Wild traveller of the plains?
Shall I awake to his mysteries?
I am learning how to ski on curved skis.
It is different from the straight, hard edged skis I learned on. Curved skis turn naturally into the fall line of the slope. Curved skis ask for trust and sensual relationship. Instead of carving the turn I must relinquish control and let the skis carve. I am learning to trust the moment of the fall line, trusting the ski will take me through the turn.
Tom the teacher says, 'Press into your right toe. That pressure on the ski is enough to initiate a turn towards the fall line.' I tell him I can't trust the moment of turning down the hill, towards death. It requires surrender and trust.
Amy Newman, June, 2008
June, 2008 - At the end of December I gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Throughout my pregnancy, I talked with Marc about my commitment to God and my work coming first. The importance of parenting from that place. Marc talked about how when women give birth, they often take a break from their work, fall into “babyland.“ He was clear that this was fine. I was clear that I had no such intention. I wanted to be on top of it, working it, connecting what came up for me in mothering my son to my inner work, etc.
I had a wonderful pregnancy and a beautiful and challenging birth experience. In an instant, my whole life changed completely. I thought everything was great. People commented on how relaxed I was as a mother. I felt like things were going well.
His cup fall 2008
His Cup
Fall of 2008
In my dream I am wandering for a long time. It is late at night. I walk down a street and there is Christopher Hitchens sitting in a chair. I recognize him. Prestigious commentator. Very intellectual. Provocative. I sit in a chair facing him and he offers me a cup. I want to take it from him, but he holds on to it. He insists on holding on to it. I get huffy. "I am not a baby. I can hold my own cup. This is demeaning, don't you think." He lets me take the cup with a look of sad resignation. We chat about something about the world or the war or whatever. His eyes look damaged somehow. I can't imagine how he can see with them. It's time to go. I think about how I could write something about my meeting with Christopher Hitchens. I go and sleep in a car I find open on the street.
Wanting More
Wanting More
The Animus is courting me. He knows me so well. He knows I’ve lived life cautiously, watching from the side lines. He knows I get scared, then I run and hide. So we’re taking it slowly right now. I’m not slaying dragons or jumping off cliffs in my dreams, but I’m with him and I’m sticking around and that feels different.
Here are the dreams I worked with Marc this morning.
Tea for Me
The Animus makes a pitcher of iced tea for me. The pitcher’s clear glass, round and full, gleaming. He pours me a tall glass and hands it to me. I take the smallest sip I can manage, a single drop. This is my life. He shows me love and plenty but I can only accept this tiny taste.
Working the dream with Marc, I close my eye and guzzle the tea, gulp down his love. It feels bold and brave. I feel wanting for him and the promise of more.
Come with Me
from The Secret of the Pomegranate by Susan Marie Scavo
excerpts from The Secret of the Pomegranate
Poison:
Dream:
I am in a crib – preverbal but just able to stand up. On the floor by
my crib are three little boys between the ages of two and four playing.Through an open door, I can see the mother in the kitchen making spaghetti, but I see her pour some kind of poison in it. I start to scream in horror. She brings the poisoned food to the children and they eat it while I scream, trying to stop them. They all fall into a catatonic state and two men in white lab coats come in. They lift the boys and take them into the kitchen with the mother so that they can
do experiments on them. All the while, I scream.from Sex, Trauma and Conjunctio - Chapter by Susan Marie Scavo
I have been circling a place in me that I have not wanted to look into, a place of absolute refusal. I have circled it with trepidation because I have not wanted to really see what it is.
Kick Ass Girl
A week before Philly I dreamt about watching a video with Clint Eastwood about a woman who became a kick ass girl.
When we were in Philadelphia I did not feel like the kick ass girl. I had surges of hot rage shooting up from the wings of my upper back, along the sides of my neck and out above my ears. I needed to feel the heat of those surges, stay in the discomfort of this energy coursing through me and walk away from my father, who, in a dream from the month before, is decrepit and frail. And yet, in that dream, I am still clinging to him. I still want him to support me. I was clinging to the infantile need of a daughter for a father. In Philly I was deep in the process of letting go of my need for my father.
