Traveling Through the Tunnel

August 2008 - In September 2007, my marriage ended and I began a journey into feelings of grief, isolation and despair that have lain deep inside of me since my childhood.

The image I have as I write is from ‘The Little Prince’. Do you remember the picture of the boa that has swallowed an elephant? With the undigested elephant inside of him he looks not like a snake but a hat. That is how I have felt my whole life. I have lived my life with this elephant inside of me. What I have been doing this past year is feeling the elephant, piece by piece, digesting it and in so doing I am slowing coming back to my true shape, my soul self.

These are the drawings I have done from my dreams this past year, the drawings that have hung all winter and spring on the walls of my bedroom and living room to remind me of the journey, that it is a journey and that I am being lead through. To go through the dark passage I have needed reminders, visual reminders that there is movement and change, to remember that everything in life changes and I am a part of life and I am changing too. These drawings have been those reminders for me.

October

Moving In With Him

I dream I am in an apartment with a French man and his dog. We are dancing in His living room. I love dancing with Him, feeling His hand on my back, behind my heart, as He leads me. In the background I can see a Universal weight lifting machine on His patio. I feel excited and in His hands. I know I am moving in with Him.

This is the beginning… I am moving in with Him. He will teach me to be strong. The life I am moving towards is living in relationship with the Animus, an archetypal figure, an aspect of the Divine that comes to me in my dreams, and is also a very real presence in my daily life when I am awake to it. I call this presence God.

November

Pride

I dream I am on a path and I come to a ladder and I climb it thinking it will take me somewhere. As I climb the top rungs and supports start falling to the ground. The top of the hill is arid and deserted.

My homework from this dream is to know: If I don’t follow my fear, I am isolating. My fear brings me to God.

The ladder falling apart means my pride is falling apart. To escape deeply held feelings of shame about my self and my feeling nature I have listened to the voice of pride. Pride makes me feel good…. for a moment. It tells me I can be good if I work hard enough and do a good job, if I accomplish something, and know the right answer. It shows me how to look like I am happy, how to look like I am leading a fulfilling life. It tells me love can be earned. Pride is a voice in me that I have believed would take me somewhere. It showed me how to get affirmation from the world and tells me when I get affirmation I will feel loved. I have received affirmation from the world and it only leaves me feeling empty and alone. My dream shows me pride leads to isolation.

The path to take is at the foot of the ladder.

December

The Bunker of Isolation

I dream I see a man walking out of a wild-west town, along the railroad tracks into the desert. He is starving, dying. A dog walks beside him. At one point he lies down on the railroad tracks to let the oncoming train run over him. The train approaches and comes to a halt above him. Two men get off the train and tell the man how to crawl out from under the train. I become this starving man. I ask the two men about getting food for my dog. The trainmen lead me into the bunker. I am terrified of them and fear they are going to rape me.

My homework from this dream was to: Go back to the bunker, face into my fear. Be with the Men. This is a projection of my wound.

The dog is leading me to my wound… the trauma of my isolation from God. This is where I need to be to be healed. The Animus has come as the two trainmen, and they are here to help me get out of this bunker of isolation. The conundrum is I am terrified they are going to hurt me; I am terrified of the one that can help me. I don’t trust there is help; I believe I am alone and there is no help.

When I was eleven my family moved away from the neighborhood where I felt a belonging to life. When we left, I lost whatever connection I had to my child self and God. In our new house I sat in a green armchair, reading books about little girls who had best friends, little girls with tree houses, little girls with active lives. I didn’t know how to grieve the loss of my best friend, my neighborhood and the life I had known there. I lost my childhood with the closing of that car door.

After that, the world went silent. What I had really lost was my capacity to feel my self and God, but I didn’t know that. There was no one to help me. I entered the bunker of isolation and was depressed for a year and a half. I have lived my life since I was eleven in this bunker of isolation, not feeling the grief, the loss or the pain.

