Rest into Christ

5/1/07 Tues 1342

Last night’s dream was so strong I felt no doubt at the need to write it down, even in the wee hours when I woke from it. It was another of those that feels so very real, where I very strongly feel the feelings.

Usually in those dreams I’ve done something wrong and am about to get the consequences—stuff like driving a car over a bridge. Last night’s dream was very different with me among a group who were going to be executed. It was along the lines of me being a political prisoner, but there were elements of slavery too.

So here’s what I wrote:

Wow, what a strange frightening dream. I and lot of others were being rounded up to be put on an execution ship. We’d been deemed ‘dispensable’. They rounded us up & said we could have our things. All the time I’m very afraid. I knew something was coming. We learned that as soon as we were out at sea they were going to force us overboard and kill as many of us as they could. (There was a little diversion in all this. We had company, Gary’s brother. In the course of the dream I learned the slaves had come up with plans for an uprising. I kept moving from fear to excitement, & fear again. I could feel there would be whips falling on me in my mind. I was dreading that. I dreaded the drop into the sea & the desperate attempt to save my life.
The thing was I had a book that was a valuable first edition of Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland” I couldn’t find it though it seemed important to have this. I kept finding an inferior version of it. I thought I had it stashed, but couldn’t find it. I accepted the burden having it. But I couldn’t find the first edition & there was the terrible feeling of the time running out. Would it have made a difference to our captors & murderers? I don’t know—it seemed important but I could only find the inferior version, titled ‘Through the Looking Glass’ Gary said something about keeping. It was ‘Alice In Wonderland’ I wanted The original version seemed to have the power to save me & my loved ones. We were rounded up & taken to an execution site. I came up with a plan to survive, & my deep fear became a little more plausible—I felt some excitement with the fear that I might be the exception and somehow survive. But I was very afraid of what was coming. They took us to a playstructure they’d build for kids. I felt everyone would be trying what I was planning, to dive very deep, & hope luck would keep the bullets from hitting me & the other heading us apart. We were taken to the deck & were told not

I was so relieved to wake up & realize I did not have to go thru that.

A couple more hours left. Well, actually less than that. I spent the morning doing administrative details, all with that curious sense of abstraction and detachment I was feeling yesterday. Like things were only border-line making sense, where I did not feel that I had any kind of clarity at my disposal. Part of it may be about missing the anchor of my week, which is Wednesday pms, Sharon nights. She will be away this week. Darn, & I’m having some interesting dreams. Last night I actually had another, a vivid one before waking up. It had to do with some sort of plush hotel room, very red. Scott may have been there, too. But the execution dream—the strongest feeling associated was this notion that it wasn’t a dream, it was real and it was inevitable that I was going to be experiencing these horrible sensations, including the desperation to survive. The frantic effort to dive very deep, deeply enough that I couldn’t be seen and could then swim underwater a way and maybe be unnoticed when I surfaced for air. I pictured it vividly in my mind as the character in the dream. I saw the dark blue, getting darker blue as I went deeper, the sense that the odds were very against this working out with me surviving, especially since I was probably hardly the only one who had thought of this strategy for self-preservation. (I’m reminded of a novel where children were kidnapped in Cambodia or Vietnam and were tied to a wheel. The kidnappers were soldiers, or maybe insurgents who were going to use the children as child soldiers. They were herded toward a cliff while tied to this large wheel, and the ones who realized this were attempting to maneuver the wheel so that when it crashed to the ground below they would be on the top, not the bottom to bear the full impact. There’s something to me in this about having to make choices from horrible options, knowing that no matter what you choose there’s a good chance you will be dreadfully hurt.)

I fear the pain, is the very truth. That and the psychic pain of all that fear and hope and desperation all combined into the sharp desire to not surrender.

So, in the dream I am part of a group who will be executed, though it ‘s a while before I know that. We’re taken on a ship out at sea and the plan to kill us is by dumping us far over down to the sea, then shooting us. I am trying to master my dread and have a plan, and sometimes I feel the relief of my dread turning to excitement. I’m also seeing that I don’t have any illusions that my plan will save me, though, since I’m sure others will have the same idea. I’m seeing that essentially it will be luck, random, blind luck that saves me. I’m dreading the sensation of falling and hitting the sea, of trying to get the breath I need beforehand so I can swim as far away as possible. My dread is sharpening as we are being taken to the place where we will be pushed.

A few minutes later I’m back with some thoughts about what I’ve written in my journal in 1978. I’m resonating with the awareness of intense feeling that I was having then. I was feeling a sensation very acutely, I guess of a kind of inner agitation. I mean as I was writing it. It was the sensation that Jeff had identified to me, that feeling of inner shaking or vibration that makes me produce psychically a high-strung note. I felt it often around Jeff, more so I guess because I knew he was aware of it, and thus sharpened that intense feeling. Trying to make it seem less pronounced or non-existent in response to feeling like I HAD to to keep a friend—that in itself was a cause for that hum. Within the context of this I feel a ghost of that hum in my ribs, and try to breathe into it. Part of me says it doesn’t know what good breathing into that tight feeling will do. But then I realize that was the sensation I first felt, long ago, that enabled me to let the hurt of losing Rick gradually co-existing with the remembering of the beauty—tolerating beauty and pain together, with the beauty more powerful. I realized there was a way of slipping through the cracks of the pain that was enormously comforting and allowed me to co-exist with it and preserve the benefit that came.

As I write all this, complete with the sensation of deep discomfort of the sensations in my dream last night, I’m made aware of something that’s hard for me to admit—my own fear of pain. As a Christian I feared being martyred—tortured for Christ (which I read about in some of the Christian books about Christians enduring persecution in the Soviet Union). Perhaps what this is about is that in a way I have lived in dread of physical pain, crushing circumstances with sensations of visceral agony. And why does what I wrote in 1978 have something to do with it? Reading what I wrote, in the context of the dream I had last night, seems to activate first of all the high-pitched hum that was my background sensation back then, and also my fear of pain. I suppose some of it is because I was feeling very anxious when I wrote what I did. I felt the anxiety of several conflicting sensations at once, amplified and sharpened into such a shrill hum. A conversation with my mom’s former neighbor had set off an examination of this. At the time I hadn’t been capable of slowing down the sensation so it loosened up and I could sink through the cracks of it and see what was there without the distraction of reacting to it. I was vibrating so fast that the sensations inside felt like something solid and impermeable, rather than being able to come to terms with their details and let the sensations open a bit, show their inner space in order to be able to see them objectively. In a way, as I read, I try to do that for her now; breathe into what I’m reading. Though oddly, I’m also having to breathe into mySelf, because those ghost feelings are uncomfortable to me in the present. I still feel an inclination to try to resist them, and my discomfort is sharpened by those feelings of resistance. I have a feeling of awareness that there is a Me that I can just rest into because I’m a Part Of. Something Bigger than me is carrying me, in a way. And it feels like I would imagine it was meant to feel when Paul, I think, would exhort his followers to rest into Christ. Be a detail on the surface of this Thing that is really, really Big. What I am resting on, and am a part of simultaneously—That which I am resting on, is backed by something Much Bigger.

Afraid of going backward

4/30/07 Mon 1744

I’m feeling a little disoriented, just out of sorts. I used my whole time that the boys were at school today trying to track down something I heard on the news the other night. It’s funny that I don’t recall having been very struck by it at the time I heard it, but now it seems important to know, and it’s hard to believe I didn’t take more note of it at the time. It seemed like a couple of men may have been responding to questions in a hearing or something, and it was a public hearing, because they said anti-war protesters were there. There were two analysts talking about it, and they said that the audience had expressed shock at what one of the men said, and then he said something even more provocative…The gist of it was summed up in him saying basically that he only cares about Americans, not anyone who’s not. This was a few days ago, and I remember thinking I’d return to it later, but it seems that I just didn’t quite realize the implications as much as I do today.

So I spent ages with the search engine, trying to find the right key word that would take me to this so I could see who it was, who he represented, what audience he was addressing and what he meant when he said he could care less about anyone who was not American.

So I’ve just felt disoriented today. I didn’t write down a fairly strong dream I had last night and I just feel sort of behind on everything. I’ve let the news slide the past few weeks, because I was pursuing the project of writing in here when my time was free. Now I see over the past several days I’ve missed some stories that seem important. I feel like I want to listen to those, but I’m not sure which ones. I feel behind on taking care of some of the details of the house. I’m wondering how all THIS fits in to this new way of living I’ve been describing the last several weeks. I just feel less aware of the feeling of That, and again I’m anxious. Oh yeah, Gary hung around here a long time this morning too. I guess at heart I’m wondering if all these out-of-sorts feelings, and often because of things I haven’t done—I wonder if they’re a symptom of becoming ‘unconscious’ again.

