September, 2007 - I am used to living a horizontal gyroscopic life, seeped in looking for approval and acknowledgement in the world. I am a woman who, as an infant, did not get to bond with her mother. In my process of dying to self, a patient, gentle and persistent Man guides me. In one of my most treasured dreams, His hand is in mine, our fingers interlaced. He is sitting back, at rest, beside me. His steady gaze into my eyes is full of intimacy, tender love and quiet humor.
My reaction at first is affront, who is this presumptuous man? I wake up. I fall right back to sleep to His hand still in mine, His gaze unchanged. My reactivity melts and I wonder: is this Him? I awake once more, turn over, fall back to sleep. I am there, hand in hand with Him, for the third time. I sit back and lean against His body. I know Who He is. Relieved, I am able to feel His intimate love without resistance. I never want to leave His presence again. He is my heart’s greatest desire. The Great I Am. The King of Kings. Jesus Christ. The Animus.
Both the world and myself, as I knew them to be, are dying as a result of repeated exposure to being with Him and with the Divine Archetypes as they appear in my dreams. Only by being with Him will my need for healing be answered. However, there are dreams where I “miss it”, miss Him, like the dream where I am walking through my house, in the back there is a theatre, the curtains are blowing because of an open window further back. I walk there and see a Man sitting at a table, I suspect he is my husband who wants to kill me to get the insurance money. Outside the open window the ocean dances with fish in the waves. Do I run into His arms and dive with Him into the sparkling ocean? No. He wants the true soul of me, not as I am in the dream with all of the superficial adjustments and compensations to my struggle-dance with pathology. I want to die to all of that. Still He calls me to go deeper and deeper. To a deeper place than I’ve ever before existed, functioned, or lived in. A terrifyingly vast, exciting new and vibrant territory beckons to me. His kingdom requires me to enact my choice point, do my homework, go against the grain, reach beyond my forgetfulness and I am challenged to the core. To live with Him in His Kingdom requires me to uncover and apply my utmost commitment with passion from my true soul need for Him.
Now, the external world is no longer the source of anything for me but a dead end, ashes, status quo, hell, the trauma of separation from Him. Despite any of my perceived successes and failures along the way, He leads me to find an inner life with Him. He leads me to the realization that I may enter His Kingdom at any moment in time, and stay with Him on the inside. I am committed to keep on showing up for the promise of the miracle: to live and experience true life in partnership with Him, as He intends, while I am still in this body and in this world.
Two mountains terrify me. One is built from the lies of the pathology about my early trauma. The other is Divine, God’s abode, where healing flows in abundance. I have to choose which mountain to gaze upon, to surrender to. My choice. I want to have choices. A part of me does not want to have to make a choice. It wants to be spared, rescued, for it to be easier. That part makes things harder than they need to be. An owl-like creature swoops in: judgment and shame, takes me out, “rescues” me from my fear, pain and discomfort. This old way that it rescues me does not work for me anymore, it causes more pain and fear. It is all off, not working. I don’t want it.
I feel “shock and awe” as I look upon the looming mountain of the Divine, set forth against a starry night sky. I feel that same shock and awe as the Animus sits patiently near, loving me. In the healing process of His love, another layer arises in me of fear and then resistance. As I wish this were not the case, I see the edges of my own self non-acceptance again. He reminds me that in the presence of His love, my obstacles are revealed only in order to loosen their hold, to loosen up whatever separates me from being with Him, receiving His love. Fear is the doorway for me, a portal, to both my trauma and to His loving embrace. When I can hold still in my fear, I am open to Him. Then there is nothing else I want to do and nowhere else I want to be.
Even when I am caught in my own struggling, You, my beloved Man, You, are still here beside me. Even in the midst of my retelling my story about how I am too hurt, too lost, with a defeatism designed to get me off the hook: here You are. All I have to do is to look to You and not at the struggle. With You, I feel open space to breathe, awaken and feel my feelings. During a recent point of despairing, I lay on the sofa in a hopeless stupor. So frustrated with my own efforts, I envision that I take a gun to shoot myself in the head. It is so vivid, I feel the cold steel of the gun barrel at my temple. I pull the trigger, shocked to discover in the next moment, the bright flash of my heart wide awake with feeling and the vision of a golden palomino horse surrounded by intense flames. Marc said this is my potency and passion: “the mystery of the Palomino.” Joy! And powerful feelings of deep longing and pain. My true soul self! As the Palomino, I love You with all my being.
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For years I’ve known that I want to be a Dreamwork Therapist, working in partnership with Him on a full-time basis. I suffered from the lie that I should be a finished product of my own process in order to really begin. I have been in training for a long time. My job title in the world is Licensed Clinical Social Worker in a long term care intermediate security forensic state hospital where I provide individual therapy, group therapy, and case management. I have grown tremendously due to my own process and work with Marc Bregman and the Archetypes. I am a better therapist in so many ways. I am no longer blind to errors such as care taking, over-identification and codependence issues in working with clients.
While my homework was “get on board the train with Him”, I was at a Renaissance Festival sitting in a timeless moment of an intimate gathering of people listening to beautiful live hammer dulcimer music. I looked around at each person present. As I did my homework, feeling openhearted, my passion to be a dreamwork therapist rose up in my heart and I heard His words, “The harvest is ripe, but the laborers are few.”
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My dream repeats twice (my dreams repeat when it is something really important that They don’t want me to forget or miss). I am riding in the back of an open-bed truck. A Man is driving. I am partially naked, yet I feel a clear expectation to get out of the truck, go up the hill, go in, complete some task, fight some battle. It doesn’t make any sense because I feel so weak, so unequipped. And yet I feel I can do what is being asked of me, as long as I stay out of asking it of myself. He looks at me and He smiles. He is going to see me through. From that place of love and surrender, all I have to do is let this happen. To fight, I have to stop fighting. Effort from my own will is aligned with the pathology. I keep my focus on Him. Marc says “put Him first and go about your business. Don’t make a plan, do things, if they don’t work out, you still have Him.” I cannot climb the mountain of His Kingdom in my own effort. My efforts are the old will, the dead tree stump. The treasure of my true soul-- my little girl, my little boy-- joyously takes His hand, our fingers interlaced. He leads me through. Nothing else makes sense.