I started doing the dream work in 1996 just before my 33rd birthday. At the time I had two goals: to have a better sex life. My wife and I had been together for 10 years at that point and despite trying many things still had a lousy sex life. And the second was to live in community. I was born and raised a humanist idealist, and had fantasies of a Vermont ecotopia of sorts but had experienced only frustrated attempts to create such an intentional community. At the time my interest in community revolved around a Waldorf School, where my wife worked, which we hoped would foster an intentional community near by.
In my first dream in the work there is:
…a man who comes into my room and says he has a cock that can stay hard a long time and it hurts them raw before he comes. He leaves and I look for a bathroom to take a shit and then I see I am in a Chinese restaurant and the toilets are filled with sliced sausages. Then I am in a spring house. There was a bright yellow spider in the spring. I think it must be there to scare people away who don’t know that it is harmless. As I am about to drink a soldier comes and shows me how he uses his bayonet to kill the enemy by putting it on my chest. I can feel what it would be like if he entered me and I am afraid he will drive it in but he takes it away and I can feel where the point has been on my sternum.
The gestalting of the dream went like this: Man with large cock: Question (Q), What are you prancing around for? Response (R), I am strutting my stuff and I want everybody to know about it. (Q) Why? (R, I am fucking frustrated and I want to get it on. (Q) What part of me are you? (R, I am your horny animal self. Q, What does it mean that you can fuck without coming? R, I can do it forever. Q, What is so good about that? R, I can stay in a hard place, isolated and lonely and here and gone and see you later.
Gestalt soldier: Q, Why do you come to this place? R, I am going to cut your head off. Q, Why? R, to protect you from yourself. What self do I need protection from? The one that will drink the water. What is wrong with drinking the water? It is full of pain. What kind of pain? No response.
Gestalt water: Q, Is this energy coming from you? YES, What is the energy? The water of Life.
Such a juicy dream so full of images of false potency. I thought I could change the world! I was a dogmatic environmentalist, recycling, BioDynamic farming, Earth First!, radical who moved to Vermont to live in a tipi, in the winter!, and prove voluntary simplicity was the only answer to the social ecological crises I referred to as Judeo – Christian culture gone materialistic -capitalist.
At the time of the dream I had a one year old daughter Sonya, my first child. My wife and I owned a nice house on 7 acres and were very much involved in creating community around a Waldorf school where my wife worked. We had a contract with the State of Vermont to be a respite home for families with children with developmental disabilities.
Shortly into the work, a little girl showed up in my dreams who at first was hurt and asking to be taken in. It seems somehow I felt responsible for the world or should I say in the world and this was causing me to ignore my own feelings of dis-ease and allowing me to put myself in positions of authority without a real capacity to manifest a health outcome, an outcome in line with God. But the little girl was responsive. She was a connection to my heart and allowing myself to feel the feeling. To slow down, was part of my healing. This quickly gave way to a little boy who also was instructing me to slow down, that I was not ready to move forward. “Just float.” This was the beginning of a long period of allowing myself to be vulnerable and of waiting and listening and feeling more deeply. Feelings came: sadness, insecurity, fear, mistrust, guilt, helplessness. Fear eventually become the major motif in my dreams.
At that point in my life I was working one on one with a developmentally disabled man who could be very violent at times. I was helping him and a few others to start their own greenhouse business.
In 1996, I went to a conference on Mental Health and Mental Illness that was put on by the Medical section and Camphill Association of North America. During this conference I had an experience of seeing a spiritual being and later being doubled over in pain sobbing like a baby for apparently no reason. Upon returning home I became borderline Psychotic believing I was to do a deed on earth some how connected to the being of Christ. As Christ had entered the Etheric World at his death, I was to enter the Astral world. Anyway I was very fortunate that I had friends around me to help me through this time to find myself again. Marc was a very big help in using the Dreamwork to show how I was placing myself in the Christ role instead of serving Christ.
My homework 7/28/96 was: fear is the key to your ability to be awakened out of your sleep and numbness and to see what is going on. Sonya is the loss of your child, of your feelings and your heart. Fear allows you to experience the results of your pathology. ( Fear is also the door to embrace something important.)
For a while my homework was be with the feeling of the vulnerable boy. (9/19/96) The something import turned out to be the pain of the loss of my father who died when I was 12. Then in a session on (3/17/97). Be born to feelings!!! Be the boy as in the first dream who fights for his orange soda.
