Let me take a moment to set the scene here. It's 5:34 AM, I've spent the last half hour in a semi-hypnogogic state, doing my morning before work routine of medication taking, nasal rinsing, teeth brushing, body washing, and clothing putting on, so that I could leave for work if this blogging thing took too long. So what possessed me to give up an hours sleep in the first place -- and do I really still have to make myself a lunch to take to work.
I hate/love having those big important dreams. So without more ado, let me recount what I can remember of it. I'll come back and explain stuff later.
I found myself in the company of the men's intensive group, standing at some distance from them as they assembled in a circle. I was extremely reluctant to join them, struggling with whether or not I should get into my car and just abandon the entire experience/ordeal. A brother approached me encouraging me to join the circle. It took me a lot of energy to approach the circle, but I keep telling my self that it is for my own good; that I keep complaining about my social isolation; that my last experience with them was very positive; you've come all this way; you must want/need to be here; you must overcome your fear. All the while, I feel this pressure to join them, a litany of voices coming from outside of myself to conform to the group expectation compounding my own inner dialog .
I finally join the circle and my hands are firmly grasped by the men on either side of me. Words are spoken and a ritual battle begins. Collectively we begin wrestling -- all while standing and holding hands -- my awareness shrinks to the just the awareness of the men with whom I am holding hands. We squeeze each others hands and writhe and twist seeking leverage. I suddenly, find myself in a leverage position that causes one of my competitors to cry out in pain. I am flushed with a sudden overpowering rage and I want to hurt him badly. Instead, I release him and we collapse into a writhing heap. A homo-erotic moment of pleasure captures me as a I am on my knees and someone presses their groin against my buttocks. I am filled with revulsion -- a wave of past humiliation sweeps through me -- and I break free of the tangled mass of limbs bent on mutual conquest.
I want nothing more than to hide. Strangely, I shed my clothes and climb a barren tree that rises above the conflict and I am safely hidden.
I don't see any answers in this dream but it thoroughly captures and expresses some of my current issues. I am highly conflicted about whether to go to the men's intensive again.
The men's intensive -- note that this history is a summation of what I think I've heard and may not be fully accurate -- is a group of men that have been meeting semi-annually now for the past six/seven years. The group began as a men's group activity growing out classes given by David Thomson's Sacred Circles Institute. The group self-identifies as a brotherhood of shamanic healers seeking personal growth and to support each other.
I found David, just prior to Gail's breast cancer surgery last year, when I was seeking a lodge to sweat and pray in after moving north from Vancouver, WA to Bellingham, WA. After a couple sweats and participation taking down and relocating the Blackfeet Sundance Lodge for which David is responsible. David invited me to join the men's intensive group. I accepted and attended my first gathering last October.
It turned out that the gathering resulted in a powerful healing for me. I was the one and only newbie at the gathering of about a dozen men. I attended the gathering with low expectations and a lot of amorphous fear, trusting only that I had been praying to walk through my fears and accepting that Creator had put David and this opportunity in my path. I was keeping faith with my current mantra and "Showing UP!"
As I was sharing my responses to the discussion questions, one of the brother's bent over for a while and rose wailing. He turned to me and shared that he was feeling my pain. The ensuing response by the brotherhood was to table further discussions and follow the intuition of the moment. A half hour later I was willingly lead into the woods where my brothers created a protective circle, laid me nearly naked on mother earth and formed a womb from their flesh that gave me a sense of love and security. The screams of agony and torment that arose suddenly from my guts were to say the least, surprising.
As, I sputtered and choked while expelling copious quantities of snot and whatnot from inside me -- to an accompaniment of eagle whistles and drums -- David apprehended, at a great distance, a toe headed boy of only a few years running and leaping in joy towards the circle that surrounded me. As the boy neared, David explained, he slowed and came to stand silently beside one of the men holding the outer circle. David intuited that this was a part of my soul that I had lost. David, gathered the child and returned him to me, as he'd been taught, when I allowed that I was ready to accept the child.
Following this healing it came to me that my addiction to smoking was intimately tied to my father. The next day, I performed a ceremony with my last four cigarettes. I haven't smoked since.
Damn, time to go make that lunch. More later, after I get home from work.
Okay, so I didn't get back to this when I got home. Instead, I finished the "Caucusing" blog that I'd started on Tuesday. It may be hard to get back into the zone that I was in on Wednesday morning when I started this thing. Its late Thursday evening at present.
I am pretty sure that I am not finished dealing with the repercussions of that ceremony in the woods. The dream had three components that I feel/think are especially significant: Rage; Humiliation; Fear. Some might think there is a fourth, the homo-erotic thing, but I accepted that I was bisexual a long time ago and have outed myself on quite a few occasions, including at the men's intensive. Truth be told, age is impacting my libido so it is not anywhere near as important in my life as it had been.
Rage, Humiliation, and Fear, that's a pretty big load of crap to be carrying around. I would like to say more about these, but truthfully, they were feelings. I would only be speculating about their sources in my psyche if I went looking at the moment. I just acknowledge that they are present and powerful. I'd hoped that blogging about them would have moved me to a better understanding of their sources but I recognize that that might be a simplistic and vain hope.
The thing about the men's intensive is that -- to the best of my recollection -- since I was there, I have had very little contact with the members of the group. I saw one of the guys for a half hour or so when Gail and I took a 4 day vacation out on the Olympic Peninsula and three others at a sweat just before the end of 2007. For a brief while following the intensive, David stayed in touch via email and phone; I also got a couple emails relating to some events that some of the guys were involved in, but the frequency has fallen the past couple months. Now, I haven't reached out to them so I can't lay fault with them for not staying in better touch.
It seems that I am just struggling with the notion of going, wondering if the time and money will be well spent. I don't want this to be some cathartic therapeutic event where I go to purge myself of the rage, humiliation, and fears that I've spend a lifetime building. I have great difficulty thinking/feeling/believing that I have anything of substance to offer this group of men and I am doubting that those 4 days has created a bond sufficient to take me back.
I suppose this says it all, "I want nothing more than to hide. Strangely, I shed my clothes and climb a barren tree that rises above the conflict and I am safely hidden."
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