March, 2011 - My work in the last two months has been opening into new places. On the trip out west to present this work at presentations and a weekend retreat, He taught me so much about being in the world with others, being with Bill, my partner, in the world with this work. Being in the world with this community. I have so much to say…
…I will start with this, the larger arc of my work and then speak about my relationship with Bill.
At the presentation in Moab, Utah, Christa and Marc worked with my dreams as part of the presentation. We worked two dreams:
Dream:
I am a teenager with a community of people, including Christa and Marc. A man sends us out in boats on a river. We go with current for a while, then the current changes and we are going against it. Then, the river becomes tumultuous, huge muddy waves and we are now in a canal.
People are getting washed off, the boats disappearing into the waves. I see Christa and Marc slump over then get washed off. The man comes to me and says, There is a big wave coming but there is a way to ride the waves to take you back.”
He shows me how and together we go into and out of the waves, him steering somehow. The boat comes to a place where the waters are calm, in front of a public space/square.
No one else made it through. I feel devastated, scared. I am running along the canal, devastated, lost, terrified, saying, “Where are my people, Where are they? I can’t go on without my team, my people. Many boats comes through but they are all empty. They are all lost. I feel the devastation.
Then one more boat comes and there is a young girl and boy, unharmed. I go to be with them.
Switch.
I am in the square and it is all children, including me. A girl comes with a tray of food, I think she is selling food, like a food vendor. There are no adults even though I know the man is there somewhere. I feel scared.
Dream
I am 13 and there is a war going on that no one else can see. A woman is detonating bombs all around and knows that I can see her. She tries to kill me by setting off bombs, but I feel protected by my father in some way, even though I cannot see him. One goes off near me and the woman and she is blown into the air. She is dead. I pick her up and try to show her to people, but no one sees. I realize I do not need to carry her anymore and I drop her, feeling incredibly relieved.
Then a man appears who directs a chorous and I am so glad to see him. He has me on stage, and he wants me to sing a solo. I begin to sing.
These dreams brought me to another layer of facing into and through my trauma. In the first dream, I felt the devastation of being the only one left, the only one who survived. It is what happened. Over the last few years, my dreams have been taking me back past through the traumas of this life and into the past past.
A past where I lived as part of a spiritual community. Where I went out into the world to teach, and when I returned, the community had been wiped out, probably by the Inquisition.
I remember saying to Bill, “Sometimes I think it is too bad that I wasn’t killed with everyone else.” He said, “Why? That’s how what we did was carried on – by the ones who survived.”
It was excruciating to be alone after being with. My pathology since the beginning has been about hiding – and I feel how good I have been about being underground, unseen. I have hidden from myself as well, not wanting to be the one who sees the war that no one else sees. In the second dream, I want everyone to know what I know, to see what I see. I don’t want to be alone with it. I want to prove that it is real. I carry the demon around to prove something, to prove that I am not crazy, to prove that she is dead.
But when I just drop it, let the body thump to the floor, I am with Him, Him leading me as I sing.
When I feel the devastation and know what is true, the boy and girl, my soul, also comes through the devastation. There is a return. In my strings, I stood between the girl and the boy and felt fear, the fear of returning to my self, returning to my wholeness. I felt the possibility and I felt the fear, too, marbled with the devastation of losing my people.
I love the work of letting go of the demon. Whenever I feel the need to prove myself, I drop the body. In tutorial, when I feel a gearing up to do a good job, I drop the body and feel my fear instead. With Bill, when I project I have to prove something, prove that my pathology is dead, I drop the body.
It has been tender work to be singing, to be with the boy and the girl, returning to my self. In the strings, I projected that the girl who offered food was poor. This is what I have been, a poor girl, feeling I had to nourish others, not myself. Is this what I did in the aftermath?
Worked a few dreams more dreams –
Dream:
I am lovers with a boy of about 8. We are at his house when we see his parents coming home. The father is very enthusiastic and a bit wild. I suddenly feel – oops. What am I doing, the is 8 and I am 30. I leave, then come back because I can’t be away from him. His parents come again and I feel oops again. I try to leave in a little toy car, but it does not work. I go back to the boy.
