Sensuality of Pain

I am feeling my brokenness in such a new way. I don’t know how to explain it except that it just is. The story behind it all doesn’t matter anymore. And there is a deep feeling of sensuality in my body each time I go to the pain of how broken I am. It is true, I am deeply wounded; many of us are. Many do not want to know or accept this pain. I have not wanted to.

I realize that I am still very angry, that I still have rage. It sits in me as a state of being, but it is not me. I have seen the demon Rage and I know it intimately and it knows me. But it is not me. It is a decapitated head and pile of guts and exists only as this thing that wants to wrap itself around me. Its head is like the head of the Medusa. It writhes. Since it has no body, it has only the tentacles which come from its head (mind) with which to hook me and attack me. It truly is a demon and this is what it looks like. Very scary stuff. It wants me to believe that it has me. The truth is it has never left me, but it is not me. It’s just that now I know It. I see It for what It is. It is the thing that has me say NO! to the Aniums. It is the thing that has me reject Him or project the bad man onto Him.

Death of Pathology

Dream:

I am young woman. I am walking along a wooded path. It is dark out and there are people walking with me. I am barefooted and wearing some kind of light weight wrap. We come to a clearing and I see a woman (30’s) standing over a fire. There are other people around perhaps in a circle around the clearing. I think some people must be holding torches. I feel fear coming into my body. The woman has some unleavened bread and some kind of thick porridge. I know I am supposed to go to her. I walk over and stand across from her. She gestures to the bread and I take a piece and dip it in the sauce. I am feeling very scared now. The random thought comes into my head, “I will be like the pigs we eat and they will find this food still in my throat after I am dead.” Other people are there, but they don’t matter. I am only with her now. I tell her that I am scared. I feel tears coming to my eyes. She says, “I know”. She takes a small piece of bread and dips it in the sauce. She says, “Take small bites like this.” The random thought comes into my head, “I took too big of a bite before. I am not doing this right.” Then she pulls out a knife, as I knew she would and she pushes it toward my heart. I say, “No”, but stay facing her. I feel like there is no other choice. I feel so scared. She pushes the knife and I feel it pierce my chest. I feel a deep pain in my heart and a heaviness.

Ever since this dream with the Anima, I have been very aware of my heart. I am aware of its physical presence in my body in a way I never have been. I feel the pain of the knife in my heart more than I do not. It is like it is living there right now. I feel the heaviness of it.

In some way it is connected to my mind too, because it is the knowledge of my alignment with the pathology that brings the pain to my heart. The knowledge of how I have turned away so totally from the Father. How I have lived under the tyranny of a closed heart. An open heart can feel this pain. I never wanted it. I never understood how the avoidance of the pain created the suffering I thought I needed to avoid.

My whole life has been built around this total rejection of the Father, the Uranian Father, God. Rejection of men, self will run riot, rebellion, independence, pride, shame. There is no one who will help me, but me! No matter what you do, you can’t hurt me; a pathologically prideful place of turning away, closing my heart. And underneath it all has seethed the rage and hopelessness that fueled the maintenance of these contracts. It was a trick. An awful, horrible trick.

Of course, I couldn’t have known. Because we don’t know until we know.

Ignorance or Bliss?

From the dream:

I am on the farm and see the chicken coop and it is very tall on wheels. There is a tarp over it and I realize that even though it is day time, there are a bunch of chickens huddled inside and on the top under the tarp. I can see them crawling around. It feels creepy to me. When I get closer, one of them sees me and jumps down. I realize that it is the one Vanessa and I call the Pet because she has difficulty walking due to damaged legs. But she jumps down and I think she must be pretty strong to jump down on her legs like that. She starts walking around checking things out. I realize that the chickens are not fenced in and that if they wanted to they could all be out and I wonder why more of them don’t come out.

The thought came into my head today about how nice it would be to go back to the way it was before…before I came into the dreamwork, before I got sober, before I knew my life was unmanageable, before the anger forced me to do something about it…a place where I was ignorant, numb and just “having fun!” It was a visceral feeling in my body. The sun was just right, the day seemed so innocuous and banal, so simply easy and seductive. I could take so much enjoyment out of being successful in my career, partying with my friends, traveling…always looking for a good time and not caring about anything or anybody really, telling stories, being the life of the party…holding court as Vanessa used to tell me, breezing in and out of people’s lives, never getting hurt, and never feeling afraid, and never needing anyone. It felt pretty good, because even though I was under the tarp, I didn’t know it.

Activation

The work I bring from the North of Eden summer retreat is a new understanding of the enormity of this spiritual work.

Dream:

I am in some kind of stone chamber. I sense that it is part of a much larger structure that is part of some huge system. I see some men that look like they are from some kind of ancient tribe of Indians lying and squatting near a stone slab. They are dressed in some kind of orange skirt and neck/headdress. Suddenly the system activates and the men stand up. One of them leaps into an octagon shaped opening in the chamber and extends his arms and legs to touch the top/sides. He is standing in the position of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. Then he blows his breath out and it has the effect of further activating the system. Then I am standing with him and I look out and see that it is a massive structure with many cells just like ours all with someone standing in the opening that looks exactly like the guy in mine. There are sparkling lights everywhere. It is like the scene from the matrix when Neo wakes up in the pod and looks down; only instead of pods I see octagon shaped openings each with a man standing in the Vitruvian Man position. It is dizzying. Then I am floating in the space in between and it is filled with water. I feel myself floating up and I can see that there are millions of people in these cells. I look down and see that way below there seems to be a bottom. I suddenly feel the urge to swim down, though I feel I am going against something. I start swimming very strongly down. I think people are now looking for me to stop me. I move past the lights and cells into a kind of substructure. I feel very scared now because it is getting dark and I don’t know what I am doing or why I am doing this. I see an opening that seems to lead further inside the structure. I swim towards it and feel a powerful vibrating/pulsing. I can hear it and also feel it in my body. It feels ominous and I am scared. I am at the bottom of the structure. I wonder if I can stand and I put my feet below my body and when I touch the structure, I feel the vibration and I think it will kill me, but it doesn’t.

When my teacher, Marc (Bregman) reviewed this dream, he said it was a gift, the man representing a kind of Bodhisattva. I did not know what a Bodhisattva was and so in the moment of the analysis of my dream, I understood it only as the idea that the activation of one can lead to the activation of many.

Learning about Alchemy

I am learning about alchemy in the archetypal dreamwork and what it feels like in my body. Here are some words I can use to describe it: uncomfortable, dizzying, electrical, percolating, burning, withdrawal, vibrating, energetic, sensual, flowing, shaking, pulsing, waves, activated, alive, falling, intense.

I have felted alchemy manifested in my body as a cascade effect. In the dreams it is like being in the crucible. I am literally being worked on by the Archetypes, those emissaries of the Divine, who are bringing me back into my body, into my feelings, the result of which is the inner spiritual growth. As I allow the feelings to enter, the Archetypes are there to support me and help move me through the trauma. They cannot help me if I am not an active participant, choosing to feel my trauma, choosing to go towards that place that my demons would have me avoid. When alchemy happens, it is as if the primordial sediment of my psyche is lifted from the depths and deposited on a new shore. Everything is different.

There is no arrival. I am not “there”, for there is no “there”. There is only more. More intensity, more feeling. This is the soul’s existence. Most of what I have experienced in my life as feeling is simply a projection of a world that doesn’t really exist. It only exists because I chose to engage it. I create the world I live in through my projections. What happens when I withdraw the projections? What happens when I no longer need to live from the place of my trauma? Who do I become? The girl in her devotion? The girl in her joy? What would it be like to live in this world from that place?