Over a decade ago I was doing a lot of myth work, and part of that resulted in me having incredibly vivid dreams for an extended period of a few months, here are a couple of note that refer to my demons…
DREAM 1: abomination
I remember being in an underworld like setting, and before me was a great cave, gathering my courage I stepped inside, it was circular in shape… and then a deep thrumming and then howling arose, and emerging out of the darkness was some kind of abhorrent abomination, is was jangling flesh stitched together, open wounds, carrying a great cleaver and slowly ambled towards me… it was slow but I KNEW that if it caught me Id be done for, so in the dream as I was learning to do, I summoned a sword and attacked the creature, hacking it apart, dodging it then hacking again, until it was nothing but a bloody mess on the floor, in my dream I stepped back as the flesh slowly started to reform and the abomination arose once again – this happened many times in the dream, me slaying it, it arising from the dead again and again….
DREAM 2: the withered man
I’d had this dream before, I was sure, but I dreamed of an old rickety wooden house, something right out of an American horror movie, I slept (in my dream) there and was awoken by a noise under the house, as I explored the lower levels, I could have sworn I saw an eye peering at my from between the floorboards.
(Once again) I gathered my courage, and opened the cupboard under the stairs to see another set of stairs heading down into darkness, into the basement of the house… I walked down into a hallway with a doorway on either side… slender beams of light penetrating the darkness shining down through the cracks in the floorboards.
The room on my left caught my attention.. movement? And so slowly I stepped in, my eyes straining in the dark. Then I saw him, the most pathetic thing I have ever seen, a withered and greying being, skin and bone, reminiscent of Golumn from The Lord Of The Rings, but even more pathetic, even more withered….
I stepped out of the room and went across the hallway, turning on a light switch and seeing that this room was another kitchen, the light was on, and then I turned and saw standing behind me this pathetic creature, fearing it was about to attack me I grabbed a knife off the side and stabbed it repeatedly, it fell to the floor with a sickening howl… suddenly the lights went off, and I heard it scurry away into the other room, and I was left with a profound feeling I’d done something terrible in this dream.
THERAPY SESSION: the bad men
In a recent therapy session we did some regression work, before we did we discussed my safe place and whether I was able to go there should the need arise.
We started with a situation that was causing me difficulty NOW, and so I described feelings of overhwelm, of hopelessness, of pain….
“When did you feel like this as a boy?” asked the therapist…
My mind wove a thread, a thought on the edge of my ‘view,’ my impulse to rubbish it, to ignore it, so strong is the self doubt in me, but something made me trust it, so I went with it… and found myself in some kind of recall, surrounded by bad men doing bad things to me as a boy, several of them, they were threatening my brothers, I had to comply to keep them safe, and so the shame built, so the anger did too.
“what is it you’re needing in this moment?” asked the therapist
“protection” I replied
“Who would protect you right now” he asked
“If I could go back in time I’d protect myself, I’d undo the violators of innocence”
“and if it wasn’t you, who would protect you?”
“Bear, he used to be a right old UNIT of a man, he’d tear them apart” I said and chuckled to myself
“is there a door in the room?” asked the therapist
“Yes over there at the far wall”
And so I imagined Bear forcing his way into the room, and imagined him fighting and over coming the bad men, protecting me, and so tears came to my eyes, still not an easy thing to achieve.
“now, your safe place” guided the therapist
And so I imagined my place of safety, a land of green rolling hills, with a river weaving down between, a perpetual setting/rising sun, flanked by mountains, and in the foreground a large and ancient tree… a tree the boy liked to climb and hide in.
She was with me, and I didn’t want to say her name, Bear was there, so was Wolf (which made my heart smile) so was I as the boy I once was, and so was I.
We rested there a while, and I felt safety and felt loved in a safe and appropriate way….
I’ve since reflected on the psychosis that overcame me a couple of years ago, how my pain became like a possessing force, how in these dreams I described my first instinct was to fight these ‘monsters’ realising at a later date that they needed to be seen and loved, not attacked…. So often as survivors we attack our own pain our own wounds, an echo of what was once done to us, and so we hurt ourselves as we were ‘taught’ so long ago…
I saw this video clip on instagram, its worth a watch, it describes visually very well, what our personal demons need to let go of us, for them to be loved, please watch it, and if you have the time comment below.
video: (outside link)
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNSmndABc5b/?igsh=bDIydXBlc241NnN2
All my love – Daniel