Recently a reported discussion group sent me their observations on my book. They reported their discussion took a direction none of them expected. The moderator of this discussion group reported to me that at first, everyone assumed they would be talking about bisexuality. The conversations naturally began with identity, same-sex attraction, and the tension between my public life and my private struggles. But somewhere along the way, she reported, those topics quietly stopped being the center of the discussion. Instead, they found themselves asking a different question. Was the “other man” ever really another person... or was he the part of myself that had been waiting to be understood all along? That question, she said, changed everything.

Some readers felt my memoir was ultimately about reconciling sexuality. Others believed it reached much deeper and that the journey was about becoming whole by making peace with every part of myself, including the parts I had spent years trying to silence. Then one reader noticed how dreams and symbolic imagery kept appearing, almost as if they were carrying a conversation that words alone couldn’t express. Suddenly, several of them began looking at the memoir through an entirely different lens.

There was one interpretation that kept resurfacing throughout their discussion. It wasn’t about a particular relationship or chapter. It was about the title itself, and whether The Other Man in Me was ever referring to someone separate—or whether, by the final pages, there was no “other man” left at all. She posed that question to me.

I responded that their conclusion was my reason for writing the book. When I was wrestling with whether to pursue a same sex relationship life, I somehow knew that when I would come to the end of my life, I would have discovered what I already knew intuitively, it wasn't just about sex. But about something more. And yes! I discovered that “the other man” that I projected out on to other men was actually in me and who I became. There really was no other man. I was and am that man, the archetype of the Green Man who connected me to Nature and to the shaman-healer in me and to a different expression of the masculine than I was raised with.

The lesson for me was “we are that which we seek.” My hypothesis is that we often project the unconscious parts of us outside, onto others, hoping to find them in someone else and create a narrative around that longing. However, when we realize that often we are projecting parts of ourselves onto some other and begin to look at the symbolic meaning of that longing, we often discover that the other we seek is us. The narrative then changes. We become that person. Their readers were right. There was no other man. Thus, the title of the book, The Other Man in Me.

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Also, according to shamanic traditions, a power animal joins us at the time of our birth and brings gifts and attributes that we have the potential to develop. During our lives we have other power animals that provide resources that we need throughout our lives. When we call for a power animal, Spirit provides us with whatever we need – we do not get to choose. In fact, we may retrieve one that is entirely unforeseen, or actively disliked. The animal that comes to us represents an instinctual part of ourselves that we may have become disconnected from – or even find distasteful but may need in our lives.

It is important to remember that no animal is superior, more important or more spiritual than another. An ant or a cockroach is as powerful and as important as an elephant or a jaguar. For example, a cockroach is extremely adaptable. If you’ve ever wondered why it’s hard to step on one, it’s because the antennae spikes on their backs are able to detect subtle changes in air movement so they can escape before being killed. Part of their message is about survival and being adaptable by using what is available to us.

Each animal has its own power or medicine. Each animal has a unique set of skills and abilities that allow it to survive. These skills and abilities symbolize the archetypal power they hold. If an animal shows up, it may symbolize that you have similar abilities, or be telling us what abilities you need to develop to make good decisions or take a certain type of action. Working with a power animal is an instinctual process about who we are becoming, not about who we would prefer to be. It is up to us to learn its attributes as it reveals its wisdom.

When you get a power animal, develop a relationship with the animal. Ask your power animal what gift it has for you that you need most in your life at this time. Accept its gift. Ask you power animal what gift it would like from you and then give it this gift. Ask your power animal what talents or strengths it brings to you. Ask your power animal what wisdom it has for you, why it is in your life, what you can work on together. Ask your power animal what is wants or needs from you. Power animals are our allies, our spirit helpers, our companions. Treat them like you would treat an important and respected friend.

Once you have established a relationship with the animals, here are some other ways to connect with a power animal.

(1)          Outline a situation, why is bothers you and ask what the best way is to resolve it for the highest good of everyone. An animal symbol should soon show up. The animal may appear physically in your life or symbolically, such as a picture that grabs your attention. It might be a picture in a magazine or on a t-shirt or when you open Facebook. You then need to decipher the meaning of the animal. You can ask the animal directly. There are also various books and websites that can help with this.

(2)          The animal may show up in a dream.

(3)          You can also journey to your power animal and ask it for guidance and help for the situation.

(4)          Read about the animal. Study it habits. Ask how the animal’s habits might be helpful in your life. How can you integrate the habits and ways of the animal into your life?

(5)          Think symbolically. For example, suppose a zebra shows up in a dream or a journey or on Facebook shortly after you’ve posed a question.  You might ask “Am I looking at things too black and white?” Or “do I need to hold opposing viewpoints together?” Notice what comes to you when you ask “what are you telling me?”

