Dream - Losing my way

Couple of weeks ago I had the following dream...

I was asleep in my bed when my boyfriend came home from his night out, taking two guests along into the kitchen. I woke up and was not aware he had brought guests with him and just entered the living room to welcome him, relieved to have him home, when I noticed the strangers in the kitchen. Not wanting them to see me exposed in my nightly outfit I crouched behind the relaxing chair. At that point my boyfriend became aware of my presence and the possibility of being exposed and ushered his guests out. Although we never spoke, we communicated with each other with our eyes. They never saw me, because neither I, nor my boyfriend ever put on the lights in the house.

After this scene we left to go somewhere together by car. I knew where we were going and had the road planned out before me. But as soon as I started the car and drove off from home I took another road. It was still nighttime, but there was something strange about the dark night. It was so dark that I felt like a blindman behind the steering wheel. Even when I put my headlights on, they were so dim in that blackness that I could hardly see the road ahead of me. Within minutes we were outside of the city and driving through a hilly forrested country, much like the road above in the picture. 

Though I knew we weren't on the correct road I persisted to continue the way we had taken, hoping to come across a split that would take me to the correct area. That never happened in the dream of course. We just ended up in the outback, the Ardennes. This hill, forrested country in South Belgium is over two hours drive away from my home, and thus not the intended twenty-minutes-drive-away suburb we had planned to go. 

Eventually the road ended as a grassfield driveway of a 19th century looking, restorated farm, with a brick arch as entry into the farm courtyard. I parked the car at the cow gate of the property, walked through the wet grass towards the arch at the courtyard, finally ready to ask for directions and help. As before, it was hard to see where I was going. The strange blinding blackness persisted. I never went beyond the arch. It was clear there was noone awake at the property, except for two farmyard dogs that came running towards me, barking. 

I halted my approach as soon as I heard the barking coming closer. In real life I'm rather nervous around dogs, because I've been bitten twice by dogs when I was a child. And I felt the same nervousness come up initially until I actually saw the dogs. The male was of medium height, hazel brown coat, of undefined race, and the second one - white female - looked like a pet lapdog. Their barking did not sound threatening once they were in sight, and they came up to me with their tails wagging. To my own surprise I petted both of them on the head, before I turned around and walked back to the car and leave the farm in peace. The dogs accompanied (or guided) me back to my car. 

As I arrived at the wooden cow gate, several women passed the car and crossed my path. They struck me as women experienced in being married, having a family, run a household, etc... And I addressed one, the woman closest to me, explaining that somehow I had taken the wrong turn and had ended up here while instead I wanted to go to xxxx (my initially planned suburb destination). 

She smiled sympathetically, and the women were very helpful, giving me all sorts of tips, signs to look for to drive back to the point where I had taken the wrong turn and find my way to where I wanted to go. As they explained, I could see the correct roads, the correct area, the correct destination in my mind. I thanked them, stepped into the car and woke up.

This dream was about my relationship and what was happening to it on an emotional plain for me. The most important message of the dream was the half-blindness and the lost feeling of not knowing where we were going except the wrong direction.

The dream starts with an example of little things between us, while living together that caused friction: bringing strangers into our home (previous my home) while I was asleep after a night out. I don't like it, because it makes me feel exposed. My home is a place to feel comfortable and relaxed, to rest from work, from stress, from expectations from people, etc. And disturbing my sleep makes me moody on top. My boyfriend did this twice when he first moved in, and the dream was at least a month after that. He had already come to respect my wish to not have guests over when I was already asleep, but it was one of those experiences stored away as cause for frustration. The disturbance of my sleep though was something that occurred weekly, although he had started to try and respect my rest in actuality already. In the dream the feelings of annoyance were never felt. But since these events occurred in the dream before our drive into the wrong direction, I take the past events as the identified cause or point in time when our relationship was heading for possible loss.

Significant seems the feeling of surety where I thought we would be going: an easy route, only a short distanced off, a route I supposed I could drive almost blind or without thinking. And yet we ended up in an unknown, unfamiliar territory, lost our way that ended at a standstill, a dead end. I started my relationship with a leap of faith, I had experienced our ability to support each other even when events were not easy, I had experienced our ability and effort to communicate in a loving way, even when we didn't like what the other had done. It were these things that made me choose to have him come from the other side of the world and live with me. Even though we are in many ways different, we both know how to relate consciously with others in a manner that is needed to make a relationship work on a day to day basis.

However, in practice for the past three months this turned out to be very difficult. Yes, I had reasons to be upset with him at times, and he had reasons to feel at a loss in how I communicated this upsetness. Yes, the two people in a relationship have the right to express how they feel and have the other respect their basic wishes. We needed to find these things out, make clear to each other what we needed, what we wanted respected, where our barriers lay. The problem was how we ended up only doing that. We barely expressed positive feelings anymore. Instead we were only expressing what we did not like, how we didn't want things to be. And when this is not backed up with positive examples of what we do like, of what we appreciate the good things that are, it's only normal that you start to feel "It's all negative. Why are we still together at all?"

