Dream: I am in a crowd and I can see three of my brothers in the crowd. A man who feels familiar comes and takes my hand, and I realize we are on a date. No, it is more than that - we are lovers, he is my beloved. He leads me through the crowd as if we are dancing, and it feels full of joy and excitement. Then, he turns to me and says, "I just love you so much." I react - I laugh and say, "How can you love me already? You just met me - you don't even really know me yet!" He just laughs at me and we continue.
Switch
Now, I am sitting with my brothers in the same scene, crowd all around. They are talking about the man I was with, about what a great guy he is, how amazing, etc. They are not talking to me. I wonder - Do I tell them that the man is my boyfriend? That he is my lover? I say nothing.
I have been working intimately, every week, with my dreams for ten years and I keep cycling back to the same issue - how I hide. In this dream, I know that the man, who is the Animus, is my Beloved, but I do not say anything to my brothers. I will not admit to anyone, especially my brothers, that I am with Him.
But when I am with Him, I doubt Him. Act as if He can't really know me. No wonder He laughs - I am telling the one who knows me better than I know myself that He cannot possible love me that much because He does not know me. It is funny. And it is really sad, too. I am hiding my relationship with God, with the Archetypes, from the world and even from myself.
I hide it when I get scared about it. When I become frightened of the power and potency that roils in my body when I am fully with Him, fully standing in my relationship with Him, I get frightened and project that terror out around me. In this dream, I am afraid to admit it to my brothers. I have been afraid of standing with Him in all of my interactions in the world because it is so different than anything I have felt. Because I have been trying to sidestep this my entire life.
I have felt Him as long as I can remember. I have felt the terror as long as I can remember, too.
Things happened in my family of origin - things happen in many families that are difficult. What I did with what happened in my particular family is that I blamed my relationship with God, blamed the intensity in me for everything that happened. If I was not so intense, if I was not so sensual, if I was not so, well, me, then nothing bad would have happened. Maybe things would have been different.
It was handy - I used what happened in my family to sidestep my terror of being with God, to sidestep the fear of facing into my relationship with God, and then I blamed the relationship for what happened.
What was true when I was a child is that I was really scared of what was happening inside of me. Afraid of the heat that rose in my body. Afraid of my body. Afraid of myself. I separated from that heat, from that intensity. I did what everyone does - I separated from my true self. It was just too much. And yes, being in my true self and being in the world created a great disparity that I could not reconcile in my child consciousness - but I was also just flat-out scared.
From this place of separation, I created stories about myself, about my family, about the world to tell myself in order to make things make sense. I gradually lived into those stories. By the time I was a young teen, I believed the stories.
On the path of this work, the disentangling what is true in me and what is not true in me has been an intricate and complicated process. I walked into my first session with many myths about myself, about who I was and who I was determined not to be. I walked into that first session unconscious of most of parts of the false ego, the false self I had created in order to find a way to be in the world. I also walked in unconscious of who I truly am, of the feelings and trauma that blocked me from knowing my true self.
But the bottom line, the piece of work I continue to circle around to is my hiding.
Another recent dream:
I am a young girl, with a group of people who are in a state of panic. I feel panic, too, though I am not sure what it is about. We go outside and I see we are on a mesa on a high desert. Across the plain, a storm is brewing fast. Everyone panics anew and tries to pile into cars to get away from the storm. I am pushed into a car, feeling scared, too. But then I look at the storm, really look at it. It is black clouds swirling in beautiful patterns. And the lightning is not lightning, but columns of flames shooting from the sky all the way to the ground. When I look at the storm, I feel no fear at all, even though the panic around me heightens. I get out of the car and walk toward the storm, feeling calm and curious and excited.
The firestorm is my desire, my passion, the heat rising in my body that so terrified me when I was a child. It is my desire to be in relationship with God with my whole body, my whole soul, with all of my life. My desire to be who I am, however that looks. Individuated, with Him leading me.
This dream shows me that I am separating from the part that continues to panic about it. The part that throws the panic I feel out into the world onto others. I am separating from the part of me that does not want to know who I am, what I am. That does not want to know anything about my particular gift. The part that wants to continue to run, to hide.
I have allowed pathology to lead me instead. Allowed pathology to teach me how best to hide, while it whispered in my ear that if I came into my potency that I would hurt others around me.
I have hidden by becoming a little sister to everyone in my life. By wanting others to find their light, their true self, while I stayed hidden in their shadow. Using them to stay hidden. Manipulating so that I could stay hidden. Instead of being a girl walking without fear into a firestorm, I have lived like a terrified little mouse hiding in a tiny, little mouse hole. Hiding from God, hiding from myself, hiding and running from those who loved me.
