Avoidance is the name of pathology's game recently, as the crack that is beginning to open in me stirs up a resurgence of this resistance.
I'm feeling into a very new place, the pain of separation from Him. Only from that place of feeling the pain can I be with the Animus, letting him hold me. Only from this place can I feel my deep longing for him, give up the trauma projection and not control, manage, avoid and restrict. This letting go is scary.
Some people in this work have very strong relationships with the Animus. I have spent most of my last two years in the work running from him, projecting onto him the violation of my childhood. He has come to me as a young man, as an old man, as my best male friend from middle school. He has come to me in pairs, a young man in a suit with an older man in a wheelchair. I used to run from him, trying to lock the doors against his intrusion. Locking out the possibility for relationship.
Over the past 6 months I have done a lot of work around this, feeling the trauma fear and pain, breaking the projection and slowly opening up to the possibility of relationship with Him. Past the trauma fear and hurt is a deep well of core fear and pain, an infinitesimal swirling of feeling that threatens to swallow me, drown me, bless me with its slaying effect on the ego. In this place I am breathing water, I can feel the liquid visceral rushing into my mouth, filling and surrounding me as I gulp it down. The deepest pain of separation from God, which I have used relationships, addictions, and responsibility to avoid feeling. Now that I am beginning to feel it, a lot of worldly situations are disintegrating. I see how little pleasure I receive from entertainment, from receiving a perfect grade or GPA, living in a numb void of drug use, the comfort and safety of having stagnant, unfulfilling relationships.
Dream:
I am with Aaron, my best friend from middle school and long-time crush. He is holding me against his chest and kissing me. He looks into my eyes and asks, "Have you told Tony yet?" "No," I say, crying.
For a long time in my work, I made my relationship with Tony (my boyfriend of 6 years, who lives with me) another issue to avoid having relationship with the Animus. I had dreams where I felt adulterous and rejected him, others where the Animus told me he couldn't be with me. This was the perfect set-up for my pathology to say, "See, you can't leave Tony because you are too weak and you can't be with the Animus if you are with Tony." Creating a false Catch-22, making an issue where there was none. The real issue was the avoidance of my fear of the Animus.
On the flip side of the coin, I am a 21-year-old woman who has never been single, who has "wedded" herself to a weak man to avoid the trauma fear of violation by any other and the core fear of finding a strong man who can really cherish me. As I feel into the real me, who we call Molly Aurora, she is telling me things. She tells me that she needs some space and time to work on herself, she needs to live alone. I need to cut the umbilical cord with my mother and get my own place when she moves out of my childhood home this year, and when I am Molly Aurora I know that I can't live with Tony, either. At this point I am not ready to end my relationship with him, and I do not yet know if that is what the Archetypes will ask of me. I do see that they are concerned with the relationship:
Dream:
I am standing on the ground and Tony is up in a tree. He hands me a snake. I look down at my hand and the snake is in pieces. I think that I have killed the snake and Tony will be upset with me.
I have known for a while that I need to live alone, and have been withholding, controlling the relationship with Tony and preventing my inner growth by not admitting my needs and desires. I have taken responsibility for my boyfriend's brokenness, compromising a lot of my own passion and violating myself repeatedly in the process.
After I left my session with Marc where I received my current homework, "to stay with the Animus and not feel responsible for other people's brokenness," I went home and from this place told Tony that I need to live alone when we move. Matter-of-factly; no drama, tears, and anger, as pathology had threatened would happen. This is immediacy, obedience. Being.
Later pathology wants to cut me down, tell me all the reasons that I will not be able to support myself financially, bringing up the projected trauma fear again and dangling it like a carrot in front of my face. Just remember, the whoremaster says, this could happen to you. You could get hurt by a mean man, just a girl living all alone. The pathology is trying desperately to keep me believing that the prison is necessary, that what is safe and known is good for me, that I enjoy such and such. But it is only so desperate because see it clearly now and am becoming allergic to it.
I am moving into a new phase of life, in inner and outer ways. I am graduating from college in May, moving out of my childhood home this year, and beginning to fundamentally change my relationships with the world. I'm being offered the opportunity to become a practitioner of the dreamwork, to work for Them in the world. I feel blessed.
Pathology wants to infuse me with self-doubt, to not believe in my worth, my ability, my potential. It does not want me to write about my excitement; my gleeful excitement of not knowing what changes are coming in myself and my outer life, my passion for becoming involved, enveloped in their love, every moment of every day.
I have glimpsed what it feels like to be Molly Aurora at the NOE retreats. There is a foundation I must build first in this work to be her, but I know that she exists within me. Marc said to me once, and it has stuck with me: We're making you a woman of God.