David Richo in The Power of Coincidence says that animals will appear in both waking and dream life to serve as guides or as triggers to transformation.  Carl Jung points out that when we become more spiritual, an animal appears. Animals may appear in life experience and in dreams at important times in our lives to accompany or even escort us along our path.  Joseph Campbell says that animals are the great shamans and teachers—messengers and personal guardians that come to bestow their warning and protection.  Animals will appear synchronously when we need information about our path. 

Therefore, the power animal can be a very significant resource to you. It will help you develop an aspect of your instinctual self that has not been dulled by society and civilization. It will retune your instincts. Your power animal will make you alert and give you sense and ways of perceiving the world that you ordinarily do not have available to you.

Many years ago, as I was contemplating what direction to take in my life, rabbit came to me and told me to “lighten up.” He further explained that “lighten up” meant to stop taking things so seriously, embrace life, play with life, enjoy the journey. Rabbit also explained that I needed to lighten up by letting go of old stories, fears, old beliefs, perceptions, and assumptions that weighed me down and discover my light.  Recently, a mountain goat came to me with the gifts of sure-footedness, steadfastness, and balance telling me that he had come to bring me the ability to move easily and confidently in what for some would be challenging or even impossible terrain. When we call for a power animal, Spirit provides us with whatever we need.

Here is a guided journey to discover a power animal.

This is the last week that I will be posting on The Other Man in Me. The purpose of The Other Man in Me was to introduce my book by that name and provide a format for people to read my book. All chapters have been published so I am moving my future posts to a new substack newsletter called Psychotherapist and the Shaman. This newsletter will focus on shamanism and energy healing. If you want to continue to receive my posts, please sign up for sheldon’s substack, Psychotherapist and the Shaman. Here is the link. shamanshalley.substack.com

Thank you for your past interest in my book and I look forward to connecting with you on shamanshalley.substack.com.

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It is important to realize that we are not training to become shamans. Traditionally it is not typical to volunteer for the role of shaman or to identify oneself as a shaman. Rather, a person is chosen by the spirits to become a shaman and to act in service for the community.  It is the community that recognizes a person as a shaman based on the successful results that the person achieves for the benefits of clients or the community. However, I do believe that it is perfectly ok and even desirable to connect with what I call our inner shaman—the part of us that remembers that everything is connected, that everything is alive and has a spirit, an energetic signature or imprint and that we can interact with that energy.

This inner shaman knows that we are technicians of the sacred, mediators between the visible world of matter and the invisible world of spirit. She knows that we can journey into the world of spirit, these places of non-ordinary reality and communicate with luminous beings, spirit helpers and power animals which become our allies and act as guides, informants, protectors and healers.

This inner shaman knows that all creation—the earth, humans, whales, rocks, and even the stars—everything is made up of vibration and light and that as shamans we can learn to perceive this vibration and light that makes up the physical world. Thanks to the discoveries of quantum physics, we’ve come to understand that all matter is densely packed light, and this vibration and light can organize into a thousand shapes and forms.

We humans are also luminous beings, made of light. We’re surrounded by a luminous energy field (LEF) that maintains the form and health of the body. The LEF organizes the body in the same way the energy fields of a magnet arrange iron filings on top of a piece of glass. The imprints in the LEF give instructions to our DNA which then manufactures the body. According to the Andean wisdom teachings, our luminous energy body contains energetic imprints of everything that has ever happened to us since the beginning of our soul’s existence, including the stories of our ancestors and past lives.

The shaman knows that everything is alive – with spirit. The earth we walk on, the air we breathe, the vines of the forest, the birds flying overhead, our parents and children, our ancestors, all possess a spiritual aspect that is different from, but connected to, their physical aspect. This intangible spirit is the animating force behind all things; the energy permeating everything, living or inert. All the forces of nature vibrate with a life force. The shaman knows it is possible to affect human physiology by interacting with the spirit world; that spirit can and does affect matter in real and vital ways.

The shaman also knows that there are many beings of entirely spiritual constitution, without a physical component at all. They are called gods or goddesses, sprites, fairies, devas, power animals, or spirit allies-- all beings who exist primarily in a spiritual form. The singular “spirit” refers to the basic power of the universe that supports all creation. When used in the plural, “spirits” are typically beings with individuality. They may present as animals, teachers in human form, or aspects of nature, such as plant or river spirits.

The crux of the conviction is that all life, be it spirit, animal, human, or plant, is connected. The actions, thoughts, beliefs and intentions of each component of the whole affect all other components to varying degrees and even affect the universe itself. To live in harmony in this multidimensional universe one must understand not only the laws and the lands of the physical world, but the principles and terrain of the spiritual world. As used here, “spiritual” doesn’t necessarily mean religious, but energetic or intangible.

