Uncovering another layer.....self hate.

The Way Out

                                      

                                            
                                                   Detail of the Naked Girl

In my last session with Christa, besides working the dream of the dog, green and vessel, I had two other dreams of the Animus and the girl...and another one which hinted at a place where the pathology was still hiding out.  In this dream I am swimming naked in a pond and one of my students come to join me.  I want her to join me naked in the pond as I am curious to see what her body looks like under all the layers of clothes.  Instead she wears a black bathing suit and I am disappointed.

So the question is...what part of me still hides out wearing the black bathing suit? Where do I still feel shame and where do I keep my soul self  hidden.  Christa advised me to be on the lookout for this in my life...as it keeps me from being the dancing girl, the rose heart and the vessel...with Him.

How this was triggered recently...I sent Christa an email sharing my new blog post with the collage of the dog, green door and the vessel  and a poem that I wrote about the feelings that came up when making the collage.
She responded with affirmation about the beauty of the collage but said nothing about the  poem.  In roughly two seconds after reading her email I first felt the twinge of  disappointment about the poem and then I went straight into nihilism about the validity of my writing.   I believed that the poem was truly heartfelt in my yearning for the Animus but then the voices came in and said that it was all crap, bullshit.  Maybe it was?  I really don't know. The doubt and self judgement are there almost instantly.  I couldn't even take in that she liked my collages.  This self hate/self judgement feels like I have fallen down a deep, dark well and there is no way out.  I vow never to write again and want to hide away in my shame. The walls close in, everything becomes flat and I just want to numb myself in sleep.
 There is something here for me in the vulnerability that comes up when I risk showing my feelings and when they are not validated.   I can't bear the rejection and I go back into the desert.  That place of icy numbness with thick walls of stone that keep me from the pain of not being valued.  Another layer of old pain that I have been afraid to face.
After a day and night of being back in that prison, I set to work on finding my connection again and the way out.  I worked on another collage about what it feels like to be numb and frozen and then how it feels to be on the sailboat with the man and dancing with the girls.  I sat in that place of extreme vulnerability and nakedness and felt how scary and shaky it is for me to show this side of me to the world.  I have worked hard  my whole life to be the best weaver, the best teacher, the best daughter, the most devoted friend.....all to avoid the pain of what it feels like to be small, helpless, needy and weak.  My judgement and self hate has been far greater then anyone else could ever bestow upon me, and I have kept that adroitly hidden so that no one would ever know how fragile and scared I really am.  I now want to show this side of me to the world....like the girl in the circle of fire ... in her nakedness with nothing to hide.

ps....after another night's reflection on this issue of self hate, I can also see that not wanting to face the truth about myself encourages these pathologic voices to keep me hiding from the pain. In the case with Peter...I have had the hardest time letting go of him ....not only for the love that I still feel for him...but primarily because I can not face the pain of knowing that he now loves someone else and not me.  I have been able to feel the pain  losing  my companion of 7 years and come to some acceptance about the new life that he has found.   But having to face the reality of myself not being the chosen one ....I couldn't go there.  This self hate  doesn't want me to feel the pain of not being loved and I have not been willing to go under that layer to feel the real pain that is about  my separation from God. As I let this new pain unfold in my heart I begin to find some sweet compassion for the naked girl.

The Dog, The Door and the Vessel.....

The Dog, the Door and the Vessel

My New Dream:
I am with a dog and we have been traveling to get somewhere through the dark...sometimes on some very scary roads. We arrive at this place with a green door and once inside we are welcomed. I am asked to speak about my journey, and as I begin, my heart fills and I start to cry. I say that I am now a vessel that the spirit of God can work through.

My work now is to keep turning to the Animus ....to do our work together on the inside and in the world.

A new poem....

In my longing....
my aching longing,
for a partner on this earth,
I turn to you.

But the wall that separates us is thick and vast.
Slowly, patiently
with chisel in hand, I start to chip away this wall
Stone by stone.

In moments of desperation I tear at those rocks with my bare hands...
fingers bleeding,
knuckles scraped,
hands raw.
My free flowing tears melting away the crusty old mortar.

Then at last the doorway is revealed.
A green door beckons.
I can feel your hand on mine as I turn the latch.

Beyond the doorway there are shadows and the way is not completely clear....
but a shining vessel appear in the darkness.
I am drawn to come closer,
and inside floating on the water is a rose.

I bend down to smell its sweet, fragrant scent
and then I bury my face in its silken petals that gently caress my cheek.

I breathe,
I feel,
I am falling, falling,
merging, melting,

and then the rose and I are one.

(Detail of the rose.)

....and then there's the music.....

