Falling through a Ring of Fire
by Scott Fortney
Johnny Cash and The Ring of Fire
Dream - I am riding on a bus with facing seats across from Johnny Cash. I am singing his songs and he helps me remember the words as I look out the window and watch as the countryside passes by. I feel great.
Dream: I am riding a bicycle in the dark that is out of control.
These two dreams were "spliced" so that my homework was to be with Johnny Cash on the bike and to feel being out of control, but in His hands.
When I drew the picture I had the feeling of being the age of ten. I also had an image of Johnny’s signature song, Ring of Fire, which is one of my favorites, so I added the flames.
Since then my work has seen a torrent of regressive dreams, many reflecting themes of fire and explosions and fleeing and surviving. What better guide than Johnny Cash whose music is steeped in themes of pain and suffering. I have been learning His song and feeling the pain of these many traumas these past six months.
Dream - I walk down a wilderness road to a camp and a man my age is following me that I think is mean. I meet a young boy about 12 and tell him that the man following us treats people poorly. He wants me to go with him into a building where there are burned dead people covered in barbeque sauce. I don’t really want to, but keep walking with him.
This dream came before the one with Johnny and shows my resistance to going to this place, but also my desire to learn about this.
Dream 1/3/11 - I am walking along a narrow road and a huge explosion things like train cars massive piles of earth and such and it kills thousands of people. I am blown or fall into a protected place and see all the devastation of the people from the town perishing and feel great dread because I know I have to flee. I feel devastated and afraid.
Shift
I am in the country and wake up from having slept the night in an open field along a trail with two women and another man. We are all in our mid-thirties. I have to lead everyone—as we walk I keep looking back for pursuers.
Shift
I am in our house on Elm Street and my sister-in-law is going to go downtown. I sense danger—something cataclysmic and I tell her with great gravity that if anything happens downtown to meet back here.
I felt a lot of pain and loss around this dream. My work was to be in the trauma of the explosion and then move into the place of being responsible for having to take care of others, to lead them out of harm as we flee. Being responsible for others, caretaking, hyper-vigilance are hallmarks of how pathology runs my life. I seek out ways in which to keep this trauma activated because it feels comfortable and familiar. The weight of responsibility wears on me and also makes me angry.
Dream - I am sitting in the middle of a vast field of deep ashes and there seems to be some partially burned books and large nails. I have an unopened bottle of clear liquor in my hand. I understand it to contain alcohol that is the distillation of despair and negativity. I do not want to drink it. It feels like I have drunk from this before—maybe all my life.
My work was about sitting in the field of ashes and feeling the despair. I have felt that despair over much of my life. While some of it can be attributed to experiences I had as a child, this dream reaches back to past lives.
I just found the following regressive dream from many years ago. I did not remember having it—it was fourteen years ago, so I was surprised when I read it. I felt the visceral anger immediately and I recognized it as my chronic underlying experience:
DREAM - I am riding on top of a van and some wood is piled around me. I am made to understand I am being taken to be burned alive. I take off my socks. A woman (demon) takes off all her clothes to add to the fuel. Some boys are riding on the fender and I am trying to hit them with my fist. I scream out in anger at them and the crowd that is around, "I hope you mother fuckers enjoy the smell of my sizzling flesh!" The Unitarian minister and her husband are in the crowd and I hope I haven’t offended them.
In the book, Dreaming Metaphysical, there is a chapter titled, Point of Need. It is about being met by the divine at the point of our greatest need. I have not done this. I have continually turned away and taken matters into my own hand. I have ever since lived this life, and past ones as well, on my own terms. I have built myself up so that I could meet the threat of the projected pain and trauma that I did not feel so that I could strengthen my false ego, the pathology, my managing and coping ways so that I can stand in horrific situations and remain calm. I do this by blaming others for what is happening to me. My façade of calmness is a cool looking version of being shut down. I feel this angry silence in my marriage, at work, in social situations. Passive/Aggressive behavior lives here, too. The passive part is being in the fire and not taking it to the Animus, not speaking is how I got here in the first place—enduring whatever the world burdened me with, feeling the pride of being able to manage it, and then being angry about it.
My work became taking the pain to Him to see all the places and opportunities where I chose to feel angry, where I relish being in it and therefore seek it out. It is a familiar place. Seeing this rage and knowing that it is un-alchemized, unprocessed pain helps me to feel my wounded, tortured soul that has endured lifetimes of abuse and pain.
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My current work has been to feel the wounds and the pain of these women in the following dreams and take it to the Animus, to be lifted up and into His love:
DREAM - I am in the square of an old European city. I am holding the back of the head of an 18 year old girl in my hand. I sense her body is not attached, but I don’t want to look. Her eyes are looking at me, but they have a far away look. I stroke her face with the back of my fingers. I knew her. I talk to her.
Dream - Patsy dresses in a beautiful green dress from the late 19th century—we are to be photographed for our wedding picture. She has a veil that pulls up from the neck that goes up to just under her nose and eyes and when she pulls it down I see contusions and bruises on her face. I say, “We can’t get photographed like this. You need to heal.” I feel pain and sadness seeing her hurt like this.
Like the dream above there is more along the theme of losing my head. These dreams have a regressive quality, but they also speak volumes about how important it is to lose the thinking part of me that always wants to figure things out and orient myself intellectually. The lawyer in me is adept at rationalizing any and everything, a spin master. My father identified this trait in me when I was a young teen. It took me a long time to see how damaging this is.
Dream - I am to be beheaded for piracy. I think about how I can overcome the executioner, but I just want it all to end. Suddenly, a lawyer says, “A navy has no ships in the desert, so it's just an army. No ship was taken.” I am watching the condemned man as he smiles at his reprieve. I feel disappointed.
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This last sequence of a dream shows a big shift into vertical healing work. It starts by showing a long held pattern of going out on my own missions to feel engaged in my life. There is then a bit of a wobbly homecoming to the Father’s house. The spiral staircase shows me accepting the help and support along the way as I become smaller and younger and vulnerable and desirous of the relationship with the teacher. The last part brings me back to the fire dream of fourteen years ago. Instead of turning outward and being angry and self-righteous, I am turning to the Animus, who is able to sit in the flames unmoved and at peace. He reminds me of Johnny Cash riding through the Ring of Fire, undaunted, purified, someone that models the right response to the trials of this life by going inside of himself—always going inside.
Dream: I am flying a fighter bomber at tree top level. It is tense—the speed and closeness of the trees and waiting for the target. I release the payload and then climb out full power. I look back over my shoulder and there is a long line of fire burning along the road.
Shift
I walk into a town and there is fear that the Soviets are taking over our army. I go into a general store—seems around 1930’s. I stand at a meat case and can look right in, so I feel around 13. I order a hamburger from the woman of the couple that runs the place. I ask her what her address is. She says, You know my address. Her husband asks me my name and I say something like, Helmsingly. He takes off his apron and comes towards me and I think he is angry.
Shift
I am in a big building in the same town and suddenly the fire alarm goes off as does the civil defense siren outside. I start down a spiral staircase. I come across two boys (13) in school uniforms and I hear one of them say, Professor, I didn’t understand that thing about primalcy you spoke about. I feel great that they are getting help as I hear Marc responds and am amazed at how he never tires of talking. I keep going down the stairs a long way and the steps are further apart.
Shift
I come to a man sitting in a train car. A fire is in the initial stages of breaking out. I know that this man knew this was going to happen and that this time he’ll know what to do like maybe save the boy. The flames suddenly engulf him and I see his hair is on fire. He just sits there in the burning fire and his face looks beatific. He looks at me and then closes his eyes and turns his head down and sits calmly in the flames.