Many dreams about this fight to be the boy for many months struggling to be vulnerable to not put myself in the Christ role but be the boy open to his guidance and then it happens again:
(11/10/97) …in deep mud and I am chosen to be in shepherd’s play and I am second shepherd and I tell Suzanne and I say I don’t understand and I hear my voice and I know why I am being given this part. I see a spear in the air and there is a black man running. I hear a thud and the spear enters my body.
Gestalt man: Q, What does it mean that your spear has penetrated me? R, Your it. Your dead. Q, Why must I die? R, You can’t know that yet. Q, Is it because I know why I can’t be first shepherd ? R, Yes.
Homework: When you die you will be the boy. Be aware of your separation from the father and your death as it pertains to this.
This was the beginning of becoming the boy. Being naked and open to help.
3/9/98 Dream:
I push through the bushes with a girl and I enter a room that my parents are in. Dad is old and is dying and he looks over craft items and I know he will notice rocks and I know it is him.
Gestalt relief: What are you? He is back with me. I have been waiting for him. I am wanting him.
Homework: be the boy with your father and feel the poignant feelings of relief that your father is home.
3/24/98 Dream:
A Black man and woman playing a jazz tune. They play together like one breath until the woman claps and the man says no and she tells him it is not his and he cries and says the name of the tune is “ imagine that.” It is a tune that reveals the spirit, the light you see when you die.
Gestalt black man: Why do you cry? Because it is not mine. Then were did it come from? It came from God.
Homework: Be the boy in the presence of the black man and woman and be learning.
There were many dreams of a boy, of being the boy. Dreams that offered homework to show me I needed to stop trying to help myself and open to my feelings of nakedness, vitality, disappointment, play, be scared and uncertain and unknowing. I had to work to NOT care about seemingly important things, just be the boy, or be aware of the fear that opens the door to passion, too, lean on the father.
8/18/98: Dream:
There is a man with three layered star gazing glasses and they are all around his head. I don’t believe they work. He shows me how they see galaxies in a different dimension… There is a boy going across the ocean in a flying machine and I ask to go along. I am scared and we fly over water and before we leave I take warm cloths and gloves. It may be cold where we are going. Still flying and we come to a community and I ask him to fly over grapes and he flies through them. I am desperately holding on.
Gestalt boy: What does it mean that you can fly? I am of God.
Homework: Hold onto the boy. DEPENDANCY with others, NEEDING others.
I wrote 11/9/98. “I want to mourn my fathers death and prepare for my own death and embrace/ acknowledge my scared little boy and in so doing become a better father, son, husband and leader. I want to be a better husband and lover and not be afraid to ask for what I need or be who I am in my marriage. I want to surrender myself to God and trust his guidance, feel my own potential and find the strength to live it so that I can serve God.”
3/7/99: Then there is a shift in which I am given hard work to do. There are demons and very horrifying images in my dreams but also signs of a new birth.
I am watching a man and I see his face and he is acting and he is pale and he is talking to a child and his words are lifeless and evil and he screams and he takes the boy and is eating his heart. A girl watches this. She is in bed with her brother and she is about to do the same thing as the man and then the parents come in and they are concerned and the girl convinces them to leave and then the parents leave and she is to eat the baby and the women comes in and shines a light on the girl as she begins to suck the heart and they are horrified and they take the child away.
Gestalt child being eaten: What are you in me? I am the helpless naivete.
G estalt girl: Why are you going to do this? I can’t help myself I don’t want to do this. I feel like I have to do it and I am compulsion.
Dream:
In a child birth class there is a teacher and she has a contraction and she observes the duration. She would like to finish the lecture but there isn’t time as she is in labor…
Homework: Be with the infant. The new birth. This is the new you. Be aware of Ariman in you, know that when you are unconscious of it it wants to kill the baby.
This reminds my of the part in Revelations where the dragon is waiting for the baby to be born so it can eat it.
Many months follow of being with the boy feeling and facing the fear, climbing to God with the boy. The demon dying. Letting go into feelings for Jesus, deepening my feeling of pain/need/hurt, learning how to know him. Forgetting the world and being open to the boy. Being a calve under the auspices of the herdsman finding my way to my fathers house.
12/27/99 Dream:
I leave Gerette. I meet two people on the path who question whether I can enter the room. I enter it, anyway. I watch TV and I am alone and I shut it off. I sit in the center of the room. The master comes and I defend myself. I am paralyzed to act and I sink in being connected like a dream. I see the image of Christ and a bowl of ashes being stirred and this fades away and leaves me feeling full.
