April, 2011 - In a dream I had some months ago, I am being led to the stake, terrified, with my hands tied behind my back, being placed so the stake point is between my legs, knowing that I would eventually die under my own weight because I couldn’t stand anymore. I’m all alone here in this very public square, a spectacle. I ache. There is no relief, no being saved, no out. I’m ridiculed, spat on, my feet get kicked out from underneath me when I’m still able to stand. Eventually I will not be able to stand anymore.
In a recent dream, I see a man, the Animus, before me and follow him to the climbing wall and up to the passageway, the tunnel. He motions for me to follow him. I follow him through the tunnel. It’s tight yet the walls give way so I can get through to him. I’m with him now. I no longer feel fear. I feel his grace instead. I feel his love. I feel my love for him and my need. I ache and I need him.
My work is to stand over the stake and take the fear I feel to the Animus and follow him through the tunnel/passageway.
The Animus was missing at the time I had the stake dream. I did not feel the love and support of the Animus at the time I had this dream at the North of Eden retreat in the fall of 2010. When I wrote down the stake dream in the morning on the second day of the retreat, I knew it was how I died in a past life. I could barely get the words on paper as the feelings of horror and terror came rushing up. I stayed with the fear for the remaining four days of the retreat. I felt the horror and terror. I felt how utterly alone I was.
Four months before I had the stake dream, the feelings in my dreams were most often fear or terror. I was really beginning to know something awful had happened, but I did not know what it was. The stake dream answered what had happened.
I need to move through the tight walls of my fear to get to the Animus. I now know he is there for me when I move through the fear. When I had the stake dream that fall, I did not know he would be there.
When I don’t remember the stake, I keep myself tightly locked up in a different type of tunnel.
Dream: I’m in a tunnel just large enough so I can crawl on my hands and knees without hitting anything. I move forward and backwards not getting anywhere. I think my husband is behind me but I can’t see him. I don’t feel scared or stuck. The way before me is blocked and I don’t back out.
This is how I live. This is my prison that I believe will keep me safe from harm. It’s my hiding place. This is the place from which I react and project so that I don’t have to feel the fear of the stake. When I refuse to feel the fear, I just project it or react out of it and make those around me pay. I often project it on my husband and I make him the bad guy. Nothing he does is right and I let him know. It can be a snide remark about not emptying the dish tray of clean dishes. When I realize how I’ve behaved, I often feel shame. This time it’s me who’s wrong. I hear it as “See what happens? How can you ever show your face again?” I just want to crawl back into my safe tunnel and hide. I want to say, “I’m not coming out, go away.”
When I wrote this last statement, my 16th birthday came rushing back. All the relatives were over to celebrate. Sweet 16. My birthday cake was on a pedestal platter, and when I went to cut it, I flipped the whole cake over. Now the cake was on the table and the pedestal was sitting on top of the cake. I ran out of the kitchen and locked myself in my bedroom. I wouldn’t come out. My family knocked on the door wanting me to return. They said all the right things. I held fast. I’m not coming out. And then, when I really did want to come out, I felt I had stayed in my bedroom too long and now I could not show my face. I felt shame and I felt embarrassed. What I’m feeling right now is pain. The pain of how separate I was then and continue to keep myself today.
The other side of the safety tunnel is the place in me where I am the one who ridicules. I am the one whose tongue is like the point of the stake, ready to pierce when the person is at their weakest. I become the executioner. Kill first or be killed. Strike first or be struck. And under no circumstances feel. I am untouchable in this place: hard, cold, unyielding.
Pain rushes up writing that last statement. I get on the back of the Animus’s snowmobile (from another dream), my arms around him, my head resting on his shoulder. I need him so much I ache.
I'm standing at the kitchen counter, mixing sugar into almond paste and I just start crying. I realize it's the ridicule I don't ever want to feel again. I live in my tunnel of safety to protect myself from feeling ridiculed, humiliated, as I was in the stake dream. This is why I am always so defended, letting no one in, oversensitive to teasing.
Another reaction I have to the fear of the stake is to make sure that no one knows what I really believe. I won’t declare myself. I fear saying, I am a woman of God. The fear rises right now as I say this. My throat constricts. I cannot swallow. I am, once again, standing over the stake. Tears well up. I cannot breathe. I was a woman of God when I died at the stake. I am a woman of God today and I don’t really know what that means for me yet.
In my safety tunnel, I declare nothing. No one knows what I really believe or think because I’m always scoping out the landscape to find out what others believe and think prior to making any statement of agreement or disagreement. I stay hidden and safe that way, away from the humiliation of the stake.
I see the Animus in front of me. I follow him into the building. I am climbing the wall right behind him. He disappears. I see him on the other side of this tight passageway. He motions me forward. I enter and move through the tight passageway. I feel his love.