I guess an answer could be, “So what? It means I went unconscious again. Is there something to dread in that?”

Let’s see, other ‘symptoms’ of being out of sorts: feeling very hungry and eating with anxiety and a sense of fatalism.

Is it something to be ashamed of, if I do go unconscious sometimes? I guess that’s part of my dread, that it’s confirming some sort of moral shortcoming.

I’ve engaged in letting something Gary said or didn’t do disturb me and then speak out of that sense of grievance. Therefore I’ve been reactive to him.

Yeah, I suppose the worry is that I’m going backward. I suppose the ultimate worry is that the ‘This’ I’ve been writing about for all these weeks isn’t big or strong enough to help propel me out of often feeling woeful and hurt in to a change in attitude and independence. Really, credibly, to change my perception of life and way of being in the world with it. I fear that it isn’t possible and I have to continue an experience of life that has people asking too much of me and overstepping their boundaries and then getting mad because I was hurt. And thus being somewhat at the mercy of others—and at the mercy of the extent of their ability to be reasonable, and honest about their own parts in something. That really was the kernel of the deal in my family—I was at the mercy of their ability to understand and take responsibility for their own behaviors. I needed someone like that in order for my nervous system to have been soothed as a child, and my parents didn’t/couldn’t do that because they were products of how they were raised and what they’d done with how they were raised. Consequently I was with people who would often exacerbate rather than soothe. They had a limited range of ability to respect emotions and feel empathetic toward children, and so I’ve spent my life dealing with the self that was built around responding to the jabbing of that situation. I learned things that I thought worked, tho I didn’t realize they weren’t in my best interest.

My dream last night:

It’s in some ways as if I am the husband of a woman I met through roller skating, Amy. In the dream, she is a child of some sort of Slavic family (I keep thinking of it as Russian) that are immigrants, and live in an area that’s mostly populated by other Russian immigrants. It’s a tight-knit community, that tends to discourage contact with ‘outsiders’. She is beholden to her parents, even as a married woman. We may even live with them, or next door. It is a time of year of some sort of family reunion. Maybe something Christmas-like, a Russian Orthodox version of Christmas. Her parents are hosting it and it is taken for granted that she will be assisting. However, on the day of the reception her/our baby is born. I’m very worried about her thinking that if our baby has just been born, she shouldn’t be having to do hostessing duty. She should be laying down in bed. In fact, there is a feeling that her duty to her parents is greater than her duty to her baby. There’s a feeling of desperation that the newborn baby may be needing to nurse, and her mother is not available because of her obligations to her family. In the dream I get worrieder and worrieder about her because she’s looking very pale and at times I think is going to faint. I urge us to go ‘home’, but home is a very tiny apartment right off of her parents place, with no room to lie down. Sterile white colored, and spare. It’s supposedly a house, but smaller than an apartment. I’m thinking of a place we’d had and was wishing we could be in there. I go into the market to get something. Now I’m femal. I look from the level I’m on and see a flat roof below me. There are 3 flat boards, like 1×6’s, and they’re just broken pieces. But they’re down on that roof and somehow it’s because of me. I decide I should pick them up, though I have a sense inside that it doesn’t matter; it would really be going further than the extra mile to clean them up. But I override that and I do, finding it was the right thing to do because the people who lived there were old and couldn’t have picked them up. They are a Finnish couple, and I try to say in Finnish that I was sorry and hadn’t meant to put those boards on their roof. I was feeling glad I hadn’t blown off the idea that I had an obligation to pick them up and just left. Rick is there and he smiles in approval when he hears my sincere and respectful tone, and hears my sincerity in trying to address them in their language. It’s like he’s seeing that there’s something true in me and remembering why he had been in love with me.

The mind can be insidious

4/25/07
1413
Wed

Sharon tonight. It seems I woke with distinct memories of three dreams, but the one I woke up with is the one that remains:

I’m on a climbing expedition to climb Mt. Everest. We are inside the caldron, and a caldron lake is below us. Cool and blue. We’re doing this climb as a rock climb, and a traverse at that. Sort of like spiraling upward. It is very warm; we’re mostly in shorts and light shirts. There is a feeling of some competition about our moves from stance to stance. I put together an unusual set of moves and am rewarded by our team leader, who is Lynn L. She gives me a green bill—I assume it was a one. The following day we set out again, and this time I’m aware that I don’t have on any sunscreen. I touch my skin and see that it is reddening. I ask a co-climber, a woman if I can borrow some of hers.

There’s a sense from other climbers that we are cheating by climbing Everest as a rock climb, from inside, traversing. There is some jeering that we ignore. Kind of like the Mazamas with their fairly rigid sense of orthodoxy and criticism from those who vary from it. We mainly ignore that.

Another dream did come back; where

I’m shopping and Scott is in the cart. He’s younger, and it’s difficult to be doing a week’s worth of shopping with him there. I’m in one section of the store, which is a Fred Meyer. Some things are in that section, but also in another. I find that the shopping cart I have won’t fit through the doorway into the other section. So I have to unload all of the groceries in one cart into another from the other section of the store, and it’s very time consuming and difficult.

4/26/07
Yeeps. Now I’m 50 and a half. What’s funny is just now I almost wrote down ‘40’.

I discussed the dreams with Sharon about the pregnancy and breakfast, and about rock climbing Mt. Everest.

I didn’t write about it at the coffee shop, because I’d left with a sort of dry feeling inside, like our session hadn’t dipped deeper into the well of insight. I was missing the internal feeling that would tell me we had done that.

Maybe it doesn’t always have to carry that feeling.
Basically we came around to seeing the dream

Later

Joy called and we spoke for a pretty long time.

Called again and we spoke for a pretty long time.

There has been something about these conversations with her that have been providing benefit to me in this process of growing I’ve been noticing. I just spent about 20 minutes sending her an e-mail because I realized that I’d unknowingly been perpetrating my reality on her. I’d developed a perspective that I presumed to be the true one—and responded to her from that place. Which is really kind of insulting, because it really does imply that her perspective on the thing is mistaken, and that if she’d only see it from my perspective, all would be well. That’s really the implication of that. I’m not even aware of when I crossed the line from listening to her without prejudgment, purely listening, into forming a perspective and assuming it were the true nature of reality. Still, I found it refreshing to at least be able to realize that’s what I was doing. I see on what subtle levels that perpetrations can be done. Because underneath my advocating for her continuing this relationship with him was my anxiety at being in the presence of her suffering—in other words my suffering from her suffering. In root it wasn’t about her at all, it was about me. This dynamic was at least part of the backstory behind my doing it. There may have been some better motives. I guess I do feel a little survivor’s guilt, in that we’re both enhancing our spiritual growth as well as our own bond, yet her suffering is what’s bringing the benefit.

So anyway, now having caught myself going unconscious, as when I assumed a reality and assumed it was Joy’s, perhaps I can get better at reading the subtle signals that tell me I’m slipping into that, so I can stop and stay conscious. I can choose to not slip into the story, and moreover MY version of the story. It’s not just disrespectful to Joy, but my life doesn’t work as well if I’m doing stuff like that. So it seems hopeful to realize that I’d gotten conscious enough to recognize a misstep, and so be able to get back in harmony. Yes, I was using this sense of being connected to my Higher Self as a way of being ‘right.’ That was subtle. The mind can be insidious.

So last night, speaking with Sharon and it flashes on me right now that this whole bigger story for me, about coming into connection with my Self, is unfolding. That the dreams have gotten to a point of expressing my fears of going forward and wanting to stop therapy. Of course she’s not going to be available next Wed and NOW I want to ask her, what would I be afraid of? What is an archetypal fear at this point? Where is the difficult task I have to face in order to break through? Am I even characterizing this right, in putting myself into a mythological role of the hero who gets lost, has many adventures, and returns home. I mean am I being too literal about the part of the myth that deals with some arduous and dangerous task. The fear that she and I have talked about, which I first feared as somehow falling away from this new way of living and it being my fault—then got the idea that maybe the fear wasn’t of me messing up or It abandoning me, maybe it was fear to go forward into this unknown—a reflex of fear at the jolt from feeling my feet leave the sand as a surge bears me up and forward. NOW I’m wondering if this is fear about some obstacle I have to go through—that this really isn’t done with me finding this Connection with my Self; that there’s still some task to do in addition. The literal mind of me wants to ask Sharon if she thinks I still have a task to do or an ordeal to go through, and that my fear that I’ve mischaracterized is really me backing away from that ‘ordeal.’