Gestalt two people: Why are you questioning me about going inside? You are not ready. What does it mean that I go in ?
Gestalt defending myself: What are you? I don’t want him to touch me. You mean hit me or love me? Love me. Why don’t you want me to love me? I don’t want it. What part of me are you? I am the angry part.
Gestalt master: Why do you come to me? I want you. But I broke into your house? No one enters here that I don’t let enter. Then who were the men who told me to go? They were my men. I came anyway and here I am angry at you. That’s OK. Why is that OK? It’s your anger. You took my father!! Everyone has their time. But you hurt me!! Only so that you can sit with me now. What are the ashes? Those are your ashes. You mean I am dying? It is your Baptism.
Homework: Stay in Gods house. Feel anger or pain. He is there to love you through all of this.
Then there was the work of not projecting the anger and hurt, to feel my inadequacy and vulnerability. I had to become aware of my resistance to the father of not wanting to ask for help and learn to trust the father with my needs even though I was afraid and hurt. I had to overcome the shame of being so vulnerable and just love the father.
6/22/00 Dream:
A woman says that God is always speaking what is before us and I weep as I feel the truth and I am aware of what she is asking me to do. I am afraid I can’t.
Gestalt weeping: What are you? Seeing angels. What is the truth that makes you weep? I need to surrender to Gods love. What is it that I feel I can’t do? That you can’t stay here with us.
Homework: Be with the weeping. Be with the woman.
So I began to say yes to the father and to weep for the acceptance he offered. This was only possible when I was the boy. As the boy I was inadequate but it did not matter because I lived in- the –adequacy of the father. It was strange to let go of responsibility down to the core of my being. To hold my child self and be the child, my essential self.
10/3/00 Dream:
Talked to autistic girl and she said he likes the poetry of E.E. Cummings and I asked is it tragic and she says it is beautiful. I weep… An old convertible cruiser with the word WORK on the side of the car and I look for the autistic girl and I find her with a tiny boy and I bring him back with us.
Gestalt weeping: What are you? I am freedom. Everything drops away. It’s realizing that I am home. What does it mean that I feel you? Your in touch. With what? With essence.
Homework: Be the boy being baptized.
More months of letting go of judgment, giving up control and not giving in to the rebellious boy. Missing the father and letting him teach me and take care of me. Feeling my squeamishness, sometimes running away and being afraid and sobbing. It all seemed so simple, I could understand why I didn’t have to pay for or prove my worthiness to be received by him. I even began to experience rage.
5/30/01Dream:
I am killing a man violently and I go for another man to kill him.
Gestalt killing feeling: What are you? I am rip it out by the throat. What are you in me? Pent up rage.
Gestalt men: What is he doing to you? We are in his face and he is reacting. Why am I reacting to you? Because you know what is coming. What do I think is coming? Your death. Death of what? Death of self.
Homework: Breath the water.
The rage gave way to more embarrassment. Allowing myself to be prepubescent. No threat to anybody. This was very uncomfortable and I was afraid to be me. Again and again feeling my pain and going to the father for help. Women mostly came to me in my dreams as the seductress and again and again I had wet dreams giving my potency over to her. Awaking to how strongly the dark mother controlled me. But breakthroughs began to come.
11/13/01 Dream:
I stay after a meeting and I talk about Delphi another girl. I was feeling her and I was on top of her and then it fizzled. She had eyes like a husky and I was glad it turned out that I was with her instead. I can’t remember the girls name and then people that were there at a meeting came in. I am afraid they will think badly of me that I am with a girl but they don’t notice. A man is greeting me with joy. I make eye contact with Cornelius and I tell him about fishhook and I sit with him and I know I have something to ask him and I forget. Bernard has been home schooling and things seem desperate. A man like me is scared.
Gestalt man: Why do you greet me with such joy? I am happy to have you back here with me. Are you the father? No. Who are you? I am the son. What do you mean I have come back? You are available and in this room with me. How do I stay with this instead of meandering? Listen and be attentive.
Gestalt girl: Why are you with me? To distract you. I want to have you. Well, the charge is over honey! You ain’t got me by the balls anymore. Then forget it then.
Homework: Be with the joy of the boy as you stand in front of the man that greets you.
