In retrospect, it was always like this: my little self runnning from pride to shame, from shame to pride, always running and never at home anywhere.
My outer life has been a figment of my imagination. I have believed, against much evidence to the contrary, that I could succeed on my own terms. If frustration or failure came my way, there still was time to put on a great effort into self-improvement and redeem myself before the final reckoning. I had talent, brains, looks, opportunities… ‘Most Likely to Succeed’ (really!). I tried many ways to improve myself through the years. Excepting initial bursts of enthusiasm, I must say that I never saw a rule or discipline, even the ones I made up for myself, that I wasn’t pleased to abandon or resist. “The Work” has been the target of much resistance. Reaching 50 puts my feet to the fire, however. There isn't time to indulge my thread bare fantasies any more. Death and the final reckoning do come knocking.
Somewhere in my belly I always suspected that I was a coward, a failure, a fraud, a sneak, a skinflint, and worst of all, someone who couldn’t really love. These are not gratuitous self-accusations. Any genuine attempt at honesty has to acknowledge the ways that I shrink from life. It seems to me at this point that the Work aims to separate out these negative characteristics and name them as pathology (and therefore not my essential self). Only this can make bearable my recognition of how stunted and miserable my life has actually been. It hurts. Sometimes the feeling of loss and remorse is pure agony. But this seems to be part of the process – becoming aware of the truth that I resist knowing. Cynicism and doubt is so much a part of my persona that I struggle to believe the other side of the equation as well: that the core truth of who I am is something indescribably rich and sweet. It is one thing to accept that the bad parts are not me, but something else to accept that I am worthy of the Big Love and all the gifts that go with it.
My first visits to Marc’s office grew out of strains in my marriage. I had left people and places many times already in my life when things fell apart, but now I was in something – my marriage - that I wasn’t going to walk away from. I had a wife, a little girl, a little boy, and a stepson. We were a family. This was what I wanted for many lonely years, a lovely, sensuous and vivacious woman to love me, a home, a family. If I wasn’t doing right, then I had to make some changes. Going to Marc followed on the heels of some ‘unsuccessful’ marriage counseling in those early years. My wife and I entered and left the work at different times. After a few years money was tighter and I saw myself hopelessly stuck in a rut, so I quit.
One of my ways of surviving the poverty of my inner life was to look for someone to carry the burden of choosing how things would be. Mother, brother, clan, anybody or anything. I love acting independent and aloof, but I can’t stand making choices for myself. I have had values without real conviction and so have most often opted for the path of least resistance With me there is always a lot of intricate and heady pondering of the possibilities, but in my gut I end up feeling that the choices I made were someone else’s. In passive aggressive fashion I undercut my 'good boy' commitments by a lack of energy, forgetfulness, procrastination and endless fudging around.
Simply put, I never showed up to my own marriage - or any other part of my life. I look back and see myself in the pathetic position of relying upon my wife to find out if I loved her or not. If she said I did, then I did. If she said I didn’t, I didn’t. If she asked me, well I had my doubts. I deferred always to her emotional reality, and as part of the deal tried to make her responsible for everything. I never stood up for myself in any authentic way. I avoided conflict, I tried to be the good boy, I failed to make either of us happy, and the marriage, locked into an impasse, dried up. In the end, I felt utterly diminished and hopeless and unable escape the final catastrophe. We agreed to a separation. I left.
The collapse of the marriage, the one thing that I feared most to fail, broke me. Then, afraid of going forward or back, I met Kate, who I soon discovered was in the Work. I decided to try the Work again, and called Marc. It is a wonder how Kate has found the strength and generosity to carry me in the state I was in (and still am a little less): broken, needy, self absorbed, mixed up, don’t-know-if-I’m-coming-or-going. It's a thorny process for both of us, but she has given me a lot of space to feel and to heal. I still don’t get it, that maybe what she wants from me above all is for me to be in my own essence. What about responsibility, care-taking, reciprocity, guilt?
So, fall of 2004, separated and getting a divorce, broken and lost, I am back in the work. The work finally takes off with this dream in January 2005:
I am retreating from the enemy. It feels like a war and we are losing. My commanding officer tells me to “Go get the horse and rescue the child”. In my mind this is a suicide mission, the field has been lost. I say “I will send someone.” He says “No, you must go.”