I kept getting images as I was writing that of metaphors with being born, being expelled—perhaps this really is birth trauma being expressed. Wow, I didn’t expect that insight. But I do realize there have been a few symbols of birth and new life for me in dreams and awake thought.

I actually was born early; nearly 3 weeks, I think, if I’m remembering my due date correctly. And I think my size WAS pretty small. Maybe even under 6 lb? Interesting synchronicity to remember those facts after that dream.

4/27/07 Fri 1319

Another morning flew by. I did get a little accomplished in the yard yesterday, so there’s some satisfaction.

I just googled “Hero’s Journey” and found some hits worth following up on.

So I promised myself at least an hour to write, after taking Riser for a walk. She’s really tired; it didn’t seem we walked that far, so I’m a little worried about her. Maybe I’m expecting too much of an older, larger dog in terms of stamina and vitality.

I had some thoughts while walking about the tendency to be polarized in viewing the world. If one casts this current “War on Terror” as a clash of civilizations, or Christian against Muslim, then on a smaller scale there’s a clash of civilizations about that clash. There is a division between the tendency to stay the same and a tendency to change.

Last night’s dream:

I have seen Rick M. while I’m driving a car. I’m shocked, and wondering if our paths will cross again. So I’m getting gas at a gas station and the car pulls up that I’d seen Rick driving in. He gets out and in this dream he looks as beautifully formed as he was when he was young. He’s wearing low slung jeans and no shirt. When he sees me he runs around the car to hug me and I run toward him to meet his hug. He is still married, to his first wife, Cindy. The one he left me for and who came over to talk to me after Rick and I had seen each other after breaking up. I was trying to find a resemblance in the face of this woman I was looking at, who was attractive and had dark hair, evidence of some years on her, but wearing it well. I was looking for a resemblance between what I was seeing looking at Cindy in the ‘present’ and how I remembered her from way back in the past. I remember scanning her face to that purpose in my dream. She is cordial but I can still see that she’s weighing rather or not I represent a threat to her coupledom with Rick. I have no intention of being a threat, but I’m also feeling very attracted to him, so I feel a little uneasy about how I behave around him. It’s an older car they’re driving—kind of like Rick’s old Galaxy 500 that was old when he got it. There are several people in his car and one of them is his son. It turns out that they are in town for some sort of promotional pediatric physical therapy ‘fair’. An effort to show the community what physical therapy can do for people by inviting the public to come and have evaluations. So I have Rick and Cindy’s boy, and I’m really uneasy. I find that I’ve forgotten how to organize myself for an evaluation, that I’m not familiar with the paper work, that I’m kind of clumsy at it and having to return to tests I’d already done because I’d forgotten to do them earlier. It just didn’t seem seamless and professional to me. My saving grace is the notion that chances are only another PT professional would see how discomboberated I was, so I tried to keep my professional manner, even while making mistakes. The other saving grace was the idea that this eval would be continued tomorrow and I could spend the hours in between studying it and getting back into that groove. I think there was some anxiety about whether I’d be able to locate the right information, and in a form that I could use.
This thing happens where I’m in a room changing into a swimsuit for a swim—oh, I’ll bet it’s pool therapy, as part of the fair. The door is open and he walks in when I’m naked. I don’t recall, there may have been elements of both of these: that he looked at me with a ghost of that old feeling in his eyes, or he looked at me with a memory of that ghost of attraction toward me and maybe seeing an unfavorable change, or maybe seeing a favorable change, or he may have been looking at me as if there was no difference in my being naked and wearing clothes. I’ m not sure how to read it, and though I don’t tend to think of nudity as a special condition that means sex, I’m aware that others do and so decided it wasn’t appropriate, especially if his wife came by, so I got my suit from the hook, sat down and put a towel over my lap, and put my olive green shirt across my upper front half, and proceeded to put my swim suit on under cover of those cloths. It seems I have an image of myself in the mirror and my hips and thighs looked bigger than I think of them. And I feel a little anxious. The swim suit is the old worn-out one I’ve been using for our hot tub.

So, in this dream there is another child, this one older, but still a very young child. Somewhere between 3 and 8—maybe there were elements of both. This is a child whose parents are bringing for a physical therapy evaluation, so they’ve had some questions about his development and are taking advantage of this opportunity of the fair. It’s coincidence that the child I see be Rick and Cindy’s child, but it makes me even more nervous—who his parents are, and the fact that I have lingering attraction for Rick. And I’m unsure about how successfully I’m concealing it, whether or not I’m under suspicion. I am doing a service for their child, and getting it done, if not as polished as I would like. I like the boy, too. There is something later, a sort of reiteration of the desire I had then, back when Rick and I first broke up, to remain friends and even be friends with both of them as a couple.

Getting fuel, I see an old love, my primary love, who looks no different than he did just out of high school. He’s even dressed similarly, And I’m attracted, even though he’s off limits. I feel like I may be being watched, but I’m not sure that’s a reliable perception. Then there’s his child I’m caring for, and feeling clumsy. But I feel there’s an opportunity to redeem myself. Then Rick comes and finds me naked as I’m switching to a different venue as a therapist. I decide to agree in my actions with general mainstream society and cover up, tho I do it without hurry or embarrassment. I suppose if in the dream he hadn’t been married I would have treated it as if he’d come in to a room while I was putting on a sweater, just got into my swim suit as I had been. Just an old but serves-its-function thing. Then there’s the appraising look in her eyes, a consideration that I might be a threat weighed against her certainty that she and Rick are solid enough that she doesn’t need to worry.

So, interesting intersection of a former love with whom I shared my first moments of physical, and really, emotional intimacy, the woman who he left me for who doesn’t look like I remember her, particularly the back of her climbing our stair case, a child again who I am assisting, and thus assisting my former love and his wife. Meeting them at a place to get fuel, then later being assigned to evaluate their child in order to make recommendations. There’s me feeling awkward and fumbly in the therapy eval of their son, but feeling I can tighten that up for the next day, then my former love coming in while I’m naked and there is some subterranean activity for me, and I’m not sure if for him. I treat the situation casually and do the appropriate thing.

I’ll have to just sit with that for a while, see if the pieces slide together in another way.

Fear masquerading as anger and control

4/24/07 Tues 14:24

So I have an hour for writing.

I guess I don‘t feel too badly that I’ve scheduled some things this week that meant no writing today. Definitely not a good day to get thinking done, intimate thinking that is. For the past few hours since meeting Darlene for coffee I got sidetracked by trying to load that external drive for backing up work. I don’t know if I’m getting any closer to getting this thing figured out so I can use it for what it’s intended for, sheltering this vulnerable data. It’s a lot more involved than it would appear; each step presenting several problems. So I don’t even know if I’m somewhere near out of this yet, the time has flown and I devoted too much to it.

So coffee with Darlene is fine. No residual bad feelings, and nothing but a shadow of the old dread about meeting her today.

So, here’s an interesting dream from last night:

We had company for breakfast. I’d planned on prepping & making a special breakfast & I’d wanted to make some pancakes I’d been wanting—had a craving for. I think I’m pregnant in this dream. I’m wanting some reassurance. I feel I’m close to my due date, & I’m not as big as I should be. I’m trying to feel the baby’s heartbeat thru my abdoman—wondering if that’s possible. I feel pulsations and take some comfort in them, but realize it may be my own circulation I’m feeling. That’s one of those questions I can’t ever find in books or on the net. So I want to go to the pg bulletin boards on the IF boards. I reallize I haven’t had movement for awhile and I’m very anxious that something’s wrong. Then I feel movement & I’m relieved, but still worried about being too small for where I should be for the stage of pregnancy I think I’m at.
Gian is our breakfast guest. Gary has sort of preempted what I was planning—got things for a different breakfast than I’d wanted; different standards than mine—food not chopped finely, spices not really balanced.
So I’m feeling really disappointed. This wasn’t as special as I’d planned. And when I talk to Gary there’s an edge to it. He’s now just sitting & reading the paper & I’m feeling unsupported and that his presence is missing. I felt that his presence had been missing when he’d taken over breakfast without asking—that it was more about Control, tho if I complained it would be an offence because hadn’t he ALREADY taken ownership & participated? Gian’s at the table & I’m feeling embarrassed about what feels like a real obvious tension between Gary & me which is evident in our communication. I want to ask Gian for advice about these moments in marriage. It seems so obvious Gary & I aren’t doing well. Then I open the cupboard & find the dishes I’d been looking for to set the table sort of haphazardly scattered among pots & pans. I feel really irritated then, because his doing that made things harder for me & made no sense. I was trying to serve up the food & hadn’t been able to find the plates and Gary had emptied a serving platter I’d arranged food in—had dumped it out on plates & then the serving platter was supposed to be used as a plate. I’m angrier and angrier. There’s also present the signature of a feeling I have when Gary serves people up what HE thinks they should eat. That annoyance and perplexity about why he can’t understand that it’s not appropriate to choose for somebody else what they want, or the demand.