Who I am is the opposite of this. Two more recent dreams:
I am a young girl and I know I am a warrior. I know I can fight demons. But when I look around, I see that demons live inside people's bodies. I get scared, thinking - what am I supposed to do with this? I know how to slay a demon, but not when it is hiding inside a person. What is a little girl like me supposed to do? Then I realize that only a little girl can actually do this kind of battle.
***
I am a young girl in a white slip dress and a man is placing me in different places. First in a classroom. I feel unclear about what is happening, then I realize that this is a war and that I am the secret weapon. That he is placing me where he wants me to be and that I do not need to know why or even what I am to do. That there is a battle and there are no clear battle lines.
He places me on a ship that is heading out to sea in a monstrous storm to check out another boat that has other boats attached to it - like a flotilla. I have no idea why, but even as my boat is soaring on the mountain size waves heading out to sea, I feel no fear, I feel that this is just what is.
I have lived as a terrified little mouse when I have a warrior inside me. When my desire is like a firestorm screaming across the desert.
I have been good at seeing what is not me, always eager to find the next blind spot, the next pocket of pathology to clear out. Eager to look at all the intricacies, all of the ways that each piece of pathology has controlled me, has attacked me. How I have used pathology, used trauma, used others to stay away from my true self, to stay away from my connection with God. To stay away from intimacy with Him, to stay clear of intimacy with others.
But the bottom line is that it is all quite simple, even with all the complications. I have been a hider, hiding myself, ducking behind others, making others bigger so I can stay hidden.
I have hidden so that I did not have to feel this desire in me. And so I did not have to feel God's desire for me. That His love for me is bigger than a firestorm. That it is beyond even my understanding, beyond an image He can show me. To receive that love, to meet that love with all of this desire in me, to step into living in that love, knowing that I am just a humble, bumbling human being, to know that He just loves me, to know that I just love Him back. This is what it is - this is what I have been hiding from my whole life. So simple. So many complications blocking the simple reality.
Today, I am feeling how incredibly particular the love is - that it is not random, generic. It is precise. That He loves me because of who I am, who He created. That all my little oddnesses, all my fierceness, all my quirks, all my failures, all the horrendous things I have done - this is what He loves. It is a big thing for me to feel, because I can deflect the love saying that He loves everyone in this way. Which, of course, He does.
But I am taking it in - that He loves me in this particular way that He loves no one else. That it is this particular, this specific. That there is no one who is ever going to ever fully understand it. That this love is particular and unique. And that it is worthy of manifesting, worthy of living from.
Which makes me feel, for the first time really, that I am worthy of receiving the love. That the love is just for me.
The way that we have spoken of mythology, this work is about the return. The Prodigal Son returns home to the Father. Persephone descends into the underworld to be with her beloved.
The question is - what happens after the return? What happens after the complications have been worked through? What happens after all my personal mythologies have been broken and He shows me who I really am. What happens when I face into my own desire, my own heat, my own devotion?
What happens after the return home? For me, right now, He is teaching me how loveable I am. I am home already and in some ways I have always been here. I am only just admitting it now. I am letting Him love me because I am learning and I know that I am loveable. Even if I am not what I expected or wanted me to be. I never knew I was the kind of girl who carries a sword and I never knew that a girl who carries a sword could be loveable. I am returning to my Beloved from the place where I believed that I, in my essence, was not good. My beloved is teaching me what good is - He is teaching me about my own goodness, about the goodness of the love between us. How I matter to Him. How I, in particular, me specifically, matter to Him.
I have worked hard to damage myself, worked hard to damage my relationship with Him. And now I can turn that energy which I used as destructive energy and use it as procreative energy. As procreative in relationship with Him. I have no idea what He and I are going to do - I feel a bit giddy with it, I feel waves of fear and wanting to jump away, I feel waves of potential shame (shame of my true self), but mostly I feel like I am in love for the first time. And that I can stand in that love, really stand in it.
There is this great Indigo Girls song about hoping for love's recovery - but the last line is "Though it's storming out, I feel safe within the arms of Love's discovery." I am discovering what love is - what it feels like to really face into His love and to face into my own love, too. To live from that love. To accept the love, accept who I am. And to step out into the world with it, with Him. As the girl I am.
As the girl with her Beloved, leading her through the crowd. As the girl warrior. Fierce and scared and dangerous and vulnerable. Not knowing anything else.