That is how I felt at the time when I had this dream. I saw myself as a bitch who whined all the time, who could not give anymore. I had turned into a person I did not want to be, the opposite of who I had been the past ten years, and that in two months time. Feeling like that, also made me very insecure. How could someone want to stay with me if I was like this? I did not like who I had become, so I could hardly expect him to like it. And well, he too was moping, and negative. It had become a total mystery why on earth we even said we loved each other, and I could not believe he could feel this way about me with both our negative feedback day in and day out. My insecurity, my fears of losing him were represented by the forrested road. The sole negative feedback was the wrong road, making us lose our way. How responsible I felt about our relationship turning badly was represented by me at the driving wheel. And it resulted in this feeling of close to breaking up represented with the dead end at the farm.

The dream served to help me identify the problem, to accept how lost I felt and to see whether we could solve it or accept that all was lost. That it all happened at night showed how big of a problem it had become to solve. It would not be easy. The semi-blindness and inability to shed enough light on the road reflected in one way the panicky feelings of "help, I don't know what I'm doing," as well as the refusal to recognize the true cause and trouble we were in. The latter too was reflected in my persistence to continue on the wrong road, instead of turning back and reconnect with a more familiar area where I could find my way again. And lastly it showed a blind trust on my driving abilities that was unwarranted.

Finally, when I recognize that I am at the stage where we cannot continue this "way" anymore, I start to explore to find help. The help comes in two disguises: the two dogs and the more experienced married women who have been running a family and households for much longer than I have done. Dogs stand for fidelity and loyalty. They also stand for intuition. That they were benign then reveals that my unconscious would help to solve the problem, and hints at our mutual persistance to have stuck together this far, because we share basic values of fidelity and loyalty to each other. The barking may have been a pun at some of our fights: a lot of noise to warn the other partner they were treeading on our territory, but no true mean intent towards each other. The most significant event regarding the dogs was how they guided me back to the car. Dogs in dreams are also protectors, and in that way a sign of aid to come to protect my relationship. Meeting the dogs, their happy response to me was the first moment in the dream that actually felt good. It gave me the hope that things would turn out well, gave me the courage to return to the car and helped me to open up to aid, help and suggestions. It is no surprise that the night's darkness did not bother me anymore, and the feeling of blindness had lifted.

The married women's advice was simple: go back to where you took the wrong turn, then you will come to more familiar ground and will find your way again and find your intended destination. In the days that followed after this dream, my mind was preoccupied in identifying how I had come to feel so lost regarding the relationship: the almost constant negative feedback, with too litte positive feedback to balance it out. Once I realized the actual communication problem, I instantly realized what I needed to do and what I needed from him to resolve my negative emotions. And so I suggested to him that perhaps for a while it would help the both of us to try and express ourselves only in a positive way. The irony of the actual events is that I suggested this while we were driving, with me at the steering wheel.

At first he reacted rather negative to my general suggestion. He didn't understand what I meant, nor what the problem was. I then told him by example, how it made me feel loved when he touched me affectionately, how it enabled me to take in his negative feelings about my own actions in the past when he communicated "please don't do this anymore," when at the same time he stroked my cheek and look into my eyes with love and understanding. And right after I said that he put his hand on my leg affectionately. It made me feel better instantly. And over the days after we both reinforced our positive loving feelings for each other in this way. The healing and solution was rapid and amazingly easy. Within days I was able to offer to interrupt my own doings at home to go to the shop for him and get him something, even though he could have done it himself easily, when I noticed he was tired, and that without him asking me to, let alone ask me repeatedly. His face had such a surprised pleased look that it made me remember to repeat such a small non-spoken offer of love next time. And though there were frustrations over the days and weeks after for the both of us in our daily life events, we had found a way to not have it turn negatively onto each other, and instead support each other again both in our own way that makes the other feel loved.

Right now he is back in Nicaragua, because his maximum allowed stay was near expiration. But we are also engaged, and I have confidence again that it is based on something real and workable. I do not fear I may have made the wrong decision anymore and do not wish to ever have to be parted from him again.