I’ve got another dream but I think I’ll write it down later.

For right now I’m just feeling a little maxed out and the boys will be home in 1/2 hour. Spending this time alone.

Funny that it hadn’t occurred to me immediately to speculate a little about that dream. I guess I had a half-assed idea about saving it for Sharon. Like it’s cheating or something to think about it beforehand but I think that’s just a ‘reason’ to back up a reluctance to look at it.

Although in some ways I have already looked at it. What came to mind was a notion that there is a legitimacy about dealing with some of the feelings that come up around Gary in the way he seems to do things carelessly, in the way that I continually get the brunt of it, even if it’s not painful it’s still uncomfortable and means I have to do more, in feeling a weird power struggle in his taking over breakfast and then doing it oddly; then not helping me…not engaging Gian, or providing his Presence. And I feel wronged even tho I know that if I were to complain he would then be very ‘injured’ and could say that he HAD contributed, and to me it wasn’t enough, or right. So perhaps the dream is telling me that it is within normal reasonability to want some accounting for those behaviors although how that fits into the notion of my just letting him be who he is and choosing to not engage negative feelings about that. There’s just a sense of reassurance that those things were reasonable concerns and are yet to be dealt with.

The pregnancy thing is curious. They are very tied together, the pregnancy and that scene with Gary and Gian. There is something inside of me that is growing, that I’m wanting very much and worrying over; even fearful for its life and health. I fear that it’s died, and I’ve been missing the signs that might have alerted me earlier. I try hard to find a sign of its life, and am aware that in my eagerness I might mistake my own life signs as its own, and feel falsely reassured. I’m anxious about its size, thinking it needs to be bigger for the stage of pregnancy I’m in.

So, maybe that’s about fear that the growing taking place inside of me is not viable? Perhaps fearing it’s not big enough to cope with the kinds of stressors that arise between Gary and me.

I feel a little anxious when I don’t really have much to write about. I guess that’s another side effect if I’m opting out of dramas, because if I’m not experiencing a drama, I don’t really have much to write. I went out with Darlene and we had a friendly conversation, much more in keeping with the ideal of mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relating. So there’s nothing to write about that. So it does leave me oddly at loose ends.

That’s what I meant about being alone earlier. Alone without the drama.

It does seem that another indication about things changing is there is less of the physical need to write. I guess I mean visceral when I say ‘physical’.

It’s as if there is some pure viability glowing within each person, and events in life, including it’s own neurological structure and internal communications cause that vitality to be obscured. Obscured by trips that It had no choice but to accept when immature, Further obscured when some of those trips seem to be confirmed as Truth. Mistaken ideas being compounded, and compounded, the hole deeper and deeper, Truth being more and more obscured, that is, the ability to discern the Consciousness that is experiencing all this. Or witnessing it being experienced.

I don’t know.

Something Joy was talking about put me on to that. Something in the story I’ve been getting over the past several weeks about a break-up she’s been going through. The idea that for them a misunderstanding has been dug deeper and deeper by other misunderstandings born of fear and each person exciting even more the other person’s fear. To me I had an image of a true bond underneath it all, but obscured by all these dug-in-deeper misunderstandings, and fear masquerading as anger and control. That seemed analogous to the light of Life inside; that sometimes the way back is strewn with layers and layers of misunderstandings that have to be unknotted—and most people are so kinked up that the conditions for being able to unravel a knot just aren’t present. There certainly is a lot to convince us that we ARE our dramas.

More thoughts on connection vs separation

4/18/07
1406, Wed; Gary’s & my 15th anniversary

Monica was over for a few hours this morning. That was nice to spend time with her. I don’t feel as anxious today about the solitude time lost.

Several dreams last night:

First:

In some sort of math class—geometry. Figuring out a concept of “the egan” which is the distance between the apex of a triangle at a right angle to its base. Something about its square equal to the length of the sides. I’m having trouble with this concept & with holding it firmly in my mind.
I keep getting muddled. Then I’m told I have books that are late for the library—“unforgiveably” & I’m afraid I may have my borrowing privileges revoked. Then awaken

Second:

Mash potato dinner—it’s supposed to be topped, Kate is coming with Vincent & going to the park first. She’s bringing the potatoes—I’ve given her the recipe but forgot to ask her to double it.
So there’s not so much as I’d like, & it sort of changes the meal, but its ok—I’m serving in the garage & Kate, Vincent & another girlfriend are in the kitchen. I’m looking for teriaki sauce for the potatoes; can’t find it, so settle for soy sauce. My grandmother is there and she’s Kate’s grandmother too. Kathy hugs her in a very dignified & affectionate way. I tell someone that she is the grandmother of both Kate and me.

Third:

This one is the longest with the most coherent narrative. I’m travelling alone, for pleasure, with Darlene. I think she may be driving, or maybe we’re on a train, or maybe there are elements of both. We’re taking her home, and making a pleasure trip out of it by seeing some interesting things on the way. There are several unique towns we pass through and stop. We walk through bed and breakfast places that have spiral staircases and each level is really beautifully and unusually finished. Bright colors and unique art. Throughout is the feeling of warmth toward

Darlene, pleasure in her company, along with the awareness that it’s remarkable that I would be feeling that way. There’s the notion that once she gets home it will be too late for me to drive home, and I will probably spend the night there and it will be ok.

4/19/07
1215

I did dream last night. I’m ashamed to say that I woke distinctly once and ignored the call to write; with a fully coherent dream in my head. And now it’s gone. The dream I woke up with today for some reason I’m reluctant to write down. I feel some sort of brake inside. It would be ok with me if that dream had sunk out of sight too.

It wasn’t on the face a bad dream.

I was at a concert. There seemed to be elements of the classic arena rock concert, but also some sort of classical, but with a classic rock concert audience. I can no longer identify who I was with. Curiously, I have a hint of the ‘signature’ of this group; a type of sesnation inside that I associate with that group—actually it may have been the mountaineering group, Blair, Rich, etc. Gary was probably there too. OK, I was able to identify this group by their ‘signature’/smell—it really is like an experience of smell. So I think it’s intermission and there might be some sort of buffet food service. I seem to have that ‘scent’ of a long food-laden table. Here I encounter a man that I’m very attracted to. He’s really good looking. (In some sense I associate him with the Jerry group I met the night I had taken my comprehensive exam for physical therapy.) In another sense he reminds me of a husband of a friend of mine. There is a sense about forbidden fruit to him, regardless, and I’m delighted when he starts joking with me. And there’s the feeling of ‘I shouldn’t, but I want’ as we walk through this auditorium with his arm around me. We’re joking as we walk. I feel sexual in his proximity. He says something to me; something about the gist of wishing he could say the right thing to turn me on (or maybe make me love him, I’m not sure.) I lean my head on his shoulder and whisper in his ear that he already has done it. And I keep my head on his shoulder. I can feel his joy. But there is still the feeling that it’s risky for us to have our arms around each other. We separate in the crowd, and I think return to our own groups. I have a sense of seeking him, though…maybe that was later.

Jerry was an interesting short story in my life. I’ll be getting to it soon in my transcriptions.

So it’s a little while later; a little less than an hour before the boys get home.

I feel a little infected with the restless spirit I had when writing back in the early summer after college graduation. I think I probably had reproductive hormones in overdrive that manifested as feelings of loneliness, restlessness. And I turned to reminiscing about romantic encounters I’d had before with important people like Jeff.

It seems it both satisfied, and sharpened the restlessness. Perhaps my dream last night was speaking to this.

It’s just kind of interesting, to not be having inside a sense of striving toward Something. That’s been the motivating energy behind all this writing. All of my diary-keeping years. Writing has been filling a yearning; and I think it’s a yearning to understand, and I had that yearning because I lacked that sense of my place in the world. I guess that’s what I mean by “understanding”. A sort of sense of my base, my launch point for my actions in the world.

So I saw Sharon last night. She confirmed that she believed my fear last week that I’d mess up this new way of being in the world was my way of experiencing the fear of going further into this Consciousness of the world. I can sense a ghost of it as I write, and I think I do have an idea of what it means. Like the first experience of being picked up and moved in a certain direction may activate fear and an attempt to pull back.

