My current work is to be in the sensuality of my boy with the Animus. It is the place that I feel fully alive in my being by feeling the love from and connection to God. Here I feel my need of Him is like my need to breathe. I don’t have to “will” my connection into place or think about where I am in relation to the Animus. It is a willingness to live in the vulnerability of an open heart. This place of feeling is the furthering of the connection from the “Be Man” dream earlier this year.
I follow my dog, Oggi, outside our home. She runs over to our bee hives. I can’t see her but I see a large mass of honey bees fly into the air. I believe she has pushed over a hive. Then I see a second mass of bees rise into the air. I think a bear has come to attack the bees. I see that I am naked and the bees swarm around me. I feel very calm. The bees begin to land on me by the thousands. I can feel the bees calming down as they form a covering over my body. I walk back towards my home.
In this dream I am alive from the infusion of God’s love and spirit. He sees me, knows me, and loves for every bit of who I am in my nakedness. There is no good or bad, only love for the truth of who I am in every moment.
Yet, in most of my life I have remained separate and independent from God’s love. I have responded in every fashion to my pathology’s shaming and denigrating projections, seeking affirmation for who I am in the world and with others from an underlying place of shame. To cover up shame my pathology expertly managed and controlled my feelings and situations that I might enter where the truth of my unworthiness might be revealed. “Gitterman” is the projection of that management and control to maintain an illusion of competency and success. I’ve been likable, kind, and a good caretaker.
Pathology’s voice is always saying: “stay away from the fear”, “turn the light away from yourself”, “stay in the world, you’re safe here”, “keep moving or your shame will show”. The voice keeps others away from my vulnerability, the vary thing that allows me to be loved. These lies work to keep me away from knowing the pain of my separation from His love. To feel the pain is to feel how alone and separate I’ve been—completely alone while looking like I’m engaged in the world, making my way in business, and supporting my family and friends. I have been unknowable in my primary relationships because I was afraid to be vulnerable to my feelings. To do so, without a connection to Him and my pain, would only bring me back to shame, and I wanted no part of that.
An example of hiding from the shame would be from my marriage. My wife, Annie, would ask about my personal work, giving me an opportunity to connect to my vulnerability and the love from the Animus. If I was listening to pathology and projecting my shame I would experience her probing as an attack. I would not admit my pain and the shame nor let her in to love me and see me in my truth. I withheld or gave scraps of myself. My projected shame could turn on her as anger or indifference, further isolating myself in the arms of pathology. Then I would feel shame at having withheld myself from her and the cycle would repeat.
It is only recently in my life that I have known that I am not the shame, that the shame is only the meanness of my pathology to keep me separate from God’s love and my need of Him. To feel my fear and unworthiness is to feel my great need of Him. To be in this need of Him allows the Love to come rushing in like a healing salve on my flesh. When I compensate from a place of shame and turn away from Him, I am in my fear alone. My child soul self, my boy in his sensuality, feels that need and great love.
Annie drops me off at a hospital. I’m a medical student starting a new residency. I walk through the hospital and come to a room with other medical students that are also here for the residency. I don’t know anyone and feel my fear coming up. I see Deb across the room and we are really happy to see each other. She sits on my lap and we are like children together: laughing, hugging, and crying.
Switch
I’m in the same hospital with Annie and Bill. We are in a room with many outpatients. There is an open toilet in the room. A man with many intestinal problems is at the toilet. He has a colostomy and other problems. He uses many paper towels to clean himself of shit and blood. He is very matter of fact about his condition and hides nothing. I like him. Bill, Annie, and I are looking for another patient that seems like a combination of Ken and Michael. I see Bill across a big lobby looking worried and scared. I redouble my efforts to search for Ken/Michael.
In the first part of the dream I am the boy in complete sensuality with the girl and I feel Him. It is my place of truth where I am immediate and can be working in partnership with the Divine. In the second part of the dream the man with all the problems (colostomy, blood and shit) is my shame. From the place of shame I like him. I am unconnected to the Animus and respond to other’s worry and fear.
God is showing me the choices: to be in my truth, passion, and divine partnership or to respond to pathology’s shaming and be in reaction, isolated and alone. To be in sensuality with the Divine is my homework. This also means to be immediate in “outing” my reactions and accepting correction from Him and my teachers—deepening my connection to His Love.