Feeling homeless and naïve, allowing myself to not know any better and not doubt the connection to the Christ and the Father. To feel this with the animus vs. paralysis and desolateness. Be aware of the bad women. Feel the abundance of the father, be exposed.
2/20/02 Dream:
A boy is acting drugged and he says I ignored him because he is being cocky and he likes his bike and rides off and he does a flip and lands on his back. A shopkeeper tells the boy he should not be playing around as the boy lays on the ground. He is a prankster. I think he is hurt and I go over to him. I yell at the boy because he is rejecting the father. He becomes angry like a demon and resists. I get in his face more and I say he must not die this way and I feel I must confront him and not let this hostility go unchallenged and I feel paralyzed.
Gestalt boy: Why are you pretending to be dead? I am showing you what it is like. What? To play around with the father and make believe you are dead. Why are you/me doing this? I am being the rebellious boy. How is this suppose to effect the father? I want him to get angry at me so I know he will love me.
Gestalt angry at the boy: What are you? It hurts.
Homework: be in the grief of the loss of the father and realizing how you have been with the father.
I feel sad and I’m trying to be aware of the suspicious mind that numbs and covers feelings. I struggle with feeling self aware /self conscious and uncomfortable and anything else that is a feeling. My work is to accept the boy, don’t save him. Keep feeling insecure. Be wanting approval.
5/15/02 Dream:
I go to see a man that I love and he has a rough face and he wants to go away from me and I will not let this happen and I demand to know where he is . I find out what state he is in and I am ready to search the entire state and then he is back and I want to kill him and I ask where he had been and he tells me about all these exotic places. I hit him and box him and then I get an open scissors and think to stab him with it and then I am given wrenches and I bang them on the table and face them at him like claws and I am about to hit him with them and I come to my senses and then I kiss him and I tell him that I love him.
Gestalt wanting to find the man: What are you? I am a scared little boy. I want my daddy back.
Gestalt anger at the man: What are you? I am overwhelmed and can’t believe he left. I want him. Are you the boy? No.
Gestalt kissing the man and wanting him: What are you? Are you the boy? Yes
Homework: Keep wanting the man and tell him that you love him.
A long stream of homework goes something like this: Needing to need, to feel the pain of needing and not having. Be the son without the father. Be the sad and small boy. Be shipwrecked. The boy with no control. Accept the boy. His passion and self love are the real you. Be at your fathers funeral and feel disturbed. Say my father died every hour. Feel naked and let god love you. Slow down to where the boy is.
On 6/22/02, my step father Phil Sosis died. He was 87. He had married my mother when he was 80, just after having a triple bypass. He was a strong man, a father, grandfather, poet, sage. I had known him as a child as he was part of the Ethical Culture Society. We played ball together at the retreats in the country. In the seven years he was my step-father we became very close. He had know my father, Ken. Phil had even written a poem for his memorial service:
KEN GLUCK … lived an eternity
died in 1975
“Death is not an end,”
You said,
“Nor a time for one
to be sad …”
We cry in our gayety!
We rage in our laughter!
Your gentle eye rebukes us
Your gentle, gentle eye
dries our tears
and strengthens our trembling
From within the velvet Dawn
your essence ripples
with your gentle rage
For there was so much
more to be done …
The worth of every being,
the dignity in every spirit,
is the heritage that you left.
“Death is not an end,”
You said,
“Nor a time for one
to be Sad …
Philip Sosis 3/75
Phil waited for me to get to the hospital, he knew how import it was for me to be there with him. Knew I had been with Ken when he died and was forever wounded by this. Phil was giving me a second chance. To go through the death of my father consciously, fearlessly, feeling my love for him and knowing he loved me and would be with me forever. I can’t remember Ken ever saying he loved me, though I feel his love now.
In Oct. of 2002, Gerette and I Bached. It was an opportunity for me to express my struggle with being the boy or the not-boy. To share how my pathology was to try to be Christ both as savior and martyr. This a way to divert the pain of the loss of my father when I was 12. How I was very resistant to being vulnerable, became angry and fight surrendering. How in my pathology I want to be loved on my own terms. This is how I pushed the pain away by being responsible for everything, internalizing parental responsibility. To trust in the boy meant I had to trust myself in a new way. In my pathology I want to be with the father without first being the boy. I am in control of myself and I can prove to God that I am worthy and don’t have to trust him to love me for just ME. I shared a dream in which a wood carver gives me a carving and I think I have to finish it but I don’t know how. It never occurs to me that he is giving this to me as a gift.
