July, 2009 - I am afraid to have what I want. Often I don’t know what that is. So I try to give to others what I am afraid to have, or can not find in myself. There is a voice in me that is always asking, “What do you want from me?”
In my frenzy to make others happy in the hope that this will make me happy I go against my deepest knowing of what is best for me. This has happened all of my life. This pattern removes me from the present moment and keeps me in a perpetual state of anger and aggression that usually comes across in a passive manner and is served up with a forced, fake smile.
I am becoming allergic to this smile and when I find it forming and dominating my expression then I know I am telling a lie, going against myself, doing for or giving to others what I will not do or receive for myself.
Every time I do this I reject God’s love for me.
When I was a very young boy of five my father, who traveled a lot for work, told me that as the oldest boy in a family of seven children I was to be the man of the house when he was away. My mother, whom I played surrogate husband to in his absences, was an alcoholic prone to emotional and sometimes physical abuse and she and my siblings looked to me for emotional support, which despite my efforts I was unable to provide. Everyone was unhappy and I struggled under the burden of trying to give everyone what they needed. I got so lost in this that I was never able to learn or feel what it was that I needed or wanted for my own child self. This resulted in me living from the pathology of the Demon Boy.
The Demon Boy is self contained and completely incested. Because he was never cared for or loved he became self-sufficient so he did not have to suffer the pain of the lack of love and the ongoing betrayal. It has taken me eighteen years to find this Demon Boy and to learn about how he has run my life. From this Demon Boy I have been saying Fuck You to God’s love.
Dream:
There is an incorrigible boy at an adoption center who has chosen to go live with a woman who is ten years older than he is. The boy is eight and his father, a man in his thirties, comes to ask again if he would like to stay with him. The boy says, “Fuck you!” He is a very angry boy. The father seems so kind and loving.
There is a man reliving abuse every day.
I am secreting a white milky substance from under my arm. I taste and smell it. It is bitter and smells like my sweat.
This was a painful dream. This is who I am acting from when I am doing for others. All my life whenever I got angry I could feel the smile of this boy as he said, Fuck You, but I was never able catch what this was until now—seeing this dream, seeing my part in making the choice to live from this place instead of in the vulnerable and loving presence of the Father’s love. This boy has accomplished a lot in the world—gets the job done, pays the bills, does exciting and interesting things. All of this has been to avoid the greater vulnerability of being loved for who I am. In the dream I am the man suffering abuse every day. The milky secretion is the pathology leaving my body as I become aware of it—it has saturated every cell in my body, but it is being worked out.
The anger covers the pain of not being loved. Anger is an emotion and it has a life of its own and if I give into it there is some reprieve, but it is a cycle and it comes around again. Now I am choosing to go into the pain that the anger covers. There is a lot of regret in this place—for how I have treated others and let my own self down.
I came into the Work because I suffered severe depression that lasted a decade. The depression was a result of assuming responsibility for other needs, resentment of this burden, and the subsequent repressed anger that followed. Despite being depressed I put on the smile and went out into the work-a-day world and did my best to support my family. While a good provider, I was not very available as a husband or father.
Dream: I go to Marc’s house and walk in without knocking on the door. I go to the kitchen and start cooking a hamburger that I will eat.
This dream shows how I have felt like I have to take care of myself and that nothing will be provided me, no unconditional love—the Demon Boy in action. As a child I kept busy with model building, book reading, or taking long trips away from home to be by myself. As I got older avoidance for me was played out as the seeking of justice in the world or being responsible.
Dream: I am riding in the back seat of the family station wagon. My dad is driving wildly, making the car spin and almost going in the river trying to teach a lesson to a strange boy who is sitting up front with him. He drops me off at a bridge near a puddle and cars splash me as they drive by. I feel afraid and hurt. He takes my brother Lee to mom’s house and picks up my sister. He says he’s going to take his kids and she can have hers. My brother feels like killing himself not knowing were he belongs.
This dream shows how my dad was always teaching me lessons, moralizing, encouraging me to strive for the next thing, but never making me feel like I was good enough just for who I was, only for what I could accomplish. It was the formative years for the Demon Boy. I became this same moralizing, preaching, and arrogant man and I feel how this has affected my own sons and is painful to see—the lack of love. In this dream I project my despair onto my brother rather than feeling the pain for myself. This dream takes me deeper into the trauma of my experience.
Dream:
I am sitting with Sam at a meeting. I kneel next to him as he gives me helpful advice. I find myself pulling away. I want to stay in relationship with him, but it is hard.
In this dream I am in the right relationship with the Father—staying in his presence, but it is hard. In life, this man is someone who sees when I try to jump up to answer questions, get more info, solve the problem, or do the job in a knee-jerk reaction. He encourages me to stay put and in myself. There is nothing to do.
Dream:
I am going to go down some stairs and bump into Rob and I pause to let him go, wondering what to say to him. Then I am walking side-by-side with my dad down into a subterranean shopping mall. I have a pair of shorts underneath my pants. I tell my dad I am going to buy smaller pants soon.
Dream:
I am in a neighborhood looking at two separated pieces of property that are not contiguous to each other and therefore not a good place to build. A contractor comes by and starts talking to me about the problem with this land not being one parcel—he knows all about it and he says he has a solution. I really like talking to him and we start walking. I keep bumping into him and soon we are walking side by side on the side walk and I am holding his right hand. There is an eight year old boy holding his other hand. I start feeling a little smaller, but am worried that the way I am holding his hand suggests that I am leading and I don’t want to. I just want him to hold my hand and stay to with him.
In the first dream I am walking with my father. He is redeemed in my heart and I am going with him. In the second dream I am walking with the Father and my desire to be lead is greater. In both dreams I am blabbering, a little self-conscious, but I am with him, going deeper into my work, into the love. This is where I am now, going with the Father to a place that he will show me, where he can build. I don’t know what this is or what it will look like. I trust Him, not looking to others.