For many years, I felt horrified by my own depth of self-deception as it was revealed to me in my dreams. I didn’t want to admit that I lived my life beneath so many layers of illusion and denial. I was also plagued by constant distress about the state of the world and the human condition. Considering the lies that I lived through, how often I existed in a state of projection and reaction, it wasn’t hard to see how we human beings, en masse, have created such horrors as ecological devastation and constant warfare. Fortunately, this work has given us a very practical methodology through which we can confront and conquer problems at their very roots within the psyche and the soul.
It is helpful, for me, to stay conscious of the broad scope of the work, because my motivation from the beginning has been not only to achieve personal healing and fulfill my potential as a human being but also to find some way to contribute to the healing of the world. I believe now that only the higher powers that direct the Dreamwork can lead us, through all our fears, frozen attitudes and blind spots, to that resolution.
When I was about 20 years old, I had a session with Marc wherein I confided my fears for the world and the ultimate destruction that we seemed to be marching towards. He said: “Well, the apocalypse is tied up with the illness of the human condition. It’s like the end result of the complex, collectively. You’re becoming part of the solution, which I don’t understand.”
Ever since that day, a part of my mind has been consumed with trying to conceive of or envision what that solution might be. Sometimes I felt overwhelmed by the notion of being a “part” of it and hoped that more heroic souls would step up to the plate.
Eventually I lost faith. Unable to realize or accept the love of the Archetypes, I was obliged to see my Dreamwork sessions as little more than exercises in humiliation, opportunities to see fresh evidence of my weaknesses and faults without a “way out” being revealed. I did not understand, at the time, how the old life still had its compensations for me; and I was unwilling to let go of the poison, the cause of my own suffering. I was essentially just paying lip service to the Dreamwork.
I had to take what turned into a ten-year sabbatical - and see my pathology play out in destructive relationships, disastrous career choices and overall isolation and unhappiness - before I was able to return, broken and world-weary, and feel truly ready to listen and receive.
Much had changed during those ten lost years. I had typed “Archetypal Psychology” into Google hoping for nothing more than to find that Marc Bregman was still alive (he’d had a close brush, as it turned out) and doing sessions. My heart leapt into my chest at the sight of what my online searches revealed: Dreamwork Practitioners...Books about Archetypal Dreamwork...retreats...personal essays, stories, poetry...it was all overwhelming and a bit like the scene in “Wizard of Oz” where the land suddenly turns to technicolor. I remember my first thought: “Oh my God! It’s coming out into the world!”
I phoned Marc the following evening. I said, “I don’t know if you’ll even remember me but I worked with you years ago and I’m feeling called to come back to the work.”
Within four months of my initial return session, I had moved to Vermont from Oregon and was able to witness the phenomenon that is North of Eden firsthand. During my first retreat, in September of 2007, I distinctly experienced how the Divine Will was behind it all - not Marc Bregman, nor Christa, nor any of the other amazing teachers that we have here. I felt terrified by this revelation. I wanted to run, to leave the retreat and cancel my next session and find a way to return to ignorance. But I stayed. I stayed because a part of me knew that I had finally come home and that, from here on, no other kind of life could be satisfying besides a life devoted to the work.
Since that time, it’s been my privilege to witness some of the fledgling steps that NOE has taken out into the world, to share in the exhilaration and fear that all of us who are partaking in this unprecedented movement seem to have in common.
And it occurs to me now that perhaps there is a deeper truth beneath the surface appearance of all that we who are teachers, staff members and students are doing to reach out and share our work with the wider community. Is it possible that NOE itself has arisen in response to the aching need of a world that has, at least subconsciously, already asked for it? That the collective heart howl of countless generations of human beings scarred and numbed by unremitting war and countless forms of tyranny and abuse has helped to usher in the healing, cleansing and illuminating flame? Somewhere inside, each one of us knows that the Devil has thus far been running the show and that only God can out him.
I have felt this sense of Destiny when I met my brothers and sisters in this work for the first time. I say “first time”, but it felt more like a reunion.
It’s as if we were soldiers in a foxhole in some distant past; and somehow, intuitively, we know now how to utilize each of our very unique strengths to fight this most worthy of battles. Each of us has been called upon to do something that no one else could do in our stead. I doubt that our presence in this time and place is accidental. I believe that the world is ready for us and that He has made us ready to meet the world.