There are things she said that I treated as old new, and now I’m suspicious that that feeling of knowing already may have been used as an attempt to ‘not hear’. We discussed the concept of experiencing the polarity of longing for closeness and longing for separateness in only the pole of wanting closenesses. So in being unable to experience my desire for separateness I was only aware of longing for connection.

I had a desire for separateness from my parents that I didn’t recognize. I wanted so much what would have made me feel connected to them, but since it wasn’t available, I HAD to move away, but that didn’t stop me for longing for the things that would have brought connected feelings—the ability to help my insides feel peaceful, and to limit the spread of the pain when my insides weren’t peaceful.)

So, I’m still not quite sure of the significance of the fact that I
a) did not have from my parents the things I would have needed to feel connected toward them; including an ability to reconnect when alienation did occur
b) this often resulted in pain
c) I had to remove myself from my parents to an emotional distance because it wasn’t safe to move closer in the absence of the ability to connect and reconnect
d) I still longed for the things that would enable connectedness with my parents
e) So I experienced the longing part of the polarity, not the separateness part, even though on some level I’d desired separation; for my own emotional safety. I didn’t WANT to have to need separation.

So back again to missing the Presence of something that should have been there and I had had every right to expect. And, it is significant in the overall picture that I needed separation

Not ready to give up solitude

4/17/07 1224

OK, I learned something. I was feeling expansive last week and felt I’d be up to social things, reaching out to people. I called Monica and suggested getting together Wed; Kathy and I are going to be walking Monday afternoons together. My friend Eileen is coming for lunch Fri. Now I realize that I have a feeling of deprivation and depletion; so perhaps that tells me I’m not ready to give up solitude.
Not quite ready to be much of a community-contributor-to yet. (and always the unease—will this feeling of not being ready go on forever? I guess that may play to a belief of “not deserving”—the feeling that I don’t deserve to be carried by the community—someone else doing volunteer jobs because I’m not participating. A part of me says that when I am fully replenished I’ll be a more effective contributor; another part fears that I’ll never feel replenished. That I’ll always be relying on other people to take up the slack for me…and how very wrong it would be for me to expect that. Why should I expect that someone carry the slack for me? Who do I think I am to deserve that.

So there’s something about a feeling of not deserving I think that’s still a piece to work with Sharon. I’m also eager to know what it was that she said was a powerful insight at the end of our last meeting.

Dreams:

1) I’m with people and there’s something about G.W. Pres
There is me remonstrating against him, it’s like for some reason I have a chance to say this stuff to his face. I go over several times telling him that he’s responsible for the deaths of all these people. I want to say Fuck you and I’m wondering if there are laws on the books against that. Now there’s something about a car and rat poison being inside—or maybe just rats. They aren’t repulsive; I see diagrams of their teeth, but its as if it’s snake teeth I’m looking at—a diagram. (like the hinged jaws completely open, looking down on them)
Something about returning.

Later:
I’m at work at VNA. I’m in the atrium. I’m asked if I will go see a pt & maybe take him into my house to kind of foster him. However, there’s some sort of issue about his behavior.
At work they have a party for me. I have lots of gifts. There are two men, one after the other, that as part of the party offer themselves to me sexually. Not at the same time. Each one I kiss, openly & feel very sexual. I have a pt. To see, & so I’m trying to gather up my gifts so I don’t have to make too many trips to the car. I decide to drive the car closer to the building—its late & there are more parking spaces closer in. I see out a window one of the men. Even though I KNOW it was just for my party that we were close I feel a pang as I see him kiss a woman.
I’ve been asked if I would agree to take a pt. To live in my home—a young man with brain and spinal injuries. I agree to it, thinking only of the extra $$. There is some hint that this guy has some major behavior problems. I drive a long way to the facility he’s kept in, and SNF with some rehab.
A woman & man nurse introduces me to him. He’s one of the men I kissed at my party. That’s when I start getting it that I may have agreed to something I can’t really do—care for this man in my home. I evaluate him in the w/c with a woman Dr & a male RN with me. He has some mov’t but very little strength. During the eval I’m realizing I’m going to go back on my saying I’ll take him home to live with us. I start to see the details of what it would mean to have him in our home with 2 small kids—while I’m working–& how he would consume our family time & my alone time. I’m alone with him & settle him for bed, but then he gets up & goes over to the door & locks me in with him. (So he can walk, but looks as if he may fall any moment.)
I yell for help & another nurse opens the door. I tell her to please get the nurse & Dr: we settle the guy back to bed & I explain to them that I’m someone who hears & idea & it sounds possible & its only later the details of what such a commitment means comes to me—this was the case. I realized this guy’s care would consume more family time & my alone time than I was willing to give. So I wasn’t going to do it. For a while they asked if there were ways I could MAKE it work. I said no. They asked where he should go. I said to a SNF with rehav, probably eventually to long term care.
I feel their disappointment. I’d been about to give them relief from a problem in taking him. I go out to the nursing station to write up my evaluation & wash my hands there. There are 2 faucets to choose from in the same sink—and it’s awkward because the one closest to me doesn’t have the soap close the one farthest one has the soap but there’s something else wrong with it that would make it more appropriate to use the closer one.

Something I just found in my June 1978 diary:
“1) Afraid of finding I’ve been living a lie with Janet—just bullshitting when talking about closeness and love. I’m afraid of finding I don’t love her, because she’s so lovable its like I’m a villain and bad person not to. (but, that’s also just fear of appearances—how I appear to other people) I fear being accused of “having lied all this time” (I’m hearing it the way she’d be telling it to other people. I fear the person I’d become to other people when she’d tell them that. Is that because MY reality of myself and the reality others have of me is so undistinguished—another form of Piagetian ego-centrism. So I really think I AM what others think of me?”

This is interesting. I suppose this was in a time where I’d look to others to define who I was, in a sense, or how to be a young adult in the late 1970’s. Get a paradigm of what’s expected. Of me. I looked at others to mirror me back to me, I think. And I was afraid sometimes of what I’d see. And I guess that’s because of a confusion—or CAUSED the confusion: my own identity as distinguished from what others THINK my identity is. So if someone said something about me, as I feared Jan might, to others, I feared I’d see that liar and pitiful jealous person looking back at me and I’d be stuck with that identity, because if I protest, then that’s PROVING I’m that identity, but I can’t live with it silently either.

It is interesting though that there’s sort of a similarity with the feelings I had toward Darlene—the fear of what they meant I was, and the fear that my identity in other people’s minds would become MY identity.

Maybe because I’m projecting the feelings of myself out on other people. Or maybe because I think that they’ll think is actually similar to the reality I see myself as. I have this image of myself as a miserable whimpering child, and I’m afraid others will see an image similar to that, and it’ll confirm my being that reality because when I look I’ll see it in their faces, mirrored back at me. And I’ll believe that feedback image.
I see that part of me was assuming that those qualities in me were loathsome in some way—or I had an image of what every one else would judge as loathsome. So in a way, there was a part of me that agreed that something was loathsome and worthy of being judged loathsome. Plus I assumed how other people would judge, period.

It makes me wonder why I’d start from the premise that I was coming from the place that was worthy of harsh judgment; I suppose another version of “undeserving” If I have an underlying belief that I’m undeserving, I suppose questioning my every motive and feeling would come natural, as would accusing myself of things I’d thought were “bad”. It’s good to read it in my old diary because I can see where this issue of how I view myself with how I believe people view me, and where that boundary is. As I’ve grown older I’ve left many definitions that I’d imagined people had had of me behind.

“And now I keep fearing having these “comeuppances” where I’ll find out all these horrible things about myself and won’t be able to defend myself because they’re true. Just like the people in those books. The idea of someone’s image of me coinciding with my image of me creates a shock-like pain inside me. And I fear the shock.)”

It seems it would be good to share this with Sharon.

Maybe that’s what’s happening, is that I’m dealing with my feeling undeserving of living from this Place. And that the whole undeserving issue has been a source of loss in relationships. Perhaps it surfaces in response to the prospect of being able to live my life from This Place.

The me-generated life vs the Me-generated life

4/16/07
1025 Mon

stoned today; stoned yesterday

Last Night’s Dream:

I’m visiting in a house with only 4 bathrooms & only 2 are working—Each time I go to one its occupied. I’m frustrated that they’re doing repairs NOW in a house full of guests. One of the guys is a friend of Helena’s, & I’m feeling attracted to him and it seems to be mutual. We laugh a lot & try to find ways to be together. In a car he puts his arm around me & I rest my head on his shoulder. He reminds me of Dwayne L from our music classes. There’s someone in the household who seems disapproving.

