September 2007 - Who am I without God? How did I manage for so many years without Him? Where did I put my faith? What did I mistake for His love? What kept me from him? I hadn't even thought much about these questions, when the Archetypes sent me the following dream.
I'm walking down a sandy road to a beach where there is a small boat waiting. The water is choppy with large waves - some people are standing there. I'm scared but I tell them I think it is safe to take the boat out. I put the boat in the water and climb in. I have forgotten the oars as I float near shore and ask someone to hand them to me. I row out a bit and the boat is tossed by the waves but does not take water. I stand up in the boat tentatively. I say out load, this would be a fine way to catch fireflies that hover over the water in the evening. Then I row back to shore and put the boat away.
This dream, along with those below, occurred at a time of dramatic inward change. These dreams occurred during a crossing over, when I became aligned, if not with God, then at least with his will that I should die to self, and die to Him. This was the moment I stopped resisting the truth, stopped fighting with my counselors, and stopped managing other peoples perceptions of who I am. So, this was the moment I was, at last, willing to face into the truth of who I have been and how I've managed without God's love and support.
There is something sensual about giving in to the truth that reminds me of facing into a cutting wind that I have clothed myself against, to see an unfamiliar and frightening landscape that I have avoided. I can feel the importance of this dream better than I can explain it. That moment standing in the boat, imagining the beauty of the fireflies, imagining the pleasure of catching them; that moment of aesthetic pleasure - not actual, but imagined - amidst the isolation and aridness of my actual situation.
I have not lived life; I have imagined it. I have longed for love, but avoided taking the risk of opening myself to it. Rather than accepting my real situation and surrendering to my real feelings, I have manufactured a sentimental realm of possibility, filled with beauty and longing, which has distracted me from the pain I felt deeper inside. When confronted by the contradiction between my delusions and reality, I have played the part of a victim, wrongly suffering at other's hands, as shown by the next dream.
I am watching a dog run and I feel happy, excited. But then the dog runs into a wall. Some person is controlling the dog and steering it into the wall. I am horrified by this.
The dog is an aspect of my heart, the Psychopomp. The person controlling and steering it into the wall is - of course - me. That has been the true cause and effect in my life. But in my sentimental realm, I have invented my own theories of cause and effect in which my suffering is caused by forces beyond my control. Suffering became, even, a source of prideful pleasure, as I endured life in order to uphold my principles and, in the mirror of my sentimentality, reinforced my self admiration.
Central to this sentimental realm was an image of myself which I fabricated to the specifications of my pride and shame. I thought of myself as a good person, a smart person, a caring person, an idealist and supporter of worthy causes. I thought I should be liked for what I believed and how I lived. Yet I was ashamed of my weaknesses and my appearance, and tried to hide them or compensate for them. I maintained this self image by being attentive to persons I admired or was attracted to, attempting to win their affection and admiration by trying to resemble what I thought they wanted from a friend or partner.
Some who cared for me wanted more depth from me, craved my real feelings and vulnerability. But when my composure was threatened, I would be offended and justified in attacking and shaming them. But I was offending God, because my tactic, essentially, was to attempt to substitute for Him in other peoples lives, by being paternal, even heroic. When that failed - as it inevitably did - I would think myself loving by helping others distract themselves from their difficult feelings - feelings that might potentially open them to God - the same way I distracted myself from my own deeper feelings. The truth is, I was a superficial, sentimental person, concealing my layers of pride and shame, which in turn hid my deeper feelings of terror and pain, and nurturing those same traits on the people around me.
This unconscious me that managed and maintained the pompous and delusional story of my life was the same one controlling the dog in the dream. The Psychopomp would like to lead me to a place of vulnerability and connection to God and to my deepest feelings, and to an immediate experience of life, in the eternal now. But He could make no headway as long as I clung to my illusions. One might say that it has been my ignorance, my unconscious complicity with the Demon - the Dark Mother pathology I have written about before - which thwarted God. I have been unconscious of her, though willfully so.