March, 2008
March 2008 - I am still striving to be the boy and feel the Father’s love. This year my 45th year has been one of the most difficult in my life. As my children have aged I see more and more of my frustration and anger reflected in their relationship to me. In my inner work I see how I live so much in aloofness or the opposite taking responsibility. These are both the same thing, ways I avoid the pain of the boy. But the pain is where I need to be. In a dream the boy tells me when he cries he can fly. When I am feeling the pain, fear, anxiety, I am dying to self. There is nothing to do.
Traveling Through the Tunnel
August 2008 - In September 2007, my marriage ended and I began a journey into feelings of grief, isolation and despair that have lain deep inside of me since my childhood.
Oh Joyous Day
March 2009
Oh joyous day.
These words and others springing forth from my unburdened lips.
Oh joyous day.
I can feel. I am feeling for the first time in months, really feeling. Oh joyous day.
I have moments when like a lightning bolt like rushing up through some wellspring... my truth shines before me clearly.
The regrets I have stuffed down. The true desires I have not allowed to be. That I have denied and rejected, as I have done with her. With Molly Aurora.
from Gravity - Not Writing by Susan Marie Scavo
When I came into the work, I was beginning to find the the voice in me that felt true. I had been writing poetry for years, had begun to publish a few poems here and there in small journals. The reason I had landed in Vermont at all, just down the road from Marc’s house in Morrisville, Vermont, was to do a two month writer’s retreat at The Vermont Studio Center. I was living in San Francisco at the time with no intention of ever living anywhere else.
At the Studio Center, I had several famous writers look at my work and offer insights, criticism and praise. It was a dizzy time for me, for I was beginning to believe that maybe I was a writer, maybe this thing I thought I had made up in my head was actually true. Maybe I did have this passion that I had spoken of for years but had been too afraid to do.
In fact, I felt that I had started to write some poems that were good poems. That had something in them. That had weight and heft.
The Jacob Factor by Marc Bregman
September, 2007
September, 2007 - As I write this I feel fear. I don’t often let myself feel it. I prefer to be in control, to be smart, knowing, looking good. But inside I’m afraid: afraid of failure, afraid of looking stupid, afraid of looking bad. My body is tense, I never fully relax. I’m wary, on guard. I trust no one, I don’t trust you. I want to trust you but I don’t. I am afraid you will hurt me, so I don’t let my guard down. I try to appear in a good light so you will approve of me. I don’t expect you to like me, so I seek your respect instead.
November, 2007
November, 2007 - When I started the Dream Work in January, 1996 I knew a lot. Despite the fact that I was a new mother (Sonya, my first born, was only 6 months old), I knew a lot about raising children – I already had many years of teaching young children under my belt and through my studies as a Waldorf teacher I now knew that there is a 'right way' to raise children.
On Commitment by Deb Degraff
There was a time when feeling became too painful, too much to bear and I shut it down. I shut my girl-self down. Now, not feeling has become too much to bear and I want my girl back, I want back my capacity to feel. I want to feel the belonging my girl knows, the capacity to relate that my girl knows. My capacity to love and care and want.
Spontaneous Combustions - July 2008 Retreat
Spontaneous Combustions from Retreat - July 2008
July 16th
Through Annie They asked in her 1st opening to use the Mountain to go deeper. I heard:
Stillness
The Mountain has no regret.***
July 17th
The Mountain heals. In and of itself.
Calm grandeur, majesty
Reflecting the Maker
Remaking me here within our circle
Calm stillness, solidity, grandeur.Coming apart in our circle
to become the mountain
I become the circle.Every day dawn dawns.
Fog lifts with birdsong.
And the Mountain endures.The seasons dress t& undress the Mountains.
Spontaneous Combustions May - June, 2008
Can you feel how trying to share your experience diluted it? Fell short, fell flat?
And the one thing you wanted to hear, that, of course, there are many approaches to strings, you already knew.
What matters here is to learn that in a feeling way. Also, it was jumping away from the group experience, by looking for a validation for Our experience which could only have happened if you were in the strings. That's all. This is the lesson for tonight. Now you know more deeply what containment can mean.
After Thursday strings group - May 1, 2008
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ONCE