His Cup
Fall of 2008
In my dream I am wandering for a long time. It is late at night. I walk down a street and there is Christopher Hitchens sitting in a chair. I recognize him. Prestigious commentator. Very intellectual. Provocative. I sit in a chair facing him and he offers me a cup. I want to take it from him, but he holds on to it. He insists on holding on to it. I get huffy. "I am not a baby. I can hold my own cup. This is demeaning, don't you think." He lets me take the cup with a look of sad resignation. We chat about something about the world or the war or whatever. His eyes look damaged somehow. I can't imagine how he can see with them. It's time to go. I think about how I could write something about my meeting with Christopher Hitchens. I go and sleep in a car I find open on the street.
I'd like to think that it makes me special somehow that I get to sit and talk with this man, to receive the gift of the cup. He is the Animus, the Christ (opher), and it is says nothing about me that he comes to me except that I am lost and that he loves me and will not give up on me. He resigns the cup to me because it is my will and he cannot force me to act differently. In fact I have a chance here to see myself fully in my pride and my arrogance, which I project on him. I woke from this dream and immediately knew that I had been with the Animus but refused to recognize him as such, refused to receive his gift on his terms, refused to be in relationship, pushed him away and at the same time tried to puff myself, to consider myself his equal. All this against the backdrop of being lost and totally impoverished. I can somehow manage to be sleeping in someone else's car - or a dumpster - whatever - and still think I am somehow pretty cool.
I saw this and felt a kind of despair. All these years of work that is supposed to lead to this connection with him that I have just scorned and spat upon. Please, I prayed, just let me die to self. Let this pride be killed.
I slept again and dreamed that I jumped into the water with a man I admire - the Animus again - and we went down, down, down. When I realize how far I am below the surface I start to struggle to get back up. And I do.
I wake and despair again. No, I refuse to die to self. It is there in the dream. I feel so stuck.
When I work this dream with Marc he catches me. From the start I have tried to contol and interpret the dream for myself. More of my desperate attempts to fix myself. This is more of me taking the cup. Trying to do things my own way. My homework is to let the man hold the cup. It is not to feel what I think I should feel when I am doing this. I think I am supposed to feel vulnerable. I convince myself I do. No, just let him hold the cup and take what he offers.
I am disobedient. I do things my own way. This very week I blew it. I send out communications that I have agreed to let someone review first. In the world, a small thing perhaps. Little or no consequences. In my work it is huge. I have done this again and again. It is me saying. "Why do I have to do it your way. I want to do it my own way. I want to hold the cup." There is an angry rage behind this, a slap in the face. In this I negate my relationship to this person who is loving me and supporting me, I shred my agreement, I trade my integrity for the sake of my pride. My life is a trail of wreckage that stems from this.
Where did I lose it this time? Where was my homework? Why didn't I let my teacher hold the cup? Didn't I know what I was doing? Why? ... I had denied that I had this anger and this pride. I was trying to manage the homework - trying to feel the right thing. Reality... I am angry, I am rebellious, I am disobedient. These things are in me and they are controlling me. And I can't control them. I can't do it myself. Every time I try I fail.
Now I go back to the man again. Now I have a choice. I can be what I was before and have been all my life, or I can let him hold the cup. If I let him hold the cup, then it is about him. He holds me in those painful looking eyes that see me in spite of their worldy blindness. Sees me as I really am. Carrying and dealing out all this ugliness and yet innocent at the core- a lovely child.
I have to be with him. It is not about the cup. This hurts. I feel such pain. This is the pain that I don't want to feel. It is easier to screw up, to go "I did it again. What is the matter with me.
I'm hopeless" and to feel shame and despair than it is to feel this pain.
Those who love me and support me in this work will not give me over to shame and despair. But what can they do? It is my will and my choice.
Next dream.
I am with a man who has held a grudge about a chair for a long time. It seemed he would never stop being angry. Then I am with him. There is a brand new chair, just made. It can't be the same long ago chair. The man is totally at peace. The anger is gone. I can feel how it is not about the chair at all. I can feel how something has changed inside him that took the anger away. Some kind of change of heart. Some kind of love.
This is me as I could be and hope I am becoming. The anger that seems so rooted in me can be gone. It is not about the chair. It is not about the cup. It's about being healed in the love. How it happens doesn't really matter. I don't have to analyze or understand it. I just have to know that I can feel the peace that this man feels. The anger is gone. I feel the relief.
Next dream:
There is a little jewish man in a dusty shop. I go back there and up the stairs. I that I am there or have been there before with my brother Paul who died, and my beloved Kate. The man unpacks glasses and wine. He is eager to share what he has with us. It seems like he has more that he wants to share. He has little materially but seems rich in wisdom and love.
This is the truth of it. I feel it and it hurts. He just wants to share. The gift is his love. How sad it must be for him that I have refused him so many times.
So, although I have spent much of my life in a pit of despair. Have been dead to countless blessings - tossing the cup and it's contents away in contempt. Have turned away from those who offered me love. Wallowed in shame. Tried again and again to control myself with my mind, only to fail. Broke rules and promises. Been a sneak and a petty theif. Told stories, made excuses, told lies. Jumped away from the pain and fear that accompanies the journey back to love. Even though I have made a botch of things and repeated that same mistakes again and again... I have hope.
If nothing else the work has brought me this clarity. Where there did not seem a way out before I know now that I have a choice. It is my power and my will to let him hold the cup and feel the pain in hope of healing. I won't say in hope of love because I don't think I know what love is. Not His love. That remains for me to find through the pain and fear. I really can choose to do this, even though I often don't. I cannot defeat the pathology on my own terms. The pride of assuming that I can is right at the center of the pathology itself. this is me taking the cup. No way out.
I could add a lot about my journey to this point. Where I began, how I failed and suffered and slowly began to discover myself. The dead ends and the ways that eventually opened up through this dreamwork. It's too much for me right now. Too much storytelling. I only know that it began early and that I cannot remember love or God seeming real or important to me as a child. What entered at that wound was this pathology that says " I can - I must do it myself. I don't need you. I'm better than you. Screw you. " Nothing good ever came from that or ever will. And yet, I am still learning to trust God and to believe that love is real.