Like most evil doers, I never thought of myself as a bad person. I thought I was just trying to steady a boat which floated uncertainly in the water. I thought my memories of fireflies to be life's greatest treasure. I just accepted my isolation and I put my faith in the boat of my fragile persona rather than in the ocean of feelings that I could not or would not fathom, and I mistook the solace I found in my sentimental aesthetic fantasies for life's meaning, for God's love, which is here and now and does not just glow faintly but rages fiercely, consuming all that is not of Him. I'm afraid of His fire.
I'm at a gas station to put gas in my van. The hose is broken and gas is pouring out. I go in the station to tell them but the man there is busy and does not hear me. I go back out and see the gas is on fire. I drive away, yelling out my window, FIRE! The man hears me. I think he is alarmed and I suppose he rushes off to put the fire out. I'm driving away as huge explosions and flames consume the area behind me and seems to chase after me as I drive away. Fire seems everywhere and I see children playing with matches and firecrackers.
Steadying the boat meant gyroscopy, managing my feelings by projecting and reacting, to keep my composure to avoid unraveling and sinking into psychosis. This was all I knew what to do with feelings, particularly difficult feelings like pain and fear. I understood them as something that needed fixing, managing, avoiding. They complicated and compromised my sentimental pleasure, but God's consuming fire was meant to burn away all projections, even the world as the ultimate projection, and leave behind just feeling. I'd reached a point in my work where I could not escape this death and still move forward in a meaningful way. Then I had the following dream.
Several NOE people are sitting in a row with Robin at the end and Marc standing beside him. Marc begins to make painful remarks about me, comparing me to other people there, describing my pathology in a way that cuts deep. I feel hurt, put down. Marc asks if I know why he is making these comparisons. i feel confused, lost. Finally I say, I think he is hurting me because he wants me to feel my trauma.
My attitude in this dream is still, I'm being hurt. My attitude is, someone is hurting me and they are doing it to me for a reason. My pathology is being very subtle because it comes in the guise of the work. It proposes: my counselor is hurting me to help me grow. But that is still the lie, the old paradigm. The truth is: THE TRUTH HURTS. No one is doing it to me. The hurt is the truth: it hurts because it is true. I am distracted by my projection of the pain, rather than feeling the pain and hearing the truth. Which is essentially what I had to do to break through, to get away from the business and go toward the is-ness.
The fear I felt alone in the boat was my fear of the truth and the pain, superficial fear expressed as denial and control. Put simply, I was in pain, in the pain of the shame behind the pride, the pain of being without God, of rejecting my own soul. To surrender and embrace that feeling was to hear the truth, to accept myself, despite my weakness and imperfection, so to reunite with my soul self, and to open my heart to God's love.
Part Two.
How am I with God, and who am I when I'm with Him? What I am experiencing these days which seems to be of him, are my feelings, which become ever more uninvolved with my outer life in the world. Sometimes events in the world will trigger an apprehension, which I now instinctively grasp, as if it where a sled I suddenly found under me as it plunges thrillingly out of control down a steep and unfamiliar slope into the unknown. As quickly as i give myself up to this unexpected ride I forget the event that seemed to have caused the feeling. Because I know the feeling is always there. I am always afraid, but sometimes I forget. And when I remember that the fear is not of the world, but of Him, and recall my faith in Him, I become exhilarated in my fear.
This is the life of the heart - as far as I have come to know it. Here is a dream about my growing into this new life.
I am in a glider with Gaelen (Sarah's son, a young adult, who is the Animus in this dream) and a little boy. We are gliding among beautiful canyons and the feeling is exhillaration. Gaelen is piloting the glider and he gives the controls over to me. I am very excited but also a little scared. I am enjoying flying but then I begin to worry that I will not find an updraft in time and we will crash. I want Gaelen to take back the controls because I trust him.
