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

Dreams of Horror, Dreams of Grace

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                                                                The Reckoning



The title of this blog post came to me in a dream about a year ago and was to be the title of a book that I was to write about my inner journey in archetypal dreamwork.  The writing of this blog has been  an attempt to start sharing my inner work and express it in  format that would eventually become the book that I had dreamt about.
All through this past winter and in the past 17 years of doing this work I have had dreams that showed bit by bit my original trauma and the separation of my soul from my divine self.  Along the way there were scary,disturbing dreams that offered an opportunity to feel pain or fear and then not long after there would be a dream of grace that affirmed the archetypal support and encourage me to go deeper.  The pace of this unfolding was determined by how diligently I did my homework and how ready I was to unravel the will of the ego that wanted to keep me still separate.  It has been a slow process because for the longest time I was not willing to go into that well of pain.  I planted my feet firmly at the edge of the chasm and said "No, No and more No"!
The circumstances of my life this past year....my being alone after seven years of a partnership and my declining health...have helped to push me past this "No" into the "Yes" and as a result, the dreams of horror increased in frequency as well as the dreams of grace.  After my last session where I had a dream about my father coming to help stand by me as I descended in the dark of unknowing, something broke open in my heart and I was given the following dream.

Dream:
It is night and there is some kind of gathering going on.  I go to find out what is happening and I see that a scaffold has been erected and a man who I know as a spiritual brother and my beloved is about to be killed.
I make my way to the front of the crowd and when  he sees me and our eyes lock. There is such a physical attraction and heart connection that it takes my breath away.  I'm not sure that I can watch what is going to come next as they pull back his head by his hair and bare his throat for the knife or axe.  Then one of the executioners spies me and says that I, his sister, should do the next part.
Then all goes dark and I am stumbling on my hands and knees trying frantically to get away from something or someone.  I am terrified ...not knowing where I am, where I am going...fearing that I might fall over a cliff or down into a deep hole. I then crash into something that I think is a pig stye and there is all this racket and squealing of baby pigs.  Something keeps attaching to my breast and I keep pulling it off.  Then a man comes with a light and I see that the creature is just a small puppy.  I take the puppy and go with the man to a small building where I just want to find a place to crawl into bed and sleep.  I wonder for a moment where my parents are and if they will be worried that I don't come home but I just want to stay where I am and disappear into the oblivion of sleep.  The man with the light then comes to tell me that my father is here and there is another gathering down the hill with a big fire and some dancing.  I follow the man, bringing with me the puppy and hurry to meet up with my father....also hoping that my brother/beloved might not really be dead but there too to join me in the dancing.

I had this dream just a day after my session and it haunted me so profoundly  that I called Christa for an emergency session because I knew that I couldn't wait for the next two weeks to be able to work it.  The meaning was perfectly clear to me but I was in such a state of numbness that I was not able to feel any feelings around this incredible loss....only the sense of being thrust into the deepest darkness and denial.  It is this denial that I have carried with me always....this denial of a loss so unbearably painful that the only way that I have found to endure it was to keep believing that maybe it wasn't true.  But here in this dream were my dear father and my puppy/girl heart and with Christa's gentle help I finally accepted the truth and let my heart feel the pain of losing my beloved and maybe even participating in his demise.   And so... I let myself feel at last,  loss with a capital "L".  The pain was agonizing in its intensity and left me feeling weak and drained but curiously I felt a freedom that allowed the love to surface and expand into love with a capital "L"!
I am now in a state of calm and contentment ....most of the time anyway...and when I do find myself slipping into the darkness I find the puppy and take the hand of my father to make my way back through the pain to the love.  I find that I am wanting to remember more and more this blissful union that I once felt with the beloved.  To step beyond the horror and experience the joining of heart and soul in the arms of the divine.  I have crossed the threshold and He is there waiting.


The Horror.....

The Grace.....

;

Sparks Flying....

                                                                 Sparks Flying

Two new dreams from my last session with Christa.....

I am in NJ at my parents house and Laura and Noah and the crew are there doing Rooting Shen treatments.  There is a knock at the door and it is Ioan Gruffyd (the Welsh actor) and I think that he is here for a treatment...but no, he just wants to see me.  The Rooting Sheners decide that they want to go over to the beach and I give them directions about how to get there.  Ioan and I then go into the bedroom and lay down face to face on the bed and he is very tender and intimate with me. Later I go up into the attic with him and notice that the chimney and foundations of the house are crumbling and I realize that the house is going to collapse.


In the next dream I am in NJ wading through the ocean in Beasley's Point Bay.  A woman in the toll booth on the bridge above me hails me about paying a toll to cross the water.  I then make my way to shore and try to pay but I don't have my check book and then I get lost and on and on it goes.

The second dream is showing a trauma trigger...a simple gesture from a person in authority can make me feel like I've done something wrong...oh, my god...what did I do....don't punish me.  Maybe the woman was just waving hello but I am still living with one foot in trauma land and the smallest thing can send me back to the feelings of panic and terror.
But then there is the Animus  -  showing up as Ioan Gruffyd, a sweet gentle man who is coming to my old childhood home  - the site of some sexual trauma from this lifetime - to show me that this house is ready to collapse and I can be free of those wounds as long as I stay with Him.
My homework is to stay locked with Him in that gaze in all aspects of my life ....and to notice the places where I still can be triggered into the old trauma.
This new collage shows what the trauma world feels like on the left and what it feels like to fall into the gaze of his love and support.

and a new poem....

We are laying face to face.
I look into your eyes, you look into mine.
That is all there is .....our gazes locked together,
the current of love passing from one to the other.
Electricity, pulsing,
Sparks fly.....like a comet exploding in the dark night.
The flow emits a golden glow....
and all my being rides on that river of light.
Wave after wave,
Breath after breath.
There is no yesterday, no tomorrow,
only this moment of being consumed by the fire in your eyes,
mirroring the fire in mine.