June, 2006
My bache in the fall of 2005 marked the beginning of my facing into this work in a committed and honest way. Prior to that time, in my sessions with Marc, I sought comfort and opening to love and truth on my terms. If I felt safe and supported, I would go slightly deeper towards my truth. If I felt afraid or challenged I would back off. I would linger in a malaise of the uncommitted. As I walked into Marc’s office, I would often ask myself: What was my homework? Did I do it since the last session, even once? My pathology had acclimated nicely to the work by making it look like I was making progress, while all the time I was responding obediently to pathology’s guilt, fear, and shame.
I grew up the fourth of four boys with two younger sisters. I remember being a happy and alive child until aged 10. My love was pure and open and unafraid. At that point alcoholism and mental illness ravaged my parents and splintered my family. I responded to that pain and fear by abandoning my boy-self. I became wary, cautious and controlling on the inside to stuff down the feelings of abandonment and shame (shame at my parent’s behavior that I also felt along with guilt for my inability to help them or myself). All the while I began projecting an outward image of competence, calmness, and success: the foundation of my “glitter-man” pathology. Additional attributes were living the “right” life with the appropriate leftist social and political positions and activism. In result “glitter-man” had a faultless armor behind which I could hide my nagging sense of unworthiness. I believed that anyone who fully saw my nakedness and pain would find me unlovable.
Dream (From 1998):
I am working in my woodworking shop. A man appears with a large truck full of woodworking tools. He begins to set up his shop outside of my shop. I wonder what he is up to.
This dream defines the separation from the Animus I create through my pride and aloofness. There is no way I would allow the Animus in my space so he sets up outside and is prepared to wait. I, in my pathology, am confused and anxious.
Throughout glitter-man’s 40+ year career I have periodically felt reunited with my boy-self. The sweetness of his love and connection was tempered by the fear and pain it brought up of my betrayal and being abandoned. I would try to step around the hard and difficult feelings to get to the love, but the boy would never stay. My way had to be through those feelings not around them-sorry pal, no free lunch!
Dream:
I am driving on back dirt roads at night. There has been a lot of rain and the roads are soft. I find a place to stop and turn around at an intersection. My headlights pick up a large Mountain lion. He stops and comes up to the car. I am terrified and lock the windows and doors. The lion speaks to me and asks that I open the door. I am afraid he will eat me.
My homework was to open the door to the lion. It took me weeks to do this. By degrees I opened the window. When the door was finally open I was a little boy sitting in the car, vulnerable and ready to receive. This showed me the right relationship to be with the Animus. I can only be with him in my vulnerability.
Enter the dreams of the Animus, a father for the boy to give himself over to, to bask in his love and acceptance, to face the demons with the support of that connection. This was new for me. To be in relationship and mutuality with the archetypes was totally contraindicated for “glitter-man” – who at his core pathology will not allow himself to give over to God, to be the student and follower of the Animus.
The pain of my isolation and aloneness and the unrelenting knowledge of my life as unfulfilled at its core connection was the opening I was unconsciously awaiting. The humility and love I feel and receive from the Animus is like a dark path being lit.
Dream:
I am joining a cooperative farming group. I am being given a plot of land to use. It is beautiful with soft rolling hills. Larger farm operators are already there. Their vegetables are already huge and ripe. A man is showing me around. I feel incompetent. I have a lot to learn.
My homework is to feel the incompetence. It is the way for me to be with the man, the Animus. Incompetence in this place is not strictly the opposite of competence. Incompetence is to feel the not knowing anything, to be ready to learn and receive, to be a new and ready student, to be trusting of the Man in my humility. It is a nurturing place for me to be.
I can see the darkness of my pathology just under the surface at times. It wants to control and judge. It wants to make all the opening and connection I’ve worked hard for seem like a sham. It wants to blame NOE for its inconsistencies and constant change. Then I feel the boy in connection to the Animus and light floods the darkened path. I am learning the true meaning of obedience in my life. It is about vigilance to the right relationship with the archetypes. It is admitting my relationship to pathology in any moment and the lies it spreads. The truth brings me into the fierce love of the Animus.