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TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

DREAMS

1. Poisonous Water
2. Parking a Truck
3. Human Pulled from Ice
4. Physical Union With a Warrier
5. Embrace with my daughter
6. New York
7. DREAMWORK: HOW DO I CRASH MY CAR?

APPLYING DREAMWORK

 

1. Be like a truck to get to where you are going

 

UNDERSTANDING POISONOUS WATER

 

The metaphor of poisonous water is powerful for me because it represents a fear which was imagined and then I discovered it was also something to fear in the real world. I first began to fear poisonous water after reading a novel (by Robin Cook?) who told a story of a city whose government wanted to control the population secretly so they poisoned the water. I read it sometime between the ages of 12-15 I believe, and I remember it leaving me with the feeling that I could not trust the people who I thought I could trust. I remember wondering, “what if there were such ill-intented people out there?” Baha’u’llah speaks so much of the oppressors and for me it was the first time I felt as though I understood what He was saying in a broader sense, more than just to those specifically who imprisoned Him unjustly.

The reality of poisonous water became meaningful for me in July/August of 2014 when I moved from Fort McMurray (polluted air) to London (polluted water) and had a dream that told me such was the situation. I didn’t know what that meant at the time but then came after that the most physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally year of my life. Where my very life was threatened to be extinguished because I did not have any relationships to sustain me through material poverty and my very life was threatened because there is no access to a public food share with dignity.

Now that I have this dream again, about poisonous waters, it signals to me a time of more issues with relationships but this time I can see how it was like before and do enough work so as to make it a much more positive experience this time.

The good thing is that this dream is teaching me about the way a metaphor can act in my imagination and in real life and how I can use the teaching of it to grow and transform quickly.

This is something I am already doing but now will be coming aware of it. I become aware of it by understanding the mental pattern in this dream.

Because it is negative, I start at the end and work to the beginning.

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In the dream I was with my daughter in a river. Someone who we have known a long time had poisoned the water with what they said was just some chemical but they were part of a cult and plotted to destroy the water. My daughter was on some motorized thing going faster than I could keep up with. But I was still trying to guide her. There was a scene playing out on the shore where the guy who poisoned the water had someone dress up in a dragon suit or like a big sasquatch and he was scaring people.

I got scared and really wanted my daughter out of the water but couldn’t catch her. We drive over a bridge and then the waves were too big so we finally came back.

On the shore someone planted flowers and they grew really fast, instantly were about 2 feet high, beautiful purple and white like tulips but actually a different flower than I’ve ever seen before and I put my hand out to touch the tops. One woman was a little perturbed at how fake they must be if they can grow that fast. I said well it makes for a nice metaphor though to be able to believe a lot of growth can happen really quickly.

There was something going on with the owner of the house, she was upset but I don’t recall details.

Something about some sort of charm that was given to my daughter and the second part was near the toilet. I didn’t want her to have it. I didn’t trust it’s source.

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When I trust the Source of a life situation, opportunity then it is easy to go for it in my mind or in reality. For example, it is really easy for me to go for children’s class, and any core activity because I know it is in line with the Plan which is building a divine civilization.

When it comes to money, work, career and people in the social world with the main intention of getting to the top, I do not trust so much, even me and the way I have this within me. When I am faced with a decision at work I go into a lot of confusion about how to go forward in a truthful and non-corrupt way. The dream says I also have this non-trusting at home with Gracie.

A charm is a gift and symbol of what makes her unique. Part of what makes her unique has to do with letting go/detaching. It has to do with a unique way of detaching (which is Dreamwork) and because I don’t trust the process yet fully I am trying to protect her from something I am afraid will hurt her.

It is because of the strong memories of being upset when I tried to go for something and it was interrupted and I got a strong identity around this as if it was “Who I was”…ie. Rachel is someone who gets upset easily and often.

One of the ways in which staying upset protects me is that it hides the growth. I used to like growing internally and not showing anyone what I was doing then they couldn’t judge. Now I can’t hide anymore and they see and they think I am fake because it seems impossible to grow so quickly. Like to be able to get over something in one day. Like being able to have a program which is just mediocre and then turn it to be amazing.

Like being able to be really affected by poverty and then being able to have material wealth. Purple and white are my colours and blue and black. Ah! So beautiful.

(As I write this all my energy and excitement are replaced by smokey darkness in my chest. Sigh!) I liked it so much better when it wasn’t there. But it was there, just unconscious.

Smokey darkness in my chest scares me because it means we are living a big lie, things are worse than I thought, the job is harder and longer and more impossible than I thought, I am not ever really safe, just when i think things are good they will go really bad, I am alone in this and people, forces, hosts of darkness are trying every day to destroy me. There really is poison in the water (fluoride) and I really am/feel powerless to do anything about it.

How do I protect Gracie from this big wave? How do I get and keep her on this side of the bridge? How do I protect her in this kind of a world? It feels impossible. (But what comes to mind is the Abuse Recovery Association.)

Now I know Saskwatch is Truth. Dragon? Ancient Chinese myth? I wonder the meaning for it since Richard was in China when I had this dream. Saskwatch as a personal symbol for me reminds me of the Truth of the powerful healing when I met Body Talk practitioners. It is a symbol of meeting my personal power. This dream came before the Pelican dream. I feel like the Pelican is to me what Saskwatch is to Jeffery, and maybe what Dragon is to Richard. When I think of the Pelican I have no fear because it eats avacado whole, has been around 30 million years, has black and white feathers, has parts of it I am unaware of that are more beautiful and special than I ever could have imagined, and because it can swim and fly and because it takes care of its babies and brings them back to life with its own blood. Pelican is like Self-Knowledge. So when I think of that, feel that, the smoke goes away and Gracie and I are perfectly okay because of the Pelican.

The guy who poisoned the water in the dream was my father and it also applies to my ex. There was an energy about my father that was so dark, so scarey, and he had such a bad odor when I was a child that when I smelt that I knew to be very careful. I would try to run away physically but my hiding seemed to excite him so then I learned to hide mentally even though I was pretending to be open in the real world. So that would be like watching TV and he comes into the house and my saying, “Hi Dad” in a cheerful voice even though I knew 1) He didn’t want to see or hear me 2) He wouldn’t respond 3) I knew I was not feeling cheerful or happy to see him really.

That energy from him when he was in that state was horrible. Makes my teeth chatter to think of it and I had no way out. So that again is age 11. Makes my eyes burn like fire. But because of all the work I’ve done around this, I can now look directly at it. Abuse, oppression, fear of being subjected to engage in physical acts which I don’t agree to participating in but am powerless to stop.