All my reality comes down to needing to be the boy with the Father.
At the Bache I shared one of my poems which was composed from the place of putting myself in the Christ role:
The Light Returns
Darkness
Emptiness turned inside out
Like the flower giving way to seed
Our skin and bones, flesh and blood, the fruit
Lo, how a Rose bloomed in Bethlehem
Turning, Turning, Turning
Until we are seeds
Born with Loving Kindness in our hearts
Lift root, leaf and stem into bud
Hold yourself in that dream kernel
Until you can hold it no longer, no, longer still
Light calling you out
Radiant colors full of joy and bliss
You, the Other, appear
A bright star blooming on the darkest of nights
When I recite this poem I make gestures with my hands depicting the Tree of Life; the birth of Jesus; Jesus on the cross; Christ risen; The tree of knowledge; then I walk forward towards the audience making eye contact with them acknowledging their light.
I am not a healer, I am not the redeemer, if I help you at all it will be because I have entered into the service of Christ and God and through their power and grace you are transformed.
11/27/02 Dream:
Lisa is in labor and I am there to help and I pull her pants down and they snap back and they have to come off. Peter gets out a fan belt and he asks if I want to be there and I wonder how he can ask me this of course I do. I help… Lisa is giving birth and Luke looks on and the baby is born shiny and I think it is sick but it seems fine.
Gestalt child that is born: What are you? I am innocent. What is that? I have been here all along waiting and gestating. Now it is time to come out. Do I want you to come out? No. It means that you have to change and come over to me. And be what? Vulnerable and dependant on God for everything.
Homework: Make the decision to be open to the child that is being born. That which feels connected to the father. Need the father’s love.
3/26/03 Dream:
A man says he has a disease and is telling me he believes it is in the veins not the muscles as the doctors have told him. There are purple and gold pills on the table but he does not want to take them. I support him in not taking the medication and that he is right about his own assessment. I feel odd.
Marc did not need a gestalt to recognize this was about the first time I realized that my father was going to die.
I immediately began to weep when he made this association for me. Up until this point my work always came back to the moment my father died. But he was dying of cancer for two and a half years and though it was never said, I must have known he was going to die from about age 10.
Homework: Feeling the loss of your father…from the moment you realized he was going to die.
4/9/03Dream:
I am sitting on an edge of a cliff next to a man in my men’s group and I am afraid of falling. I feel I could survive if I fell. I talk about the pines and how they grow and I am now backing away and they inch me forward. I fear they will push me off. I move away.
Dream:
Luke (my 3 year old son) gets a present from my father and it is a big toy car and I try and get him to watch Dad take off.
Homework: Feel the fear and go down over the cliff. This is the way to be the boy with the father.
7/2/03 Dream:
A man with developmental disabilities I used to work with is dead and rapped up like a mummy but he has an erection.
Gestalt: Q,: Royal, what does it mean that you are rapped up with an erection when you are dead? R:I am not dead I am aroused. Q: What part of me are you? I am the clairvoyant part. Q: The boy? Yes, the boy. Q: What does it mean that you have an erection? I am passionate. Q: Why are you tied up? Your afraid of it. I tell the mummy I an going to pull off the wrappings. His response: Hallelujah!
7/15/03 Dream: I am crying on Christa.
Gestalt: Crying what are you? I am happy to be home. What is home? Surrendered and open to the love.
Homework: BE crying on Christa.
In that month of July 2003 I quit my job as an Employment Coordinator of a Human Service agency and My family and I prepared to move from our home of 17 years in Vermont to a Camphill Community, Triform, in Hudson N.Y. where our Daughter Sonya (8) could attend a near by Waldorf school. Gerette and I would be closer to family. I would have the community life I had hoped for. August 10th, we moved.
8/13/03 Dream:
Kids going by on custom bikes. Airplane landing near by. Man surprised at them. I ride a custom sled. Laura, her father and Indigo (as a baby) get on with me and I pull us along with my feet. Laura is worried about her father's safety. We start down a hill and are gliding fast. Feels great its working! Then we hit gravel and lose control and Laura flies off saying “shit!” I watch her like in slow motion slide face first on the ground. At the same time I am keeping her father held back behind me as we come slowly to turn sideways and come to a stop. Her father is okay. Shift- I am holding Indigo who I keep calling Luke and can’t remember his name at first. He is bleeding from his ears and I am wiping up the blood. We are at a first aid station and I pick up gauze and the nurse says it has been used. I drop it and desperately wipe my hands. The bleeding stops, Indigo is okay.