We’re trying to get somewhere.

I woke and wrote that a little after 2 am. I had another dream before waking up which I didn’t write down because I was also getting the boys up. It seemed fairly straightforward to me and I didn’t think I’d forget it. And I realize that that one required a decision to lose. I can feel that point where I refused to go over it in my mind to keep it intact. I hardly noticed when I did it, but I see it now.

It had to do with moving.
I see a room which is like an apartment, and I see a bed in it with a red spread. In some ways this reminds me of a hospital room. I am in the process of leaving it and moving my stuff somewhere else, and the feeling is consistent with needing to move on from the room. My father comes to the door; the sense is that he is one of the people helping me move. There are times I can see myself walking in the hall, down a looooong hall, which is like looking down the hall of a motel.

I am feeling a little anxious today because I feel less open to being and feeling warm with Darlene. Still, I felt no doubts about Gary asking her the favor of us using the beach house, and babysitting the boys. Perhaps this sense of pulling back is due only to my disappointment that she’s busy this week end and can’t take the boys. I had been visualizing Gary and I alone together for the first time I think since Connor was born. Oh, with the exception of when we were moving—which hardly counts as intimacy. I had hopes that there would be ample uninterrupted time that would be a good base from which to move forward in our marriage.

Is it a decision that separates me from my sense of connection to the Greater Me. I choose living There, and it seems possible I may need to make myself aware every moment that I have a choice. And perhaps this is a parallel with Scott, when Sharon suggested doing for Scott what I would have wanted done for me.

Maybe I’m feeling less generous today because I’m a little depleted from a 3 day weekend with kids; often not harmonious. I wonder if there is a barometer that sensitive in me that can read fluctuations of my energy level.

To get back to Scott, it seems it’s a moment by moment choice to stay centered, Moment by moment I need to remind myself to continue choosing. I need to be choosing moment by moment to live from Me. Because I feel beset with doubts about my ability to really change my pattern by staying in Me. Maybe this is also part of what Sharon meant when she said that often ‘at this point’ people want to leave therapy, or they have dreams of death. And that it may be fear holding us back. I think when I asked Sharon about leaving I did have a sense that maybe I could take over from Here, being that I’ve already learned what I came to learn. Perhaps that was the first pangs of the older world pulling me back. Maybe the dulling of the pleasure of knowing This has to do with a raising up of the intensity of the fear. I’ve also seen myself objectify This, as in conceiving of it as a rabbit’s foot, or a device to make me feel better in the me-generated life. There’s a sort of conflict about the me-generated life vs the Me-generated life. One containing the other, but acting outside of the confines of the me-generated life—by being able to look at my responses in the me-generated life, and trace them back to beliefs they might be based on, and the decision to believe. In my Witness self be able to ask my me-generated self if I want to renew my decision or not. It’s important to me that I write about this other Self in capital letters. It is a Place that commands my involuntary respect. I think I’m getting an idea of the possibilities between living totally from within that Place, or living in my me-generated world, but while suckling from this Place.

I wonder what I (I almost said was) am afraid of. Maybe it’s a fear of being totally absorbed.

What was it Sharon and I said at the end of our session when it occurred to me that where I thought I may have been longing for closeness and suffering because I didn’t get it in the context I was raised on the level I craved, but there was a possibility that I had disowned the need for separation. Sharon suggested that that was a ‘sophisticated’ thought and I could sit with it for a while. Now it seems there was another part to that and I don’t remember. Another piece to that revelation. I guess I need to ask more about this.

1457

Last 20 minutes or so home alone. I’m not sure how to feel about today, meaning whether it counts as an expenditure or not. I spent the morning getting ready, mainly, doing a little news-checking and some clean-up. Then I went into st. Johns to run some errands—mail a couple packages, pick up some material at the library, visit a while with Don, and then go for a walk with Kathy. So I wasn’t home with the day stretching before me, and ‘traditionally’ that has counted as a ‘loss’ of a special day; the ideal being 5 days in a row with no obligations or commitments to fill. I have an element of that kind of feeling, but it may be from force of habit.

How to change my experience of my 5 year old

4/15/07

Feeling irritation this morning. I feel uneasy about how this fits in with this ‘new’ processing, or new way of being. Because I still feel exquisitely irritated by Scott, his chattering, his being in the way, his repeating the same things over and over again. I’m distressed by my way of non-responding to him which is basically to give him what I thinks he wants, without enthusiasm in hopes that he’ll go away and quit bugging me. The interruptions, and then mini-meltdowns when I tell him he has to wait his turn. It’s just his 5 year old kidness that gets to me. He’s more of a whack-a-mole type of kidness than Connor was, where you respond to one aspect of irritating kidness and it pops up in another. Almost immediately. It makes me feel wild, and then I worry about what effect that my attitude toward him has on him. I perceive him as a pest, and I’m afraid it shows. So how can I create a ‘different experience’, a more pleasurable experience. Now Gary’s needling me about the condition of the refrigerator and I’m reacting to the digs. So I can feel unpleasant emotions engage,

I’ve been reducing the celexa, and I wonder if maybe that has something to do with my increase in irritability. Because it’s been harder these last couple days, especially with Scott, to not identify tightly with my reactions; harder to find the space between Me and my reactions, and stay there.

Dream:

Some sort of hitch hiking dream. I don’t know if the boys were with me or not; sometimes I had a sense as if they were there—the ‘signature’ context of them, but I’m not sure if I actually “saw” them. The couple who picked us up were very religious. It was a cream-colored large car, like a cadillac or buick. I think I was in the back seat with the woman, and someone like my sister or maybe my cousin Janet were with me. This woman had that kind of evangelical glow about her, like a couple did that I met when treating a lady they were caring for. This couple kept talking to me about how they had “saved” various people. This woman was sort of like that. We arrived at their ‘church’. It was an odd service, with lots of young people dancing, but I had the feeling it wasn’t really in the fervent religious spirit these older people had. Then there’s stuff about needing to go to the bathroom and then Scott was with me, and I wanted him to go into the women’s room and had some repulsion that he’d gone into the men’s. Then I’m wanting him to wash his hands. I’m leaving with some friends, Rebecca and her 4 children among them. I invite them over and she says no thanks. As we part I call back something to tease her and she doesn’t laugh. By way of an explanation I tell the people I’m with that I don’t blame her for not laughing; she must be really exhausted with 4 kids.

Later—did some tribute work-vacuumed, cleaned out the refrigerator at Gary’s needled request. He took Scott with him to Connor’s practice, so I have some peace here.

I wonder at my impatience with Scott. I wonder how much hands-on attention he’d need to stay out of trouble. It occurs to me that what’s true is that I haven’t been willing to do what it takes to keep him out of trouble. If I’m conversing with him, or letting him ‘help’ me in the kitchen, at least he’s not going and writing on the walls or getting into Gary’s tools, or any of the other things I keep stopping him at. I think he needs FAR more than I’ve been willing to give. He needs to be nearly continuously engaged, or he goes and gets into something he shouldn’t. I suppose the behavior I’m seeing is a result of my having chosen to not engage him at that level. Again I see my pattern of wanting to be left alone and not being bothered with 5 year old things. I am just going to have to include him more. I have a feeling he may feel less of an impulse to bait Connor if I engaged him more than as just a pest. So here’s a place where I need to be aware of a decision on a deeper level. I’ve been responding to Scott as a pest. This morning as I sat in the chair Scott wanted to come sit with me. He’d already been bugging me in the kitchen, getting in the way, talking when I’m trying to talk to Gary or hear something on the radio. I was thinking to myself about the experience of him and wondering how I could experience this positively. I realize, it’s normal to be irritated with irritating behavior. I’m not trying to change the experience of irritation, but I need to change the preconditions that give rise to the irritating behavior. That will change my “experience” of Scott’s behavior.

OK, so then what about my ‘experience’ of reluctance to cut short something I’m interested in in order to give him the presence he needs. Well, let’s see, that experience would change if I changed it’s preconditions. Which is a belief I have that it’s important for me to catch every nuance on the news so I understand the subtleties of a situation. And part of that is driven by the desire to prove myself to my dad. To have the knowledge I’d need to out-argue him. Interesting that feeling of intensity of competitiveness. Even to this day when it’s not important to me to change his world view I still want to ‘best’ him when we talk about these things. I feel competitive enough that it makes me anxious if I miss something on the news, so anything that causes me to miss something on the news aggravates me.