What does it mean that the oppressor is on the beach forcing people to dress up like these mythical creatures and scaring people? It is like something sacred and beautiful being manipulated to cause fear. What does it mean to see this in the dream now? It is like for me to think of this happening now in the real world and that makes me think of hosts of idol fancies in the Baha’i Faith manipulating it. But also, can be like Mr. Pellegrini and how he spent those days plotting and now is ready to fight. Susan must be doing the same. I must do the same somehow too and mostly because I don’t want people to see the smoke in me which is how i use something i know to scare others?

Someone uses their words to poison the water. How did he use his words to poison the water when I was young? It was bad when he was silent. It was worse when he spoke. And why did she leave us alone with him so much? She was working night shift. It was like living in hell. I couldn’t do anything to protect Andrea, it was all I could do to protect myself.

So the words were like a storm. First calm. Then critical about the house mess and that would get me going to clean it, believing if I could clean it fast enough he would calm down. But then Andrea would get yelling back at him and then war. And then when he was done with her he would find me, doing maybe what he thought was nothing and get physically attacked. Until I would fall, like fainting. I would wake up in the kitchen and not really remember how I got there. and have to use the washroom. and have to get something to eat. and wonder around like how my mom would thinking, okay, what do i do now. He would be gone. the house would be silent. i would get food and go up to my room and write or read and go to sleep, like dead in my soul (until I turned 15 then i had the idea to pray and fast about it) and when i ran to the bus the next day it would wake me up and then when i slept on the way to school it would be like a “re-start button” and i would wake up at school like a different person and “be” my school self as if none of that had happened at home. but i always felt like i was hiding something and had to pretend. i kind of thought we were all pretending. it was like ok we all just have these horrible things going on at home and we get here and pretend. ok sure. i can do that, no problem. then the Writings would say things like Tablet of Ahmad, “people are wandering in the paths of delusion, bereft of discernment to see God with their own eyes and hear His melody with their own ears” so as I got older and stopped pretending at age 18 and thought also we were all going to stop pretending, it was the Tablet of Ahmad and the Seven Valleys in which Baha’u’llah would explain to me why the rest of the people around me were not also growing.

Also, several times a big shift would happen where all of a sudden everyone in my life would change within a short period of time. For example, all within one or two months people would move away, die, change work, schools, or friends, etc and I would find myself without the relationships I was used to and I would say to God, okay…that was interesting, where did everyone go? you must have had a plan for that and please show me what to do next. I would move forward and some people would come along and some people wouldn’t and it would be like starting a new chapter and i would be okay with that.

All that is happening again. Now God wants me to see how and why and be conscious of it. Because Gracie is growing up and needs me to guide her to healthy relationships. Also, it is learning how I can go in and out of relationships quickly and easily too.

It was like when I was the age she is growing into. We were left alone with him for a long time. I wrote letters to my mom to get us away from him. She left him but then got a small apartment that Andrea and I couldn’t both stay in but she was acting as if it was okay for us all three to live in and she asked us both where we wanted to stay. andrea spoke first and claimed the bed in the livingroom. there was really no space for me to physically (or emotionally, spiritually, mentally)  live there. I chose to go back to the house, because there was more places to hide (physically and mentally) than to stay with Andrea because I would have killed her or myself.

I guess the dream wants me to see when I first chose to be like a Pelican.

And it is when Debbie first obviously started taking vengeance on me. She later accused me of “choosing him” because I liked him more than her, and of plotting against her because I “asked her to take them away from him but then didn’t go with her when she left”….she did not see that the choice to live there was impossible. A one bedroom apartment, with one bed in the livingroom! and only one couch! and a man (who is now her husband, an admitted sex addict and alcoholic) who visited on weekends to sleep with her. It was not that I made the choice it was that she made the choice. but she blamed me for it and used it as an excuse to turn against me.

So…..the dream wants me to get through this smoke so that I don’t get trapped in this cycle anymore and am more free to come and go easily from relationships.

My first question is: What method do I want to use to deal with this smoke?

The answer is Body Talk.

With reading the writings, praying, and music.

And a written idea of where I am going with this.

AIM/INTENTION/DESIRE

1. I want to get to a place where this “smoke” is gone from my digestive system, hips, lymph system, heart, blood, kidneys, gall bladder.

I want to have the energy and routine to run, hike, bike because it’s great not because I’m running, biking, or hiking to get away from danger or to get to school/training/work.

1. I want to get to a place where I have financial stability, meaning my house, car, work, savings, Gracie’s schooling & recreation is not in threat of being taken away.
2. I want to get to a place where my day job is completely stable and there is no threat (real or imagined) of my losing it and where there is balance and harmony in the way I spend my time after work, with Gracie, with friends, engaged in business development, in the social enterprise, in direct Baha’i activity, and in dreamwork.

For Rachel,

The metaphor basically teaches that when you leave the relationships that are like poison because of the way words are used, then you can change and grow really rapidly in beautiful ways just like you say in the dream. You have to understand how you keep being pulled into the poisonous waters so that you can leave them easily and quickly. I bet you are looking forward to the rapid growth. Wouldn’t that be fantastic!! I am going to try to formula on myself and see if it works. I will let you know.

 

DREAMWORK QUESTIONS

 

1. What relationship do I need to leave quickly and easily today?
2. How can I “leave” a pattern in a relationship with someone who is still in my life but change the pattern quickly and easily?
3. What relationships want to grow in positive ways but I am hesitating because I am afraid of being left alone with the oppressor?
4. What can the true mother on a beach tell me about how to stand true in my Pelican self?
5. What is priority for my physical body today and releasing this anger that has been there since I was JY?
6. What do I know now that I didn’t know then that can help me with this?
7. Where am I headed today that is really great?
8. What very small things can I do, that can make a big positive impact?
9. How do I get from this smoke to a place where I feel energetic/enthusiastic again?

I am adding to your text here at the end.   This is really marvelous work.   Here is what I would do in the situation now.  You have identified your father as being the one who was so poisonous and then your mother after that.   I think you have dealt with your mother before, but not so much of your father.   You could leave your mother, but you couldn’t leave your father because you had nowhere else to go.  So that kept the poison, the smoke.  The coping mechanism from the poison was hiding and then pretending in school like nothing was going on at home.  

 

The solution is to go from the smoky poisonous air to the clean and clear air, then to go for hiding to be out in the open with what is really positive in your life and to not pretend like that things are ok, but see them for how they are and then go for serious transformation.   

 

It might be helpful to substitute yourself in place of your father.   I think you have done enough work to not get you into vulnerable positions with poisonous people, but you probably have an ego self inside of you that is poisoning things up.  What you can do is to go inside and hear the you that is trying to stop you from going forward.  It is probably going to sound a lot like your father.  It is what makes you hide and pretend.    Then you can change the voice from a negative one that is abusive to an encouraging one that gets you out there and doing positive things in the real world.  Then you can be all of the positive metaphors of the various animals like a pelican, a positive empowered sasquatch or a dragon.   Anyway, try switching the voices in your head.  