Homework: Be the boy with bleeding ears.
It is obvious my tremendous desire to live in community is deeply connected with my pathology and I have come to a place where it has become harder to hear His voice.
9/12/03 Dream:
I go in a hospital elevator secretly, put on an apron to disguise myself. Get out on the private ward. President Bush is there, I see him, I feel afraid and turn to leave, escape.
Homework: Go back to the hospital, be with the father. Feel anxiety.
10/31/03 Dream:
Walking with red haired girl , talking about piece that I worked on about wildlife, birds, white bears and tiger cubs, caribou… …Luke making noises attracting cubs, I am afraid. The cubs want to play.
Homework: Be aware of wanting to get approval from the girl. Be the boy not self-conscious wanting to play.
11/19/03 Dream:
I am in bed with Gerette in my childhood bed room. The window is open and I am looking out at a car. My childhood best friend Mark, is looking in the window, I call out to him a warning that I am keeping watch over it. He comes to the window and we shake hands. It feels great to see him! Shift to showing black people the way to a church where vision of rainbow appears.
Homework: Be with Mark feel friendship. Work on behaviors like humanitarian savor bullshit.
The following are quotes from Marc during this session: “There are a million ladders to heaven but you don’t climb up, you climb down, and there is only one ladder down.” “You are the door to God” “ It is important to put your behavior under a microscope. Scrutiny is the enemy of pathology.”
After this session I wrote a B on my hand to remind me about my homework, it meant both Boy and Behaviors.
I was asked tell my biography to a class of special needs students here who are studying biographies. I talked to them for about an hour telling them about my life. At the end I asked if anyone had any questions. One very dear student said in her strained and hard to understand speech, “What’s that on your hand?, pointing to the B. I started to cry. I had gone through my whole life and hadn’t mentioned the dreamwork or the boy. I was so grateful for her pointing this out and giving me the opportunity to share about my dreamwork and my struggle to be the boy.
I have been working a long time to get to the boy. I don’t feel anything and have only recently been given a dream where I could see the why not.
6/17/04 Dream:
I am in front of the house I grew up in with Gerette. Mrs. Gray our neighbor is in her house but does not want to be seen. I don’t want to be seen by her. So Gerette and I go to the back yard. But then I feel I will miss out on the salami.
This is about how I am hooked by the dark mother. When my father died when I was 12, I became a mama’s boy. My little boy vanished and the boy that pleased women took over. I internalized this need to please women so that even without prompting I am a good little boy. When I don’t do this I feel empty, numb, lost. But that is exactly where the boy is feeling the loss of his father. I have to recognize first that I have latched on to the dark mother and know the power she has over me.
A similar pathology is that it is much easier for me to do things for others then to do it for myself. When we were moving out of our home of 17 years to rent it, I spent three solid weeks fixing all the details of the house. These details not being done always bugged me and I didn’t want the renters to have to live with them unfinished. Of course I would never have done it for myself. Or today, for example, I cleaned the van we had exchanged with a neighbor and really thought I was enjoying cleaning someone else’s car. Knowing that my car would not come back clean. I like having a clean car but I don’t often clean it. I am so obsessed with doing things for others that I live in an intentional community that espouses that: ”in meeting the needs of others our own needs are met”. This has meant that I am continually obedient to al ma mater over my own feeling of well being or rather in order to ovoid my feelings of grief, loss and pain for my father. The feelings that are leading me back to the boy and through him to a connection with life with the Father again.
8/23/04 Dream:
I am riding my sister’s bike, she has given it to me. It is a touring bike with a place for touring bags. I show it off. My mother comes with a toy motorcycle bike for Luke (my son). As she gives it to him she say’s she is sorry she couldn’t get a good one, this is a cheaper one. She realizes this was a foolish thing to say because in Luke’s eyes it is perfect. Shift- Phil is in pain, has just had his teeth worked on, his face is disfigured and purple (like Ken’s after the attempt to remove the cancer from his jaw). I ask him how he is. He says he is in a lot of pain.
Watching my father waste away, knowing the imminent death of my father, I turned to my own fantasy of a world I could save. He died, but I would go on to live to elicit the best in others and myself, as he sought to do. The pain causes me to pass out, I can’t feel how painful it was for me to watch him die.