We worked this dream twice. The first time, I was asked to feel my fear and give up control to the Animus. That homework resembles a dying to self, as I am the one who controls through pride and shame. The second time, I was asked to keep the controls and feel the fear. Perhaps this homework resembles dying to God because He is offering me my life back, through Him, that is, through my feelings. My experience is to be vulnerable, to risk everything, to crash, to die, perhaps, yet risk nothing because I have Him. That seems to be what the Animus asks of me in this dream.
The two different ways I worked this dream represent the corner I am turning in my work, in the dreamwork. I recently sat with an old friend and saw in him my old self as he subtly asserted his story of self. I felt the pull on my psyche like a sort of science fiction traction beam. I felt afraid as I was drawn in. I became aware of my demon and of my pride and shame. I became aware of two orthogonal languages, that of the world, the big lie, and that of the Divine. There is no way to speak of who I am becoming in the language of the world because there is no story, no posture, no explanation. There is just the mystery.
I'm a student at a grade school and I'm hanging with Per's friend Isaac. We are working on class projects. I've created some kind of light that glows. The teacher asks us to hand in our projects and Isaac hands his in but I realize mine isn't ready and I tell the woman teacher. There is no shame. I'm stopped by another teacher also a woman. She has a list of problems I need to fix if I want to pass. One of the problems is that I hum during class, another that I forget to close doors, etc. I am a little confused because this is just how I am. I'm not sure if I can stop humming, etc. But the woman's position does not feel important to me, as I feel my father's love and that is all that matters.
In this dream, I've unlearned the belief that love needs to be earned. The pale, false love offered by the demon - pride - had to be earned. The love I feel in this dream had to be unearned, in the sense that to be with the Father and receive His love I need to stop trying and start being. After a lifetime of being not-me, getting back to me so I can be with Him seems like hard work, sometimes. The demon certainly has tried to cast it in that light, as being earned. For example, she has told me that the reason I don't feel His love is because I'm not good enough. She is sneaky but, ha! ha!, I'm on to her. This is why I like to say, I have unearned His love.
I have not actually been very successful in the world. My pride has been very fanciful. That is, though I've thought very highly of myself, my conceit has not been outwardly affirmed. My main accomplishment has been being often right, or correct, in an intellectual sense. But most people have just resented me for that. I've always been intensely insecure and self conscious, which are irritating traits. I made poor choices which eventually led my professional life to a dead end. My marriage was loveless and ended in failure - aside from my two wonderful children. Even in regards to my spiritual work, I've been slow and stupid. The truth is, my life as a whole has been a great failure. My natural gifts, my expensive education and great deal of good fortune have all been wasted. Yet I can say this with delight, because now this failure seems like a blessing!
I'm in an auditorium crowded with men. I find a seat in the back. I feel insecure, unsure of my place. There is lively conversation or debate, it seems to me, about some cause. In any case, I raise my voice in favor of some man whom I think champions what is good and just. Then the theater begins on the stage. I am sleepy though. Suddenly I find I am down in the lower corner sitting with another man. I cannot see the stage. The man smiles at me and explains I'd fallen asleep so he'd carried me down here where he could care for me. I felt touched. I felt loved by the man and grateful to him and trusting and wanting to be with him. Something about him inspired my love and confidence. I felt safe, that this was my place and I belonged there with him.
This theater is, in a sense, my life. The stage is certainly where the drama of worldly suffering unfolds. I start out unsure of my place, but I seem to want to be part of the drama. I think I can acquire a sense of belonging and meaning by siding with what is good and just. That describes my life very accurately. But in fact, I am lost. I am naive, not very savvy. Kind of a chump. I don't really understand how the world works. As hard as I try, I am just not a worldly person. The world is a yawn. That is the blessing. From accepting this about myself seems to come the opportunity, in this dream, to discover meaning and belonging in relation to the Divine, to be touched by the Christ, and to discover through Him who I really am, and to feel his love and support.
