Hi all,
Last week, we opened another layer around the how of the way dreams help us change our narratives. And how the narratives they change are not just one layered.
We are complex beings and the narratives we carry are not singular or isolated from each other. So, when we have a particular narrative around ourselves because of our life experiences, that narrative does not just stay with one part of who we are. It radiates out to all parts of our lives, inner and outer.
Which is why we need to practice and be present with the consciousness the dreams bring us. Just as untrue stories impact us negatively on so many layers, new consciousness can do the same in restorative and evolutionary ways. Radiating to surprising places.
But the process of change takes practice and attention. Which is why the dreams revisit narratives again and again.
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The particular series of dreams of mine we are exploring as an example of this are woven around my relationship with my father. How he was unable to be present with me because of his own challenges and traumas in his life. The first dream showed how I followed after him as his “caddy” while he completely ignored me [and how that played out with partners in my life], the second dream continued this but with my consciousness changed. I felt the loss of my father and knew he did not know how to see me. Lost in his game.
So, an archetype showed up and showed me what it was to be with someone who truly wanted to be with me. In a way I could understand, feel and receive at the time, as his beloved co-worker.
A big awakening for me. But when I had the awakening, I was not able to just BAM [CUE ANGELS SINGING] fully live into that reality, live into the sweetness of the dream, because the way my father had been with me as a girl and a young woman radiated out to so many aspects of my life.
From lovers to friends. From teachers to coworkers. Every. Where. The narrative of being unlovable permeated everything. Including being lovable to myself.
Especially, too, in my inner life.
The next dream, then, of the archetype calling me and saying, “Come on over” while I am standing alone in an old Italian town square, across from a cathedral that does not seem to have any doors, brings together many of these layers.
Here’s the dream again:
A sweet man calls and asks if I am going to come work for him now. He tells me all I have to do is walk across the square and into the cathedral where he is waiting for me. I feel scared and, as I stand in the square, I realize I do not know how to enter the building because I do not see a door. Just a wall that is many stories high.
Here, the layer of my Italian father, the layer of my relationship to my Italian heritage, my Italian family.
And. It also brings in the layer of my relationship to my spirituality and to my relationship with myself.
For the story of being unlovable had deeply permeated my inner life and my relationship with archetypes/divine/guides [whatever language works]. If I believed in “god”, then even god could not love me.
Or if she/he/they did love me, it would be same way my father did – from a distance. Cold, impenetrable and far, far away.
The idea of “god” as something distant was also taught to me as a girl raised within the catholic church. God was not a being to be in direct relationship with, not a being to have any closeness with. The god of my childhood “lessons” had to be interpreted through a very elaborate [and gorgeous] ceremony, in a very elaborate [and gorgeous] building/cathedral by a man who was called a man of god.
Me, out in the pew, being taught to always ask forgiveness for being “a sinner”. Me, sitting below the lecturing priest, being taught that I was so bad, we were so bad, that an incarnation of god had to be sacrificed to make things right. Me, on my knees, asking if I could be a humble servant to god.
It was a perfect fit for my already ingrained story about my lovability.
Then, there was me, in the dream, standing outside the church without any visible doors, being invited in. In a very profound way, this is what it felt to be in the catholic church. Standing outside, invited but having no way in. Especially as a woman.
For in catholic mythology, it was the woman’s fault, in the original garden, that people were separated from god in the first place.
When the archetype came to me as a co-worker in the earlier dream, that was something I could receive because it was not directly related to something “spiritual”, it was not a “god”.
The man was also not a father figure. Not really. As co-worker, he was setting himself as someone to trust outside of the realm of father or even god the father which I had grown up with as the truth of god.
Instead, the man came as a mundane, every day, 9-5 work buddy.
How is this aspect related to my spiritual life? It is related so precisely because the man was in the world of the mundane. With me looking for something lost [nice metaphor], just going through a day of “work”. It was a dream directly speaking to me about how to be with my spiritual life. In the every day. Outside of the “cathedral” or all the big ideas and mythologies of spirituality.
To bring in the cathedral, then, in a later dream really brought a deeper understanding about my always wanting to be “caddy” and it also brought a place to practice. A place to practice how to be with my spiritual life in the mundane world even with all my history with the catholic church and with my very Italian father.
My work from that dream was to walk to the cathedral and find the door, even though I could not see it at first. To get unstuck from the place of “there’s no way in” and trust that the door existed.
I loved the dream even though it confused me when I had it. I loved it because it helped to unstuck me from that place where I believed there was no way in.
No way into knowing myself. No way into knowing my spirituality. No way into knowing the divine.
Taking that first step toward the place that felt impenetrable was the door.
The door into another layer of restoration in my own spirituality as well as a door into exploring what my spirituality could be – what was new. This time not alone, not with a god that was distant, and frankly, seemed unfriendly and demanding and super damning. This time with my co-worker on another part of the search for what had been lost.
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Practice does not mean doing the same thing over and over again in the same way. Instead, to practice means to grow and deepen what we practice. It is a honing of our knowing, intuition and skills. It is learning things at a layer and then learning things at the next layer and practicing all of that.
Next week – a dream from this week that furthers this conversation and is encouraging me to keep practicing!