When I was thirteen I developed a happy persona to cover the fact that I was living in a bunker. I got very good at it…. so good I even believed it myself. But somewhere inside myself I knew something was wrong. Something always felt not true and I secretly wished someone would die so that I would have a reason to grieve. I knew there was a well of grief in of me, but I had forgotten what it was about.

December

Sea Lions

I dream about sea lions, they are powerfully thrashing around a large aquarium. I think I have to feed them.

My homework is to swim with the Sea Lions; they are a part of me.

I feel fluidity, sensuality and power swimming with the sea lions. It is a strong contrast to the fragile, broken feeling I have had.

December

In His Care

I dream I am going to a wedding. A friend puts his hand on my back and walks me down the aisle to the front of the church. I feel exposed and vulnerable coming to this wedding alone, and I feel taken care of.

My homework is to: Be exposed and vulnerable. Be the girl in the church who is being taken care of.

I don’t realize in the dream that it is my wedding to the Man I am moving in with. Who else’s wedding would it be? This is my dream…. a picture of what is true in my psyche at this moment.

In my waking life when I feel his hand on my back I find myself in my girl body, relaxed and comfortable, feeling my feet on the floor, arms at my sides. It is a feeling I remember. I stand with my weight falling equally through both feet rather than leaning off to one side. It feels good to be present in my body in this way. I feel innocent.

December

Entering the Tunnel

I dream I am walking with my mother in the evening on a dirt road. We come to some water across the road. I cross the water and enter a tunnel on the other side. My mother is no longer with me. The further I go into the tunnel the darker it gets until I can no longer see ahead of me. I get scared and turn back to find my mother.

My homework is: When I get scared and see myself projecting, go back into the tunnel without my mother. When I see myself looking for safety, go back in the tunnel. Keep walking in the tunnel by myself. This is the dark night and I travel alone. Let go of my mother, take the risk; make the jump.

My mother represents the world and everything that is safe and known…. where and how I look for security and safety to avoid my fear. To take the journey of reclaiming my soul and my relationship with God I must leave behind everything that is known, everything that feels safe and secure.

I start walking in the dark tunnel alone…. surprisingly I do not feel alone, I feel surrounded by God. I am walking in the soft darkness with God.

While doing this homework I am traveling back from Boulder where I have been visiting my brother and his family. I am in airports and airplanes, surrounded by hundreds of people, but really I am in the soft darkness of the tunnel, it is the only thing that is real or matters to me. Whenever I feel afraid, I fight the urge to listen to the scary stories my mind wants to tell me. Instead, if I can remember, I feel my fear and go back into the tunnel.

I am going home to the fiftyith birthday party of a friend. I want to go and I know my ex and his new partner will be there. It will be the first time I am at a social gathering with them. I do not know how I will feel. I keep feeling my fear and going back into the tunnel.

January

Being On God’s Swing

I dream I am on a swing with a woman friend and we are being swung high above the fields below. When we get off it is Christmas and there are packages arriving from my mother.

My homework is to: Be swinging. Be scared and enjoy the exhilaration. Trust, open up, let go…. then there are gifts. What I hold onto is what separates me from God.

I feel myself on God’s swing viscerally. I feel it in my hands through the ropes of the swing. In my outer world life I feel the movement in my body and I feel how everything in life is moving.

I dream of being in the bed in the house we moved to when I was eleven. I wake up out of a serious sickness. The Animus, looking like my ex, is sitting at the foot of my bed in a chair. He has been sitting vigil with me while I was sick. On the walls all around me are pictures of rainbows and the ocean, healing herbs. As I wake up he starts talking a blue streak about how we needed the ocean sounds playing around me, how important the ocean is right now for me. He talks like he thought I might not make it. I feel how much he wanted me to wake up.

