Dream: Mom is driving and I am in the back seat. There is a tremendous rumbling noise that is very loud and scary. As I look out the back window I see that the earth is moving back and forth. I am so scared. Now all the sudden it is pitch dark and I am afraid that Mom can’t see to drive. The road is on a high mountain, on some cliffs. I ask Mom if she can see. She says, “No but I’m being guided.” Somehow the car knows where to go. I am in such fear because the car could go off the side of a cliff but all I can do is trust what she is saying and hope that she is right. Now a man is there and he asks me if I have a memory about the place where we are going. I am surprised when a memory does come to me and I have a sense about where we are going. I wake up with a feeling of fear throughout my body that stays with me for a long time.
Before doing dreamwork, I never thought much about fear. It was always with me in the form of anxiety, but even then I didn’t really think of it as fear. I thought of anxiety as something annoying that I just lived with. Something I had to put up with. My normal way of being.
Now I am starting to experience a different type of fear. Archetypal fear. It has a different texture to it than anxiety. In the post “Being held down”, I felt it when the animus was lying on top of me. The feeling was a deep fear. One that felt unbearable but I had no choice but to bear it. I continued to feel it as part of my homework; an extremely difficult feeling to stay with. In this dream I feel it again during an earthquake when I hear the loud rumbling and I see the ground moving. But then the dream switches and so does the type of fear. I go from archetypal fear to anxiety fear. Rodger asks if when the dream switches, the fear has a different texture to it. I had never thought of fear as having a texture. But it did. When the dream switches and it becomes dark, I want to manage the situation. I ask Mom if she can see to drive. She answers me in a reassuring way but I am still in my head – wanting to figure things out. This anxiety fear feels different. In anxiety fear, I am still trying to control things. With archetypal fear, there is no possibility of me controlling anything. Anxiety fear keeps me in my mind. Archetypal fear forces me to let go of control.
The animus shows up in this dream with a question. “Do you remember the place that we are going?” Anxiety is gone as I listen to and consider his question. I do remember something, although I can’t quite put my finger on it. Rodger suggests that the place that we are going is to this place of archetypal fear – like the earthquake fear.
My homework is to feel the fear of the earthquake and feel the trust when I hear the man say, “Do you remember?”.
Feelings that are strong in dreams often fade. As I visualize and try to feel into this dream scene for my homework, I don’t feel that intense feeling anymore. But I do feel it at night. I wake up out of my sleep and I feel it. There is no dream (that I can remember), just a feeling of fear. This is new. It is starting to spill over into my waking life as well. I can feel it now as I write. It is not surface anxiety about a particular issue in my life. Anxiety leads me to my head, signaling me to figure out a solution. This new feeling has a different texture to it. A new deeper feeling that I can feel in my body. Surprisingly, I don’t try to push this feeling away. Sometimes, its a feeling of fear mixed with energy, almost an electric feeling.
In the dream, the animus is by my side as I begin to “remember” these feelings. In waking life, I have a sense of wonder as I allow and experience the texture of these new feelings.
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