 

What do I do when I am going from smokey poisonous air to clean and clear air?

 

1. Become aware of the smokey poisonous air
2. Go to hiding out in the open with what is really positive
3. Not pretend it is okay
4. See them for how they are
5. Go for serious transformation

 

Using Dreamwork to Recover from Abuse, Poverty, Oppression, Illness

 

1. Go Inside
2. Hear me trying to stop me
3. Notice feeling of wanting to hide and pretend (Feeling of: I can’t do this)
4. Change from oppressive to encouraging that will be going for serious transformation

 

Applying the strategies: How to get inside when I am afraid (when negative memories are active)

 

1. Thank/Honour something/someone
2. Write Down Intentions (or opportunities I’ve gone for)
3. Breathe Deeply, center & grounded, get in the physical body experience, feel the floor, couch, etc.
4. Feel and imagine the desired goal (one atom of clean and clear air entering my body and creating space affects the whole body)
5. Physical needs: desire to brush teeth, get blanket, prayer book nearby, drink water, check time – get really comfortable

 

Meditative State occurs then

 

Some insight or understanding emerges such as:

 

The only way to go into a room where someone will speak with poisonous words is to be already in the clean/clear air.

 

Be in the clean/clear air, how it feels, how it sounds, and know that is where I am headed, where I am going. Then what he says I can hear without really listening or being impacted.

 

Body Talk to get air – recalled several fainting experiences while in his presence, in a car, in the kitchen, by the water and just sat with that awareness that he had so much power over me to make me faint. It didn’t take a lot of time to be able to go through the work and get started on the next part of the Dreamwork blog. And great supports emerged all day.

 

Also recalled how I started using visualizing positive to combat the negative.

 

Could hear “I want coffee” like a growling like if I didn’t go get coffee now I was going to be beat up. I just said, yes I hear you want coffee, we are going to do this now and there will be opportunities for coffee later. It worked.

 

Given that his voice was so negative as to make me go unconscious the idea of going in to hear a voice of mine that will sound like his scared me so much as to make me not want to do it. Instead I sat with the feelings of fear which came up.

 

I wonder: how do I stay conscious to hear the way I speak?

 

I noticed today when Gracie did something how I sounded like him. Not yelling. Just firm and rough. I’m glad to hear it so that I can change it. This has been my desire since childhood to remove everything of him that I was exposed to. When I was a child I didn’t think he was human.

 

I can understand now that indeed humans have a part of us that is like an animal and this is okay and the way things are and we can transcend those negative patterns and choose much better things for ourselves and others.

 

It is like there is a child in me eager to finally hear and finally understand why they were the way they were.

 

VISUALIZATION

 

It started consciously when I was 11. I was walking in a cold winter afternoon after doing my paper route and I did not have proper winter clothing because of the poverty. I was really very cold feeling. I just told myself to think of drinking hot chocolate and it would warm me up. I tried it and it worked a little so then I thought I need to jump right into a huge hot chocolate cup and then swim in it and then my insides and outsides will be warm. It worked.

 

Also, when I couldn’t fall asleep I learned to think of something that was impossible and jump into it and that seemed to “trick” my subconscious into sleep. I would imagine something very beautiful, very far out, like dancing with care bears in the clouds or giraffe walking upside down in a living room, things like that which were so fun to imagine it brought me out of the smoke and poison.

 

FAINTING EPISODES

 

1. Age 14 or 17 or many times between these two ages – Being in the kitchen and he came in yelling and he stared at me and yelled and hit me and I stood strong and stared back at him and I actually saw through the veil to his soul and that’s when I learned to detach from his physical self because it had nothing to do with his soul. Now when I look at that I feel that God showed me that so I would have the ability to survive and now do the work I am doing. To describe it, I would say it was as though at first I am just looking at him like a man standing in front of me, but then the edges around his body softens and a light shines from “behind” him and it was like he was a puppet, a hologram, and the light was the real him something like that.
2. Age 16 ish – Being in the passenger seat with him on the way to a counselling session and he was talking in a way that was like he was trying to hypnotize me so that I would not say or do certain things when we get there so that then I saw the “counselling” was a fascade and was not going to really help us at all and so I started to sob and hyper-ventilate and yet we arrived and when we went in I collapsed and the counsellor did this visualization about putting the feeling in a balloon and sending it far away. I used that image for several more years, sending it to the stars.
3. Age 18, telling him I knew he sexually abused me and him denying it and my collapsing to the ground and him standing there like, “What Rache?”

 

Hard stuff to look at today but yet manageable with realizing it is my ego self I am responsible for and feeling strong enough to breathe through it.

 

This is really awesome stuff you are working through, quite amazing.  So what happens is that hearing his voice inside makes you go unconscious. That means when you hear the voice that you should have had, that you can have now in your head,  that is much more nurturing and encouraging that you will be fully conscious in a positive way.    The tricky part is you go unconscious when you hear the negative voice.  So you may end up in another room or somewhere else after you hear the negative voice because it makes you go unconscious.   

The idea is to hear the negative voice and then as you are turning down the volume of it to turn up the volume of the other one.  If it is too much, because it throws you into an unconscious spin, then I can walk you through it sometime.  

 

DREAMWORK: PARKING THE TRUCK

Going deeper into the transformation

 

In the dream, I had been driving a grey truck, excellent solid, new strong truck, for a distance. It had the feeling of Fort McMurray northern environment and I had finally arrived. The road I was on was gravel and there was a slope on both sides that went down to a house on the one side and maybe a farm, or industry on the other. I parked the truck with skill in an area near construction so that it was perpendicular across the road and no one else could pass. I signaled to someone, a farmer perhaps, was it okay that i parked here and they signaled said yes.

 

I got out, was playing with the keys between my fingers, assessing the surroundings, taking it all in. What a great feeling to have arrived.

 

When I first woke up there was a sense of some dream images from where I had come from and a sense of some that followed this scenario.

 

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Dictionary

 

truck – a vehicle for getting to where i want to go, is powerful, has a lots of space and multi-purpose, is dependable and trustworthy, is something of a privilege to be able to own and drive well, can travel and handle well even in far away places, even in cold and snowy climates, even in construction and unpaved roads.

 

new rural area house – this one is owned by industrious individuals who were expecting me and inviting me, well maintained, well situated, well supported, able and capable to withstand any weather or any storm, the feeling of in-it-for-the-long-run and the feeling of being part of a family, the way the road was higher up was like I had driven in on a mountain road and the house was in the valley, so it was protected in a way like that.

 

new farm/industry – the feeling from this farmer and industry was productivity, service, prosperity, feeling of doing what needed to be done and everything being okay, ie. services received, paid for, and invested back into the business. a feeling of things going to last.

