Spotlight on the Feminine

Friday, September 3, 2010

DREAM: that I am in a McDonalds with several young guys who felt like my brothers. The one woman manning the shop was taking her sweet time and doing our orders one at a time, while yapping her face off about how much she hates her job, how awful her life is, etc. She has a captive audience and was making the most of it. Finally she has served just about everyone except me and she sat down at one of the tables, still talking. I began to plead with her to make my order.

DREAMWORK:

My mind immediately goes to my shadow being the woman, and masculine alliance being the men... but...

From my body: It is about the voice of grievance, the plaintive, whining, bitching, passive-aggressive voice inside of me, inside my shadow, because we were told from childhood not to complain, that making demands for yourself is selfish and shameful. That aggrieved part of myself has been suppressed. I didn’t get enough of the love and nurture that I needed, but I wasn’t allowed to complained about it.

My feminine self was especially starved, now begging the shadow for help, but shadow has to be brought to light first... Now that I have done some fairly intensive work to heal my masculine (most of the men have been fed), it is time to turn to the feminine for any redress that is still needed... okay, this part doesn’t feel like it’s from my body...

It has to do with my issues with what I call heart-types, what I judge to be feminine passive-aggression – the bitching, complaining, blaming, guilt-tripping, backstabbing, emotionally manipulative tactics to get your way. I still can’t stand to be around any of that, so definitely that got stuffed down the shute into the shadow as ‘Not Acceptable’. We were not supposed to make our needs known; we should be self-sufficient and be able to fend for ourselves; it is shameful and weak and dishonourable to be needy. Only the weak and ‘girly’ live off others by playing the damsel-in-distress card. So where is that needy damsel in me?

Or perhaps the question to ask is, how can I allow myself to have needs?

First I admit to myself that I have needs, and will always have them in this life, because we are made to be interdependent. It is the glue that holds our world together and keeps it revolving cycle after cycle. Needs and neediness are not the bad thing I’ve believed them to be, despised in others and denied in myself. I shall declare my needs to myself and to the relevant others with honesty, clarity and timeliness, from the still and centred place within.

As an afterthought, I suppose it isn’t quite right to teach children to be independent, at least in a general sweeping sense of not being dependent on someone else for our survival, for that is really an illusion, not to mention fear-based. It only sets children up for self-censure and isolation, deprive them of the support that we need by right and can provide for each other. What we intend as independence is really individuation, for given the conditions of balanced parenting children can grow and separate from their parents in a healthy way, inherit and learn the necessary tools and skills to embark on their own journey.

One more detail needs elucidation: Why was it in McDonalds? Because I do not deserve anything better than cheap fastfood. It is about poverty-consciousness vs. abundance-consciousness. I have cut out much in my life and my ‘needs’ have been greatly reduced in the last couple of years. I feel content and happy about this simplicity of my life now, but perhaps my intentions were not entirely pure, perhaps in some part I played into my belief of myself being small/insignificant/unworthy/undeserving. That instead of dealing with this crippling belief, I hid it, though not consciously, inside the movement to reduce/reuse/simplify. The kernel of fear of poverty and deprivation is still in there... Deep inside I fear deprivation, therefore I deprive myself of needs in order to lessen that fear, believing that if I need less there will be less chance of deprivation. I can see now the black-and-whiteness of this belief, a sure sign that it is a belief.

It suddenly occurs to me that maybe this is why I’ve had a phobia of seeing sharply contrasted black and white colours in nature, such as the glossy skin of the killer whale and the underbelly of a swallow or tadpole (but not pandas or zebras because they are furry and the line between black and white is blurred), or the time black mold grew inside a jar of white tempra paint, the sight of which made me instantly phobic and nauseous.

Back to the issue at hand... needs, and the fear and loathing I have about them, and about myself... What I truly desire is to feel fully human, full-sized for what I am, that I am seen, heard, and always have as much as I need from life. That the source of this providence never runs out, is freely given, and easily accessed anytime. There is no need to waste, but neither is there a need to scrimp and scrape, to be fearful of wanting, of having to save for a rainy day. If we keep the temple (ourselves, our community, our world) clean and sacred and full of prayers and offerings, the flow of life can run through it abundantly and everlastingly. That’s the only work we need to do in this life, the rest is windowdressing. I get now that this is what devotional or contemplative life means.

