Held

From the dream:

…Then I see a muscular handsome foreign man who goes up behind one of the NOE women and dances with her, and then he does it to another woman. Then he comes up behind me and presses against me and wraps his arms around me and starts dancing me around. He has his head next to mine with one arm around my waist and the other around my shoulder. I feel uncomfortable at first, but then feel myself relax into him and I close my eyes. He puts his hand over mine and our fingers intertwine and I can feel myself following him and it feels really good. I can feel my desire rising as we dance through several rooms. I know there are other people around but I don’t care. Then I think he will feel my desire and I feel scared. Then he is gone and I realize I have on overalls and probably smell like a farm girl and I am not like those wealthy beautiful girls (that I saw earlier in the dream). But then I think this probably doesn’t matter to him.

This is a completely new feeling for me. To be held. How can I describe it? It is a feeling of utter safety and comfort. There is love and tenderness in being held. The moment is sensual and so the feeling of sensuality rises in me. My desire. What is this desire? It feels sexual, but I have learned that all of my feelings, when felt in the body, lead me back to this feeling of sensuality in my body. The desire that rises is the desire to know more deeply the truth of who I am. It is a desire to know more intimately my God. It is terrifying, because to open up to true need invites in a new level of vulnerability. And you, dear reader, know what I am talking about when I say that being vulnerable is the antithesis of what my ego wants. It will fight with my soul tooth and nail, horn and hoof to keep me from it.

If it's not one thing or another...

Dream:

I am with Vanessa. I see my mother a ways away. She doesn’t see us, but I see her pacing around like she is waiting impatiently for something. Then she sits down in the grass kind of behind a small shed and starts doing a stretching routine. Then she jumps back up. I feel awed by her power and a little afraid, because I didn’t realize how strong she is. I tell Vanessa, “Wow, she sure is in good shape for 78”.

OK, I want to talk a little bit about this. I sometimes say to my friends, “If it’s not one thing or another, it’s your mother!” I even say this to my mother sometimes. We laugh, but our laughter is tinged with the unspoken tragedy of the abuse, rejection and terror of our relationship when I was a child. There is a place in me that wants to NOT speak of this, to protect my mother somehow, to minimize, lie. This is my shame, my fear, my need, even today, to seek the approval of my mother. But, it is not about blaming my mother, for she did not know and could not ask for help and was lost. In the dreamwork, the “dark mother” can push up out of our psyche. This is the energy of all the ways in which we are a slave to the issues of our mother, all the woundedness that is wrapped up in the loss of our child self. The demon that the mother carries on her back is often passed on to her daughter. It doesn’t mean our mothers are bad people, though it’s true that many forms of abuse occur when the mother is under the thrall of her demons. The dream above is a reminder to me of how the pathology waits, bides its time. It is strong and it is showing me how strong it is.