September, 2008: I returned home to Vermont in July 2005 from a two year mistake – ragged and torn - yet more me than I had been in many years. I jumped whole heartedly into the training path to be a North of Eden teacher – there was nothing more important to me. It was a year of healing, looking seriously into the dysfunction in my marriage and healing, honestly revealing the pathologies that had driven me away from my home and my heart.
There came a point however, where I started putting on the breaks inwardly and adapting to what I thought was expected of me. I learned to use the language of my NOE training to make it appear that I was still doing deep work. I did not know that this was happening. For a while my teachers and even Marc did not know. In March 2008 I left the NOE teacher training – this is part of what I wrote then and I still weep from the pain of this truth:
For four years I was a member of NOE – dedicating myself to a training with the goal to be a teacher in the dream work. I grew a lot – in the first 2 and a half years. Then I plateaued and refused to budge. I plateaued because I had learned the language – learned how to out my pathology, learned how to appear that I was doing powerful work. All the while, I was hovering and refusing to feel my fear, which is the single ingredient that the archetypes presented to me through my dreams over and over and over. “Notice your fear”. “Notice when you are avoiding your fear”. “Notice when you feel fear and jump away from that fear” “Feel the fear.” I believed that I could take a sip of the fear and that was enough, thank you very much.
I became dependent on NOE – the required reading was an opportunity for me to drop into my feelings. Often times I barely did my homework during the day and then, in the evening of reading, would begin to feel deeply, like a gush. I was using NOE, its structure and the deep work of others to buoy myself up. Being a member of NOE gave me an identity, said that I belonged to a group of incredibly devoted and dynamic individuals and therefore I must be a worthy person. I stayed on. I had convinced myself that I was a member of NOE for all the right reasons.
In the session with Marc just before I finally saw the truth, Marc said to me that it felt like I was siphoning off energy from NOE. The sting of this statement hit my gut and I began to bleed. It felt like love turned against itself – my love for this work, for NOE and His people - twisted into a massive projection that allowed me to avoid facing into my fear. I had turned this love into disguised self hatred, self betrayal – taking myself out of the equation while in the same breath striving to rise myself up into their light, their approval.
This sneaky pathology had worked for a while. But now the game was over. I was demoted to student group – a group for individuals who were isolated from the core of NOE so that our pathologies could not pollute the vessel. When this group became the Projection-Reaction group it became very clear that I was using the process of 'outing my projections' to hide from my real work – that of honestly revealing my fear and resistance.
I began to see the elaborate lie that pathology had constructed. The truth was that I was using NOE to avoid doing my own work. The work that only I can do – the work of facing into my fear, walking into my fear – noticing my fear and deliberately stepping into it rather than away from it.
This is very new. I do not fully trust it but it is the only direction I can go and truly grow.
For the last six months, I have been humbled and I am doing my work or not doing my work – for myself . I know that I am the only one who suffers when I refuse to do my homework. Doing my homework is the only requirement for growing in this work. Sometimes I do it – and sometimes I don't.
I am getting to know the resistance – getting to know how it feels, smells and tastes. Often, it is a tightening in my chest that is accompanied by the feeling 'I can do it'. It tastes like isolation and smells like “You are wrong and I am right” . There is a coolness, a touch of arrogance that sometimes gets disguised by sentimentality that I used to believe was compassion. It is a tenacious micro-manager – that knows she is the only one that can be trusted to do things right. It is highly critical of others, especially my husband and office manager – those who I need and love the most.
I am also getting to know the real me. The one who is devoted, the one who feels deeply vulnerable and walks toward Him anyway. I feel so vulnerable. I feel like I am standing naked and have no skin on. It is a raw feeling and the more I feel it, the more I can allow myself to feel it. I have been afraid to feel myself in this way – my vulnerability and my unrestricted devotion.
Almost a year ago – I had a dream where children gave me a bone and I walked in luminescent light, singing “I am a child of God...and now I'm going home...” Although I deeply felt the power of this dream, I turned away from it's gift and retreated to my resistance. My current homework is nearly the same dream - I am walking in the dark, feeling both fear and 100% devotion – I am walking to Him – and there is nothing in my way.
In my most recent session, Marc uncovered the truth of my fear. I fear my passion, I fear the ferocity and intensity of my devotion. I fear my gifts. My gifts are my passion and my intense devotion to Him. A few weeks ago, a different dream revealed that I fear success. My business has suffered from many hits of the pathology that would love to ruin me – both spiritually and financially. To allow myself success in business right now is the same as standing in my devotion to Him – to being in relationship and making decisions out of the juicy feeling of being with Him.
I am very slowly beginning to trust the vulnerability that I feel in this place - it used to be excruciating and now it is softening. In the softening, I begin to drop into the juiciness, the fullness of me that is not me - it is the fullness of HIM in me.
This week I have noticed that often times when I do my homework, I feel the beginning of it – the tingling fear of walking to Him alone and then there is a stopping point. When I stop and notice this, and take the time to breath into it, I see that it is just residual resistance – something that may always be present to some degree – but it is my choice to breathe through and past it – and then I feel myself – I am the naked girl with the Lion – and there is no where to go – nothing but the body tingling experience of feeling Him – both within me and by my side.
Here, I feel the clear path to the Divine. And this is who I really am.