Maneuvering in this web of creation, this intertwining world of spirit and nature and man, is the shaman’s life’s work. It is the relationship with this spiritual dimension that heavily influences the quality of life for an individual and a community. In shamanism we do not use our own energy in doing healing work; we work in partnership with the spirits. The shaman is the hands and heart that the spirits work through. As shamans, we are the technicians of the sacred who mediate between the world of mortals and the world of spirits.

In activating our inner shamans, we let the spirits know that we are willing to become vessels for healing. The spirits long to work with us and engage us in service to the earth. Journeying is a way to connect with spiritual helpers, to access personal spiritual guidance and healing, a way to help others and the planet and to reconnect with nature.  In the next few posts, we will explore the concept of shamanic journeying and I will provide an opportunity for you develop your skills at journeying through guided journeys. There are many types of journeying such as

1.      Journeying to the Lower World to meet and develop a relationship with your power animal.

2.      Journeying to the Upper World for the purpose of meeting a teacher or guide.

3.      Journeying to the Middle World to discover and communicate with the spirits of the invisible world who are around us all the time but whom we may not perceive in ordinary reality.

4.      Divination journeys to divine information for ourselves, individuals and the community.

5.      Healing journeys to address the spiritual dimension of illness.

6.      Journeys for interpreting a dream, the meaning of a symbol or omen or sign that shows up in our lives.

7.      Journeys to receive instruction for creating and performing ceremonies.

In fact, there is nothing that we can’t journey about. To provide a format and structure for journeying, we begin by journeying to the Lower World to meet and/or work with a power animal. But before we do that, just what are power animals and how can a relationship with a power animal be helpful to us?

To learn more about power animals and to access a guided audio journey to meet a power animal, I invite you to become a paid subscriber where you have access to all the chapters of my book, The Other Man in Me, Erotic Longing, Lust and Love: The Soul Calling and you will also have access to my posts on shamanism and energy medicine. Become a paid subscriber below to continue to read this post and access the audio journey to meet a power animal.

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In my previous post, I gave a brief summary of shamanism. Basically, shamanism is a family of traditions that focus on voluntarily entering altered states of consciousness or what are commonly known as non-ordinary states of reality and interacting with the sprits or entities that live there on behalf of individuals and communities.

Over the next several weeks, I will be introducing basic concepts of shamanism and give examples from my own experience as a shamanic practitioner on how to access and work with your inner shaman.

First, shamanism holds that everything is alive and made up of an energy field. This energy field vibrates with an energetic signature or imprint of information pertinent to that field. These energy fields are connected and exist in relationship to each other, interacting with each other and since they are responsive, they respond to our intentions.

Just like quantum physics describes a field of energy that connects all of life, shamans speak of a web of life that connects everything. Shamanism maintains there is a physical world of matter and a spiritual invisible world of energy.

Second, shamanism divides the world into three parts: The Lower, Middle, and Upper Worlds. These aren’t physical places, but rather energetic domains that are said to exist within us and all around us.  In short, the “lower world” represents our unconscious and houses our psychological wounds, ancestral baggage, past life influences, and is the place where we often find our power animals. The landscape in the Lower World tends to be earthy, filled with mountains, deserts, dense jungles, rivers, and forests. To access the Lower World the shaman might descend down the roots of a tree, travel down the cater of a volcano or through a hole in the ground, through the entrance of a cave, or through a body or water, such as a lake, stream, river or waterfall or any place in nature with a natural opening into the earth. I often journey to the Lower World through the roots of the World Tree or dive into a body of water or journey through a hole in the ground or a cave.

The Middle World is the spiritual dimension of our physical world and the domain of our everyday experiences. Here the shaman communicates with the spirits that live in all things present in physical reality. Shamans classically journey to the Middle World to find lost and stolen objects, to commune with nature, or to do long-distance healing work. You might take a Middle World journey to meet with the spirits of the plants, trees, and rocks where you live, to learn more about them and come into balance with them. To access the Middle World, the shaman, once in the altered trance state, will leave from his present location and walk out into the middle world where they see and interact with the spirits or energy of what they encounter there.

The “upper world” is the world of our becoming, our future potential, and possibilities. It’s also the place of angels, ascended masters, gods and goddesses. Many people experience the Upper World as very ethereal. The light tends to be bright, although the spectrum of colors can include everything from soft pastels to complete darkness. The landscapes in the Upper World can be quite varied. You might find yourself in a crystal city or simply in the clouds. To access the Upper World, shamans may use the Tree of Life, climbing up the branches into the Upper world. They may climb a rope or a ladder, jump from the top of a mountain, rise in a volcano, whirlwind, go up through the smoke of a fire or have bird or horse drawn chariot take them. Now days they may use a hot air balloon or ask their power animal or guardian spirit to take them there or just float up. I often enter through the upper branches of the World Tree where I am sometimes met with a chariot pulled by an animal. Sometimes, an opening appears, and a rope and ladder is extended down which I then climb up.

