June, 2008 - I rarely cried.
I hardly ached.
I don't scream.
I have always felt fear and that terrifies me, so I mostly cover it, try to manage or control my surroundings to make it go away. I am learning to stay with it, trust my teachers and my chart that it is my gateway. I am terrified of shallowness. I am terrified as I feel myself close to where I was 5 years ago when I left the work. But this time is different. Maybe I'm only hanging on by a thread - but it's a steel cable. It's a lifeline. It's a choice, and I'm choosing it.
I'm really scared to let go of who I've been even though I know it has been shallow and angry, holding contempt & judgment like a cloak around me. However, instead of warmth or comfort, I received a cool arrogance, and aloofness, and embraced it. Turned the collar up.
I read somewhere that one looked so hard for God that they got lost in the looking. That rings so true for me too. When I do that, a brittleness replaces my softer becoming, my new feelings of vulnerability, of need. Being scared of my neediness, repulsed actually, it doesn't take long to not even know what 'soft' or 'need' even mean.
I don't like being lost.
I don't like not knowing.
I don't like not having a foothold, an armrest, a guardrail. I want instructions! I'm lost and listening to the demon witch call me failure. Then I compare myself to others and never measure up.
When I go back through my childhood all I really remember of my feeling state is a great desire for my mother, not getting those needs meet, and settling. Making do with crumbs of affection. I was told I was charming and special. Beautiful. I was encouraged to (go away) play and make art. I was told how fortunate I was to have a loving family. How successful my father became from divorced immigrant parents. From sleeping in the back of his father's car.
I was obedient to get my crumbs. Who was I to need? I had all I could possibly ask for. Therefore I did not ask. Obedient, I did not ask. I did not know what I wanted. Yet where did this great yearning arise from? I stopped feeling pain, loss, and grief at their silent request. My loving dad came into my room and tickled me if I appeared sad. He had suffered enough and would save me from my own. He was also a rock. He was funny, successful, honest, and I could count on him. I was taught that my father would take care of everything, and then my husband would after that. End of story. He adored my mother who only complained about him. These are the unsaid things I learned well:
Don't talk back
Don't ask
Don't complain
Appreciate all you have been given
You are one of the lucky ones
You are well provided for
You are fortunate
Remember your persecuted ancestors
Yet, I felt scared and lost. I think was silently taught to give up. They told me all I had to do was try. No matter what the circumstance it was like tasting a new food. If I didn't like it I was good enough for trying. That's all. Just try. No one told me about needing to practice. No one talked about 'need.' No one bothered to practice. If I didn't like something I could just spit it out. And I did.
I was taught to do my schoolwork and be responsible. Help mother with the housework. The emphasis was to get it done. No practice. No immersion. No joy. Just start at the beginning to get to the end. Done. Over. Then go out and play.
And there, outdoors, is where my imagination unfolded. There I saw God. I felt God. I breathed in an Archetypal presence and mixed it up with nature. I kept it a secret and felt foolish…if I felt much of anything at all beyond scared.
In the suburban home on the safe, well lit street I went home to silence and dread. I covered my fear with obedience to my mother's silent rules of order. I began a secret life. As a child it began with three imaginary friends, but as I got older it went underground, and by high school I was stoned.
But now…what misery, what lies am I listening to now?
Recently I had a powerful breakthrough dream. Marc wondered what I'd do with it. He barely finished his comment when the demon started in, “Yeah, You are too shallow to hold this. You can't. You won't. Noe isn't for you anyway. You don't have depth. You stay lost in your stories. You will never stop looking to others - see how you just took Marc's comment and ran with it? You have NO depth. No staying power. You twist the fear so badly that then you become afraid of Marc or Noe. ……”
Afraid of what you know? What is happening…right now...instructions!
“Take my hand! Run through the wet street to your becoming! No story here. Just hush. Tighter, yes. Grab My hand tighter. I'll never let it go! This you already know, so do not allow the demon to convince you otherwise. A flat screen response to the homework IS doing the homework. You already know any touching into, any viewing - even of a single image, is doing the homework.
FIGHT with Me!
Insist on staying with Me!
Persist. Persist because you know. This you really deeply know. This connection is what you've both wanted and needed your whole life. BE WITH ME - with or without Noe. Grabbing My hand tighter and running makes her demonic voice fade. You cannot argue with her, or even respond, and this you know too.
RUN WITH ME!”
September, 2007
I know I have a calling and a commitment. I know I have heard Him in my quietest
moments, felt His hand grab mine when I've stumbled - over & over His hand
outstretched to mine, felt my tears well up out of my heart when He is with me, inside
me, guiding my every action. It can be so easy, effortless, and terrifying to move with
Him. Dance with Him! I have felt His love & His fury.
In August, I dreamt:
The Animus leaned over to me at our candlelit dinner & said, “I've missed everything about you.”
The joy that filled me, in the dream & in waking life is beyond the telling. A few weeks later He came as my lover.