When I wake from this dream I realize that the Animus - who I thought was gone forever once we moved - has all this time been sitting at the foot of my bed in my childhood bedroom, waiting for me to wake up. He speaks to me about the ocean, essence, and how this is what I need now for my healing. Essence is the realm feeling, of sensuality, of innocence; it is the realm of the soul.

In my life, I begin talking with my ex, we begin processing what happened in our marriage, which ended in a shockingly abrupt manner. It was shocking in the same way that moving when I was eleven was shocking. Overnight, my life changed forever. Something that had been was over and irretrievable.

When I was eleven, I did not know how to accept this change and move on in a true way. I had no trust that there was any other life than the one I had lost. Now I am finding my way to move through this loss without cutting off my self and my feelings. In the process I am moving through all the unfelt feelings of my childhood as well.

January

The Bears

I dream of walking around a pond with a Man and a Woman; we see four bears on the course of our walk. The Man and Woman are at ease with the bears, while I feel afraid.

My homework is: When I feel fear see the bears.

The Man and Woman are archetypal figures, the Animus and Anima, male and female aspects of the Divine. They are comfortable with the bears as the bears are a part of me…. my potency, my power, my big bear heart. I see the bears all over my house. When I am writing they are sniffing around my living room. They are interested in what I am writing. I feel a bit uneasy with them until I get used to having them with me. They want me to write what is true.

January

Holding onto Him

I dream I am sitting at the feet of a friend who loves me. I am holding onto His leg. I feel close to him.

My homework is to: Keep needing only Him. Hold onto His leg, my head on His thigh. Know He is all I want. Feel close.

I have periods of intense darkness and despair where I believe the isolation of the bunker, believe that isolation is the truth of my life and that it will always be the truth of my life. I have believed this lie for so many years that it is hard to trust any other reality, hard to trust the reality of the Animus actually being here in the world with me. The feelings of despair and isolation are hard to bear and sometimes I will pace the house crying and then I will hear His voice say to me, ‘I am right here, right here.’ It is a firm voice shaking me out of the lie. He is telling me He is here, in the world with me, the way He was when I was a child.

February

He Recognizes Me

I dream I meet a tall man with bright eyes. I am attracted to Him. We make eye contact that is intense. I feel something in His gaze; it is changing me.

My homework is to: Slow it down; be in the place of making eye contact with Him. He is recognizing me. Stay with Him every moment. I need to be where He is.

I spend time in that gaze, feeling a deeper connection developing with Him, hearing His voice. I still can be taken out of this connection easily and when this happens I plunge back into the desolation of the bunker where I do not believe God is real. When this happens I feel completely alone.

My sister calls me from Australia often and I cry or talk and find my way with whatever I am feeling in that moment. She tells me how much she loves me and wishes she were with me to give me a hug. But what helps me is that she is there at the other end of the phone and I can cry and feel and tell her what is true for me in that moment. What helps me is that she listens and accepts me.

Even though it is painful, I feel alive and I can feel God’s presence. What is terrible is when I am stuck in what I call my suffering, the ‘feelings’ of nihilism, despair and isolation. I say ‘feelings’ because they are not real feelings that change and transform and bring me into a deeper relationship with myself. Rather they are mutated feelings that do not change or transform. They feel like feelings, but they are not, they are suffering, they lead no where and serve no purpose, they are a dead end street and I need to learn to get out of them in a genuine way - not burying myself in a bunker and pretending to be happy and well-adjusted the way I did as a child.

March

I dream I am on a train that is traveling through a western desert landscape. The train car is big and spacious and I feel a sense of grace and serenity riding on this train.

My homework is to: Be in the grace of being on His train. Enjoy the grace, the peace, the serenity, and the generosity of His train.

I love traveling by train. Trains are an archetypal symbol representing being on the spiritual path…. the soul train. I am surrendering. I am accepting what is happening in my life and my path. I am accepting that it is His train and I am a passenger. I feel peacefulness in this surrender.

