I stand at the threshhold of the work now more conscious than ever of the choice that I have to make, what is at stake and how and how I turn away. The animus is there again and again. This is a gift of a lot of work I have done to expose the lies that stand between. And yet I remain separate, not recognizing the Animus, or not becoming the boy with Him. Jumping in, being spontaneous, feeling the fear and the pain, being in the uncertainty and trusting... these are challenges I face.
Dream.
Andy Garcia needs some money for something to drink. I know that he is a famous actor. He is handsome and cool. I have fifty cents and give it to him. It's enough for coffee. I hope he will come sit with me.
Pride keeps me separate and aloof. This has been a blind spot because it often takes the form of 'pride of victimization' and is sly. In this dream where I feel the animus energy and some of my longing to be with him I can only come up with 50 cents to seal the deal. I make a feeble gesture and hope he will come. If he doesn't I will have another opportunity to feel sorry for myself. The boy wants to give everything to him and to belong to him all together, but the man I am in my pride is content with nothing, or next to nothing.
Dream.
Someone asks me what are three things I want before I die. I say "To know God's love" I can't think of anything else that I want.
Somewhere inside of me I know to have God's love is to have everything. When Marc calls me a 'spiritual dude' and reflects to me that I am a man of God I feel a sweet and tender welling up in me. The longing arises in me and it is sharp. It hurts. When I stay with the pain I know the love is there. But then, if only by a razor thin separation, I jump away. I go into my head, step outside myself, observe myself, talk endlessly about anything and everything. It can be very convincing and beguiling. The pain of nihilism mixes in and tries to convince me and you that I am really feeling a lot.
This kind of self reflection and suffering goes on endlessly never resolving anything. There is a word for all my issues, worries, theories and talking... Tribbles. I am so full of tribbles that sometimes I have to just say nothing because everything I say, even about my tribbles, is another tribble.
My tribble talk and everything I do in the world is laden with concern about proving myself. I want to figure out the right thing to do and to say. If I do well I am inflated with a feeling of superiority. It never lasts. When I do poorly I am devastated and depressed. I feel like a failure. I need to redeem myself so I try to do something that is beyond my abilities. This sets me up for another cycle. This the gyroscope of pride and shame keeps turning. Here I am aloof, isolated, alone, morbid, needy, arrogant, living in a fantasy world. The painful and absurd truth of pride in me is that somehow I end up feeling superior to everyone even though I am up to my neck in failed expectations.
Dream:
I need to go get my son. He is at my ex-wife's house. I am late or worried about being there at the right time. I get there and answer the phone. It is Marc. It is a speaker phone and it is too loud. He says I might as well face it that I am not doing the work. I think that I might as well give up. He reads me a letter that he got from Rob. I think I should have written a letter to Marc. Rob says in the letter that he met a woman named Mary. I think that Rob did something the right way because he can meet people as a man of God, but that I can't. I want to turn the phone down. My ex comes. I'm off the phone. I am upset, ready to cry. People walk by outside. I feel exposed. My ex says that maybe I should play some nice music. I almost accept this suggestion, but I know I don't want to and say so. I see dirt on the rug and think it is from me. I look for a way to scoop it up. I feel really lost.
This is me in my tribbles. I am beginning to leave this. Even when I screw up big in my job I am learning not to let it take me out. I am calmer now. It is a chance to see the game for what it is. It is not me. I'll never get it to come out right. I can never do something so grand that it will fill this hole inside. Hard to believe that I can be OK without doing the right thing. There are moments when I realize that His love is freely offered and there is nothing I need to do or can do to be worthy of it. How strange and frightening to leave all those ways of measuring myself: good and bad, competent and incompetent, smart and stupid, etc. What an attachment to pointless suffering. I have not been disgusted enough to finally leave it, though.
Dream:
I get to a platform where Kate is. I get up there and try to stand up, but there is not enough room and I hit my head. I lie down. Kate is naked. I touch her and she responds. I feel excited.
I've made a big commitment with Kate to buy our house together and to get married. This is a leap of faith. I don't always feel excited about this, but sometimes I do. At each step of the way with Kate, as with the dreamwork, when I have held fast and made the commitment instead of listening to the doubts (tribbles), I have been lessed. I realize that I am being given a new life ...and that I have put up resistance every step of the way.
Dream:
I am in a bed in a van going down the road. The people with me feel close, like family. I am naked and am uncomfortable exposing my penis and try to keep it tucked under. I try putting my shorts over my lap, but my efforts to cover up also feel a little silly. A little red haired boy appears next to the bed. I don't recognize him as one of the family. Maybe he is an orphan. I see that he wants to be with us. I pick him up and sit him next to me and put my arm around him. I want him to feel accepted.
This is the boy that I am becoming. I feel his longing to be with the father. My own shame feels less and less essential. The excitement and longing that I feel about women's bodies and sex is rooted in his sensual aliveness. It is the baby that I keep throwing out with the bathwater of my shame. My newest work is to build the passion in me, which is the boy's passion to live in the embrace of the father. To feel in a sensual way, my desire for his love - which is in itself a gift of His love, which I have so long forgotten, doubted, feared and scorned. To walk out of the old game, through the pain and into the unknown and the sweetness and the terrifying potency of His love.