The dream continues, but some background is needed to show the importance of what happens next.
Family history. I got damaged. Like the average person, I am deeply tangled up in my neuroses, just carrying on the legacy of generations of psychologically damaged people. I think I decided very early, maybe 2 years old, that I could be in relationship or I could be myself, but not both. Love looked like annihilation. I was split and dissociated from my own feelings. Ambivalence has been constant and pervasive through my whole life. Passion, a brief visitor, or totally absent. This is a long story and interests me greatly, and I have gained something from trying to remember and understand it, but there is only so much I can take from my objective past that helps me. The dreams tell the story on the level where the real healing can take place. I believe this. I have experienced it…. and I often forget it.
So, back in 1991, an early dream:
I am on a bus. No one is driving. The bus is speeding out of control with no driver and I am in a panic. I think I must try to drive the bus even though I don’t know how. Then I see an old man sitting peacefully in his seat.
Gestalt: Me; “who are you”. (inner thought: ‘this is stupid Marc – I’m only guessing what you want me to guess’) Man; “the spiritual father”. Marc; “Ask him if he has anything to say to you”. Me; “Do you have anything to say to me” (Stupid guessing. Don’t feel a thing. What would the spiritual father say?) Spiritual Father; “I love you”.
Floodgates open. I feel it overwhelming me.. Tears, more tears and a real ‘boo hoo’ belly cry. Amazing. I might leak a little from time to time, but this is out of control Feeling. These were the kind of tears I had come close to crying when I met a girl that I loved but I wasn't sure and didn't show it but I hoped it would work out anyway and then it all went to hell and partly because I slept someone I definitely didn't love and made and ass of myself and had to tell her 'No' when I still hadn't told the girl I loved 'Yes' and this other girl got really weird and cut her wrists with a razor blade but didn't die in the outhouse where I found her and I just wanted to go home and put my head in my mother's lap and cry like a baby and I did make the long trip home and I tried to put my head in her lap even though it felt weird and she got stiff and said “It isn't so bad. You'll get over it” and so I took a walk with my Dad and took his hand like a little boy because I wasn't even thinking and said “I love you” which I don't remember ever saying to him and he said “I love you too, son” and then he died of a heart attack three weeks later at age 56 and at the service I saw his face in the stained glass window where Christ was and he was in the light and he was the light and I knew that he was pure love with all the heaviness taken away and I really did see him and I almost cried but I didn't because there were all those people there and it would have been embarrassing.
Those tears are mixed in with these tears and all the other tears I have denied for a lifetime. No matter what the pain or loss through all those years, never crying like this. So the pathology got caught off guard for a moment and this truth slipped in. More tears in the car, but by the time I got home the cork was back in and the pathology was back on top. And so it remained until this year.
Inadequacy was the first door I explored with Marc. Strange concept. In my accustomed ways, inadequacy could only mean flying in shame to the isolated place where I hide and make it my task to fix myself. How could this be the doorway to love? Only if I were in relationship to something (God?) that I could trust. Impossible. Another early dream:
I am sitting in an outhouse that smells of shit. A man comes and tries to get in to me. He leers, has bad teeth, seems hideous and dangerous to me, probably wants to kill me or bugger me.
I tried to grasp how Marc can name this man as the Animus – hideous and fearful only due to my projections. My homework was to be with this man. Strange and difficult concept. I couldn't see it. My basic approach to the work in this time was distrustful, resistant, and combative. I argued with Marc about everything, pouring the acid of doubt on everything that stood to help me while trying to gain points by being intellectually engaged. As if I knew something worthwhile to add. “Yeah, but…” Full of my own ideas about things. Wanting to be in conscious control, to do it myself.
I wanted to feel good. Maybe that could come from some divine providence outside of me. How about a nice soft angel of mercy? I wanted proof, not this dark journey. Not some kind of dying. I wanted the archetypes to prove themselves to me. “Make me feel good and I will believe in you”. I wanted a magic pill to help me in my vocation, my marriage, my music. I wanted to have proof without losing my doubting mind. Instead of trust and faith (or discipline), I wanted to be saved through luck or magic. No wonder I stopped doing the work. There was a period following this in which I read a lot about Jesus and Christianity and semi-actively looked for religious conversion experiences, hoping God would just snatch me out of myself, save me, make it easy. No go. No God either, as far as I could tell.
