angry girl...

Dream - A group of people, that feel like royalty, are at a large on-going outdoor party.  The afternoon activities are over and everyone has now showered and cleaned up for dinner.  I haven’t yet.  We are about to sit down.  I rush into a room to shower, knowing I will be late.  In the room is a young woman, 20’s, who is keeping an eye on a little girl, about 7.  The girl is sitting on a bed and seems to be challenged. Her head is lowered, hair hanging in her face, and she has a really angry look on her face.  I am in the bathroom, getting ready to shower.  When the young woman isn’t looking, the girl throws something at her.  Now I see that she has a tennis racket in her hand and before I can call out, she swings and hits the woman with it.  This poor woman!  I notice that she is all showered and looks nice.  I’m still a mess.  I will offer to trade places with her; I will stay with the girl and let her go to the dinner; she deserves it.

The girl is my soul self...angry.  The ‘cleaned up’ young woman is my ego.  I, still a mess, am not ready for the meal with the royals, the archetypes, those energies that connect us to the higher self, the divine.  It isn’t even me who is invited, it is the girl, this angry little girl is the one invited, but I keep that part of myself locked up.  The challenged girl is not who my true self is, but that is how I see her.  At this point in my dreamwork, not only am I still struggling to feel, I certainly don’t want to feel my vulnerability and my need.  It feels like a weakness to me, some flaw that I need to overcome. So the young woman is my projection that I, my ego self, am smarter than my soul self, that this girl somehow needs to be managed, that I have to ‘keep an eye on her,’...I certainly don’t want to be her. 

Rodger asked me to feel into this angry girl, feel what she’s feeling, made to feel her voice doesn’t matter, that she’s imprisoned by what others think. He asked me to take a good swing with the tennis racket at this ego part of myself that is holding my true self back, my joy, creativity...my fullness.  I struggled with this, could only manage a half-hearted feeble swing.  I couldn’t access my anger, again years of meditation practice had taught me to transform my anger and not feel it, that it was somehow unskillful.  Rodger acknowledged that there is the anger that can be a cover for other feelings, but in this case, for me, the anger is valid and needs to be felt. 

Dream Practice/Homework–Be the challenged girl, feel what she is feeling – see the world from her point of view, how she’s being held back by others’ opinions, feel how she feels being imprisoned...and take a swing.

Mary Jo Heyen
Archetypal Dreamwork Practitioner
mjheyen@gmail.com 
Dream sessions in person, via Skype or on the phone
website: http://maryjoheyen.com/