I do not know that I am not really lovers with the boy – we never have sex in the dream – but that I am little like him. I am afraid to be with him when the parents come home. This is my boy and I am the girl with him, but I am afraid to be the girl with the parents.
Dream:
I am hiking up a huge, snow covered mountain. I get to a pass that is difficult, few make it through. I make it through. I feel like He is with me as I walk. Then, on the other side, the most dangerous part of the mountain, there are a few people there and they are skiing. I think – they are freaking insane. It is like skiing Everest. I see Him there, waiting for me, laughing.
I am on the mountain again, I have come through a difficult pass. And there He is, laughing at my astonishment at the crazies who are skiing this dangerous peak. And I feel the humor. It is really funny, really crazy.
With both of these dreams, I am not getting something. Here is the dream to show what I am not getting.
Dream:
I am a girl of 10-13 and I am walking with a regal older British woman, who reminds me a little of Christa in the way that she carries herself – with grace, ease, so much love. I feel the love in her. I feel like a relative in some way come to stay for a short visit. We are walking with her dogs through an elaborate English garden, like a large estate. We go into the “house” and she shows me around, introducing me to people. It dawns on me that this is the royal family, that the man at the head of the table is her husband and is the king. I feel scared but then I feel into how everyone is themselves, has their quirkinesses. I love this woman, love being with her, she is looking after me. She shows me a bedroom as if I knew it was my room, how it has been cleaned for me while we were out.
What I do not know in this dream is that this woman is my mother. It does not occur to me that I could have a mother who loves me with grace, with ease, without competition. Who loves who I am, who loves to walk with me. Who loves to be my mother.
At the end of the dream of the boats with the boy and the girl, I was still afraid.
It is terrifying for me to move into becoming the woman of God that I am, the woman of passion I am, as a woman, a girl, without knowing the love of my Mother, the Divine Feminine. It is so out of my experience in this lifetime to know that kind of love, to receive that kind of love. I have not had many Anima dreams where I feel trusting because I have not yet been able to receive Her love as Her daughter.
Without knowing this love, I have not been able to love in this way either. Or, I have not been willing to love in this way, in a way that I do remember, somewhere deep in me. I learned and took it on instead, how to be like my birth mother. I have been competitive, I have been cold, I have been passive aggressive, I have been narcissistic. The girl without a mother scrambles to get by, scrambles to live. Always gearing up.
Gearing up is my pathology will. Trying.
It is very different for me to try, to carry that demon around proving myself, than it is to just sing. To just be with this woman, letting her look after me. No, let me rephrase. To be a daughter with my real mother.
At the retreat, I sang “Orphan Girl”, because I have really lived my life as an orphan. Scrappy girl, angry girl, jealous girl, guarded heart girl.
But now. I have come through the difficult pass, I have come through. I have come through and on the other side, things are returned to what they are supposed to be.
I have come through and I am returning to my real family. To my archetypal Mother.
I have done work with my Father, I feel Him with me. In the dream, I feel Him as I make my way through the pass.
To bring in the love of my Mother is something entirely different. I feel my broken heart in a new way. Feel how I have not had that, how I have pretended not to need Her love. I feel a little resistance to it and…
…I am cracking open to needing Her love, feeling my broken heart. It is excruciating to be with Her, walking our dogs - greyhounds, sitting with our big family, feeling her love for me. It is a simple love, complete acceptance –a joy and a delight in me. I feel her joy and delight in me. Her joy and delight that I am home with Her.
*****
Hi All –
In Archetypal Dreamwork and Gender Class this week (which I co-teach with Marc Bregman, Christa Lancaster and my partner, Bill St.Cyr), we opened the subject of Female sexuality and libido. It was an incredible class for me, to explore sexuality and especially the sexuality and sensuality of the clitoris.
Intense, really, to even write the word.
In my work, I am walking, sitting, eating with my Mother, my Anima mother, who moves with grace and love. It is work that is plunging me inside, to a quiet place of feeling completely turned upside down.
I feel shaken up with this work, ungrounded in a way that feels right.
