April, 2011: My dreams are showing me how I am afraid of connecting to the Divine.
Dream: I am at Langdon Street Cafe with lots of young people. They are picking up shoes from big piles and throwing them at a wall, where the shoes disappear. It looks like fun. Then I am without my shoes and I cannot find them. My feet hurt without my shoes. A young man in a racing stock car comes by and offers me a ride. He is revving up his engine and has tattoos on his arms. I get in and go a little way with him. He is cursing at the car in front of him, revving his engine. I am scared and tell him I want to get out. I go back to the cafe to look for my shoes.
When the invitation comes to get in the stock car, I bolt. My excuse is that I am afraid for my life, afraid that this man might harm me. I brace myself for the impending threat, even though this man driving the race car has not said or done anything threatening to me. My work since having this dream is to face into a choice: will I surrender and go for what I feel is a frightening ride into the unknown? Or will I leave the car and go back to look for my shoes that give me the protection and safety I have worked all my life to craft in the world?
My shoes ground me in the experiences of the world, where I have become a successful professional woman, with power in my field and pride about my accomplishments, at the expense of knowing my true feelings. But shoes are irrelevant to my deeper, inner world.
My dream is inviting me to sit in the stock car with this tattooed man longer and longer, listening to his engine revving, his foot tapping on the accelerator. As I do this, my fear feeling turns to nausea, but I force myself to stay in the car and brace for take-off. But bracing myself is no way out of this. Bracing myself is so familiar to me, since it is how I cope with everything that I do in my life. Even though I have stopped making lists, I still brace myself for the voice telling me how I need to be productive and efficient, and how I need to manage and control my life and my husband's.
For example, when I wake up on a summer morning and go out to look at my vegetable garden, rather then celebrate the Divine abundance in the garden, I brace myself for the amount of vegetables and herbs that are ready to harvest, since I will compulsively spend the morning putting up food for the day. In my head is the voice saying After all, you can't let food go to waste, can you?
When I need to talk to my husband about spending money on something I feel we need, I brace myself for the argument that I believe is coming. Instead of honoring the partnership of our marriage, I plunge ahead, arrogantly and independently. I feel the pain when I see how pre-empted my husband is when I act this way. The voice says You really shouldn't talk to him at all- he'll just get upset. Why don't you spend the money first, just to make sure you get what you need. You can tell him later on. It's no big deal.
When I answer the phone I often brace myself, waiting for something another person might ask of me. I hear the inner voice saying, You have enough to do. Don't let this person pull you away from all the important things you need to get done for the day.
The bracing energy comes when I cannot control a situation--the incredible growth in my garden, in my life, or a wild ride in a race car, in my dream. So, when I feel I am not in control, my mind spins around, much like a spinning top, pulling me away from the fear I don’t want to feel.
Knowing that bracing myself will bring me nowhere, I return to the image of my dream. I remember that I am barefoot and exposed, with my feet unprotected. I feel my toes free on the floor of the car, feeling more childlike and receptive to the excitement of the impending take-off. In order to feel the shift in my being, I return over and over to this place, wavering between fear and turning towards this man with open excitement. As I feel into my girl-self, I can open to the spontaneity of this wild ride. This receptive place in me is only a vague memory from early childhood, when I was just a baby, trusting in everyone, before I lost my soul-self to trauma. This memory becomes more and more vivid each moment I linger in the car, excited and scared, open to anything and everything moving toward me--the real me, that is.