One of my favorite parts of the Rooting Shen treatments is how the music aligns so perfectly with what is happening at the acupuncture point and more importantly with what is happening with me on the inner level at that moment.
For a month before the treatment I worked hard to collect over 200 songs and it was a pretty eclectic selection that I ended up with. A few days before leaving I had watched the movie Mamma Mia! and been so invigorated and enlivened by the music that I tried to add the whole soundtrack to my collection before I left but was thwarted by my lack of techno savvy.   Once I got to Whitefield though, Meg was able to help me and we were able to down load the whole soundtrack just minutes before the treatment began.

So then the moment arrives when I lay down on the table... push the shuffle button and the treatment begins.  The theme of the music....and there really was a theme this time....was (just to cite a few...)

         uplifting ~  Hallelujiah by Handel & Leonard Cohen, Here Comes the Rain Again
         joyful ~ What a Wonderful World, For unto us a Child is Born, Belle
         body rocking ~ Michael Jackson, Elton John, BeeGees
         legs gyrating to the rhythm ~Dancing Queen (2x), Voulez Vous, Mamma Mia!
         arms conducting to the beat ~ Lay all your Love on me, Take a Chance on Me
         heart wrenching  ~  Blood of Eden, Little Sparrow, Top of the World
         heart filling ~ Cirque de Soleil: Aftermath, Flight, Battlefield, Threat, Storm; Angel of the Morning
               

Since I've been home I've continued to push the shuffle button and see what comes up for when I'm sitting having my morning oatmeal, getting ready for work or making dinner.  The Dancing Queen and Voulez Vous (from Mamma Mia!)  come up most regularly and I find myself dancing wildly around the living room, feeling my body start to heal more and more through the movement of dance.  In my session with Isabelle this last Wednesday I brought the Ipod and we used my treatment music to help in the guided meditation of what it means to be the Queen from the higher conscious.  Once again the songs seemed to coincide so perfectly with what I was feeling on the inside.  There were songs that resonated with "partnership, leadership, impeccable character, generosity of spirit and most exciting to me.....as the  5 Mamma Mia! songs came up again.....the dancing girl heart.  That seems to be the strongest message for me lately...to be the Dancing Girl/Queen with the heart bursting with life and joy.

Hands on Heart.....

                                                                 Hands on Heart

                                                    Detail of Rose Heart

Here is a bit more of my Rooting Shen treatment as things settle in and begin to take shape.  Instead of acupuncture needles, this time Taylore and Noah just held their hands over the main points - Noah on the heart point and Taylore on the stomach meridian.  For four hours their hands stayed in these places and at various times my hands covered theirs and I was able to add to the energy being focused there.  The simple beauty of a laying on of hands....hands covering hands....hands holding hands....brought a peace and healing to my heart and soul that I could never have imagined.  As a gazed on this collage last night before going to sleep I wrote this poem to try and express some of the miracle that is happening to me.


                                                       
                                  I see the light of a hundred candles burning brightly
                                          and feel the warmth of their glow.
                                  I feel your hands wrapped around my heart...
                             my tender wounded heart that has felt so barren and empty.
                                       With the warmth of your gentle hands
                               I feel the heart soften and the  wounds begin to heal.
                                         Like the petals of a rose, there is a gradual unfolding
                                                     as the center begins to unfurl.
                                                       Letting in light, joy and love.
                            I have walked a long, lonely road trying to find my way back to you.
                                        I have traveled through dark and scary places...
                                            filled with horror and relentless misery.
                              But the light of a hundred candles and the blossoming of the rose
                                                  are guiding me slowly back to you.

Rooting Shen ....24 March 2012

Light of Heaven ....post Rooting Shen

                                                


A  week ago at this moment...6:40....I entered the treatment shed in Whitefield, Maine to begin my fifth Rooting Shen treatment.  My dear friend, Lark, had driven me over to the coast of Maine on Friday and we stayed in a B& B run by two women in Waldoboro for the night and the next day. Then  Lark drove me to Whitefield on Saturday afternoon for my treatment and left me there for the night.

 I still don't have many words for what transpired but it was  transforming on a very deep level.  I had brought my dream of being imprisoned for a lie and wanting to be a queen and the theme of the treatment was about finding this queen self in it's true manifestation.  It was not about being the queen with the man...it was about being the queen with the Divine....and what that really means to me. The music took me to places that had been hidden to me all these many years and at one point I was down on my knees feeling humility and sadness for all the times that I have turned away from my divine self.  I had brought my collage of "being the queen" to the treatment as a source of inspiration and in this new place of being broken I asked for the collage to be thrown on the fire that was burning outside the shed.  I felt the shallowness of living from this place of needing "the man" to dictate  the way for me and it was a relief to have that old way of relating be burned to ashes in the fire. Rising from the ashes I was greeted to my new self by  Handel's Halleluiah Chorus and my whole being was filled with  clarity and joy.  There will be more to share as I continue to sit and embrace this newfound sense of my queen-ness  and I look forward to what continues to unfold.

