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.
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