Magic Star Reading (30 October 2009)

Friday was the first true clash between my boyfriend and I. By Friday morning he had not yet returned home and was still on a party binge, while he was to come with me in the morning to my mom who would give him a language lesson, and other things while I went to work. I called it off with my mom and during the morning break called to my own home to check whether he was in already. When I arrived back home in the late afternoon from work, he was still partying in our home with two total strangers. The house was a mess, not to mention how he had broken some of the things we had agreed upon: no strangers in the week, not while I'm not there. I ordered the two strangers out, told him I would go out for an hour to cool down and in the meantime he could clean some of the trash. When I returned it was obvious he had started to clear a bit, but ran off either angry or sad. When he returned he told me he had gone to the river and had been crying, apologized over and over and how I deserved much better, that he needed space, a week alone. That was when he told me he had used our card to get money for partying, and it had been a total irresponsible sum.

Eventually we calmed down, but I felt hurt and deeply disappointed by what happened, and laid the above cards in a magic star spread (the pentagram) in order to ask for advice regarding what had happened.

The first card, the card that portrays the problem or basic situation that caused the Tarot question was the 5 of Cups called disappointment. There was no arguing with the accuracy of that card: disappointed, betrayed in my trust, and I felt as if he had done this to hurt me, to send me a message. The card does not mean everything is ruined, but that there is a heartfelt disappointment and that it is hard to see past the broken cups.

The second card depicts the cause of the disappointment, and it was 7 of Cups, Debauch. While in the Rider Waite this card is about pursuing several fantasies all at once, in Corwley's Toth card it speaks about finding pleasure in superificial stuff that has no meaning, including addictive substances. Indeed, my disappointment was born out of my boyfriend's over the top partying (debauch) that lasted until 4 pm in the afternoon.

The third card shows a factor I need to consider, which was 7 of wands, Valour. How much does it no oppose the debauch of the 7 of Cups? I took the card as urging me to gain courage to fight for what I think is right. The sparkling rod in front of the other 6 wands, seems to say "show your backbone."

The fourth card gives adice or shows the solution: the Devil. The Devil indicates people bound to something as if it's an addiction, like a partner and of course substances, and also indicates worries and being held back by material considerations. The Devil tells us that it is not the partner or substances that hold us captive, but we ourselves do, and we are free to get rid of our bondages, if we just do it. The Devil urges us to face our fears and failings, and in that way free ourselves from it.

The fifth card is the end result of the situation, in this spread the Ace of Cups. An ace stands for an opportunity born from within, and the ace of cups stands for the chance of budding true inner happiness. I love this card in the Toth deck... When I see it, I think of the Grail, which for me stands for unconditional love beaming its bright ray everywhere.

So, what does it all mean? What do I need to free myself from? What do I need courage for? Does the ace of cups relate to my relationship or does it stand for a new opportunity.

One way would be to interprete it as gaining the courage (7 wands) to free myself from the relationship (devil), or have the courage to solve the difference and have him understand not to do this again, and free myself from my fears of material comfort, free myself from the memory of the disappointment.

On the one hand I allowed the thought of him perhaps needing to be on his own and traveling, I allowed the idea that we do not need to be together. And on the other hand, after a night of sleep, I discussed with him I felt he had the right to decide together with me what our money would be used for, and showed him everything of our financial situation. And for now that has seemed to work fine: we discuss our plans, how much each of them would cost, and decide together.

ETA: The Magic Star spread follows the pattern of the pentagram. In four of the cards we can see a pairing. 7 of wands versus 7 of cups, and thereby balancing it. The 5 of cups, Disappointment, shows the upside-down pentagram, which is the Satanistic symbol for the Devil, thereby hinting that what is holding me imprisoned is the disappointment, and that I needed to look beyond it, and so find the Grail through Valour.  

Tarot - Saturday 2 Swords (24.10)

While the 2 of Swords in the Rider Waite deck stands for purposefully turning a blind eye on matters to keep the peace and thereby closing your heart and holding down your emotions, Crowley sees the 2 of Swords as Lord of Peace. Swords represent the mental world, the mind. The number two evokes polarity. So, balance is required, between the heart and mind. So, while the Rider Waite deck focuses on the difficulty of finding this balance resulting in doubt, the Toth deck emphasises on the balance coming from insight and making up conflicts and planning.

Of course the first conversation about an incident is not always enough, and a couple needs to then discuss what "rules" they ought to live by to preserve the peace between each other, discuss a plan of what each can expect from each other in a similar situation.That is exactly what we did, including Sunday for which I did not pull a day card.

For example, I want and understand that my boyfriend wants to meet people and start building his own network of friends. On the other hand we both would want to go out together too: nothing more pleasant than showing off your partner in the social world, certainly in the early stages of a relationship. But I also need to work in the week, and be well rested in order to be a just teacher. Another example: I'm used to invite friends over once in a while. So, I think he should be able to invite his new made friends over, even if I don't know them, even though it remains awkward as an idea because it is my apartment with my stuff (he's acting very responsible about it though). Or we make plans to visit my parents to do the laundry there, and one partner thinks we will stay over for dinner when invited, while the other wants to go back home.

