I have lost my self in the world, and am beginning to find my soul again through the dreamwork.
Dream:
I am looking in the mirror, and one side of my head has straight hair and one side of my head has curly hair. I feel the pain of being split in half, torn between two different ways of living my life.
The side with straight hair is the little girl who always did things right to please a mother who wasn’t there. The curly haired girl laughed at the grown-ups who were trying to stifle her, tell her to be quiet and polite, and be more “grown up.” I want to find that little girl again, let her be free, and feel her connection to the divine.
Another dream:
A large boa snake is hovering over two girls, one 5 years old, one 12 years old. The 12 year old is terrified of the snake; the five year old is mesmerized and feeling its sensuality.
Shame is a big part of my work right now: shame about being molested at 10, shame about not having my parents believe me about this. I am also facing into the shame about raising myself, since my mother was remote and unable to love me. When my shame takes over, I feel inadequate, unable to connect with Him, unable to receive His love.
I was a child who always wanted to know God, but lost touch with Him when I was three. I became a seeker as a young girl, asking my parents to drop me off at different churches, even though they would not go. I was seeking for the love I felt early on. I did not find what I needed in church, and subsequently felt there was something wrong with me.
I lived most of my life with the deception that if I entered the helping professions
( teaching and school psychology), I was doing something that would bring me closer to God because I was a good, caring person. In the years that I lost my girl, I tried to fill the gap by being productive through meaningful work in the world with no connection to the Divine, adrift in the seduction of the world, trying to fill a big, gaping wound in my own soul. I became the expert on learning problems, and cried for the children who had not learned to read and felt as if they were failures in the world. In reality I should have been mourning the loss of my own self. Eventually that wound scabbed over enough that I looked productive, successful, and caring. This wound has been now reopened and isd a gift to remind me how much I need to reclaim my own soul and connect to the Divine.
Although I am an expert at jumping away from the Divine energy by avoiding my feelings, planning my life and controlling my family, by judging myself and others, by believing THE BIG LIE that I was spiritually in a good place because I was saving other lost children in the world. In my dreams I jump away from feeling and hide in the maze of judgment and analytical thinking, yet the Archetypes are slowly, gently teaching me to stand in front of them, open, to see that there is nothing else that matters but being there, receiving the love.
This separation from the Divine also manifested in my marriage. Because of the separation, because of the shame, I was afraid of true commitment and intimacy with my husband, and I asked for an open marriage, where we were free to have other relationships. This allowed me to become numb to my husband’s love, and served to separate me from my girl even more. The open marriage was hurtful to all of our family. I became a driven workaholic with a short fuse, lashing out at everyone around me, even though I was really angry with the deceitful bitch in me. And the lies I concocted every day to cover my tracks were so bad.
Dream:
I see my little sister, a young girl, bound and gagged, lying on the bed, bleeding and hurt. When I go to her, she will not talk to me. She leaves and goes to her older sister, telling her she has been raped. I am bereft because she will not talk to me.
The girl is mute because I have violated her trust by the years of promiscuous behavior, seduced by the whoremonger.
Ten years before I began the dreamwork, we renewed our vows and ended our open marriage. I needed those ten years to recognize the emptiness in our marriage and my lost soul self. I felt I was living in the world as a corpse- numb, cold, with no sense of Him. Through the dreamwork, I am beginning to feel into myself, discover my boy, and slowly reclaim my girl without shame, with the help of the sensuous, loving Anima. I am also feeling Him more and more, everyday in dreams and in my waking hours. The split often reemerges in my dreams, but I also dream I am pregnant, or holding a baby in my arms.
My current work involves letting go of the shame and receiving the love, while hoping that more of my baggage sloughs off and parts of me die. Then perhaps I can birth this baby girl.