 

keys – to hold a set of keys – really, the feeling was that this truck, this house, this industry was a part of me. in the social world we would say “it was mine” but that doesn’t describe the feeling in the dream…the words for that would be “i belonged” and also “i fit in that space and that space fit in me.” something like that. more about being connected and a piece of a whole rather than than ownership. also that I was the whole and these were pieces of me.

 

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Theory

 

What is the dream telling me is the biggest issue?

 

The dream tells me I have arrived at somewhere, some time that I have been journeying to. The dream shows me a bit of what it means to be at the beginning of things going well. It centers me and helps me to make decisions about what action to take next.

 

The keys are like choices for different doors to open. In the dream I wondered what to do first – sort of like go see the farmer? or go see the house owners? or go for a walk? etc. the fact that i saw the farmer makes me feel this is the direction to go first. so who is the farmer in my waking life?

 

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Application

 

The keys represent choices. Which door do I want to open first.

 

Yesterday, and the day before was like a roller coaster of events, and great opportunities. A number of doors opened before me. I think the farmer represents a situation in which i had thought of opening this apartment as a center for office space and service for core activities and then a group showed up who had been brainstorming and made this decision to find a space to rent in the neighbourhood. I offered my space to them and now they are thinking about it. I went to bed wondering what should i share with them, what should i say, do, write in order to advance this as a collective, given that i am new to them.

 

in writing this it is clear. I took action and now am coming back to the dream again.

 

When a dream is positive I can go inside the dream and live there all day.

 

When I go inside the dream and see the house and the farm and hear the wind and some machinery, hear the keys in my hands, I feel that the dream is encouraging me to expand into a feeling of being able to trust my surroundings. To trust both house and industry, both myself and business. To go into both easily. To not hide in either but to be in both.

 

In the dream, it is like I am clearing out cobwebs in an old attic and opening windows but also it is like walking into a beautiful, clean, well-maintained kitchen and being okay with the fact they want to hand the keys over to me. it’s not like showing up to a friends to visit. this is like showing up to a friend who is giving me a house and farm and my responsibility is to receive it. so when i walk in it is not like i walk in and take in things the way they are and have to stay that way but I walk in and am thinking about in what way I will be a part of this.

 

SOOO many doors opened in the past 48 hours I truly don’t know which to walk through first, second, third. I like so much the farmer in the dream. My natural inclination is to go to the house first, to the kitchen! LOL. but the dream says go to the farmer. So…i’ll go in and meet him.

 

The thing about the farmer is that he is open to whatever I do. If I go introduce myself and show interest in what he’s doing, he trains me. If I go down with the keys to open the back office, he gives me space to do admin work. If I go to him to talk he’d rather get busy working but will listen to what I have to say. So then I can ask myself, if this was the situation what would be the best case scenario that I would want to happen? The old administrative me would feel so comfortable to go in the office but I really feel like the learning here is to just do the work, come along beside him and let him teach me. It’s awkward and humbling but is better than hiding in an office.

1. Human Pulled from the Ice

 

I hear “A human was pulled from the ice who had been there since 1929” and I see a young woman who was intentionally submerged in ice be pulled out by scientists. I see the casing that I thought was her human form open up by a zipper behind her and she crawls out of the back. She is fine.

 

I also hear in the next room kyle playing drums really loudly. he’s playing with someone who taught him a technique so that even as the drum falls apart he can still make it play. he thinks it sounds great but he is embarrassing himself and others are looking strangely at him. I notice how I used to feel sorry for him for being so unusual and try to make it better but this time I just leave him to himself.

 

but i go to a restaurant and the owners do not speak english. there is some big cuffufle behind the counters about money and two different values of money and exchange and all that. so it is difficult to pay for my food at first but then i figure it out and i have so much money and i lay it all out on the counter as a bit to get the owner to shut up but also to just say, “here, take what you need so I can get my food.” and to say, “I am not poor. the problem is not my money. the problem is the system that doesn’t allow us to have a common language and also to have a common money.” so anyway then the restaurant owner, Italian or Greek, says okay fine give her her food and they put three dinner rolls into a to go bag. I’m stunned. “All this was for the sake of dinner rolls? Which I don’t even want or eat?” and the owner just shrugs. Ah! The situation is hopeless.

 

I just leave with the meal ready to feed myself, gracie and a friend

 

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Dictionary

 

Person in ice – ice is a symbol for oppression, ignorance, abuse, jealousy, anger, treating one another poorly; a person is a dream is a symbol of a fully developed virtue or quality; a person emerging from ice would be a fully developed quality transformed

 

restaurant – choice

 

money – symbolizing spiritual bounties

 

Italian/Greek – culture which does not value women as equals

 

dinner rolls – bread kills me

 

1929 – The year of the beginning of the Great Depression, which was 10 years of depression which preceded World War Two

 

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Theory

 

The dream wants me to get to a place where I am aware of the qualities within myself which have emerged now that I have done many years work on going through the ice. The year 1929 is significant to me because as a child when I first learned of the Great Depression in 1929 it was one of the first times that I saw how corruption worked in the world. It didn’t make sense to me as a child when I learned that whole populations were going hungry and the government had money but didn’t give it to people. It was the same feeling I had in 2009 when people were flung into housing and economic crisis and instead of creating a system which supported the individuals and families, the government issued corporate bailouts. I thought in 2009 when all this corruption became widespread people would stop pretending everything was okay and we could talk openly about real cooperative growth towards sustainable communities. The collective response told me that there was still more to the story to unfold before people woke up.

 

To be in a restaurant, standing up to an owner who does not really want to see or talk to me, and having enough money but not having language to communicate shows the nature of the problem. I did what I did for my daughter and her friend but in the end it was the cause of my having to make that choice again – eat food contaminated with bread and cause slow death from internal illness to my digestive system or don’t eat contaminated food and go hungry and die from a slow death from lack of food.

 

The last time I saw this choice in dreams was when it was a german shepard in a cage and a cat and the owner was feeding it meat-based food even though it was vegetarian. The key in that dream was remembering that this is how things used to be and not how they are now.

 

So the problem is language. Not having a language to use to express what is wanted or needed. The solution is to remember the skills used to get through the ice. And in the real world that has to do with not pretending anymore that things are okay because since 1929 they haven’t been.

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Application

 

What is the biggest issue facing me today?

 

Gracie not having a ride to school and my not being able to bring her because I don’t have a car, don’t have money for taxi, don’t have friends or family to ask, don’t have time to take her there and get back in time by bus. Taking here there by bus means my spending 2 hours going to and from a location which is about a 10 minute drive from our home. It means using up my entire morning without a break and it means no work done on other things which need to be done in the house and in the business. But it looks like that is what I may need to do.