Breaking out of prison to become the queen......

Being the Queen

                 

This is my work now ....to leave the prison of my pathologic attachments...and to become the Queen with the Animus, the King.  And  to also be the girl who can fly skiing down the hill feeling absolutely free and full of energy and joy.  Both dreams showing me the promise of what life could be if I can face the pain of loss and to look at the stark reality of what the inside of my prison is really like.  Any sane person would have no trouble with this choice.  Who would choose to stay locked in a dark, empty cell with no light, no air, no love...or....to have a loving partner who is totally devoted to me and who treats me the like the Queen that I am? But the former state is the choice that I have been making....by staying tied to someone who is nothing but a mirage of my own mind.

In a moment of clarity and willingness to face my fear of pain, I finally cut the tie to this attachment and started on the road to embracing this new state of being.  I immediately felt a sense of freedom and excitment and my next dreams showed the Animus coming to me with all his love and attention as an affirmation of this decision.  But the days are long, and it is still hard, hard work to stay with this knowing that I did the right thing.  The pathology keeps wanting me to turn back...it plagues my mind with memories of the past...of what could have been, what could be.  I feel the pain of loss a hundred times a day.  I grieve for a lost friend.  I am not free of this torment and heartache....yet.  The other night I watched the movie....Young Victoria...and it was such a beautiful story of true love and of a man who could stand outside the limelight and support his beloved to be all that she could be.  It was so inspiring and so helpful in steering me back to the right path.  It showed me that this is what I want...this is what I need.....on the inside and the outside.  I need the Animus to be my inner anchor and I need a partner who can help me be who all that I can be....the Queen of England and the girl with a heart full of love and joy.  Step by step I am now on the road to this.

And so tomorrow I leave for Maine and my Rooting Shen treatment....Sweeping the Starry Skies of Heaven.
A way out of my entrappment that I hope will sweep away all of these old patterns and all of this physical and mental misery.  Wish me luck .....
love,
Kate

The blessing of being disabled....

A week ago last Saturday, I awoke to shooting knife like pain in my right arm...starting at the shoulder and going down into my right bicep and down the forearm.  What the heck!  I tried to think of what I did the day before to set this off?  Whatever the reason, there I was with this new pain and absolutely no use of my right arm.  I struggled to dress myself...had to eat with my left hand ...and try to do all my usual chores with just one hand.  I felt vulnerable and helpless and resigned myself to laying low for the rest of the weekend.  It hurt to even lay down and sleep was almost impossible.  I hoped that with time it would just go away and that this was just another weird side effect of this dreadful Lyme disease.
On Monday I had an appointment with my naturopath and she was also perplexed about the severity of the pain and the incredible swelling in the right shoulder.  She gave me some anti-inflammatory remedies and told me to continue with ice and rest.  I managed to drive myself there and back using my left hand to shift gears but I knew that I was going to need help in my life if this continued.  At this point I was still trying to "go it alone" but by the next day I had to start asking for some help from my workers and students. I had another appointment for acupuncture with Taylore on Tuesday and on the drive into town I cried and cried from this feeling of being so totally helpless.  Taylore had to undress me for the treatment and it was like being tended by a kind mother to a small child.  Something so out of my realm of experience.  Her assessment of my situation was "trauma" of a physical kind but I knew that somehow this was all related to the bigger trauma that I had been working on all winter.  Some pain that was stuck in my body and now in the process of letting go.  Taylore suggested a session with a bodyworker...one of my dreamwork colleagues...and miraculously she had an opening that afternoon.  I cried once again on the drive into town and I began to realize that this was all part of something much larger then just some pain in my shoulder.  When Cathy saw me in the waiting room with my arm gripped tight to my chest she also sensed some kind of holding related to my inner work.  Holding tight to my baby in that fiery church perhaps???   Her medical opinion was that a tendon had twisted around the shoulder blade and that once the inflammation was reduced, she could work it back into place.  In the meantime I needed to stay with these feelings of helpless vulnerability and savor this time to delve deeper into my heart pain.
It was actually the best medicine for me at this point.  Not being able to draw, or write, or create collages, or house clean or work gave me the time to focus on collecting music for my upcoming Rooting Shen treatment.  I could lay back and listen....find the songs that moved my heart and take some refuge in the music.  Taylore had lent me her Ipod with 934 Rooting Shen songs and at first I was overwhelmed by the sheer number.  How would I ever get through them all plus find new songs of my own??  And in only two weeks!
Slowly, patiently...with the Ipod on shuffle...I am making my way through them.  Finding ones that resonate and skipping over ones that don't.  My arm has healed a little bit to the point where I can now feed myself with my right hand and type on a computer keyboard but I still can't manage much else.  I am asking for help...crying alot...and finding my way through this healing by taking tiny steps.
And being filled by music.