Back to January 2005 dream.
The commanding officer says, “No, you go” And I go.
And I go!! This is unprecedented. I obey the animus. Where did that come from?
Not from “me”. Maybe from being so lost and broken to the point of desperation - with a bit of grace thrown in. I don’t know.
I run back and reach a barn where three men stand. I feel that I have not been careful and have run into a trap where I will be captured or killed. They stand relaxed as I run past them into the barn. The man in the middle, an oriental, follows me with a knife. He lifts his knife up, I have a knife, but think he will kill me. He plunges the knife into his own belly and I watch in horror as blood comes from his mouth and he dies.
Marc: “Do you know what hara kiri is?” Me: “Yes”. Marc: “He is showing you what you must do.” Me: (obedient) “OK”.
OK. I get a timer. Wear it on my belt loop. Do the homework maybe 40 times a day. One week hara kiri. Knife work. Cutting away the false self, finding the place that must die and sticking the knife in. Taking the cover off my heart. Then one week drowning (another dream). Going under into the wet place, the heart place, the place of knowing nothing. Going out of the world. A faint, but discernible longing to be a student arises in me.
Finally I get it about the homework. Stop judging myself. “Did I succeed? Did I get “my breakthough”? Did I fail? Did They fail me? Is there any 'They' there? Is Marc fed up with me? Blah, Blah, Blah. They can’t reach me in this place where I resist being in ‘Exactly-What-Is’ no matter how dismal it seems. I have to stop wanting the homework to be a magic pill to fix me and take away the pain and make me happy and successful. The path leads down. It gets worse, or seems to, because now I see it: all the bullshit, all the years, all the people I have hurt; my wife, my children, my friends, my family, myself, because I would not be loved, because I have been running running running, and worse, I am still running. Stop, Peter, Stop. So I do the homework for the first time with real diligence.
Marc saw a change in me when I came back and after. He saw the willingness to be obedient before I did, I think. I asked about NOE for a while, not even sure what it was. In January I asked Marc again. He said “The retreat is tomorrow, are you going?” I said “Yes”. Thankfully not enough time to mull it over and dissolve my first clear impulse into doubt. I went to the retreat. Boom, I am in NOE. The current of the work expands, multiplies, accelerates. I find a wound in my chest and go through it. I find tears, the distance between me and the Big Love, the terror, the deep well of pain. I go into the wound, into the well and I stay there. I come home. The pain continues. I am a wreck. I cancel work. Quit the coop board. Quit trying to push and make it all work in the same way. Stop, Peter, Stop. I try to hang on to that golden thread of belief and trust which is the Work and the NOE community.
The dreams keep coming. Anima, Animus, Child, Demon, Father, Dark Mother. I do the homework as best I can. Do the Work. I try living closer to the world of feeling that lies behind the shadow screen of my dreams. This is is where the real action is taking place. The dream is real. Here are dreams, in brief, following 'hara kiri', that lead up to the present.
A scrawny naked girl steps out of a city bus. I am judging her, but I go to her and comfort her anyway.
Be with her. She is my long-suffering heart. Don’t condescend. I am the broken one.
I am at my own wedding, but I am indifferent. I only have concern for a silent girl who lies on my chest. She is a demon and she shows her evil face in the gestalt. I can’t get her off me. Feel beaten. She is too strong. I feel the claws sunk into my chest.
Homework: See the demon girl. Seeing the demon is the death of the demon.
I ski down a hill out of control and run into a bear. I am frightened.
See the bear. Feel the fear. It is the animus.
A college student (me) doesn’t care about his classes. He wants to take drugs that will allow him to see his soul. In his room are his sister and father who judge him and put him down.
Accept that this altered state of consciousness, which the student (me) is seeking, is good and necessary. (Surprise! I was judging him) Don’t side with the critics, they are demons.
I meet a woman in a restaurant. She wants to talk, and thinks she knows me, but I turn away and say I have to go. I see the Godfather(Brando) sitting at a table. He gives me a little Christmas gift. It is a rubber alligator. I say he should keep it and give it to a child.
