October, 2007 - I have followed my dreams through the Dreamwork for just shy of twenty years. For me, living by the guidance of the dream is normal. The dream is my own personal teaching parable with it's innate wisdom, designed especially for me. When I wander from my own truth, when I forget what I know or how I feel or who I am, I look to the dream for correction. I listen in to my dreams to point me back in the direction of true north.
In a few days the world of Archetypal Dreamwork will be forever changed. What has grown up slowly, but surely, over thirty five years in Central Vermont, within a community of seeking folks, will be known by a much wider audience. Our dear friend and colleague, Rodger Kamenetz, has given the world the gift of writing about his journey. His book will open up this work to many more folks.
I am in awe as I write this down. I am in wonder.
Last week I had a dream at our most recent retreat. In the dream I am standing in the meadow at the edge of the forest up on Norris Mountain, the location of our retreat center. Out of the forest at dusk comes an enormous bull moose. I am so close to him I can see his breath and feel the warmth of his muzzle. I know in an instant he can trample me if he chooses. He does not. Instead he walks very slowly and deliberately toward me, lowers the huge antlers of his primeval head and bows, staring at me all the while. Silently this huge creature moves on, back into the depths of the forest. Next, a larger than life male lion emerges out of the darkness, walking towards me. His mouth is so immense I realize he could swallow me whole. He does not. He comes and stands before me, in all his majesty and, like the moose he looks me in the eye, with great respect. Then, he bows his great maned head in acknowledgment and follows the path of the bull moose,back into the forest he came from.
We are on the verge of great change. The great ones are showing their respect for the preparation and work we have done. They bow out of respect for our obedience. We have built a retreat center, learned how to work the dreams in a group process called String Therapy, and trained students to become teachers of this work. More than that each one of us has continued to do the hard work on the individual level, growing deeper through our dreams and being willing to be obedient to what the dreams have asked of us.
We do not know what will happen next but the dreams show me that we are on the right track and the Divine is noticing.
Personally I too feel on the cusp of a new phase in my life. For the past ten years I have chronicled my journey in words and images. This fall my friend Sue Scavo and I are compiling my collection of writings into a book. Very soon, we will be able to offer another book about the Dreamwork, a personal story that weaves the past and the present, through all the choices I have made along the way, how I have diverged from my truth and how I have learned to hear the truth and know it as real. In the book I talk about my dilemma: how I kept choosing men as a way to avoid my own feeling self, the pain of my separated self and ultimately union with the Divine.
It’s the story of a life lived keeping love at bay; for if I opened my heart to love I would also open to great loss. The dreams opened me up and strengthened me until the time came when I had grown the capacity to bear my own deep loss and separation from the Divine. The plan was exquisite and gorgeous, perfect in each step, a unique design for the unfolding of my soul.
Underneath my compulsion around men, I travelled down into deep corridors into the well of loss, evoked for me by my parents, who, out of their own woundedness could not live the life of intimacy and connection my soul longed for. By entering the portals of the present I opened to the core terror and loss which were my tickets back to my real self, the one who could give and receive love.
In my book I recount incidents in my life to illustrate how I was lost. I include dreams and their explanations to show how I was found. All the way along I drew my dreams as a way to feel into them more deeply. My life in the last twelve years is the substance of the book; everything I lived found it’s way into my writing. The book and my life became so synonymous that recently my youngest child, Gabriel, asked me: “Mom, what will you do in your spare time when you finish your book.”
Here is a recent excerpt from the book, called: Becoming a Vessel:
September 7, 2007
I dream I am with a woman who tells me she has recently lost her dear brother. I feel her loss acutely.
Then I enter a room with many people including a tall man. I know who he is. He is my love. I go up to him and ask:
Is it true I am so special to you?
He replies by taking me in his arms and saying: You have no idea how special you are to me.
I feel his love for me completely.
She is me, the woman in my dream who lost her brother. She is me who feels deep loss, who knows how to follow the golden thread of loss, down, down, down into the well, into the center where the love dwells.
The love that is divine, the love opening through loss. Spiralling around through the years, through loss, to deeper relationship to the Divine.
I have learned to accept loss when loss is there.
It is here tonight, for no real reason. I feel the energy of loss around and in my heart. I eat two pieces of toast until I realize I am trying to mute the loss. I stop, plug in the laptop with it's cracked screen. The crack is leaking a fuzzy fuschia-colored line in a soft diagonal curve. It looks like the screen is bleeding.
When I feel pure loss, without any story, without an attachment, I can drop into it fully. There's no hook in this dream, no drama or story. It's not 'about' my childhood, my last marriage, an old betrayal. It's just loss. Through the softening, the opening to loss I feel his arms around me, my head on his shoulder. I can take in, fully, in my whole being and body, how special I am to him. I don't think I am special to him. It's not about believing I am special to him. I feel how much he loves me in every particle of my being. I feel it on my skin, in my heart. I am letting go into this holding me. I am not holding back. Finally, I am not holding back. He loves me. I am special to him. I let it in. Way in, like never before.
When loss comes without a story it is a pure gift. It's for me, it's mine.
