I've spent my life thinking that love was earned, that it was not given freely and that it could be taken away at any moment. I had to be the good girl, the funny girl, the unselfish one that takes care of others. I thought love meant being admired from a distance. I learned this from my mother. She was loved, but she couldn't accept it or believe it. I saw that in her but not until now, in me. In a recent session, Marc told me that I couldn't feel love because I was too busy proving to everyone how wonderful I am. Pulling this off means manipulating, conniving, scheming, lying.
I'm trying now to be honest, open, transparent, but I'm so hidden and defended that even I sometimes question if I'm being true or still playing games.
When I first started the work, Marc would give me homework to be vulnerable, and I told him I had no idea what that was like or how to do it. He would question in a gestalt if I felt shame. I never quite understood what he meant by that either. In my recent work I've tapped into the place of shame that I've kept so buried all these years and am able to see how it has kept me in the my hiding place.
In the course of my work, whenever I start to break down my defenses and get close to sacred connection, I get scared and run back to hiding and shame. The truth of these was shown to me in these dreams.
I'm with a number of people and we're packing up to go off to a party. I see a man, must be my lover, because I have one hand over my heart and one hand on my stomach. I say to him, "I don't know if I love you more from my heart or from my belly."
Shift. I go outside and see that people are in their cars ready to go. I had intended to stay overnight at the party place with him, but I see that 3 people are already sitting in my car. If I drive them, I'll have to bring them back. I decide to get in and drive and I think we'll just work it all out once I get there.
I walk out to a giant pool and find that the surface is tilted towards the water and very slippery. I'm sliding backwards into the water. I pass a woman and tell her to hold my towel as I'm sliding backward into the water. In the pool a huge wave crashes over my head. I surface to see I'm with the women. We realized another, bigger tidal wave is heading towards us and we decide to run to the other end of the pool to avoid it, but we go too far and end up out of the pool in some maintenance room.
In both of these dreams I come close. I'm open to a certain point, but run away in the end. Instead of going with my lover I'm caretaking. Instead of letting the tidal wave drown me, I leave the pool.
I'm at a meeting in some social service agency. The leader points out a young black homeless man and says he needs a place to go for a few hours so I take him home. At home I'm busy working and he says he needs to go out for a few minutes. Later I go into the bathroom and see he's urinated without flushing and there's a big bug like a centipede in the toilet. His filthy clothes are on the floor and I see bugs crawling out of them. I go down the hall and see he's unpacking and planning to stay. He's changed into an older man, no longer the young boy.
I don't know what to do. I can't decide if it would be caretaking to have him stay, or if it would be surrender. I don't know if he's animus or pathology.
Marc says that bugs are a symbol for shame. Whenever there's a symbol in the dream, it's because you're not feeling it. I'm so invested in avoiding my shame, in hiding my shame, that I can't recognize what's pathology and what's the animus.
In group last Monday night, I was telling my truth, when Sue, Dorothy, and Ellie each stepped in to mentor me. I was crying and felt a stab of pain. I knew it was the pain of receiving their love. The love they were giving freely and without judgment.
Today I worked this dream with Marc.
I'm at a party where there are two groups of people. There's a man in the other group and we're flirting from across the room. Suddenly I feel his arms enveloping me from behind. I surrender into the embrace. He says something to me that I can't quite hear, but I hear the word fuck and I hear the word tonight. Then he's gone. I get giddy, titillated, even though he's gone and think "Looks like I'm gonna get laid tonight."
Even though I know the man is the Animus, I had an automatic response that I wanted to change the words when I told the dream. I wanted make love instead of get laid, but in the dream it didn't feel lewd or crass, it was playful and loving. Marc said the Animus is getting aggressive with me now, but I'm still not ready so he leaves. My homework is to feel the titillation, the juiciness of the anticipation of being with him.
The real work for me is to not run away and hide again, from God, from Marc and NOE, the dreamwork, or from my life.