I feel God with me now as I never have before. Yet I still project my feelings onto others to avoid them in myself - and then in my darkest hours cry out for help. I think I am alone. I think too often & too much to avoid a surrender, and immediacy. It is so very familiar to feel isolated, and then to avoid further pain; the healing balm of yearning for God's love, and my own tender innocence, I can become critical, reactive, defensive. I stumble blindly through this world looking for answers to avoid my pain & vulnerability. I became a helper, a teacher, a social worker, not with His guidance, but for approval and love.
This IS slowly changing. Yet my Pain, so new a friend to me, that I forget her, get lost
easily, then barely trust her. At times I hate her and ignoring her steady quiet voice,
trespass over my heart, failing to wake up to the truth of this tender pain. The place He can, and has, come to me. It is the truth of my soul, and hence, the foundation of my soul's calling.
The Battleground
What am I to wonder?
When will I feel home?
Where the cool ground underneath me drains/sustains my soul.
I travel in circles,
And every night I roam...
I see the stars above me;
It's me and them alone.
But then one night I dreamt He was dying,
A soldier bloody and gore.
I gasped the Blessed Truth
In that nightmare
Like never, ever before!
The battleground is always bloody,
The aggressor wanting more.
This soldier shows me weakness,
As the way to find my core.
Bending, bowing, flexible,
Yet unflinching and always fair,
His sword of discrimination
Held high through the smokey air.
What would life be without Him?
That's the only question now.
If indeed He died to me completely
- - - - - -
The light struck through me burning.
Burning me up for sure.
But I remained cracked open
Like never had before.
I sat beside Him yearning
Love & sorrow bigger than my mind.
I too, bleeding, wounded
Regretting so much wasted time.
I don't know any more now.
In fact I know much less.
But in this space & silence
I can feel I'm blessed.
When I go & sit beside Him,
Silent & afraid,
He puts His hand upon me,
And I can leave my grave.
Then He brought me to His window.
Leaning out I wait for more.
I feel myself with feelings,
Like I never have before.
August 21, 2006
I never really felt like I belonged, yet I knew how to fit in. Most of my life now seems to have been so much compromising that I lost myself to please others. As a teenager I had 3 hairstyles: one that pleased my sister, one for my dad & then the one I liked. My mother praised my artwork so I did more of it. She loved the country, and my high school boyfriend ended up in New England, so I applied to colleges in Vermont.
I love nature and art, and was involved for many years in aesthetic spirituality. I yearned for spiritual connections since I was a child, and tried many ways to do this. I did this alone, with others, and with drugs.
I have so many stories, and I've started this so many times I just don't know what is my truth right now. I guess it's because I've been basically lost most of my life. I only recently gained the wisdom to know this: to really FEEL this for myself, not because someone else told me.
I don't know what I'm doing most of the time. I'm very capable, independent, defended and stubborn, yet I often don't know what I'm holding onto, or why.
One of the few things I do know is that this dreamwork is compelling to me. I want it to be the center of my life in some way. I worked with Marc for over a dozen years, finally stepping away from my pathology enough to see it. I Bached in 1994, and then dropped out in '01. I said a lot of things about why, but the truth is because I felt disgusted with myself. I wanted to see results. It was too hard, and too slow. I wanted to know just who the Animus is, and moreover what did he want with me?
Almost 2 1/2 years ago I asked Laura Ruth if she would work with me. By the end of the first year I was able to sit with Pain. In the gestalt, all Pain said to me was a quiet, 'hello.' I could feel a change. I could stop running away. I can sit with Pain. And Fear. I can let go of knowing what's next. Not all the time, and I still lose the thrust of my homework by the end of the week, but I have complete faith in this process. That is a miracle. MY miracle. Most of all I have felt the love and I want more. The most recent deepening of my process was when the Animus came to me as a dying soldier, I have been so arrogant and judgmental, that only through the potential of complete loss of His presence could I feel not only my desire for Him, and that connection, but how helpless and lost I am without Him as my compass. In fact, that's one of a very few things I can say I really, wholeheartedly want now. I want to be led! I'm so very tired of being in charge, and can see what a joke it is to think I am anyway. Or, in charge of what?
I long for simplicity, to be around others who are trying to be in their truth, no matter what that may be, and more quiet connections in my life.
* * *
Questions
All I have is this one huge heart,
This knowing surrender
And tears.
My floodgates have opened and there is no stopping it.
Why would I?
Rivers rush down my cheeks to irrigate an old, dry heart,
Smoothing out the rough places when,
Just yesterday,
I would have told you there weren't many.
Is it a lie
if I am ignorant?
And why is it called a second chance,
When I've had about a thousand?
How can words tell of this love?
This heart that breaks over and over,
That is (I'm learning) made to cleave and wrench and tear.
How can my tears heal the raw wound that
When I went to fetch my sister, Mother died alone?
How much farther can my chest expand when I hear
My son laugh, my daughter sing?
What are these tears made of anyway?
The ones that come up from my heart,
That wash away my mind,
Soothe instead of sting?