All of this is immensely valuable insight for me, but I still have to balance the belief in order to move on... help me, my body... Gratitude and worship, intend to bring more and more of them into ALL of my life. Fill myself up with the grace, light, and love this way of life brings until I feel my full-sized self, confident, poised, expressive and sharing, from the stillpoint of my being.
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TWILIGHT: My body told me that it is important to find the constitutional remedy for my dad, and that it is a flowering plant remedy mentioned in Jane Cicchetti’s book. Rose. (I didn’t find it in her book though)

Ordered from Helios: Rosa Gallica 200C / Gallium Muriaticum 30C / Millifolium (Yarrow) 12C

I think Ga-Mur is his constitutional, Ferrum Series, about roles and responsibility, mental/emotional focus; Millifolium is an acute intercurrent, physical focus; and Rosa Gallica is for spiritual growth and expansion, his shadow remedy.

Shadow remedy... hmmm... that feels important somehow... a remedy for the parts of our selves that we have rejected and hidden in the dark recesses of our being, stuff we would deny, repress, and denounce over and over again, not recognizing the alchemical gold it is waiting to become.

But how can we arrive at a prescription of a shadow remedy? The clues would be the things and symptoms that we deny or reject with the most vigour – “That’s definitely not me!”, “I hate it when people do that!”, “I can’t stand it when...”. It is the degree of intensity of denial, the force of repulsion, that give it away.

Using myself as an example, I HATE it when people make noise that encroaches on my peace and quiet. It makes me want to lash out, kill, quash the person responsible for making or allowing the noise. The audacity and inconsideration for others just gall me no end. HOW DARE THEY!!! How dare they belittle others (me) and walk right over my feelings without blinking an eye, as if they can’t see me, as if they don’t know that I have feelings and sensitivities that can be shattered, as if they are totally indifferent to me, as if I don’t matter at all.

Sounds like Type 5 stuff, The Small Man or Hitler Syndrome... Perhaps shadow is in the type that one goes ‘up’ to, e.g. Type 7 goes up to Type 5, supposedly a healthier compensation than going ‘down’ to Type 1. But at least in my case the criticizing and negativity of Type 1 are obvious symptoms of a stressed out 7, to myself and others around me (unfortunately). The ego-inflation and misanthropy of the 5 are much less apparent, I am less likely to voice the hatred, except to show anger if I am with people I know. Very few people know about my urge to kill, and even they don’t take it seriously. I used to be filled with hatred of this kind, and this particular trigger still remains. I watched ultraviolent movies where the bad guys are eviscerated and punished in the most extreme way, and the good guy (a.k.a. the victim) like Arnold Schwartzeneggar got his revenge even though he was not particularly smart. He was justified in doing what he did because he was righteous and the luck of the universe was on his side. Pure shadow projection. Thank you, Arnold!

So, I need a shadow remedy that addresses my split of feeling small/invisible/powerless and its opposite of feeling big/arrogant/powerful. Hmmmm, still masculine stuff... perhaps that’s why in the dream, Shadow sat down at the table across from the one guy sitting alone there...

Nitricum: Stage 15: loss; expansion of the ego, assertive; Silica Series: boundaries
Nitric Acid: In Nitric acid (as with all the acids) we have the theme of separation and the need to re-create a fusion of the separate ends – to complete the circle. This is a potential fulfillment which is somehow being thwarted. This is all about expansion. The person is living a life which does not allow them to expand and be fulfilled. A keynote symptom is sensitive to noise. An unforgiving nature – irritable, hateful and vindictive, they constantly think about past grievances

But my body says not to take a dose of Nit-Ac, there is a better way for me to heal this split. And that is to intentionally bring love into my body next time I am triggered by noise, and ask love to heal the trauma. Where there is hatred let me bring your love... Hmmm... so it was a trauma...
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Saturday, September 3, 2010

DREAMS:

Someone had made a weapon out of a club or paddle, and put some long, vicious looking metal coiled blade on the fat end to hit another person over the crown, to cave their head in. I’m not sure now if the intended victim was me, but I was desperately trying to get away or trying to help that person get away. I woke up in a fright and the backs of my thighs were aching in a big way, the same way they would in waking life when I see something too viscerally painful to watch, but about 25 times more intense.

I was in a place with my siblings and my cousins. The light was a bit dim, as if it’s a cloudy day. There were potted plants of various kinds and sizes everywhere in the room. I began to move one of them, a big one, to the window ledge, to make some room on the floor.

I was looking down and saw that I was pregnant. A guy was with me. I thought it was Michael even though it didn’t look like him.

DREAMWORK: