There is some healing happening.....

      "Behind the Wall"

Collage of the children emerging from behind the wall.

Dream:  I am in a house with an over poweringly bad smell.  I look everywhere to find the source and then I notice a section of wall with a secret panel in it.  When I move it aside I see that there is a large room hidden there.  I step inside and there are row upon row of sleeping hammocks with children in them piled one on top of another.  I think that they must all be dead but it seems that some of them are still alive.  I feel horror and pain at the conditions that they are living in..how can this be?  I then discover that the smell is coming from a dead bear.

My work from this dream was to bring those captive children out of the darkness and into the light.  To stand in the doorway and feel the horror, the pain, the compassion, and the sadness.  As these children were parts of my soul that had been hidden away...for one reason, or another...and left to barely survive in the darkness.

"Healing on the cellular level"

"Dr. Wu ~ the Healer"

Dream:  I am at an appointment with a Chinese man named Dr. Wu.  He is middle aged but seems very ancient.  The treatment is unlike anything that I've done before.  Many of his family members are taking part including his wife and son.  I ask the wife who Dr. Wu's teacher was and she tells me very emphatically, that his teacher is inside oh him.  At one point, Dr. Wu asks me to remember something and I recall my dream of the children hidden behind the wall and I start to cry.  Then we go outdoors to take a walk in the snow and my feet are bare. We go up and down this winding road and it feels like I'm skiing on just my
feet...exhilarating.  When we come back to the house, I sit down next to him on a bench and lean close in an intimate way.  My body is then flooded with this erotic energy and I can feel and orgasm coming.  There is some great healing happening inside of me.

My body is demanding more and more rest these days and these new symptoms of dizziness and foggy headedness keep me constantly triggered in feelings of fear and uncertainty.  The Animus though, has come as Dr. Wu and he is here to do his work on me.  The restless energy of always moving, always doing - working - cleaning - whatever, that has plagued me all my life is at last settling down and I can bear to stand still.  Through the work of feeling the horror and the pain of acknowleding the children trapped behind the wall, I have allowed and welcomed new feelings to surface.  The fear is coming more and more into the open so that I can look it in the face and breath my way through it.  Standing still....breathing...leaning into Dr. Wu...that is my work right now.  Amazingly enough, in this new place, I can now face  getting  back to the Yoga mat.  In the past year I  have been so resistant to starting a practice again.  I could not bear the thought of laying still and opening to what might come...but now I am saying "Yes" to whatever feeling may arise and have the willingness to feel them.  It is still an ongoing struggle but I am standing still more and more and experiencing what is going on in the moment. 

Maine Retreat - Part I "Thank God for Water"; Part II - The Portland Retreat

FIRE

                                                                           