Working through the portals of story we walk into a land beyond story. We need the portals of our stories to enter into the domain of our sacred feelings. When we react to the story we keep ourselves locked outside the holy portal to the feeling tunnel which returns us to our selves, our real soul selves. The story is just the key into the tunnel. We need to enact our wound in order to activate it and enter into the tunnel which leads into it's secret chambers, the rooms which hold the hidden essence of who we are. When we react we stay in the game, the lie of the world. We miss the moment, the whisper of the angels who say: walk through, keep coming, don't be afraid, we are waiting for you. Every time we react instead of feeling, the angels, like the angels in Wim Wenders film, 'Wings of Desire' stand helplessly, sorrowfully by us, near us, unable to do anything but silently witness. With sorrow.
The archetypal realm is endlessly patient with we humans. I have been moving towards ----and running away from---- His love for twenty years.
The fall, separation, the journey, the return.
The journey is full of twists and turns. It is exciting, dangerous, frightening, exhilirating, frustrating, demanding, lonely, painful, joyful and sad. Along the way of the journey are many gifts and offerings as well as adjustments and difficult confrontations. Ultimately, though, the journey is not about the obstacles any more. It is about the fulfillment, the sacred union. It is not a concept. It is felt and real and embodied. Accepting the union is a new phase. Can I live in this love? Can I accept a new reality? Can I step into the unknown of being fully loved?
I have been learning to live in a new reality with His love.
I falter. I faltered this week. I suffered a backlash. I did not feel special or loved. I felt unappreciated, resentful. I let grievances in relationships build up. I was lost. Underneath feeling lost I realized I was scared. In my separation from Him I got scared.
Once union is felt, the state of separation is an unbearable purgatory. I had to call some friends to remind me I was lovable. I needed a bridge back to the dream where I am special to Him. I found my way. I found my base-line: loss.
Love through loss, acceptance of loss.
September 8, 2007
About a month ago I dreamt of being in the harbour in Bermuda where I spent my childhood. My belongings are in a basket on a rock. I am in the water with my young labrador Flora. A wave comes and washes away my things. I have no need of my wordly things, what attaches me to the world. I watch them go. There is nothing to do but be in the water with Flora.
In the water, in essence, with the girl puppy. The world is washed away. The realm of the world needs to go for me to stand with Animus in the inner realm.
September 9, 2007
Last night I dreamt about my little house in Mud City; it had come loose from it’s moorings. It was no longer attached to it’s foundations. I realized it was in the water. Bill was pushing it and it was skimming through the water. He was laughing uproariously. I realised it was okay.
I feel like I have no co-ordinates in the world. My attachment to the social structure has been dissolving over the last year. In this dream it is severed from what I thought was the foundation. I remember how much that house held for me, how I used to visualize it when I was away from home, in order to feel sane and connected. It is no longer fixed. I am no longer fixed. I feel untethered, free floating, without a set reference point outside in the world.
Loss dissolves the false sense of security the social structures of the world gave to me. Loss brings me to my knees, loss leaves me raw, open and exposed. I am undone by loss. I am brought home, to my Beloved. I do not need my little house to know who I am.
I just took the dogs out for their late afternoon constitutional. I met my dear friend Laura in the driveway. We compared notes about where we find ourselves, in similar but different realms without the old, known co-ordinates. Adrift, knowingly. Adrift with meaning. Divine meaning to which surrender is the desired response.
Later Sue came down to borrow a box of Annie’s Macaroni and Cheese. She said, "I’m going somewhere and I don’t know where it is. I’m scared.” Nothing is known and familiar. Feeling hollowed out in a wonderful way I meet her in the unknown. She cries.
I say to her I have been feeling all day as if life as I have known it is falling away, everything is changing and I do not know what is coming next.
Over the years the salt-tears of loss have worn channels through the limestone vessel of my being, wearing away the unneeded structures, softening, forming a hollowed-out receptacle for me to fill up with my own beingness, with His love. In order to receive His love I needed to know I was special. In order to feel special I needed to feel His love. Ebb and flow. The two weaving around in perfect concert, for me, the way, in the time I needed. One dream at a time. Learning to give and to receive. To give up what I was asked to give up, to learn to receive the gifts offered by the archetypes.
A few days ago I felt the pain of loss. My feelings were hurt in relation to a dear friend. It was not time for resolution with the friend. It was the time to rest with the feelings inside me, to allow more limestone to dissolve. It was uncomfortable to do so, to rest with the discomfort of the feelings. I could feel the part of me that wanted to retaliate, to exact vengeance. I could feel my brittle anger. I sat in a circle of close colleagues who heard my pain and reminded me of the preciousness of my own vulnerability. Bill told me the gift of the vulnerability of my hurt feelings was for me, regardless of whether the friend ever understood my hurt feelings or not. I stayed with those feelings of hurt.
On the island of Bermuda, where I was born and grew up as a child in the sixties, there are mysterious limestone caves with stalactites and stalagmites, growing up and down. The rain water drips down wearing away the limestone to form the cave deep in the earth. We loved going to visit Crystal Caves as children, entering into the darkness. It takes thousands of years for the formations to become. It takes thousands of years for the cave to be hollowed out. The cave is patiently evolving over time. I often remember the limestone caves when I ponder the process of growing in consciousness. I recall the English director, Peter Brook saying about his lengthy production of the Mahabarata: It will take the time it will take, it will be what it will be.
Becoming a vessel take the time that it takes. I am a patient warrior. I know how to move through the waves of terror and loss, staying long enough in the intensity of the feeling for the dissolving of alchemy to occur. I meet the feeling without judgement or shame: it rewards me by moving deeper inside the spacious realm of the Divine.