Staying with the pain of having my children be cared for by another man. Feeling my father’s pain of being taken from his children by cancer. It is now clear to me why I do not feel this pain when I try to bring myself there.
Can I stay still enough and soft enough for my heart to open? What is this journey that finds its progress in going down into feeling. The beat stilled, the stars whorl, inner weight floating to the surface and gone. Flames lapping at the sky, a spark kindling the heart. This bache page opening in me a way.
November, 2005
Three weeks ago I had a breakthrough dream:
I am walking into a house. I have empty soda bottles in my hand, Ken is walking out with large wine bottles in his hands. I enter a room, then Marc comes in and has a coat draped over his shoulders. Bill comes and takes it off him. Then someone else takes the coat underneath off and Marc says, "Who wants the honor of taking my coat off," and I take it off. When I do this, I notice his nose has a bandage over it. I am concerned. He says he will not be able to live down this accident, in a chiding way. He is fine. I hug Marc, say thank you and feel love and devotion.
When I worked this dream with Marc, it was clear that he was the Animus and that I was the boy honoring him feeling, maybe for the first time, a real feeling. That love changed me. But the dream also showed how I distance myself from that place by jumping into the false feeling of concern and then devotion.
Did I feel concern when my father died when I was twelve? I remember feeling relief, he had been sick for three years, unable to speak as pieces of his jaw bone were removed to rid his body of the cancer. Eating through a tube in his nose. I had already checked out. I could not feel the pain of his death or his love. But I also became devoted to him, trying to be like him, trying to gain his love even though he was dead. Not feeling love but devotion to something outside of me always outside my reach.
The love I felt in the dream was deep, it changed my face, made me cry. I felt this in NOE group, too. It was awesome to feel the love welling up in me around me. Of course it was not my love, but His love coming through me, holding me. It was very healing.
I am speaking in past tense here because I haven't felt that love in over a week. I am back in a numb place or worse defending my pathology.
In my last session with Marc I shared a dream in which:
David (Animus) is with an old Rhino which threatens to crush a car that is between him and me. The Rhino rushes him but he is able to push it away by putting his arms out. It rushes him several times and each time he stops it. I watch this and feel afraid.
The Rhino is me in my pathology. The Rhino pathology shows up in how I have avoided doing this new web Bache. In how I become passive aggressive in my marriage making agreements that I don't want to keep. How I forget to ask Marc for help or don't share with him things that came up in my mentoring session.
How I don't take care of myself. The Rhino is what I do when I am not feeling the love.
My homework is to: feel the fear of the Rhino. Recognize when I am the Rhino. Be the boy taking off Marc's coat feeling love.
In the fear place at least the Rhino is outside of me where I can see it.
Silence is also another manifestation of the pathology. It knows if it speaks it will be found out, especially with Marc and in NOE. Even as I have been writing this I have long periods of silence, it has taken close to an hour to get this far. The pathology does not want to be seen.
I push forward, try to breath into the homework of being the boy but the best I can do is to expose the pathology. I am afraid to be seen as the Rhino, stuck and doing everything I can to keep the Animus away from me.
I long to feel His love again. But I know this too is Pathology. Longing, devotion are doing and doing is my willfullness showing up. The love comes when I stop trying and feel His love.
2006
Dream: I am jumping off the high dive I do an awkward dive and enter the water. I’m under the water and I remember that I can breathe the water and have a few moments when I am in awe of my new ability and freedom in this realm before I drift back up.
Finally I am breathing the water!
I went to my session feeling very depressed NOE is starting up again after the summer to focus on my personal work and I am not feeling excited about it. I feel uninspired.
Perhaps its just seeing how great Gerette is doing and I am seeing how little progress I am making in comparison.
On our way to a couple’s session I was talking about all the things I am doing: Being a father, working as a School Transition Counselor full time; going to Graduate School to get a Masters in Mental Health Counseling. When I got done with my list, Gerette said, “and being in NOE”. This is exactly how it is. I forget about NOE. I forget about my homework. I am so lost to my true desire, to the boy that I go through life asleep to my dreams. In my dreams I remember. But I forget during my days.