Turn away from the woman, she is the seductress, the dark mother. Be with the Godfather. Enjoy the joke: The alligator/pathology is harmless. Accept the gift. Be with Brando. Be the child.
A quiet little boy finds me three different times in a dream in which I am also with my ex-wife. I feel good with him, but do not think he belongs to me. At the end we are playing because even though he is back with ‘his people’ he is not happy. He wants me.
Accept the boy. Feel good with him.
In a stark white room a man sits dirty and bloody saying that he thinks he will rape someone. His voice is flat, emotionless. His right arm is cut off and the wound is gaping red. A girl lies curled up in the corner.
See the demon and know that he is falling apart. The girl is my heart.
I go in a house and open a door to find a little girl who says that if I swing her again she will give me the key to the house. I am not sure I like this girl.
She is my child. I am projecting shame on her. Swing her. Feel the joy. (I do feel the joy – it lasts about three seconds before the complex steamrollers over it. It takes a quick move on Marc’s part to show me this. So then I gain two days with the girl before I fall out into despair again).
I go into an antique shop looking for a map. I am alone. An old man, shopkeeper, comes and gives me a book. I read in the book about a man, an engineer (me) who goes to teach native people about turbines. The chief tells me/engineer I must go, I get beaten up by a gang of guys. Don’t know why. Want to go home. End of book. Shop man and wife return. I go give my boys a hard time because they didn’t help with the groceries. I go back in with old man and wife. I want to stay and know they will welcome me and feed me.
Stay with man. Ask him for help. They know all my ways of screwing up and accept me as I am. Feel the joy. Feel the pain. If lost, ask the man for help. Give up maps, which are 'ideation' and useless.
I see a yoga class on the left, typical, quiet, controlled. On the right things are wild: girls are taking their shirts off. A man and woman are turning in a slow circle dance in the middle. He has an exposed erection. A man, the leader, is singing and playing guitar and saying “If you want to show the teacher your laughter – don’t do it after. If you want to show me your crying – stop your trying” I want to remain uninvolved and see the girls exposing themselves, but the man with the erection makes me feel uneasy. I am being judgemental and I don’t want to be exposed.
Be exposed, be sensual, be juicy, be in the moment.
There is a core of resistance in me to being exposed. To be seen in an unguarded state of feeling has been too vulnerable for me. This resistance, like the demon, like the book, is falling apart. Still, however, to feel my joy and follow it seems to be careless, selfish, irresponsible and dangerous. The pathology prefers that I remain uninvolved, a non-participant, a voyeur. My dreams show me being stand-offish. From this place, I feel in control. Safe. Distanced. This is characteristic of mind, and storytelling, demons which make writing this biography is a special challenge. It is too easy to tell a story about pain and joy, but much harder to be present and exposed in true feeling. Any distance is too great.
A last dream.
A man who I don’t see and don’t know has been carried by natives in a special cloth that is light and strong and made with gold threads. He was being carried in order to be rescued or healed. He is gone. A woman (a sensual person I know) has kept the cloth.
The cloth is the Shroud. The man is the Christ. The healing is the Resurrection. The woman is Mary Magdelene. It is the Shroud of Turin. It is the Shroud that covers the Cross before Easter. (No, I didn't figure that out myself.) My homework: be in the Shroud.
This last set of images moves me so deeply that tears have come to my eyes as I write this. I hadn’t expected this, but it feels good. It is a threshold only, but it promises much. A good place to 'wrap this up' for now. (get it?)
Marc says that sensuality is the cornerstone of spirituality. This is just the thing to be hoped for. That after the suffering (the passion) comes the joy (the resurrection). It is so rich. It is everything. Could there be anything greater than to have the passion and the resurrection occur in my own being? It is awesome and frightening. I hardly dare think it. And the pathology is fighting me every inch of the way, to be sure. Who knows when He will come and whether I will be ready? Ready to step off the sidelines and into relationship with Him. To close the distance.
Having written this, despite all the indescribable pain and sorrow, the demons and the discouragements and despair, the fear and the unknowing, as I look over the landscape of my dreams, I feel a sense of divine play, as if the Great Secret at the center of it all is smiling. This is new. The archetypes keep coming and asking me to come out and play with them. Could it really be that at the end of all this is something in indescribably joyful and juicy? Could it?