Separation and Trauma

We live in a traumatized world and our dreams reflect that trauma. This can show up in extreme ways, for example in the sort of dream we would call a nightmare, or it may reflect back a simple core level of separation.

A DREAM: I am walking on a floating boardwalk on a cold and sunny day and I see two boys who have fallen into the water. I grab one of them and pull him out and hand him to a couple that is standing nearby. I see them put a wet towel on him. I am upset about this, not understanding why they are not wrapping him in their coats to keep him warm, as I imagined they would. I am too busy trying to pull the other boy out to worry about it. But for some reason I can’t grab this boy as he is just out of reach. Then I reach my leg out to him. He grabs it but I am still unable to pull him out. I look down at him and he looks me in the eye and I see that he is okay. I am so stunned by this that I awaken.

This was the first dream I ever worked. I worked it with Christa Lancaster who was my dreamwork therapist at the time. She asked me to feel into the moment where I saw the boy was okay and consider the possibility that it was me that was in trouble. It was hard for my mind to let in what she was saying and yet I could not deny that the boy was okay. I knew it in the dream and this simple truth actually shocked me to the point of waking me up.

I had no idea at the time how much more waking up I actually had to do. What I didn’t understand that day was the profundity of how separate that I was from this boy, how separate I was from my self.

You might reasonably say this dream has nothing to do with trauma and I would have agreed with you back then. I had no idea really of what it meant to be this disassociated from myself. I did let in what Christa was saying about how off it was that I thought I was being the hero when actually the boys were fine. Given that, it was also hard to disagree with the idea that maybe the couple was putting a wet towel on the first boy because he was like a fish out of water. That they were trying to mitigate the damage that I was creating in my arrogance of trying to save him. That maybe he lived in another realm where he needed to be in the water, needed to be in himself in a way that was far beyond my comprehension.

It turned my world upside down to let in what Christa showed me about my dream. I knew the world was in trouble. I was a socially aware left wing activist who had on some level devoted my life to “saving the world”. To let in that maybe I was the one that was in trouble and that I was projecting this on the world shook me up.

I thought I was fine and yet I could not also deny that I wasn’t. I knew in my heart there was something more to this life. I could see in my political work that those I was working with often seemed as troubled if not more than those I was so self righteously opposed to in one way or another. I was also at the end of a very troubled marriage.

There was really no way then, that I could let in fully what it meant to me on a psychic level to be in this basically hostile relationship to this boy, to my self. And I didn’t really have to. All the dream wanted me to do was to begin to see this, to begin to consider other possibilities. To consider that maybe who I thought I was, was not actually who I really was.

This was the first step on a long journey that has been an epic adventure in its own way. This site is devoted to sharing what I have learned from that adventure. I hope that it in some way touches you and helps you to take whatever steps are there for you to take on your journey.

Bill St.Cyr 11/19/11