In the couples session I brought up how I am having a hard time listening to Gerette talk about the business without making comments about how I think she should do it. Marc was all over me about this. “You don’t know anything about business!!!” “You have done nothing successful with money!!” “Gerette is a Genius! She started a business just a few months ago and now she is starting to grow it. If she listens to you it could be ruined!” Marc went on about how squirrelly I am, always playing it safe, never doing anything entrepreneurial. It is true; I am not good with managing money or taking risks or building something over time. Marc brought in that perhaps I am trying to sabotage Gerette’s business because I don’t want her to be successful because that would make me look like the inept putz that I am. I was not aware of trying to do this. We have struggled over how we spend money. I am always very conservative and this frustrates Gerette. In the past I have done things to sabotage agreements we have made too, usually by not acting on them. Even now I am struggling to recognize my attempts to word this in a way that the pathology is not seen defending itself. The boy wants only to support and love Gerette. The boy jumps off the high dive and knows he can breathe the water. I have to stop myself from trying to defend my pathology.
August 12, 2007
It is almost September again and this statement of a year ago is so familiar and yet there have been some changes. I have just given the remainder of my inheritance to buy Gerette a business. I have done this for the wrong reason because I think it will be profitable and get us out of debt. Debt which I have allowed to accumulate, a positive step for me. I have seen my conservative self come up again and again but I have done my homework and been pushed over the cliff, and allowed myself to fall. I know that the right reason for spending this money is that I have used it as a safety net and as an attachment to my father. Holding on to his gift to me, projecting this as security that his support and presence is still in my life. I have chosen to break this projection by supporting Gerette’s passion to create a profitable business. My homework now is to see my pathology and how it is at the wheel of the ship in my life always steering me into the rocks. In the dream: A large man is standing next to me and we are looking over the edge of the boat as we travel along parallel to the shore. I am afraid we will hit the rocks. We do hit the rocks and slide back into the water. I go down to look for damage. Marc is there, we look down into the bottom of the boat but it is black, we listen and can’t hear any water coming in. I sit down and say: “This is a strong boat”. I feel weak and overwhelmed by the strength present. It is a strong boat; it is the Father’s boat. My pathology does everything in its power to wreck this boat. It shows up in how I question Gerette about her business, in how I criticize my children, in how I believe and fear that the boat could be wrecked. I know I can’t trust this voice in me that thinks it knows something but again and again I allow it to speak.
Even as I write this I get slower and slower, yawn, and fight to stay awake. It is so hard to be honest. I reread what I have written and try to get reconnected with what I have said. The truth is it only reinforces the pathology and gives it a way of directing the process. I need to speak faster and say it in the now. I feel the presence of being on the boat, I begin to tear up. This is what happens when I do my work. During the last retreat I cried deeply a lot. It was such a beautiful retreat for me. I did my homework of that time which was to: “Watch the boat going by and feel the pain of not being on the boat.” I felt that pain and had dreams of the boy doing boy things and I was with him. Then I had the dream of being on the boat. I am amazed at how easy it was for me to give my inheritance to Gerette. I felt his presence when we sat at the table celebrating the purchase with the previous owner. I made a toast to my father for his gift to make this possible. I allowed the honor to be his. I feel the pain that now it is my turn to make it on my own. I am terrified. I get choked up. I have nothing to say for myself because I have done nothing yet. I am free falling, knowing it is a strong boat, His boat. I am remembering how I was as a child, scared, alone. I sucked my thumb so much I pushed my front teeth out. I could put my finger on the inside of my upper teeth and the outside of my lower teeth with my mouth closed. My mother was very unstable, a diagnosed manic depressive and my father was not very present. My innocence was lost. I hide from the pain of this lack of intimacy in my family. It just occurred to me that the intimacy I feel with people in NOE, the support to feel the pain, to see the pain in others, to laugh and play together is what I want in my life.
AHHHHHHHHHH! A yell from my heart, my aching heart, I want to be the boy in his loving family. I can allow myself to be loved. I can love because I choose not to hide from my pain or experience love vicariously. Thank God I am getting my head out of my ass and feeling the strength to face the pathology, the strength coming from turning to Him and allowing him to steer the boat. Riding the waves of adversity in his steady hands. How I lie. In today’s couples session I make a statement that I have never had the Anima in my dreams, when it has happened recently: Christa coming to me to support me in buying a kayak and Laura when I was sitting on the toilet. Of course in the dream with Laura I want to lock the door, stay in shame and don’t realize she is coming for me not as I assume to use the toilet. I lied with Marc today in the couple’s session saying there was nothing left of the money when we still have our IRA investments as assets. I lie to myself about doing better in the work so I can be in NOE again. Being on the boat means outing these lies and going back to knowing it’s a strong boat and feeling overwhelming pain and staying in his presence.