 

Also, big decisions to make about advancing my ideas forward and feeling a lot of fear about that.

 

Knowing that fear is just because it is unknown and in fact when I get through the fear and do it anyway the results are always good. Knowing then I need the time to do these things and if I am traveling by bus and biking all morning I can’t do them.

 

Also being aware that opportunities are slipping by at the same time and if I don’t take action quickly on some of these things it will have long-term negative repercussions. All this still takes away from the divorce and what I really need to be doing for planning Christmas break and holidays.

 

What I don’t want is to go unconscious just because I am frustrated at the decision in front of me between eating bread or going hungry. Better to just choose one or the other and move forward. In waking life some days I choose one and sometimes I choose the other. I wonder if I decided on one path or the other if it would yield better results for me.

 

1. Physical Union With A Warrier

 

In the dream, I am on a couch in a darkened room in large gathering in a large home. A man approaches me and he touches my shoulder and asks with his heart, “Am I okay?” I turn towards him telling him with my heart I am okay and then instantly we move into a deep embrace of full penetration intercourse as we sit on the couch but we are basically sitting still and there are just very subtle movements of a touch of a finger, movement of a tongue in a kiss, toe against a toe. And we have an understanding of thoughts and emotions of our union being of service to one another and not that we are getting married. In waking life, he spoke of the role of a man in a community as being a protector/warrier and the role of a woman as being the leader/healer. It is our understanding in this embrace of the warrier in him protecting the healer in me and the healer in me supporting the warrier in him. Everything from our surroundings falls away, no sight no sound, nothing but the feel of skin to skin and peace.

 

Also, a woman who made earrings came to me and spoke of her craft. I said I had wanted to learn to make earrings and asked her to come and see what I collected. I showed her little animal totems I had collected from animals around the world, elephant, bear, ostrich, tiger, dolphin, horse, etc, there were so many. I could see she didn’t expect me to have all these here waiting for her. I told her that I never had the chance to travel before and see the world, so I collected these little totems from animals around the world in the hopes that one day I would see them. Each animal was like an invitation to their country when the time was right. I knew I could make them into something. She wasn’t sure what they had to do with earrings but I knew I was on to something. She was interested and intrigued and I thought she needed some time to integrate my idea.

 

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Dictionary

 

couch – a personal symbol of the safest place within myself, yet also a symbol of area of the home we are not to “get too comfortable in” because we are to arise from our couches and announce good things and do good service to humanity, not get trapped in the trappings of the world

 

dark room – a place I go to detach from the world and be still and silent in myself

 

large house – house is a symbol of self, in this dream the house was acting like a hall because there were about a hundred people in it, the feeling was that I belonged there, like a collective housing unit (yet there was no mess to clean)

 

large gathering – a hundred people in a home with me has the feeling of 100 lady bugs on me, the lady bugs were harmless even though there were so many of them

 

physical intercourse – the union of a fully developed qualities, of masculine qualities of warrier/protector/guardian and feminine qualities of gatherer/healer/knower.

 

earrings – decoration for ears? symbol of what?

 

artisan – to dream of an artisan now is like meeting the inner crafts woman.

 

animal totems – symbols of wishes, wondering if it’s a symbol of emerging qualities of these animals? Like choosing what to do first?

 

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Theory

 

I went to bed full of gratitude that on the evening of the Birth of Baha’u’llah I heard the beautiful drumming and chanting of a newly declared First Nations elder, and her Baha’i helper who is from Persian background who is newly given an Anishnawbe name “Red Sun Rising.”

 

To dream this dream at this time gives guidance and clarity as to the direction to take in terms of priorities amidst a lot of choices.

 

It also gives my mind a comfortable place to go amidst all the chatter.

 

Refreshingly welcomed.

 

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Application

 

There were a few things I was hesitating on, waiting for a clear direction and at last night’s gathering it all became very clear. Still, I went to bed thinking about the truck and how I didn’t much feel like working like a truck again, especially with the negative memories of when I worked like a truck before with not getting the results I wanted. But now is different because of what I went through at the beginning of the year here in London and because of where my life is at now, people are watching me now in a different way and there is room to grow.

 

Ready to feel joy again, that’s for sure and to live the integration. Ready to have fun.

 

The earring crafts woman gives a clue as to the approach to use going forward. It is like people approach me thinking that they have all the ideas and skills and will move me forward and when I show them that I also have a dream and a plan and skills and vision and tools and will to get there and then they are actually shocked. I used to get really annoyed with this (and in their hesitation I got jealous and angry and then excluded myself or sabotaged opportunities). Now I feel differently. I can show people my animal totems that symbolize for me growth, expansion, travel, and dreams coming true and I know I am moving within my dream and whether or not they want to participate is up to them.

 

That being said, I like the idea of making and selling jewelry/earrings. Sounds fun.

 

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Trekking Through a Rainforest (not bookmarked yet)

 

In the dream I was walking with a tour group through a rainforest. We crossed over a section which was joined from tree to tree by a large, strong net. It took a lot of trust to believe it would support the weight of adults crossing it. When I got to the other side it felt so great.

 

1. gracie on me and someone else thinking it’s something else

 

In the dream, I am lying naked on my back in bed comfortable. Gracie is beside me, also naked and comfortable. She then rolls over and is on me. Memories of midwives telling me that skin-to-skin contact with the baby is really good for babies and how uncomfortable I was with that come to mind and it is like Gracie turns into a baby in her behaviour even though still her regular size. I wrap my arms around her and try to be comfortable. Then someone opens the door and they see us. There is this strange moment of all of us not knowing if this is okay or not. The woman at the door keeps talking and I see she genuinely is going to leave it up to me as Gracie’s parent to give her what she needs in the way she needs. She didn’t judge. She closes the door. And I just have Gracie in an embrace. I know she has to get up soon and readying myself for her temper tantrum when she doesn’t get what she wants.

 

There was more when I first woke up but I couldn’t hold them all in my head. I think I need a pen and paper and flashlight beside my bed to write them down right away. But it had something to do with plots. Someone being up to something and my figuring them out like a detective. Detective Journalism.

 

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Integrating the Warrier/Healer is an internal process of connecting two parts of myself which until now were at war with one another. In my early domestic experience and in the cultural world around me, males dominate females and I learned from an early age how to protect myself from that and also how to create an ego self which responds and reacts to that with the intention to ensure survival. Internally it was like playing a game of hide and seek. Externally, it caused stress, anxiety, hypersensitivity. It lead me to not be able to feel comfortable in large groups. I lead me to seek out new ways of doing things in order to get rid of the terrible feeling of course clay inside myself. I learned all the habits of the culture to deal with this including avoidance, denying, being too busy, drinking too much coffee, not getting enough exercise, watching too much TV, etc. It was like I was always trying to find a way to fit into a culture that even Shoghi Effendi said not to fit in to. He said, the culture is completely backwards. The more unlike the culture you are the closer you are to the Truth and to Baha’i Law. Statements like these gave me courage to not celebrate Christmas in the traditional way, not drink alcohol socially at work gatherings, go to school for the sake of education and not for popularity contests, etc.