I think, “it doesn’t matter. I can check it later.” Then a voice says, “But I might forget, or not have the same interest later as I do now.” And the voice would say, “Then it wasn’t that important.” And that brings me to the place of who prevails. There’s a part of me that when it wants something, it wants it NOW, and the idea that in the future I might not want it dishonors this person in the past who DID. I feel like I’m abandoning that part, leaving her behind. The part of me that’s hungry for a piece of information, and has a hole shaped for that information, and it’s never filled, eventually overlooked if not tended to immediately, and in a way will eternally remain empty. Eternal suffering, even if the larger organism feels full or full-ish. OK, so resenting Scott’s interruptions and figuring out how to change that experience of Scott to a more enjoyable one brings me to the decisions that maintain his behavior—mine, that is—and then where they come from—first a competitiveness, then an anxiety, then a part that doesn’t want that anxious part overlooked and abandoned. And feels that moving on from a want-generated-anxiety is leaving something behind to die. Isn’t that weird—I’ve just never looked at it this closely before. A ‘solution’ comes to miind, which is to remember and come back to it later, but that generates anxiety that maybe I won’t remember to do that. Or adding it to my list makes my list longer and I feel anxious about having something else to remember. So it seems to start with anxiety.

I think my father and I may be symbols to each other of what seems like a split that is very old: liberalism vs conservatism. I think that Bill O’Reilly has cast himself as the champion of conservative and traditional middle American values, and liberalism is the windmill he’s tilting at. Not really an unbiased remark. Each side says, “I know I’m right” and feels that if it’s opponent is beaten in a war of words, then it wins. For a lot of my life I was afraid my father was right. That the orientation and context framework that he comes from, in which a profession of belief in God along with church-going as part of the trappings, and patriotism being a large part, that that orientation is objectively “right” and moving away from it is “wrong”. My dad could beat me in an argument every time. So that’s why I want to inform myself.

Do I really need to defend myself? Probably not, but what about the part of me that thinks it does? It needs to be completely satisfied before I move away from self-defence, competitiveness.

I think I’ll just sit with that for a while and continue a little transcribing.

How does this ‘New World’ work?

4/13/07 1602

All quiet downstairs, but then I’m not too eager to go down and look. I’m just pleased about the quiet, enough to take my chances on what I’m going to find when I check out the hot tub and the downstairs. Connor’s got a friend over. Rebecca was here with her 4, but it didn’t turn out real well for us. Scott and Mason began fighting, this time sooner than they usually do.

I feel worn out. It’s true that I got to bed late last night, almost 1 am, but I slept til 8:30. I’m also on a period, after a cycle that was only 13 days long. So looks like weird things are starting to happen.

I can’t tell if I’ve managed to stay in touch with my Self. It was interesting to consider that this fear about losing this newfound place of comfort and ease may have been a masquerade for pulling back in fear from this new place.

What’s interesting is I’m in a sort of weird in-between. I’m not so much on the prowl for inspiration. The stuff I read in hopes of ‘ah-ha’ moments don’t have the same draw; that is I’m not as hungry for them. The reason is that those ah ha moments were glimpses of what I think were hand-holds to get me up to this point. I have a clearer picture, and not just a glimpse now. I’ve climbed, I think, those rungs of the ladder. Finding those glimpses made me feel full. But the glimpses were hints at what I think has been revealed. So I don’t seek those books with the same appetite. So there’s a little emptiness because I don’t hunger for those, because they are a bit redundant now.

Later

Sigh. I think I make a mistake about trying to ‘use’ this ‘new’ perspective as a means to an end. I have a tendency to veer off into that territory. So I feel troubled if I don’t –if I still have troubling emotions, like my sharp impatience with Scott today. I guess I never really lost sight—for long anyway—of my Observing Witness, but I was probably on a continuum closer to lapses of awareness and just being in the context. More tightly identified with my internal emotions. And noticing they tended toward unpleasant. I’m just thinking I probably had a half expectation that moving into this realm of more awareness of my self from my Self, and also more awareness of my self OF my Self—I’d had an expectation that I would feel happy all the time.

I guess I’m busy learning if this IS indeed a new world; and I’m exploring it’s outlines and interior. I’m asking questions: What does this new world mean in terms of my daily emotions? Of my behavior toward my children? Of my reactions to my children? To Gary? Should I be discouraged if I’m irritated, and irritable, with my kids? Or sink into the context of fight again? If I forget my moments where I can choose? That’s interesting, because its like I forgot that today, the whole notion of CHOICE. I don’t think I’ve even thought the word today. That’s really been kind of key in my musings and ‘discoveries’ over the past weeks, and today I didn’t even remember it, or really pause to consider what my choices were in any given situations. I forgot about the micro-choices that add up to the more complicated ones: complicated by the little choices and their consequences. I guess I just didn’t really have my awareness about me in my moments in life—I mean the smaller ‘structures’ or units of being that make up my day, moment by moment.

I realize I keep acting as if this new way of thinking is a sort of magic charm, a talisman so I can never be unhappy again. I think of it in a ‘step on a crack/break your mother’s back’ way. Superstition. What comes will be taken away, especially if I want what comes. The more I do want it, the more likely it will be taken. That’s an anxiety shut down place: I felt something inside me shrink to a small, dense point at the conception of wanting and getting, and wanting badly and getting.

I’ve felt less in touch with my own generosity today. I think that’s troubled me too. So I felt the hard edge of my irritation with Scott more sharply. I just didn’t FEEL generous when it came down to it.

4/14/07
822

Dream:

I’m at some sort of school. There is a guy who works at the school, or actually, maybe this is a store. My car is in the far side of the parking lot, and its an old car, one I had when I graduated from high school and started college. There is a man who sort of oversees the grounds, maybe he’s a custodian. It seems I might have some trouble with my car, and I approach this man for help. It is a hot day. At some point he touches me in a way that I’m not sure is appropriate or not. It’s in reference to the heat, I think, maybe he’s telling me I’m over-dressed. It seems like there is some atmosphere of concern about heat stroke. Maybe he’s telling me I need to put on other clothes, because I THINK I remember, or maybe it was in the dream that I remembered later, when I was telling someone, that he placed his finger on the zipper of my jeans and then moved his finger up toward the snap. Or, maybe he put his finger on the inseam of my pants, and ran it up to my crotch. It seemed like it was in a quasi-reasonable context and I wasn’t sure how to take this. I went to the store manager to see if I could get clarification, and then regretted it when I saw she was going to take disciplinary action. I’d hoped, I guess, that she’d just advise me on how to interpret it and then I’d know how to respond. But instead it looked like this guy was going to be fired and I felt responsible. Then there’s a part where either Derrick, the contractor we had joins the dream in addition to the custodian, or the custodian becomes him. And there’s a sense of latent attraction with him, but I’m dismissing it because he seems too old. Then I remember that he is only a little older than me. When I realize this then all at once it becomes a possibility; it’s almost like he, Gary, and I are a trio. Although it hasn’t really been acknowledged among us that “Derrick” (the same guy as the custodian, or someone else?) has a similar status to Gary’s. We’re on some sort of family trip where my parents are there, and I’m trying to set up some sort of cooking area, and people all around me are making demands—laying their fights (the kids) at my feet to intervene, my mom wanting to know something about something we might need later in the future. And a little attention between Gary and Derrick, and me feeling a little overwhelemed by the needs and anxieties of people around me.

I put the notebook by the bed last night. I didn’t use it. The few times I did surface toward awakening I was reluctant to surface further to write.

More musings on this –I don’t even know what to call it; I say, “New World” but that doesn’t feel quite right. New Person?

I’m wondering if this is a path that’s been trodden before, others having walked step by step to the awareness of themSelves. If this is like the stages of normal human development, though many remain asleep to it. I want to ask Sharon about that.
Behind everything I think and do, there is a Self that witnesses it. Hiding in plain sight. SomeOne I am waking up to, from years and years of calls. I am just waking up to this.

There was a time I wouldn’t have thought this Self was significant, even if I had been more awake to it. I’ve been vaguely aware of It, but I’ve been asleep. The thought of being able to generate action from There, as opposed to from within my conTENT is the potential I sense for a much more effective and happy life. My con-TENT was the hand I drew. I was born with the nervous system I had and the parents I had, and the environment/culture I had. My life’s central theme was of loss and suffering of some kind. So I played it out in my experience of things. But now I see there is a larger Me who is bigger than the dramas that go with my mind and nervous system. I want to have suffering be less a part of my experience. Not central, anyway.

I was feeling aware that part of me views This as a means to the end of feeling good all the time, the ability to protect myself from encroachments. In other words use This as a tool. I have a feeling it doesn’t work that way. Things just don’t work that way.

