-Wednesday, May 19, 11 pm
Tension present.
I’m gnawing my fingernails, one in particular. I wonder about the experience of light. There seems so much darkness amongst us now. Truths but dark truths, hard and painful. Is God preparing us for hard times?
I see Marc on Friday. It’s about time.
Gnaw, gnaw, nibble , nibble. I feel anxious. That doesn’t sound real or deep. What am I avoiding? Ellen’s been having a hard time lately and I’m feeling abandoned by her. In two recent dreams she’s disappearing and I’m panicking. What are these dreams saying about me?
Monday she went down hard and I spent several hours that morning, (I’m on vacation this week), probing her nihilism. I thought I was being careful not to be merciful. I thought I was doing the best I could do. I thought I was being a loving husband. I felt supported but that evening; backlash. I felt resentment. That evening I felt grumpy. Why wasn’t she better? Bill saw red flags all over the place, says he’s been there before, says I was probably trying to make her feel better so I didn’t have to feel so bad myself and I think he’s right. Caught in the act of being merciful after all. I think this is what my dreams were trying to tell me, the best thing I can probably do in these times is let her go otherwise at some level I’m making an issue of her doubt, pain and nihilism and losing touch with my own feelings.
These are dark days. I don’t regret the work I’ve done or where it has brought me. I believe that if I hadn’t done this dream work I would be unhappier now than I am, the weight of living and age would have pulled me into a place darker still and unredeemed but having said that I can’t honestly say I am now any happier than I was before I began this work nine years ago. I see more that is true, know myself better, feel more but I can’t say I’m any happier. Does that seem odd or not really that important?
A few weeks back Bill and I remarked at how little gold there seems to be in our processes. I asked him again recently about gold and he says he is feeling it though its not what he had imagined it would be. He says he can taste the hand of the Animus holding him, sweet and salty. That sounds wonderful and I’ve felt moments like that the past few days but I grieve letting go of the hope for ecstasy and that seems to be what I’m being asked to do.
I guess I’m identifying with a certain glumness and that can’t be good.
I’m fading out. Nearly went to sleep in my chair a moment ago. Time for bed. Maybe I’ll have a dream, a dream that responds, a dream that reveals, a dream that promises, a dream of love. Wouldn’t that be sweet?
-Monday, May 31, 11 am-
I feel suddenly alone. Lonely. Afraid. Falling out of the world. Down, down. I feel suddenly sleepy, like the gang in the Wizard of Oz, cursed in the poppy field so close to their destination. There’s a thin line for me between this dropping down into my deeper places and falling asleep. I just had a strong cup of coffee but the pathology like the Wicked Witch is sabotaging my quest. "Poppies, poppies"
I go to my homework which is to receive the pass from the animus. Here’s the dream:
I’m in a football game. Final play of the game and I believe I’m about to see the Animus, a huge quarterback, keep the ball and run in for the game winning, season winning, record breaking touch down. He takes the snap then passes to me instead. I look downfield see the goal and run it in for the touchdown, shaking a couple tackles. The crowd goes silent. I’m confused. I go to the Animus and ask him why he threw to me. He says, "Because you were open." But I still don’t get it. "But the crowd wanted to see you make the touchdown not me" I say. He just looks at me.
Marc made hay on this one. "You’re not even happy or getting it when you make the touchdown."
"But I’m confused, I thought he was supposed to do it. I mean, Marc, it’s like at North of Eden you suddenly turn to me and say ’Alright you run it now’ I wouldn’t know what to do."
"But in the dream you do know what to do."
He’s right, in the dream I was surprised but I knew exactly what to do and I did it and I wasn’t in my pride, I just did what I was asked to and could do. Only when the crowd went silent did I fall from grace. The crowd.
The world is that crowd, the audience I have acted for on the stage and in my life. The audience whose response has been my guide, the audience I have listened to for the truth I have been unable to feel. Ellen has been that audience for me big time. So when she disappeared, as I reported in the last entry, I panicked. My boss and customers are major, vocal audience members pulling me this way and that with their expectations, needs and unconscious pain. My new circle of brothers and sisters in NOE are another audience and of course there’s Marc. Even making touchdowns is bereft of meaning if there is no audience to enthuse me. At least I’m playing with and in conversation with the Animus in the dream. And in my life?
I spoke with Bill shortly after my session. He said he too feels I know more than I think I do and that I have a tough time trusting my knowing as I did in the dream. I was in a good place that day and had figured out a way to integrate my homework into my work day. When challenges arose I would tell myself "It’s not about this task in the world it’s about receiving the pass from the Animus. What does He want me to do? What am I being called to do, not by the world but through the world by Him?" And this worked for two days until my supervisor jumped all over me the next three days in a row. I fell right back into responding out of my fear and forgetting about the Animus and his pass. When I am jumped on like that, like my father used to do, I react too quickly for there to be any consciousness. Bill has long suggested that I go back and replay moments where I go unconscious like a movie in slow motion to see where I fall into pathology, to see what feeling it is I’m avoiding. He says Christa taught him to do this and he discovered that what he thought happened immediately in fact sometimes took several hours. I’ve never seen anything that striking in myself but I have gone back and seen that a tumble into my pathology with Ellen which I thought was instant had in fact taken place over a fifteen or twenty minute period and I’ve learned a lot about myself looking at those lacunae, those missing places. But with Bruce, my supervisor, I believe I fall as soon as I hear his voice or see his car or see his name on my ringing cell phone screen. It’s as if I’ve fallen into pathology with Bruce permanently, long ago, long before I even knew him and his contacting me simply reminds me of what has always been true, that I am lost and afraid around him and will always react from that place even when he’s not jumping all over me because I know that one false step and he will pounce. Of course this all goes back to my father who was surrounded by eggshells just waiting for one to be broken and so confirm his prideful certainty of the stupidity of this world and everyone in it. There was no falling into pathology with my father for I was already there in my very approach to him from my earliest memories around age three. My approach to him was always based on avoiding those eggshells which of course had nothing to do with expressing myself. In fact it had everything to do with not expressing myself, or rather I could only express myself after careful planning so as to be sure that I wouldn’t break any shells and so earn his quick, burning wrath. Forget spontaneity. Marc calls this my "hyper-vigilance." How different and painful it is to see my three year boy, Ian, being the unbridled three year old I never was. Now with Bruce I lie to avoid his wrath because it’s all about avoiding his wrath, not about the truth. The only good thing to report here is that I’m now feeling the pain of my lying, feeling the harm I’m doing to myself, tasting the foul poison I swallow again and again. Perhaps the foul taste will eventually overwhelm my fear and I will change my behavior in this dark hole of my life but for now I cannot even imagine a foul taste that will trump this fear and so I keep drinking, drinking.
I know that God cannot use me as long as I drink this poison with Bruce. I know that He cannot use me until I can stand in my truth with Bruce. I know too that I cannot face Bruce alone, that I need His support. I know that I behave this way with Bruce because I do not feel God’s love. This may take a long time, but I feel that if I could stand in my truth and speak my truth with Bruce then I could move mountains.