March

I Am More Important Than Things

I am walking down a road in the desert when I come upon two men; one is my Frenchman…. the one I dance with…. with the weight machine. The two men are pushing a big cart full of things. When they see me they push the cart off to the side and it goes bump… bump… down a small hill. They come towards me. I feel I am more important than the things. They are happy to see me.

My homework is to: Go back to the place where they leave the cart for me. The person is more important than the things. They are coming for me.

When I work with this I feel the pain of having believed that acting happy and looking right were more important than the truth of what I feel. I feel the pain of how I acted this out in my adult life and my marriage. It is a neurosis that comes from being separated from my self and God. From this neurosis I would worry about how things look, believe there was a right way to do things, worry about table manners and the new floor. I would think first about safety and security, how things looked before considering my feelings or my husband’s.

The place in me that always has known the truth would watch in horror and say to me, ‘Stop!’ But the neurosis of being separated from my self and God is strong, and despite my capacity to see, to watch it unfold and know the truth, the neurosis still ran me.

March

Coming Out of the Tunnel

I dream I am coming out of an arch that is the same shape as the tunnel I entered in December. There is a party going on and I feel radiant and whole.

My homework is to: Go through the arch to the celebration where I feel radiant, whole, empowered. This is a new place. I am learning to trust my feelings. If I get lost, go back through the tunnel, through my trauma.

It is hard to trust that I have come through. Marc tells me I will probably have to move through the tunnel more times, but that once I have come all the way through it will never be that hard again.

I dream I am sitting next to a Man. I look down at my hand and see my engagement and wedding rings still on my finger. I feel ashamed and shocked and pull them off. They come off easily and I close my hand around them.

By taking off my rings I am letting go of the world. This allows me to go deeper into my trauma, which came in the following dream.

April

Waiting for Him

I dream I am lifted up from my bed and flown to a hill at dusk where I am set down on a path that leads up a hill. I walk up the path in my bare feet and jammies, feeling the night air. It is getting dark, I feel scared but make a clear choice to stay. I hear a dog coming and call out to let the dog know I am here. I know a man and his dog are coming to find me. I am scared and vulnerable and it feels great.

My homework is to: Let Him come.

All week I stand alone on the hill and call out to the dog and the man, “I am here! I am here!” I am waiting, knowing He is coming for me. I feel joy calling out “I am here!” Standing alone on the hill waiting is so different than being in the bunker. I am still without Him, and it is still my trauma, but now I know He is coming; He is out there and He is coming to find me.

In the bunker I suffer alone in isolation, while standing on the hill, even though I am still alone, I have my self. I am a girl in bare feet and jammies, standing on the hill…. I am here! I feel my vulnerability, my fear and my excitement.

April

Him

I dream a big Man lifts me up and holds me close. I feel His mustache on my cheek. It feels so good. I say, “Please don’t put me down. Keep holding me!”

I feel peaceful when He holds me. I tell Him over and over, “Don’t ever put me down!”

My homework is to: Leave my house every hour, then jump into His arms and feel His mustache. Tell Him: Don’t put me down! Keep holding me! Pay the price; I have to give up something to have Him. Give up the house.

When I do this homework I run down the stairs of the beautiful house I designed and I run out the front door, I jump into His arms and feel His mustache. The feeling that floods me is freedom. I feel so free. He is all I need.

May

Be Ready to be Struck by Lightning

I dream I am in a church and a Man comes in looking a bit odd. He tells us He has been struck by lightning. He lies down for a minute and then gets up and heads back outside. I want to know if He is okay. He looks fine, sort of special and lively. I like Him.

My homework is to: Be ready to be struck by lightning.

I talk with Marc about my marriage and what he saw. When my husband left, he said he had never loved me. I have believed this all winter because it has helped me let go. I was ready to hear what was true now. Marc spoke to me of the love that was there and how we had both not taken care of it. Dropping into the pain of this I collapsed into bed for a day. I cried and felt the pain wash through me. It is a relief to be able to feel this pain. There is no story, no words, nothing to talk about. It is simply pain about the loss of my marriage and the much earlier loss of my self and God. And the regret for the years of lost living, the missed opportunities.