When I am with God, I am largely indifferent to how events in the world play out. I am not really paying attention. That is not to say I do not feel fear or pain, as insecurity and disappointment. I'm afraid of terrorism. I care about the environment. And so on. But I see through the lie that my participation - in a worldly sense - matters. I don't buy the lie that George Bush is a champion of justice and Al Gore is a champion of the environment. They are really just both champions in the manipulation, through pride and shame, of people's fear and pain. In any case, they both make me yawn. I was once part of that world, though half heartedly, and it bled me of my soul.
Part Three.
Though I no longer really feel part of the outer world, I still exist in it, and I'm still subject to its seductions. Here is a recent dream.
My childhood friend Rick is distressed because his wife is leaving him. I feel disappointed. He confesses he cannot get an erection. I suggest he try viagra. His wife appears and starts coming on to me. I am appalled, initially. But she is very beautiful and sexy and I realize I want her. At this point I seem to pass into another land, it is wondrous, kind of like candy land.
The wife is the demon, and I am seduced by her. The elation I feel is pride, which is sort of like cocaine on credit, because by the time I actually worked this dream, I had already fallen and was wallowing in shame. My addiction to pride is deeply ingrained, and the demon, perhaps, is in me for good. The same sentimentality that kept me dreaming about fireflies is at play here, in my disappointment. My sentimentality kept me from recognizing her and acknowledging the shame I felt. As Marc said, "She is a demon. She seduces. She shames. She rejects. What did you expect?" That is not a sentimental perspective. My own fall was foreshadowed by Rick's predicament in the dream.
My sentimentality is a dreamy oblivion from which I must constantly awaken. My pride is ever opportunistic, and will try to sugar coat any gift I might receive as a matter of my doing, as deserved, as earned in some way. In my spiritual work, I often attach pride to my standing with God. I see my relationship with Him as a matter of my choosing. In the following dream, I attach pride and shame to where I sit in relationship to the Animus, and of course therefore I think I should be able to choose where to sit.
Presently I come to a field where Marc is sitting behind his desk and Sarah in a chair some distance to the left. A chair for me is provided some distance in front of Marc, perhaps thirty feet, and I sit down. We all seem so far apart. This feels weird and I want to sit closer. I wonder if he does not like me or if I have done something wrong.
This is all to say, the two aspects of my spiritual growth that I described above are not so much a before and after as two sides of an ongoing evolution. But there has been a turning point in my readiness to act in the world with the support of the Animus, as when He gives me the controls of the glider. Standing in the world knowing the truth and seeing through the big lie, feels to me kind of like being a secret agent, and it is risky in the sense that if I am able to be true to myself, which is to be true to Him, then my primary concern is no longer managing how I am perceived, and I become afraid of being reviled in the world.
I see some elves and follow them into the upper field where only faery people can go. I'm walking back down and i have some kind of encounter (I can't remember the details) and agree to work for the man. He is some kind of investigator and the work is dangerous. He is explaining to me the three kinds of fear as we walk. I am having trouble staying on the trail because the hillside is so steep. I keep slipping. Switch. I'm in a building and Marc and Sarah are in the inner office. I'm working for them. A man comes to the door who is entirely covered with plastic armor, like a science fiction robot. I feel fear. I tell him he is not welcome here. His voice emerges from behind the mask and is not scary. He says he is John Anderson and got a message that he was offered a job here but thinks there must be some mistake. I hear Sarah's voice from the inner office, she says it was the wrong name, they had invited someone else.
The trouble I have staying on the trail is my trouble with my pride and my shame. Even as I dog His footsteps and listen as best as I can to what He says, I slip and slide. This trouble is the source of the confusion in the second part of the dream. I might arrive at work as the plastic man, i.e. in my pride. That would be a mistake, for sure. Alternatively, the shame undermines my self acceptance and sense of belonging, so I won't believe that I am the one who's been invited into the inner office. This is the slippery slope over which I try to walk in my vulnerability. This is the slippery slope upon which I attempt to write this moment, as I try to hear what He is saying to me, and I wonder, where is the demon hiding right now?