Chapter 52. Down low

DREAM. July 16, 2009. Restful Descent

Seemingly suspended in mid-air I have a moment of considering what to do next. Walking alone in a wooded wilderness, I have stepped out from a ledge expecting the ground below to be a drop of a foot or two, but am suddenly aware that it is more like a hundred feet – a fall will be dangerous and possibly lethal. Noticing tree branches above and around me, I consider using a limb as means to get to the ground below without injury. Maybe I can take hold of a branch and my weight will bring it down? Yes. I grab and hold onto the branch while it slowly descends. Its span is perfect, lowering me to just above the ground with merely a hop to land safely.

DREAM. August 14, 2010. Free Fall Sand Slide

Our – Gregg’s and my – journey home is up and over, around and all over different terrain. A few times we are on sand dune-like hills that we need to slide down. I feel apprehensive: what are we going to hit at the bottom of our free-fall slide? (I can see some rock ledges near the bottom of the slide path.) Somehow on the way down I am cushioned (I’m on the outer edge and in the front leading as we slide).

DREAM. July 31, 2011. Wobbly Weak Core 

I am trying to find my way through some extensively connected buildings, moving along at roof level. I come to a high area, confused as to which way to go and I step into a cab-like suspended container that swings considerably upon my entry – I almost lose my balance and wonder how will I get out or down from here. I see a long slide (like an airplane escape slide) and a person (male?) helping folks get onto the slide and instructing them toward ‘safety’ (the way down). To get to the slide (and the way out and down) I need to maneuver my body sideways and around, over a gap between the cab and slide, and I’m having a difficult time of it. I feel some inertia, almost like I can’t move, my core is too weak? I believe I make it to the top of the slide, but the dream ends before I descend.

DREAM. Early morning Jan 17, 2012.  True-ly Falling 

I am falling – a kind of descending that is scary at first, but turns out to feel rather more like flying – falling/flying from the top of some multi-storied buildings to the ground. The buildings are boxy, highly colored (teal with black trim, Scandinavian-ish?). I hear – or is it sense? – an assurance that I won’t crash.

My fall is in a swaying downward pattern (picture spiderman moving from building to building), and at a pace where I realize along the way that I won’t be harmed.  

Upon landing there is a welcoming presence: I think it is Jesus? (a human form at least a head taller than me, though not intimidating in any way). I put my arms around him (or does he put his arms around me?).

We hold each other – feels so good – I want to stay, like this is just where I want to be, his presence is sweetly and gently comforting and safe and stimulating and warm. TRUE SELF

Another part of dream happens at a large rural home with numerous outbuildings. I along with others (Becky?) are looking at some partially caged animals (containment was open at both ends) in a dim room. 

Among them are ferrets and a multicolored crustacean. I notice the ferrets out of the cage and try to put one back – it is clinging to me. Then I am aware that the creature is on my chest and when I pick it up (with some horror: it is ugly and unusual) and try to pull it from me and put it in the containment, it clings to me – maybe it is tangled in my black scarf? Or has wrapped its claws onto my clothes? With great effort I pull it from me and let it go, or it let me go. [I think the ferret and crustacean creatures may represent FALSE SELF.]

My spiritual journey for so many years has been about wanting to be: “up high” (seated with Christ with God, as in Colossians 3), I've wanted to be heaven-like in my thoughts and behaviors. That seemed to me to mean avoiding, if at all possible, what was base/muddy/lowly, to not fall down or fall away.

But I’m given these falling dreams. Seemingly a message tailored for me.

Falling, in dreams, can symbolize a returning to what is fundamental or real, it can indicate a need for consciousness from the higher realms to come back to the body. In my case, I think the falling is symbolic for leaving behind my egoic/try harder/compulsively work/false self that has been performance-oriented and mostly about doing, to get to a grounded fully-human-while-also-divine true self that can be about being.

Rohr’s words (in Falling Upward read in late 2011, and CD teaching on Spirituality in the Two Halves of Life, listened to in 2010 or so) along with other authors, have been a gift of permission for me to be other than “right” or “perfect” (according to my old constructs). 

A “lofty” diligence in following the rules, a pandering to my ego, and a careful establishing of a stable container (an on-top “place” in this world) was what I did – and did a lot – and was maybe appropriate for a time.

But the way is changing for me. That roof-top ‘cab’ is shaky (representing this transitional time of changing up my sense of self?), and the difficulty in moving away from the rooftop (in the July 2011 dream), even though it’s the direction I want to go, reveals a need for further strengthening of my true self core (the effort-full movements, almost slow mo, seem to represent a weak sense of true self).

There is need for strengthening of my true self by realizing and embracing that I am beloved, a fully human being marked and chosen by divine love. 

Gregg & Diane 1978

“I created you

Now let me love you

That’s all I’ve got to say

Would you like me to repeat that?”

-          Janet Hagberg

My spiritual journey involves an invitation to both receive love, and to get in touch with lower ground. It’s time to fall down, to fall into God (the good, true, beautiful, yes, and also sometimes suffering, humiliation, pain). 

The January 2012 dream is a gift of gentle assurance that there’s movement in the desired direction of falling.

It is a falling that is also flying,

    into the arms of Jesus/the divine,

          to the heart of my existence,

                   a heaviness that is the core of my essence.        

               

How surely gravity’s law

strong as an ocean current,

takes hold of even the smallest thing

and pulls it toward the heart of the world…

this is what the things can teach us: 

to fall,

patiently to trust our heaviness.

– Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours 
(* see below in small print for entire poem)

*Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke

How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world. 

Each thing—
each stone, blossom, child—
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we each belong to
for some empty freedom.
If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left [God].

This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God