Being able to drop into and move through these feelings is what this work is about. It is where the alchemy…. the transformation…. happens.

A force we call pathology does not want the alchemy to happen; it does not want my soul to emerge from the tunnel and have my life; it does not want to let me out of the bunker and into His love. That force reacts when I drop down deeper into my self.

And so a two days later my ex and I had a misunderstanding and the floor beneath me dropped and I was alone in the isolation once again. The times when I become lost like this are further apart. This time I recognize within hours that I am lost in my suffering and need help to find my way out. I call Marc for help and we look at my dreams. They show what caused the lost-ness. They show the way out.

June

I dream I am out with my father. I suddenly remember I have an appointment to get my haircut and off I go. I am unable to find the appointment card with the time or the street or the salon so I let it go and I go back to find my father. When he sees me coming back to him he smiles the biggest smile and I can feel how happy he is to see me.

I have this dream shortly before Father’s Day when I call my Dad. I haven’t spoken to him in two months. We talk for an hour. After the usual banter he drops down and asks me how I am, he listens and tells me he understands. He tells me over and over how much he loves me and I feel his love.

June

Anxiety

As I feel loved I drop into the pain of not feeling loved. I have pockets of anger and anxiety that flood through me. I have several days of anxiety. It is stronger than I have experienced. The strength of it allows me to observe what anxiety does to my body and mind. It freezes me so I cannot think or function. I am forgetful. I almost drive into the garage while the door is going up and stop at the last minute from crashing into it. When filling the fish tank with water I forget about it until I notice I am flooding the bedroom. I start a sentence and cannot remember halfway through what I am saying. When the anxiety is peaking a friend is over for the night. She suggests I draw the anxiety and I draw page after page scratching out the anxiety, blunting my colored pencils, until we are laughing uproariously as she tells me a story about asking her father once to tell her what he remembered about her as a child. He thought about it and said, ‘you were nothing special, just a regular baby’. This made us laugh so hard we kept repeating it, ‘nothing special… just a regular baby!’, trying to imagine a regular baby, trying to imagine the babies we know ever being just regular babies.

The laughter and tears and drawing break open that layer of anxiety.

June

He Pulls Me forward

I dream I am sitting on a bench and the Animus comes as an old boyfriend and takes my hands, I pull back in mistrust.

My homework is to: Go to the moment with Him, find the girl and let Him in.

When I do this homework I feel the girl in me and she can’t wait to go with Him. I feel Him take my hands and pull my girl self out of the shell of resistance and mistrust that has been me.

July

Entering the Water with the Big People

I dream I want to swim in the lake but I think there is a big spider on the edge of the dock and I am scared. Two Big People are kind to me. They do not shame me for my fear. They lead me down to the beach and take me into the water that way.

My homework is to: Be the girl and go with the Big People into the water every time I am scared. My fear of spiders is projected fear of the Divine. I learned to care-take to avoid this fear.

Swimming with the Big People

I struggle with fear and doubt; sometimes I am able to go in the water with them, and sometimes the voice of doubt takes me out. I have always been a strong retreat group leader, but at this retreat I am wobbly and struggle in a way I never have at a retreat. I listen to the voice of doubt and question my capacity to teach. I work a dream with Marc and find a pathology that is shaming and condemning me and I am listening. The demon of shame is out in the open, I can see it in my dream and I can say ‘no’ to it. This is a breakthrough. The voice that has shamed me and I have believed my whole life is exposed. I see it and now I know what I am fighting.

Instead of reacting to the voice of shame when it attacks me, I am now able to recognize I am under attack, I am the girl who is being attacked. What I feel when this happens is vulnerable. I realize why I have listened to this voice for so long…. it protects me from feeling exposed and vulnerable. I see how much shame I have had about my feeling nature, my vulnerability, my tenderness and how easily I cry.

