Crossroads

"Crossroads" ~ Laura Smith

In my recent dream, I am on the train platform. It is a remote way station. We have left most everyone else behind. These tracks lead to wilderness. This is a place of choice, a crossroads, liminality, a place between worlds. To go forward is to leave all that was before, behind; to be a "rogue", to go into the wild.

I walk to an archway opening on the other side of the platform. We have time before the train comes. There is a wild pond, the water's edge laps the platform. I squat down and put my hand in the water. It is warm. For this moment I am the girl with my face turned to the sun feeling the simple joy of wanting to go swimming. But it is fleeting because I am scared. The water is dark and wild, the train tracks disappear into thicket and dark forests. I turn. The Father is there. I am not alone, yet still I am afraid.

The other choice from the dream is to go back. In this choice, I am no longer the girl, but instead the woman who wants to go back. Back to the "safety" of her old ways of being. I want a nice hotel, a pristine pool, a nice lounge chair so I can just lie in the sun. I can get a nice tan, look good, pretend I don't have a care in the world. Maybe read a book, sip a cold drink, be waited on by some cute waiter or waitress who would just love to get me something from the bar. I've got a story or two I could tell to entertain my pool mates. Maybe get a massage later, after all, I deserve one. Disappear in the forgetfulness of life. Dis-remember. Forget about traumas and feelings and tracks that disappear into dark woods or stairs that descend into pitch black.

One slight hitch, the other dream in this sequence: the one with the Animus, enormous, black, powerful, standing before me naked on the boat. But, if I can make him into a bad guy, a rapist or a torturer, I am outta here. I can go nuclear, blow shit up. Who cares if my flesh sizzles when I can't feel a thing? But the hitch is that I feel my desire, the desire for conjunctio. Direct and personal connection to divine love is, for me, a terrifying prospect. Why this is so, I do not know, or perhaps I can just as easily say, why shouldn't it be?

I realize I can no longer distinguish between my fear and my desire. In my body, now, it feels the same. These feelings, felt in the body, are so unfamiliar that they are difficult to stay with. But I am noticing that they come more easily and can stay longer. And, I am realizing I am feeling the weight of 48, the knowledge that I have never truly felt my own passion, nor explored the true depths of me. This knowledge hurts.

My homework is to find the place of my fear on the train platform with the Father and to bring that fear to the place of attraction to the powerful, huge Animus on the boat. This I will do, for the truth is I don't want to go back. The dreams will bring my own truth, my own essence forward. The choice is simply to feel or not to feel and, meanwhile, there is the moment on the platform, the liminal place in between.