 

The union of the warrier/healer seemed to wash away all those doubts I had about who I was, where I fit in socially, and where I wanted to go. To feel and live the integration I go from feeling vulnerable and alone to feeling connected and completely protected. All fears vanish. All worry disappears. I feel truly at ease with myself and just as importantly with another human being. That is the feeling I never had before.

 

So then,feeling a connection to another human being who is not playing an abuse game changes everything.

 

Every movement matters. Every thought and emotion is noticed. I am not invisible anymore. Just as importantly, he is not invisible, his thoughts and emotions and actions matter. I am inside him at the same time that he is inside me. It is the culmination of the vision I had after the near-death experience when I was 19. And at the time I did not even have words to describe what I had experienced except for that I had the vision and words to say that even though externally a man physically enters a woman, internally his soul is designed to receive a woman and likewise even though a woman physically receives a man internally in her soul she enters him. That was the phrase and vision I had when I was in the next world. And this is the first time I have found an ear to listen. It’s the first time the reason why I was given that knowledge or awareness makes sense to me.

 

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Dictionary

 

naked – comfortable with self

 

bed – place of rest

 

gracie – me as a child, gracie now?

 

skin – to – skin

 

** Not sexually abusing Gracie, or any child, is one of my personal internal accomplishments because I made the decision at age 19 to not repeat the cycle and then I did not. It was something I never talked about but which emerged in the Body Talk training. It was clear to me in a session Loejse Jacob was doing that if I had have ever sexually abused my daughter it would have caused more damage than what I could fix in this life time. But because I didn’t, it showed I have the internal will to overcome ego and for that reason the sessions she did with me, and that training fortified my spiritual strength to continue to advance in the divorce and in my life path towards being of service to women and children who are recovering from abuse. At times when I used to feel like a failure as a parent, and in my career, it was actually this accomplishment which sustained me. The difficult thing is that I could never share this accomplishment with anyone. No one knows how to listen to this type of accomplishment.

 

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Theory

 

This is about my biggest fear right now. That as I learn how to parent Gracie independently that I will do something that I think is normal but which is really inappropriate. So this is like the marriage because as I was becoming an adult and integrating in the world around me, I was always watching people to see what “normal” was because I knew now my home and experience was not normal. And then I would make note of it and really quickly change. So for example, it first started with my tone of voice. I knew inside I did not want to be the kind of angry person that my dad was so I decided very young that I would be a peaceful person and I distanced myself from him and his behaviour deciding they were not like me. But then as an adult, I found that my ex-spouse would behave in ways which would elicit huge anger from within me (it was part of an abuse cycle intentionally created to make me angry so that he could then control me and apologize later). So anyways, I found myself yelling and full of rage and after I would apologize to him and say this is not me, this is not the way I want to be, I am growing, I am changing this. And very firmly I meant it. It was the truth. And because I had done so much work by then, with removing alcohol, smoking, physically violent “boyfriends” etc I knew I could do this one too. His reaction back then confused me but it makes sense now. It was that in that way I was also doing the abuse cycle on him – placing blame, yelling, apologizing, making a deal and promise to change.

 

So what Baha’u’llah’s effect on this cycle did is that it actually made it so that when I said I would change I actually did. I got support from agencies; I read books; I did journal exercises; I served my community and ran youth empowerment workshops; I prayed and fasted; I took vacations; I made decisions which advanced my career and craft. And actually, he did nothing physically to move forward but now what I see is that he “mentally” followed me and then played the abuse game from there. As I changed and grew, he just got more crafty at placing blame and making me angry. Subtly, unconsciously, I started to hide from him the things that were important to me, so that he could not attack them. And that’s what lead to the emotional/mental pattern which almost killed me when our daughter was 2 years old.

 

Anyway, the threat he held over me is “if you do this ‘thing’ others will think  you are crazy and you won’t get what you want.

 

In the dream, what I want is closeness and comfort with my daughter, to be a proper nurturing mother. But I actually don’t have a vision of what that would look like so even if something is “normal” I feel like it isn’t.

 

Thoughout my whole marriage I used to have certain perceptions about things and I would share them all the time with him and he would all the time interpret the surroundings for me telling me yes that is normal, no that isn’t. I see how dangerous that was now because his “normal” is not really “normal” according to healthy relationships or Baha’i Law. It was Baha’u’llah who protected me all those years because it created in me an identity that he was powerless to move. Even still, his behaviour lead me to want to kill him and even then, rather than divorce him I decided to just wait until he died. Because that was easier than dealing with a community of people who thought everything was normal when it wasn’t.

 

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Application

 

What is my biggest fear today?

 

That I will be going about working like a truck and do something really culturally wrong.

 

By now I know that even if someone doesn’t judge me infront of me they will just go behind my back and talk about me. I’m thinking of the door opening and closing as as symbol. People looking into myself and then closing the door, closing opportunities for relationships and connecting.

 

That is my fear.

 

Going forward with my goals right now means showing a part of myself to others which has never been shown before. I think the dream is showing me that it is a part I am comfortable with and also as a mother was comfortable with but am now afraid of being scrutinized by a culture which finds fault in everything, judges, back-bites, and makes false reports and false accusations.

 

The emotional solution is to trust myself and not the behaviours, words, of others as my guide post for what is or is not appropriate. I know myself my intentions and I know what I have or have not done wrong and don’t need anyone to tell me.

 

Actually, now that I write this the symbol of this becomes more clear. I’m going back to add something to the dictionary….

 

Given that the dream lead me to remember this accomplishment = i better go because I lost track of time and have to rush to get to work now!

 

1. NEW YORK

 

In the dream, I am arranging a trip to New York. We get there. There are just a lot of component parts to put together on the way for the journey. NEW YORK!!

 

APPLYING DREAMWORK

 

Being like a truck

 

I know what this means.

 

Right now, my biggest issue is that I have been working on developing some great initiatives and I am now at the stage where some opportunities are emerging which will move them forward and at this point other people’s egos can start to get in the way. So this is where I used to give up and back off and start new projects that didn’t upset people.

 

The new me knows that what I am working on now is my life’s work so there is no where else to go.

 

Given that I “have to” move forward because it is my life’s work to do so, it means I am going to go for this. Given that I am going to go for this my mind starts to wonder, okay, since I am going to go for this what strategy will work best here?

