Personal Statement
My Jacob Factor
Summer 2009
I took a course in college about autobiography. I remember the inevitable conclusion that the professor guided us toward: that autobiography is always a lie. For him and for me there was no way out. The best you could do was to struggle with this unbeatable foe. In this work we call the foe, 'the lie' or 'pathology'.
This personal statement is autobiographical. What I did not have then that I do have now is the dream and this work. My dream shows me the truth of myself. This work teaches me how to confront the truth, enter into it, struggle with it and bit by bit, live into the deeper truth of who I am. It is the Jacob factor that Marc has written about. I am in the struggle. I am not through with it. My angels haven't given up either.
So although my pride wants me to be seen as someone special with a special gift or talent. Wants me to stand apart from the crowd, uniquely qualified. In my dreams the only truth that really matters is that HE seeks me so that I can know his love. Intellectually I know that dying to self means being born into my true self. I see how this process has not diminished Marc or my brothers and sisters in NOE one iota, but has actually raised them up. And yet it has been a struggle to give up my isolation, my pride and come into relationship with the divine. This struggle continues. Looking back I know I have changed. I know I am deepening into this truth bit by bit.
Relationship. It is so much about relationship for me in my work now. The work I am in now is built on all of my past dreamwork, but the key homework that marks a turning point for me is when I take the wine from the Animus' cup. Since last fall this has been the bedrock of my work. At first I was aware of my prideful resistance and my angry reaction. Much less I was aware of His tenderness and love for me. I always had this choice. I didn't always go to Him and accept the wine, but I knew it was a choice. It pains me to know how angry and hurtful I could be to others in my resistance. People like Marc and others kept looking past my pathology to find the boy in me despite this.
The wine is his spiritual energy coming into me. It has it's work to do to change me. It is possible for me to recognize this as a sacrament - a covenant with Him. Maybe this is where my relationship with him took a conscious turn and became something substantial in me. But it is not what I think that makes it what it is. The wine works on the cellular level. I have nothing to do with it other than to accept it. It's grace. Only after the fact do I see the connections. If I have changed it is because I have taken his wine. If I am lost, then I have forgotten to take the wine.
In the last retreat I had a dream about me being a spiritual teacher who could perform miracles and heal people, but in a room full of people no one was paying attention to me. I created a cone of fire to get their attention and stepped into it. It threw me out. Instead a teenage boy said "I can do that" and stepped into the fire. He could stand in the fire. I was shown up in my pride and thrown out. I thought he was being arrogant, but it was me. He was just full of himself in a good way and this was pleasing to God, for this was His own holy fire. When I stepped into the fire as the boy - for this is also me - I felt this for a moment. How it was to be full of this fire, nothing to apologize for, clean, clear, and full of myself. And there was great pain. If this was true of me then there is pain knowing how I have lived, never knowing this and never feeling this. How arrogant I have been.
When I do not seek the wine.... and why wouldn't I want it.....it has a lot to do with not wanting to feel this pain. It also has to do with preferring to have things on my own terms even if this means feeling miserable and alone. It is a strange form of pride that I have. Not wanting to feel good if it has to come from Him. Preferring misery, self-diminishment and defeat.
More recently I had a dream in which I ran into a couple of young men with whom I had some issues that had never been resolved. I tried to make light of this by making a kind of joke about this conflict. They took it as an invitation to have a real physical fight with me. I could see this. They lit up. There was fire in their eyes. I was scared. I didn't want to fight.
This dream was bringing me back to a part of myself that I have tried to avoid for most of my life. I remember one time and one time only that I hit a kid in my class who was bullying some little kids. I couldn't stand watching this. I made him stop. It took a while for Marc to get me to acknowledge that this felt good. Underneath my fear and my sense of guilt it felt good. It was good. I was feeling my fire. Marc had me connect this fighting feeling with taking His wine. Working with this has been transformative in my relationship with Marc.
I have always projected onto Marc my egotistical drama of being the good boy or being the bad boy. I project that he is there to judge me and punish me if I do wrong. Either I am all in a frantic rush to prove myself and gain his approval, or I am wallowing in a sense of failure and hopelessness because I screwed something up. Because I am doing carpentry work on the NOE retreat center this has plenty of chances to show up in the real world, but it has always been there in our therapy big time. What I have done has sabotaged relationships, not only with Marc, but throughout my life. I have always felt hurt and bewildered at myself. I always feel I am trying so hard to be good, or to redeem myself for my last mistakes only to be blindsided. But I am becoming conscious of how I set this up. An ounce of fire in my relationships looks like a pound of cure. It gives me a place to stand - right or wrong - that is not about approval or disapproval.
In my most recent dream I see a tall black man who is wearing a little box on his head. Looks like he is about to give a street performance in this neighborhood which feels fully dominated by black culture. He's actually a geek. His art form is not about being cool. A couple of other black men come up to him, lean on him and talk in his ear. What I see is that they want to intimidate him while acting like they are his great friends...his bro's. When I closed my eyes to feel myself as this geeky black man with a little box on his head I felt very alone. I felt scared. I am ready to pack it up. These guys were promising to hurt me if I do this thing. Then I remembered Him, the Animus, and his wine. Alone I could not stand in myself in this way, but with Him I could. I can.
This dream shows me how I avoid conflict and how I expect to be punished if I stand in myself and in my fire. The wine is this fire. Fighting in this way is not bad. In fact it is necessary. There is opposition within me and around me to being in my truth. When I feel this fire I am not so afraid of conflict.... even with Marc. I can be more honest. Truth is that I'm still afraid. When I am dodging the conflict I am hiding. I deny that I have a choice. I prefer playing victim to pathology. I am putting the lie out there. I sabotage relationships.
When I feel the fire in me I know what I care about. I allow God's love to burn in me. I care about this work. I care about what NOE is bringing into the world. I know what I am fighting for. This work is struggle. I don't know why I have chosen this struggle. Why I have made Jacob's choice to wrestle with my angels. Really, I don't know where this comes from in me. I haven't felt a lot of passion in my life to 'know God's love'. I have been a great cynic. I have heaped scorned on 'born agains'. I am not the best fighter in the bunch. I haven't always taken this seriously. Plenty of regrets. But so what. I am where I am. I am changing. I don't know where this is leading. I am learning to stand in my relationship to Him and to let this lead me.