I think one thing I’m defending against is void. One thing my writing did for me, as well as help me to get to Here, was to fill time that otherwise would have been empty. I wrote a little about this prospect yesterday. There is a part inside of me that demands a certain ‘presence’. There’s a part of me that recoils against emptiness and tries to defend myself. From it, from boredom. I feel uneasy when faced with nothing. Smoking pot has augmented that empty spot. I guess that’s why I like it because of the euphoria my empty spots are filled with. I like that, and I like the insights that have come from it.

I guess it really did serve as a ‘dulling the pain’ function. To get through some difficult things, like when I’d nearly always get stoned before running races, back when I did that. I liked to do it stoned and part of it had to do with the way the euphoria enhanced the pleasure I could take in from feeling the strength of my body, and it also served as a lubricant so that the tedium wouldn’t discourage me. I get an image of a bubble in between my ‘cells’, billowing out and firm enough to lean on.

This has been part of my ongoing discussion with myself about the use of drugs and if it’s appropriate within this New Framework.

So why am I reluctant to face the empty space?

I’ve gained weight and my clothes are beginning to fit me more snugly. I really like being slender. So I’m uneasy about my feelings about gaining weight. I’m reluctant to go off the wellbutrin because I’m afraid I’ll gain weight. I think there’s a part of me that feels that having desires based on one’s appearance is unworthy. Selfish. And another self wonders how this fits in with this different Atmosphere.

Closeness vs fusion

4/11/07 Thu 957

I talked with Sharon last night about my fears of doing something to wreck this…new life; new way of living.

Part of me sees this new stage as a gift and I prize it; it’s/It’s a Source of pleasure for me. (I worry about the wanting of pleasure, that in a way –here’s another way of experiencing it: The sensation of Context in being in that Place is one of quiet pleasure. I suppose it’s freedom, or it’s the absence of the cares that are a part and parcel of living at the level of apparency. It’s a relief to not need to be subject to the contents of the feelings and filters that produce them that were so often negative. If I’m not weighted down by the stuff that would weigh me down in an apparency level, then I am unpreoccupied with it. I can see how I was carrying a heavy load while in the world of apparency. I can also sense what it would feel like inside in a context of picking it back up, so I can ask myself when I start going through the motions of picking it back up if I really want to do it.

I choose This. I’m dealing with fears that It will go away, that it/It can’t be relied upon, it will disappear along with all kinds of accesses within myself I haven’t had before. It will be taken from me as punishment for being proud I’ve gotten here, just inside the door. I’ll have to give up smoking pot to experience It. But really, all This is really about is being more alive in my world, and doing the things that bring aliveness in—it’s about being more alive in the world by Knowing I have choices, and I have the ability to wield that skill—I can make a choice. And I can make it outside of the promptings of the world of apparency.

When I’ve had pleasure I’ve been afraid of it going away. Feeling I don’t deserve it, I guess…which is interesting since feeling undeserving has come up before with Sharon. I suppose the feeling of undeserving has manifested as feeling badly about imposing, needing to be invited to partake of something or in something so that I’m very sure that I won’t be rejected by asking first. And there was that element in the dream about the sleeping bags. About wanting a choice spot in the middle but feeling unworthy to ask—not entitled, I guess is what I meant. Since I was unprepared. I’m looking for release. I go to the regular place that would meet my needs—the toilet—maybe traditional cultural religious Christian practice? And find it repulsive and full of shit, with more shit being added to it by this huge bum who’s taken over the…Church? So I go outside the ‘church’ to ‘find release’. And I’m safer than I think. I’m not wearing shoes. I couldn’t wait to get them, I had to go so bad. I had been in too much of a hurry to grab them, and now I was in too much of a hurry to go back for them. That reminds me of my emotional states in the world of apparency. I’m in too big a hurry to discharge them to consider these emotions because I feel such an urgency for their release. Perhaps that’s what this dream was talking about. I couldn’t do it—find outlet, I guess. I couldn’t find outlet in the Church/toilet. I couldn’t receive what was being added to, what was sort of being given to me. Yeah, the man behind the curtain seemed pretty indifferent to me, and he was faceless. He did have a big, fat, ass, though. So my outlet was outdoors, raised up on a steep scree slope, on the verge of not being appropriate, the possibility of being seen. Not-seen: appropriate/Seen-inappropriate. Interesting, so it is the presence of others that would make peeing inappropriate. My solution is to go before they get to me. So just barely sqeaking in under the banner of “appropriate”. I need to get down to the trail to be able to walk back to the cabin set-up. I can’t do it safely by walking around from the level I’m standing, I have to descend and go back to get my shoes. The bed-position issue still hasn’t been resolved.

I think I fear that the offering for me to share their bed is coming from “Sacrifice”. That’s why I’m not comfortable receiving it, because if it’s coming from Sacrifice, then from Abundance, then I truly am putting them out, and imagine I feel vibes of condemnation from them for having been unprepared. That is sort of like the trip to Nepal.

I suppose one thing the dream can be telling me is –for some reason I had an image that seemed to speak to the issue of backlash. That the dream was telling me to expect some, I guess…but I wish I had a clearer view of the connection—where the idea of expecting backlash came from. I had been talking about the women from the Nepal trip telling me that there was enough bedding for all of us when I’d forgotten mine and I was afraid that it had come from a context of sacrifice, because the context I’d had all along with them was of somehow not being aligned with them, or being mis-aligned. So where does the collective image of “them” become a warning about expecting backlash? I don’t know. I guess I’ll move on. Another thing the dream could be telling me about is my fear that I’m unprepared and vulnerable. That I don’t have everything I need with me as I go through this Door (of choice).

Sharon said that often at this stage there are images of death, or people want to stop counseling, in dreams. She described it as the first time a body of water swells, and lifts you and propels you forward. It’s a pleasurable sensation, but also kind of scary to feel a moving forward that is not directly controlled by the me of the world of apparency.

So perhaps those are what the first 2 dreams are about is feeling unprepared and a little afraid as I witness myself going through this door. I’d interpreted that as fears that I was going to get pushed back out of the door and have it shut in my face, or that I was in, but it really wasn’t going to go anywhere—another dead end. That’s how I’d been interpreting those fears: Sharon in turn interprets that interpretation as a pulling back away from this door. That it’s my mind coming up with a ‘reason’ to not go forward. I suppose if I fear falling victim to having this Place abandoning me, that it has the same results as if I were to pull back of my own accord. That I’ve chosen against It. So perhaps I’m generating a situation where I ‘lose’ this and go back to my world of loss. Perhaps I’m doing it not because I’m wanting to continue with this, but because I don’t want to continue with this.

I’m not really conscious of feeling fearful about going this direction, but perhaps this is what my dreams are telling me. I’m not afraid of losing this, I’m afraid of gaining it. But it would appear to me as if it had been ‘taken away’.

Hmmm.

Because of something else Sharon and I came to. It was that I had had to stay back away from my folks—that while I thought I was longing for closeness, I was actually choosing to stay a little distant, because my parents were people that I couldn’t let myself get too close to. So it wasn’t just them, it was me as well, choosing distance from them…That I was manifesting their disowned desire for closeness, and THEY were manifesting my disowned desire for separation?

It seems like a strange and complicated puzzle—if I’m manifesting closeness-hunger, it’s on account of having disowned a need to be separate?

I talked to Sharon about a fusion of entities at their core, with the paradox that the fusion comes about not through attraction, but on an account of two opposing forces whose fusion forms the matter and psyche we know of. At it’s core held together by opposition. I asked Sharon about what it would be like if this fusion could be based on a different force and she suggested that it isn’t a fusion, it’s a being in proximity, in relationship, but not fused.

When I got this understanding that I had not gotten too close to my parents as a way to defend myself, I had the flash about the paradox of thinking I wanted closeness, and suffering because I wanted closeness, when actually I maintained distance…perhaps for fear that I would be swallowed by them or…fused. Perhaps that’s the universal fear, that closeness means claustrophobic fusion, separation means loss. Perhaps this is what these images are showing me.

Perhaps the state of wanting closeness and separateness at the same time is intolerable and so people seem to slip into a mode and disown the other.

I can’t remember verbatim what I said, to have Sharon respond, “That’s a very strong insight. Why don’t you just sit with for a minute”. I think it had to do with the insight that I had closeness longings simultaneously with separation needs.

I don’t remember last night’s dream. In light of some of the stuff Sharon and I were talking about I should have made more of an effort to remember. Well, I keep staring at the paragraph and having no inspiration to write, so I’ll stop for now.