I had a significant dream last night, after my heart opening meditation.
I was sleeping in well maintained old, somewhat dark,Victorian era, house, kind of like what my middle class grandparents might have lived in. A quite scary, Charlie Manson looking type man, showed up at my bedroom door threatening me with some kind of horrible fate (which wasn't made clear) if I didn't do something, or not do something (that also wasn't made clear). He left, indicating that I would have some indeterminate time to do this thing that I didn't even understand.
My first action was to try and lock the doors so that he couldn't get back in. But none of the doors in this house were lockable. Either they didn't have locks, or the locks were so old, the locks were more ornamental than actually working. Finally I felt I had no choice but to leave the house for the moment.
When I returned, the scary man was sitting in the foyer waiting for me. I had nowhere to live, but I knew was safer outside the house looking in.
That's as much as I remember, but as I was writing that dream in my journal this morning it hit me what a clear metaphor this was for the patterns I'm trying to change and the way I'm feeling right now about those patterns.
The locks on this house are the habits that are no longer working, and have long since lost their utility. The scary guy is basically everyone who has ever made me the object of their dis satisfaction or anger. This would represent a lot of people, not necessarily because I'm a dissatisfying person, but because dissatisfaction is most people's default mode, so as a fellow human I'm bound to end up the object of some of that. Maybe those locks once worked to keep those people with their confusing, or confused agendas out, but they don't work anymore.
I'm in a vulnerable place right now, the open space around and outside this old habit house, looking in. But it's a safer place for now.
A different kind of scary, but a better one, because outside the house, there is the possibility of help and liberation.