The difficulty is finding a balance in all of this, and it does not always come naturally when both partners have lived on their own for years and are chronically used to do as they see fit for themselves.We're bound to make mistakes without intention, and need to find a way to set up a communication pattern that will avoid making such mistakes and gives the other person the most insight in each other's plans. 

Tarot - Friday Art (23.10)

Art is Crowley's Temperance, and illustrates the mixing of two opposites: fire with water and the lion with a griffon. The result is something steamy and passionate, and can tend to blow in our faces, so temperance is required in order to have a productive result rather than destructive. The angel in this card mixing the opposites holds a wand and a cup. Not only are these the Tarot symbols related to the elements of fire and water, but a wand is a symbol of the male aspect while a cup of the female aspect.

Friday was a day where I was confronted with my first irritations of suddenly having my partner living with me, something he had done that he shouldn't have, coupled with my worries over my finances. It's a small appartment and we are in some ways as different as night and day as well as both needing attention, spirited and extraverts. It can be a volatile combination if we were to think only of ourselves and would not have the maturity yet to express our needs, wants and frustrations in a loving way. Luckily we can argue in a manner that still expresses love. The potential of a fight was there on Friday, and yet we simply talked things over in a temperate and productive manner.

Tarot - Wednesday Hanged Man (21.10)

The Hanged Man is a Major Arcana card, where a man is hanging upside down in the position of a sacrifice. So, basically this card is about looking at an issue totally differently than before, and also about accepting that something needs to be sacrificed. It also warns that you give up resistance or a fight, and with some fatalistic attitude accept the situation as if you can't do anything about it, and so give up.

This is of course a feeling that has been building up over the past weeks with this financial worrying situation. I try to limit my expenses, gain some control over the situation but don't seem to succeed: something always tends to happen beyond my power the past half year and I'll literally have to pay for it. If I want to solve this I will have to look at other solutions than usual. And of course after the down of finding out that my financial situation still has not bettered a little, I naturally felt like the Hanged Man again.

Tarot - Thuesday Princess of Swords and 5 Disks

Crowley's Princess of Swords (aka Page of Swords) shows a young woman within a conflict situation. She's trying to keep her head (with a helmet reminiscent of wise Athena) above the dark upsetting clouds and ward off any unseen evil. The sword is pointed downwards. This can help to impact a coming blow, but clearly the Princess is not willing to strike first. Note how the dark clouds can only be seen underneath her own feet, suggesting that her worries that are the cause of her defensiveness may have been born in her mind alone without a material cause. She might just as well be fighting a depression. The sky around her and that which she tries to defend herself from is clear and light. Is there any real danger to be seen? Lastly, the Princess of Swords is alighted in a green colour, with green symbolizing "green of envy".

When I saw this card, I knew I was warned about me ending up feeling cornered and self-protective. So I drew another card to clarify in what area this conflict would expose itself. I drew the 5 of pentacles. 

This card is called Worry by Crowley, and as pentacles it signifies the cause of the worries is tangible, and very possibly material and financial. We see a reversed pentagram on this dark card: things are not going well. Nor is it a situation that is easily solved. All elements are involved and in a negative way. The card shows no rescue.

I knew then that the conflict would be about my financial situation, that has been a point of worry for quite some time. While I do have work (loads) and a healthy pay, I've run into some misfortunes with financial repercussions over the past months, and it all piles up one after the other. The past month I've been trying to at least stabilize the situation.

On Monday night, past midnight, and thus Thuesday, I checked my bank account and my attempt to turn the situation around has not yet come to pass. So, upcoming bills, how to fix the situations short term and long term, planning was running through my mind the whole day.

Tarot - Monday Knight of Cups (19.10)

Crowley's Knight of Cups does not correlate exactly to the Knight of Cups of the Rider Waite, because the Toth deck has no Kings in the Court cards. Crowley has princesses for pages, princes for knights, and knights for kings, while the queen remain queens. But that would not be totally correct either. I rarely see a court card as another person than the querent. Often I regard them as an attitude the querent has within a certain situation. Pages or princesses stand more for an opportunity to me, like the aces, with that difference that usually the opportunities of the aces are born from within, while the opportunities of the pages come from outside ourselves, coming from a person. The RW knights and Crowley's princes tend to stand for an environment and climate rather than just one person. This leaves only the queens and kings (or Crowley's knights) to represent actual concrete people.

So, according to the card for past Monday (that I drew on Saturday 17 October) the issue of that day involved a man in a romantic sense. The Knight of Cups is like a romantic ideal, the knight in shining armour, who'll fly to other worlds to pamper you with his feelings for you, driven by his impulses. In my case this was very literal. My Nicaraguan boyfriend had his flight from Costa Rica to Germany on Monday in order to come and live with me for the next three months.