July

I dream I am in bed feeling the Animus before me like I do in waking life, feeling Him but not seeing Him. Suddenly He becomes solid and we are kissing. I am excited He is solid and I can kiss Him and receive His kiss. He tells me, ‘Wake up!’ I do and see there are three men in my room. I am scared and wonder - is He really the Animus, or are they burglars. We talk and I ask Him what he wants. He jokes, ‘Analgesics.’ I say, ‘You want aspirin?’

My homework is to: Go back to the moment in bed with Him where He says’ ‘Wake up!’ and know He is real like I know when I am kissing Him.

I am feeling His presence with me in daily life more and more. When I notice I don’t feel Him I can feel something is wrong and I go back to my homework to find Him again. It is not hard to find Him; He is right there.

July

I dream I am sitting with my twelve year old nephew and a Man and a Woman. My nephew asks me a question about girls. I say, ‘The one to ask is that Man, not me.’

My homework is to be the boy who feels Him even when he can’t see Him in the world, and to ask Him to tell me about girls. This boy is the real me who has no shame. If I listen to the shame I cannot hear the Man. It is one or the other.

When I am the boy I realize it isn’t so much the girls I want to know about. It is that I am a twelve-year old boy and I love this Man. I look up to Him. I can ask Him anything; I don’t have to pretend, I don’t have to know anything. I feel comfortable in my vulnerability with Him

I am traveling back from Boulder again after spending time with my nephew. I can feel the part of me that is bold and loving and confident like my nephew. I am a boy with the Man on an adventure flying across the country. There are all sorts of airline snafus, but nothing bothers me. I am taking life in, what ever it is. There is only this moment. I love everything about life.

When I get home and walk in the house I feel I am ready to leave this house. I love it…. and I am ready to move on. I don’t know where I am going…. and I am ready.

August

I dream I am in bed with two teenaged boys and a Woman. We are all going to make love. The Woman is relaxed and laughing. I am stiff and feel shame.

My homework is to: Stay with the pain that is coming up as I feel the love and tenderness of the Woman. Don’t listen to the shame, be vulnerable and in the not knowing.

When I go back into this dream, as soon as I stop listening to the voice of shame I feel like a girl. I feel vulnerable and cry a lot.

In my life, I get two offers on my house the week I return home and I accept one. I begin looking for a new place to live. It brings up the pain of having left my old neighborhood when I was eleven. It brings up pain to think of leaving my beautiful home. I don’t hold my tears back.

I am feeling my girl self with Him in my daily life. I feel pain but it is not nihilism, I feel sad but it is not despair. I cry like I did as a girl.

August

I dream a man hands me a sheet of paper with his dream on it and several of us are discussing it. The man leaves. Another Man comes and picks up the dream and looks at it. The first man returns and is angry with me that I allowed the other Man to see his dream. I say, ‘I don’t think I have done anything to violate you.’ I feel clear I have done nothing wrong. Then a Man and a Woman wrap some people in plastic and inject something into the plastic. I assume it is poison.

My homework is to know that the work we are doing is changing consciousness, and changing consciousness can be felt as an act of violence…. even though it isn’t. A change in consciousness implies the dying of the old self, and this death is what can be felt as violence. In my dream the dreamer reacts and resists the Archetype, which is to be expected, the old self does not want to die.

In my dream, I hold my ground, which is new. I stand firm with the intent of the work and the intent of the Archetype. I stand firm in the face of resistance, which is an act of love; love for my self, love for the heart and the soul of the dreamer, love for the truth and love for the Divine. It is this type of love that has guided me through this tunnel of darkness; that confronts my old self that does not want to die; and that will guide me each time I falter in times to come. Through being loved in this way I am being taught to be strong and learning to love like this, too.