 

The truck dream is here to get me to think about when I worked with trucks because I did something very unique at that time to go forward. The dream wants me to remember the good of that and do it again. FIrst let me look at what I would have done if not for the truck dream.

 

The big issue that I have about working like a truck now is that the last time I worked like a truck I did really amazing things and got amazing results and then what showed up was how little the people closest to me supported me. It was the beginning of the end of the destruction of the old farm house pattern which is a really good thing – but still was so painful and if I am not careful then my ego steps in saying “this is scary and leading to loneliness, better not do it.”

 

In that case, in fear I would delay on talking to people, delay on sharing information, delay on giving details for what I want. Tell part of the story but not all the story. Try to make people happy. Give them what they want and wait for opportunity to get what I want. I would start other projects which would distract.

 

Usually by this time there would also be a big crisis – like getting evicted, like being without a car, like getting fired, like having false accusations come my way, like making commitments I can’t keep, like people getting involved in what I am involved in and them taking over because of the roller coaster and unconscious spin. When I’m spinning I can’t drive of course.

 

So this dream effectively reminded me of the last time I felt real joy. It was 2 ½  years ago. On the one hand it feels like 10 years ago. When I think back to that time it feels so long ago. I can’t believe it was only 2 years.

 

Working like a truck means the qualities of being able to go the distance, carry others, go over all terrains etc but more importantly for me specifically it means recognizing that I can see things others don’t see, that I can hear things others don’t hear, that I am called to do things others are not called to do and that at one point that used to make me feel joyful. The joy came out of it because of the loss of relationship life and career life and dreams that came along with the situation last year.

 

The truck dream is calling me to remember a really important decision I made to quit a job whose employer was corrupt and to start my own business. The joy I felt. The open-ness, the expansion, the creativity, the passion, the potential, the freedom, the soaring.

 

So when I look around me and see what is happening with my current ventures I can see where the old pattern of behaviour would lead me to hide for sure. To back away, 100%. To leave it to others to deal with and then come back in 3 months, see what remains and build from there. Instead, I am sticking with it, so that means I am ready to drive the truck and this time will get to where I’m going.

 

So how do I stay in truck-mode? What did I do then that worked? How can I apply that now?

 

The BIG thing about that time was that when I think back to that, it was the first time that I have something positive in the external world to relate to. Instead of going to a dream for inspiration, it was actually the real world where things were gonig well, where I was taking action, where things had flipped in terms of my perception of myself in the world and the world inside me.

 

What is it I did and how did I do it and how can i do it again?

 

I was at work for someone else. I saw them being corrupt and illegal and in my role I would have been blamed and made accountable for huge illegal activities, so without having another job lined up and only a bit of potential appearing for a new business I quit the job.

 

BUT ALSO

 

I was at work for myself and had gathered a team around me who were working well with me, had great skills and potential and I believed in what we were buliding. I took a huge leap of faith to put my words into action to go for an amazing opportunity when it presented itself and it was good for my daughter and I as well as my career.

 

HOW DID I DO IT?

 

1. I started noticing things at work that did not make sense.
2. As I tried to make sense of it (organize files, make phone calls, track flow of information) it caught my supervisor’s attention and she started questioning what I was doing.
3. The more suspicious she acted, the more sense of urgency I felt and I started to do more, to think about it at home, and to dream about it at night.
4. I had a dream that showed me a very negative outcome that would happen if things continued going this way (the dream was that a driver had an accident and got killed) and because I was the safety officer/administrator I would get blamed and have legal consequences.
5. Interestingly, I was acting in all three roles at the time – truck driver, and administrator, and safety officer. In some circles they would call that a conflict of interest, but in realty because I had the skills and time and willingness to do all roles and because they had a need for each to be filled we all went for it. But it was because I was in all three roles that i put the puzzle together and saw the HUGE risk that the drivers were in (for example, for a very long time before I came in to do the work they were driving without proper insurance! and trucks were not properly maintained with regular check ups or repaired by authorized mechanics….the boss ran his own shop and fixed trucks there with below standard solutions…and also drivers were getting away with working too many hours and falsifying the documents in their log books.)
6. So I just didn’t tell anyone what I was doing except Svein who gave me a lot of encouragement with his words but later of course showed that that relationship was doomed to fail but anyways with just him saying “go for it” I just quit.
7. I felt confident in my freelance/marketing and ability to start a home daycare business and tutoring to pay the bills.
8. Scooby-doo comes to mind here” And I would have got away with it too if it weren’t for those medling kids…lolol.” Just kidding.
9. Okay, so being like a truck here was like going for something instead of running away from something. To different energies. And knowing now what I didn’t know then, there was a lot of negativity around me that was influencing things that I wasn’t aware of. Shortly after that I dealt with a landlord that I was afraid would evict me, and parents that were trying to turn the lights out on me, and an ex that was trying to suck the life out of my daughter, and a business partner that was trying to turn me into his mother. It was also the first time that I consciously did a different pattern of dealing with people after a session with Richard. The conversation about talking to my landlords and how when I saw it in a different way I could behave in a different way and then I could get different and better results. Very very good things came out of that conversation that have been positive for the Faith nation-wide.
10. So the truck dream wants me to remember the positive that I went through in leaving the old pattern with Debbie as it will help me now in leaving the old internal pattern and voice with John.
11. So what scares me is to think of seeing all that is going on that I am not aware of…another 2 ½ years of critters emerging from the dark…but in reality I know it needs to be done because of the time we are living in and what we are trying to achieve by 2016.

 

HOW IS THIS NOW LIKE THAT THEN?

 

How was what I did back then “like a truck” and how can it be like a truck again?

 

The truck is the machine that provided the space for all that to happen. If there were no truck, there would have been no driver,adminstrator, safety officer. Be like a tuck is like stepping out of the drama and just doing the work.

 

I am the truck.

 

When I am the truck I am not afraid to keep advancing towards the direction of my goals.

 

Not afraid to have conversations, write emails, make calls, do the actions I say I’ll do, make agreements and commitments, share information. Do things that others may be uncomfortable with or suprised about but that I’ll do anyway. And also take on roles that are like individual, community member, administrator/governing body officer.

 

In the dream I find our teenage babysitter in a bath, she is so happy.

 

I am in a huge house and have been babysitting and now the owners arrived and its time to go. Just as Gracie and I are leaving I find this 5-6 page long letter taped on the wall with so many things she wanted us to do before we leave. Gracie flips out because she wanted to go play. I just say we have to take the list and do what she wants. It’s her house. The details on this list are incredible. She lists where to put certain things, like one kind of cup on one side of the cupboard and another on the other. It does feel overwhelming because it seems like it will take days to do everything.

 

Gracie is standing with me. I move to start working and she pauses. It’s like she’s listening to inner guidance. Just completely still. Then she resumes with me. I think oh boy, that must be what I do and why people wonder so much about me.