I had a dream several years back of a small handsaw at my clitoris, my mother’s voice and my voice in the dream. I did not feel the terror of what was happening in the moment, of how what happened with my brother and with my mother was the removal of my clitoris, the removal of my most sensitive place of feeling, my place of deep, deep, remembering of who I am as the girl.
And now. These years later. As I have faced into the false clitoris I created, the “excited” girl who really was fueled by hate, who was the one who took over cutting off my clitoris; as I have faced into dropping this like the dead weight it is, letting go and just singing with Him, solo; as I have let go of my clutching onto the dark mother, the dark mother in me, the true Mother comes.
Quiet in this place of tumble and turned upside down.
Quiet.
My work, also, over the last several months, has been to face into sexuality with Bill in a new way. I avoided this work for a month, not facing into it as the opportunity it is, then turning toward and into.
With this work of being the daughter, loved by my Mother, by my entire family at the table, I do not know anything about my sexuality. Bill and I have been exploring and in the exploration, before this new work, I continued to feel a block in me. An opening, but also a place where I feel my libido, my orgasmic self is still behind something. Of course – without a Mother, how can I step into my sexuality as the girl? With a mother who cut off my clitoris, how do I step into opening back to my clitoris.
My Mother is here now. This morning, Bill asked if I wanted to be touched and I answered as well as I could. I said that I did not know. I feel tumbled and upside down, I feel Her with me, walking next to me. I feel shy of Bill touching me in a way I have not felt before. Before, I felt resistance and worked through the resistance. Before, I felt, in a way, that I had to battle through my resistance. To face into it, to say no to the seduction of pathology to go numb or to hide or to withhold and in that place of hiding to project. Now, it feels like to battle through is to be “trying”.
There is so much in this place of being a daughter loved by my Mother.
Quiet in this space. Tumble. No trying.
It feels so much a part of speaking – my clitoral reawakening, my Mother with me.
I have also tried to speak in the past and have worked through my resistance to speaking. I have spoken with the “excited” energy. I have pushed through to the words – both pathologically and as a warrior.
Tumble. This is different.
When I first started writing poetry, years back, each line of each poem was a battle. I have not written much poetry in the last few years, feeling this place of battle in me and intuitively not wanting this kind of battle.
This is different.
This is feeling the words wanting to rise up. A word here, a feeling there, a sentence. Or just an urge to write something. To write these emails in a different way.
Different.
No effort.
Words tumbling.
My sexuality emerging as it emerges. My Mother with me.
In my piece from the Drawing class, there is a space between me and my Mother. I remember my birth mother and how she has clung to me, how she has draped herself over me when we were together, wanting to always hold my hand, telling me how she loved me.
In being touched, I feel the pain of all this. And I am remember.
She is with me gently. When I did the image on Tuesday, I put myself as close as I could to Her. In the dream, She walked without touching me. Knowing.
I have been feeling her hand on my shoulder the last few days. Really, just aware of it last night and now today. Her hand on my shoulder, gentle touch. No clutch. I feel it now.
Her hand. I feel at the table with Her now, the whole family sitting to a feast.
Fear here, too.
Fear about opening to the real joy in me, not the false joy. The real desire. The real desire to speak, to be with my Mother, to be touched by Bill. To live clitorally all the time. Not the compensatory clitoris, the false energy, but this, quiet, deep, place. With the fear that arises with it. Without running away from it.
To be making love all the time, not just during sex with Bill. But all the time, right now, here as I write. In a few hours, when I have a session with a client. This afternoon as Bill and I write together, finding a new way of working together. Writing together. Stepping into leadership in a new way together and supporting each other.
From this place. Tumble, upside down. At the table with my Family. My Mother, sitting with me as all of this tumbles through me.
I am staying with, not entirely plunged in. My libido, my sexuality, gentle, slow, quiet right now. She is sitting next to me, I feel Her hand on my shoulder. I am feeling how I can turn to Her.
I feel how I can turn to Her. New, this.
How, when I want to flee, I can feel Her hand on my shoulder instead. Gentle. Like a whisper, inviting me to stay.
Stay with Bill, with more honesty. No more pushing through.
Stay in my body, quiet.
Stay with the words that want to tumble, upside down.
Stay. Here. At the Table. With Her.