PLUS   ICE

EQUAL'S    WATER

        Today the sky is clear and the sun is out and everything has a clarity to it's edges...especially the pine trees with the sunlight on them.  The water is a new shade of blue today and I wish that I had been keeping a record of all the different shades of blue, grey, green, blue grey, blue green, almost black... with paint.
         I awoke this morning feeling the immensity of the fact that I have been on this earth for almost 60 years...and for most of those years I have lived in a state of discontent and despair.  As I finally begin to climb out of that prison, I can look back and start to feel the pain of regret for all of that lost time not fully lived.  Not that my life has been a failure in societal terms....as I have had a satisfying career and many loving family and friends.  But my soul needs and the health of the girl heart inside have always been pushed to the bottom of the list and as a result, I , as the adult have suffered terribly because of it.  Not just in the ever present feelings of loneliness....even in both my marriages and long term partnership...but also in relentless physical pain.  I have accomplished much, but it has always come at a price.
        I know now, thanks to the dreamwork, that there was a great wall of trauma in front of my soul girl and my resistance to getting behind that wall has been unbreakable.  Terrible bad things happened to me in another incarnation and I arrived in this present one with all of those memories intact.  I vowed in the strongest way possible that I would never be subject to that kind of horror and terror again and so I stopped feeling anything that would open the door to those memories.  That vow served me well in allowing me to survive and function in the world but that choice is now taking its toll on my physical and mental state.  The pathologic pull that wanted to keep me hostage until my soul was utterly destroyed had almost succeeded.  I could very easily have become another souless victim who found relief in drugs,antidepressants,alcohol,religion or suicide.  In some ways I did numb myself with an addiction...that of overwork...proudly calling this my passion.  I thank God, the archetypes, whoever that there was still the faintest ember of a flame inside that kept making itself felt and saying "yes" when all I really wanted to be saying was "No".  Granted my "No" was alot stronger and more powerful then the "yes", but slowly, slowly, step by step the "yes" became stronger and more potent.
       So...here I sit....gazing out onto Eggemoggin Reach....away from all the responsibilities of my life for 11 precious days.  Eleven days to listen to my souls needs and wants.  To feel what I/she wants to feel and to do what I/she wants to do.  To be aware of self in the true way...not the ego who needs to be praised and loved for what it can give and do ....but the soul self who can just be.  I am remembering my dream of the baby left out in the snow to freeze to death and how I have not really let in what it feels like to have kept that vital part of myself frozen in a block of ice for all these years.  Because I do not know her truly....I don't know what I have missed.  Because I have not let her be a part of me, I don't really know who she is.  It's why it has been so easy to forget her....push her aside, shove her needs to the end of the list.  How can I miss what I do not know?  But that is really the tragedy of my life...to have lived almost 60 years without  knowing who I really am.  Not caring to know who I really am.  I won't go into shame or blame about this because the lesson of this life for me was to face the wall of trauma and finally break through to the other side.  But I will not waste another day of not embracing my self self and clasping her firmly to my heart.  I will keep her no longer in the deep freeze...conviently out of the way...so that I don't have to feel the pain of her aliveness.  Becuase with her being alive and whole in me then I will have to feel pain and loss...grief and sorrow...but also joy  and contentment...awe and wonder.
              Thank God for water.

Snake Bite

The Portland Retreat....
After leaving my little paradise on Eggemoggin Reach, I drove down to Portland for a three day Archetypal Dreamwork Retreat.  It was a smaller gathering then the retreats held here in Vermont at North of Eden,
but that suited me just fine.  The two most important dreams that I brought to the retreat were as follows:

     Dream:  I am at the weaving school and two men have lifted up the dye shed and are cleaning out the space underneath it.  They have dug a deep hold and are filling it with clean sand.  They show me a pile of debris that they removed and it appears that someone was living under there.  All of a sudden I see this enormous snake come slithering out of the foundation.  It is covered in slime and I notice that at the head is an unborn fetus also covered in slime.  I yell for Norman to come have a look but the thing has moved quickly and mounted a horse and ridden away.  All that is left is the slime.
      Dream:  I am riding on a donkey in the last stage of labor.  My husband Joseph finds a place for us to stop in an old barn.  He is going to find a midwife but I tell him that there is no time...the baby is coming now!

Both dreams carried the feelings that there is something new that wants to be born in me.  In the snake dream I get to feel the awe of this marvelous thing but also I get to notice how I immediately  step aside from the experience and have "Norman" validate it for me.  What is that all about?  Good question and one that I need to keep in front of me as I do this re-birthing.  In the second dream I was able to feel the fear of not knowing how to do this thing of giving birth...really feel it....and then have Joseph right there beside me giving me all the support that I need.  When we worked this in the String Therapy, "Joseph" was behind me letting me lean into him as I struggled with the labor.  The visceral connection of this leaning was something that finally made it into my consciousness.  I have felt so alone in my fear ...especially lately...that having this solid
flesh and bone experience was an incredible gift.
Two incredible gifts to take back home with me to Vermont.

Volcano Erupting

This is the dream I had last night...and it fits in so nicely with the new energy that I have been feeling when I take brush and paint to paper.
 Dream: I am at the beach and just a little ways away on the horizon I see two twin volcanoes begin to erupt. It is spectacular to witness! I wonder if the ash and lava will reach me where I stand but I am not afraid. Instead I revel in the power that is being unleashed.
(These paintings were actually made during the past two weeks and reflect the work from my previous dreams.)

 

Heart on Fire

Volcano Exploding

Bleeding Heart

Reverse of Bleeding Heart

Star Gazing Under water

Being the Aboriginal Boy....

"My Rainbow Serpent"

 Dream: I am at a house near the water and there are three boats that I start to move to the dock so that I can go kayaking. Ellen Cooke comes by with her two children and a very small boy who is part Aboriginal. He has thick dark curly hair and comes over to sit in my lap. Peter is there as well and squats down next to the children. I ask the children if they want to go out in the boat with us. 