 

I am standing at the kitchen sink and then I get the feeling of a snake watching me, like how I used to, and I look all around but there’s nothing around me. Then I look out the window and see an animal in the trees staring at me, hard to tell if it’s an owl, or something like a big squirrel or cat. Anyway, it’s gaze is what I was sensing and I think, “phew!” no snakes.

Then I go about detailing the house.

 

Then I am sitting on the couch with the woman. She is in a court case and is telling someone about it. She pulls out a really heavy package of papers and files, so heavy she can hardly lift them alone and she nudges to me to help her but I don’t get the message until they are already on me and then I think, “oh. this was heavy. she needs help.”

 

So she puts this heavy package stretched on her lap and mine and is telling us about a court case. I see she has kept a file for every transaction between someone and his daughter. I think it’s a good idea for me to do that too. Then the more she talks the more I realize she is in court with kyle. She is my lawyer. and she is talking about a way he tried to deceive her or the court. we discuss how he is deceptive. that you can be driving along in a car with him and ask him to close the back window, he’ll make a really big deal about closing the back window – joke or whatever, meanwhile when no one is looking he’ll open the little window on the floor. then later you see it open and say to yourself – did he do that? why would he do that? and it makes you feel crazy. the lawyer and I squeal at recognition – “yes!! just like that!”

(I had a feeling to call him last week and to have Gracie call him but I ignored the prompting. Then he emailed something that showed me if I would have phoned him things would have been a lot better.)

 

I am ready to find joy in details.

 

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RIchard wrote:

(Aug 31, 2014)

Whatever happens in the outer world is also happening in the inner world.   This is the huge step of acceptance and humility that made a huge difference for me. If you were stolen from by a thief on a motorcycle grabbing your purse as he drove by,  then that is what happened.   In the outer world you need to make some changes to prevent it from happening again.   Maybe you have to not carry a purse.   When you accept that happened and that injustice exists and that the other person lives in a different moral reality than you,  then you can deal with the outer world and live fully in it.

The big change happens, however, when you realize that you are also being a thief to yourself in the inner world.   You may be fearful of going out and interacting with the world because of having been assaulted in your current living situation,  but the inner robbery happened much earlier.   This is where the really strong fear exists.

In my case with having been fired the outer firings keep from fully participating in change discussions in the organization.   It is not safe to say the truth as I see it because the negative truth is a threat to the way the organization is currently being run.   When I accepted that reality, then in the outer world I can keep my job which is the best thing for family at this stage in our lives.   The problem is how to deal with the inner firings.   When you have a bad outer enemy, it is so tempting to stay in the world of blame and be justified for it.   It is not so easy to get to a place of humility where you have to admit and ask yourself how your fire yourself.   OUCH!!!!

When you take the step of going to the inner world, it is only you and you.   You can only blame yourself or yourself.   The very exact moment when you accept that you have fired yourself or stolen from yourself or assaulted yourself is when you move from blame to taking responsibility.   Even if that is as far as you can get,  it puts you so much more in control of your life than the other culprit in the outer world.   My first step in the process of responsibility is to go inside and ask myself how I fire myself.   How do I fire myself?

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Last night I was informed that the car I was going to lease was in an accident. It means I can’t have it today as I had hoped and it means I maybe shouldn’t buy it. The feeling I have now, when it showed up in my dream is like a “soggy backpack’ – that is a feeling of really wanting to go somewhere, not being able to go, and then crying and really hating life, the world, the universe. It used to lead me into a depressive state for years, then with some work I could get through it in months, then weeks, now days, sometimes in one day.

It used to actually feel comfortable to be in that state. I would give up on everything and just hide in my apartment, hide in myself, and do nothing.

Now I don’t want to be in that state for even one moment because I see that the ‘soggy backpack’ is actually how I keep my own self from achieving what I want to achieve.

My fear of the soggy backpack actually creates problems too, for example, it will keep me from opening mail, answering a phone, replying to an email, meeting a friend because I am so afraid to get stuck in a swampy kind of feeling inside myself that I will avoid the things that I think will trigger it. The unfortunate result of this fear is that it keeps me in a state of going in circles, and not getting to where i want to go so actually then there is more soggy back pack.

So I can look now and see this is eog and that this is a dark force operating within me. I can say that I ‘soggy backpack’ myself and it is true. If i can learn to overcome this then i will not be blaming anyone for anything and i can grow in unexpected and meaningful ways.

If i learn to work through this then i will not fear it and if i don’t fear it then it can’t control me.

The way that I lost my car to begin with was also that a friend had driven it and it got hit by a bus. Now a friend was driving my car and hit something.

According to Richard’s post I can ask myself: How do I get myself into a car collision inside?

When did it start?

I can remember being about  7 or 8 and getting in the front seat of a car that someone was driving. There was a lot of fighting going on in the car. Something in me acted quickly without me being able to stop myself because I hated the fighting and I reached out and pulled the steering wheel. What happened next? I don’t remember exactly…did the car go in the ditch? did it jus swerve? I don’t remember but what I do remember was the way the person yelled at me, the way they shamed me, the way they made me feel about myself. They were really wondering why did I do that and I wonder myself. Did I do it so that the fighting would stop? That it would create a distraction and interfere? Did I do it to protect someone else who was in the car getting yelled at.

Is this how I started to car crash myself?

I also remember a dream from that time, about some people I loved being in a car that went into the water and the real fear I had about this for a very long time.

I decided I didn’t want a car. Didn’t want to go anywhere that needed a car. And then didn’t get a car for a very long time until I was 21 and my grand father helped me to get my license so i could drive him on his errands. I used to ride with him and feel it was very dangerous so I would imagine white light protecting the car as I said a prayer. I believed it was God that kept us safe because it certainly wasn’t his driving keeping us safe.

Mostly I just always felt unsafe everywhere I went and would use these mental ideas to imagine I was in a different situation. I liked to use images of light to protect myself and others.

So I”ve been without a car for more than a year now and when I start to act in a new way the transportation will be available. I think the new way has to do with not carrying a soggy back pack.

I think in order for soggy back pack to be in my life things have to be going really wrong. Knowing that I have a part of me that really likes to destroy things is scary. then i can’t tell when I am making a decision based on what will lead to something that is good for me or something that is not good for me.

it has to do with the internal and external world. the thinking that will change things is believing that the outside world is safe to act in.

I sabbatoge myself because i am really good at fixing problems and cleaning messes but that is supposed to be in the past now. now is the time for being like a bear and finishing the process. going for things and finishing them. it’s hard actually to finish what was started because so many egos get in the way.

So is the answer about having a really strong inner voice that is positive, especially when I want to do something? like Groove?

going in – turning down the yelling voice in the car – and turning up a strong inner voice…..