 The work from this dream is to forget about managing the children into a recreational activity and to just be with/be the aboriginal boy. Find out what part of me he represents. When I felt into this question I realize that he has a calm contentment with who he is..."I am who I am". There is an inner knowing of his place in the world...especially the world of the spirit. He is a "gulapa" ~ magic man....like Nullah - the half caste
Aboriginal boy - in the movie "Australia." He moves easily between both worlds....has a kinship with all things and a wisdom that is ancient. He is innocent...full of feelings...and he loves to sing.  The drawing of "My Rainbow Serpent" is my rendition of the Aboriginal legend - The Rainbow Serpent. The meaning of the legend to me is all about transformation on a large scale. I feel that this is starting to happen in my life right now and I am in awe of the power of what this boy holds inside of me.

It's all about the Man.....

 

 

 

A Contented Life

 This past March when I had a Rooting Shen treatment in Maine the "theme" or message from the treatment was that    "it was not about the man!"  In this case, the man was a man in my outer life who I had put in front of my own soul needs and was essentially hiding behind because I was afraid of feeling the pain of loss. The dream that I took to the treatment was about being the Queen -  not standing behind or below the King, but by his side as an equal....and to do this I had to face into my fear of pain.
The work that I did over the next few months was all about coming into the kingdom of my soul self and finding the feelings that I had buried over the course of my life. Much of this work was concerned with facing into trauma pain and taking the steps to turn from the horror to the love.
Now the dreams are reflecting this shift  and I am meeting "the Man" and finding a union with him that surpasses all other experiences that I have had with men in both the inner and outer realms.

Dream:
I am with a group of people  -  some men, some women. There is a man who is a celebrity or prince and all the women want to be with him.  There is also a group of men who want to keep these women away from him.  All kinds of dramas ensue, with the women who try to be with him, and the men who try to keep them away.  I also want to be with him but I stand outside all of this drama and just wait.  I know that he has eyes for me too.  Finally we are in a car - hidden under some blankets while another man drives us away from the drama scene.  We reach for each other under the blankets and I am eager to have him inside of me.  When he does enter me I have an orgasm that feels like an explosion of volcanic energy!  Oblivious to the driver of the car I hold onto my man and keep inside me for what feels like hours.  I wonder and hope that I might get pregnant.  Then the dream  runs forward to the future and shows me married to this man and the mother of three or four children.  I am going off to get my hair cut and he is in the bath.  I ask him to look after the children, who are all running around wildly, and he smiles. I smile in return.  I feel vastly contented with my life.

As I feel into this Divine union with Him I am finding more and more parts of my soul that have been inaccessible to me.  The horror and terror that I witnessed which caused my soul self to flee and lay hidden, are now the portals through which I can pass through to find the myriad of feelings that were denied to me.
I am turning away from the suffering and misery and towards the passion, excitement, the contentedness, and the joy.  I want to feel everything...all the good feelings, and what I judged in the past to be bad.  I want to embrace them all and let them all flow through me.  In my last session with Isabelle she mentioned that there are over 50 feelings that we can experience.  All of them are probably variations on the big three....Fear, Pain and Love...but to me they are wonderous in their variety.  I started to make a list of the feelings that have shown up in my dreams over the years and that I have more or less repressed in preference to staying in the nihilism.  Wonder, awe, bliss, agony, ecstasy, expectation, disappointment, frustration, impatience, rapture, humility, gratitude, generosity, loneliness, compassion, tenderness, boisterous, adored, full, energized, jubilant, cranky, jealousy, envy, angry, scared, horriffed, terrified, scorned, unwanted, shunned,  frozen, numb, radiant, beloved....the list goes on and on.  Oh, what a gift it is to reclaim these parts of myself.  I feel an aliveness in my body and spirit that is new and overwhelmingly beautiful....and it is all because of Him.

Oh my God...it's you!!!

The work from my session two and a half weeks ago was to be obedient.  Not only to my dreams, but to the advice of Christa, my therapist, as well.  For in her candid but firm manner, she told me that if I didn't do what the dreams were trying to show me, she would resign!  And so...because I trust her implicitly and because I do want to keep moving forward in my work, I did what was asked of me.
Which was basically to let go of something...someone...who I have been using as a foil to feeling my pain.
So I obeyed ...I did what was being asked of me to do...but because I felt a "tiny" piece of resistance in the doing...the pathology got a hand hold and morphed my pain into nihilism.  My particular flavor of nihilism still allows me to function in the world ....just barely....so that I can get up and go to work and be somewhat productive in day.  Inside though there is an ache in my heart that results from the shut down and by the end of the day my head aches as well and I usually go home and go to directly to bed.  The symptoms of my lyme disease are also very much exaggerated by these attacks of nihilism and in this stage of my Rife treatments I end up  nearly incapacitated.  There are days when I can't go to work...when I must stay in bed all day...sleeping or just looking out the window.  Gazing out upon the most beautiful summer weather that we have had in years and cringing at how narrow and forlorn my life has become.  I am so tired that it hurts just to move and I feel like I am in a prison where the voices in my head are urging me closer and closer to taking my own life.  They tell me that I will never be well again...in fact, I am getting sicker from these treatments, not better...so why not end it all and be done with it.
When I came to this place of wanting my life to be over, something shifted inside and I could at least find the energy to pray.  I prayed for help....to God, to the Animus, to my Dad...to anyone out there who was listening.
I still couldn't get to the pain....wasn't that the whole point of being obedient???...but I could open my dream journal and re-read the dream that my homework came from.  The homework that I had not even remotely taken a step towards in these past two weeks.  Why??? Because there is something about having to let go and feel loss that triggers my trauma of losing my beloved and I instinctively will not go there. It is easier
 to stay shut down in the nihilism then to feel the pain.  Also my connection is still very tenuous and by the time that I can take the step of turning to Him, the pathology has rushed in ahead of me and turned me back to Hell.  But this time I was able to get there first....or at least I turned to the dream and made an attempt to feel my homework.

The Dream:
I am being pursued by a man who I think is going to rape and kill me.  I go into this house to evade him and hide in the bedroom ....placing a knife under the pillow just in case. He comes in through the door and something in my body recognizes him and I feel this instant physical attraction.  He leads me to the bed and I can hardly wait to embrace him.  But then I have to pee and go off to find the bathroom.  He follows me in and sits and chats to me while I'm on the toilet.  It feels like I have known him for years.  We then go back to the bed and lie down naked together.
Homework:  Feel the physical attraction to Him and stay with Him on the bed.

At first I don't want to feel the physical part...the attraction, the intimacy in the bathroom, the laying together naked.   I am scared shitless of all this and there is a big NO there. Something inside that says ..."Nope...I had all this, it was taken away from me in the most brutal manner and I will not risk ever having these feelings again.  But I go back to my dream of watching my beloved's execution where I also felt the most profound feelings of love and support, and then I realize....Oh my God...it's you!  It is my beloved that was pursuing me and comes to the bedroom.  It is he that my body recognizes immediately with an energy that can't be denied.  "It's Him, it's Him!! As I melt into this knowing , I can feel his arms around me.  I feel held in the most supported manner imaginable.  I can open my heart, I can banish the despair and I can feel the sweet, softness of pain that allows the tears to come.

I feel released from a bondage that seems to be more toxic and deadly each time that I encounter it.  I wonder why I choose this kind of suffering and misery over these feelings of love and connection?  Why it is so hard to break free and find my way back? I decide not to judge myself harshly over this...it is part of my journey and I can only feel blessed in this moment that I am back among the living.

Stuck in the moment of Horror

Sunday ~ May 27, 2012

Since my last session where I worked the dream of witnessing my beloved's execution I have been stuck in the numbed out place of darkness.  I was able to feel the terrible pain of loss while in Christa's presence but then on my own I could not find my way back there.  On Sunday I was having a skype conversation with my friend Rose and I related to her my feelings of being stuck in the nihilism.  She then said..."it takes enormous love and courage to witness your beloved's execution, so be easy on yourself."  Those few words ...the love and courage...found a crack in the wall and I could finally feel the "ouch" that let the tears start to flow. I realized today that I carry this pain with me always and more often then not I am completely closed off to it.  It is right under the surface of every breath that I take and it has taken so much energy to keep it buried.  Perhaps this never ending physical pain is this unfelt heart pain that I have not been able to access until now.  Even those few moments of feeling a shred of that pain today becomes so quickly inaccessible.  How to keep that door open...that is my work right now.  To go back to that terrible moment...it is dark...there is fear...there is a crowd of angry, aggressive energy.  I am filled with terror.  There are torches lighting the scaffold...a smoky, resinous smell.  I feel the anxiety of impending doom.  The man that I love...who is all the world to me...my spiritual brother...my one true love...is calmly awaiting his fate.  Our gazes lock...there is a strength in him that is passed to me.  A message that says..."Be strong, my love...this is not the end...we will be reunited...our love will endure.  Do this deed for me.  I will feel your love with your hands holding back my head.  That will be my grace...to know that you are near.  Do not be afraid.  I know that you and I are one and we can never be parted, even in death".

But the darkness did envelop me...and quilt and shame became my persona.  My soul was damaged by this act.  I lost my faith.  I could not grieve or feel the pain of loss. I became numb and broken. I lost my way in the wilderness of despair.  Searching, always searching for my beloved and my faith.  Lifetime after lifetime.

And now the way is being shown to me.  I am at the end of a very long journey and my dreams keep pointing the way through the darkness and I follow their lead.  Take each new step as it comes and keep my faith even though I know not where it will take me next.

Monday ~ May 28, 2012

It is Memorial Day and I have a session with Isabelle at the end of the day.  When I drive through Montpelier to her office the roads are quiet...hardly any traffic...everyone off to some celebratory picnic enjoying the beautiful spring day.  I am feeling heavy and tired and long for the safety of her massage table where with her help I hope to re-connect to the dream and the loss.  She takes me back to the moment of holding my beloved's head back....throat exposed....ready for the knife.  I don't want to go any further ....don't want to see or feel what comes next.  Part of me wants to stay in the dark, denying that moment, pretending that it never really happened....that is was all a mistake.  I turn on my side, curled up in a fetal position with a blanket over my head.  I know that I have to do this so I take a breath and go back inside. There is a knife cut across his throat....a cry of anguish...and then blood.  Blood all over me as I hold his lifeless body.  Someone comes and takes the body away and I run and hide.  I can't bear the feelings...I won't feel this, I won't, I won't...and then my mind goes blank.
Isabelle is holding onto my feet to keep me grounded as she continues to guide me through the darkness to find some anchor to hold onto.  I find something there in the dark that takes me my surprise....anger.  Not just anger...but ANGER!!  She makes me stand up and work out this anger by thrashing a soft baseball bat-like thing onto the table as I yell and scream out loud.  It is hard work and part of me is resisting it.  I don't "do" anger and I am uncomfortable acting it out in this way.  But it is now out in the open and I am ready to welcome this feeling as another step along the way to finding the pain.  I drive home feeling spent and soon after I get home a migraine starts and I am in physical pain for the rest of the night.

Tuesday ~ May 29, 2012

I have a busy morning of an appointment with Dr. Pam and my Rife treatment and then my session with Christa.  As soon as I am in the car driving to town I feel the anger surfacing.  I am so angry that this had to happen to me...that God took away my beloved and left me alone to face the rest of my life with this pain.
As I say the words out loud, the tears come and I am awash in pain.  All through the adjustment with Pam, the tears are falling and she helps me to stay with my homework and gives me some advice about how to support my liver where this anger has been stored forever.  In my Rife treatment I feel something dying...not just the lyme spirochetes but the part of myself that has resisted all of these feelings of pain, loss, anger, love.
At the Pink House with Christa the pain and anger continue to unfold...the one blending in with the other...cries of rage mixed with tears and sobs.  Thank God, at last, the dam has broken.  In some strange way I feel cleansed and unraveled.  Exhausted but renewed. 

We work through some dreams that are showing me a major source of my stuckness in my outer life and then the new homework dream.  In that dream I am with a man called Scott, who is the first mate of the schooner, the J & E Riggin.  He has just gotten a letter from Jon and Annie, the captains of the Riggin and they are inviting him to the birth of their next child.  They feel that he is part of their family and want him to be there at the birth.  So...this is me...the new child of the archetypal family that is getting ready to be born.  The soul that has been waiting underneath the thick layer of trauma and is now ready to emerge into the love of the divine family.  I am just starting to take this all in .....there will of course be more...but for now I am just awed by the miracle of it and can add nothing further.
love,
kate