As I already mentioned to the shaman everything is alive. The Middle World is one place where the shaman can speak to the spirit of the rocks, trees, plants, wind, water, fire, earth, etc. The shaman can speak to the spirit that lives in the Middle World.

The two most common types of spirits who work in partnership with the shaman are power animals also called guardian spirits and teachers in human form. Shamanic cultures believe that when we are born the spirit of at least two power animals volunteer to remain with us to keep us healthy emotionally and physically and also protect us from harm. These animals are akin to the Christian belief in guardian angels. The other form of helping spirit that shamans work with is a teacher or healer in human form. These typically were the gods and goddesses of the various cultures, religious figures, and ancestors who wished to help. These helping spirits work with the shaman to bring healing to individuals, the community, and the environment. The helping spirits are also consulted with when information is needed.

Third, one of the major practices a shaman performs is called a shamanic journey. A shaman is a man or woman who goes into an altered state of consciousness and travels outside of time into the hidden realms that many term non-ordinary. The Australian aborigines call non-ordinary the Dreamtime. It is also referred to as the Other World in Celtic traditions. We might think of it as the unconscious or spirit world. In these hidden realities there are helping spirits and compassionate spirits who offer their guidance and also their healing help in behalf of all life on earth.

Typically, shamans use some form of percussion, especially drumming or rattling, to go into an altered state that allows the free soul of the shaman to journey into the invisible worlds.  As part of my spiritual and meditative practice I regularly journey to acquire guidance, information, and healing for myself and others. I am also an artist. Sometimes, my journeys result in a painting. This painting is the result of a Middle World journey to Lake Titicaca in the Andes.

On November 8, my 75^th birthday, I awakened with a strong desire to do a shamanic journey to Lake Titicaca and the Earth’s second Chakra. I put on my journey music, engaged my travel companions, Quetzalcoatl and my black panther cat, and requested that we journey to the Lake. Soon I was at the shores of Lake Titicaca. I noticed that it was a little chilly. I asked permission to enter her space and am welcomed. I sat at her shores, looking at her and thanking her for all that she does for the planet.  I felt the vibration in my body slightly increasing, and I noticed that I was sitting on a smooth ribbon of beautiful blues, whites and pinkish colors. I realized this was her waters. I’m amazed at how smooth and silky it felt. As I came to the end of the journey, to my surprise the waters of the Lake rose up and handed me a beautiful Rose Quartz stone. Quetzalcoatl, black panther and I journeyed back to my room with the Rose Quartz stone.  I accepted it as a birthday gift.

I knew that the Rose Quartz was a powerful healing crystal associated to love and the fourth chakra, purifying, opening and healing the heart to promote unconditional love at all levels. But I wondered if there might be other meanings to the Rose Quartz, so I googled it. To my surprise I discovered that the Rose Quartz connects people born between November 8 and 12 to the archangel Ariel. Doing this journey on November the 8^th and the day on which I was born was quite a synchronicity reinforcing once again our connection to all things and the World Soul. What were the chances that on my birthday, November 8, I would feel impressed to journey to Lake Titicaca who then gifted me with a Rose Quartz that has this meaning and history!

Whitney Hopler in her post (4-1-18) on Angels and Miracles, An introduction to Angels says that Ariel means “altar” or “lion of God” in Hebrew and is known as the angel of nature. Ariel oversees the protection and healing of animals and plants, as well as the care of the Earth’s elements, water, wind, air and fire. In some interpretations, Ariel is also a liaison between the human and the elemental world of sprites, faeries, mystical crystals, and other manifestations of magic. People sometimes ask for Ariel’s help to take good care of the environment and all the creatures including both wild animals and pets and to provide any healing that they need, Ariel can also help you to forge a stronger connection with the natural world.

According to Hopler, to call upon Ariel, you need only request her guidance for goals that are within her realm. For example, you might ask her “please help me to heal this animal,” or “please help me to better understand the beauty of the natural world.”

This is an example of what can happen in a shamanic journey. You can meet a guide, get a gift or direct information. In researching or exploring the meanings of parts of the journey, what we call amplification, you can get more information or guidance that you would not have had without the journey. As a way to honor this journey, the archangel Ariel and the gift I received of the rose quartz, I painted the journey. I call it Archangel Ariel and the Rose Quartz.

To continue to read this post where you can get more information on shamanic journeying with a script for journeying to explore the Lower World, sign up for the paid subscription. With the paid subscription, you will get all the complete chapters of my book, The Other Man in Me, Erotic Longing, Lust and Love: The Soul Calling, plus complete posts on shamanism and energy healing.

Next week I will continue on the theme of shamanic journeying and will provide an audio journey to journey to meet a power animal.

Preparing to Journey

A shamanic journey is always intentional, deliberate and focused. To journey, you need to identify a clear purpose or intention. First formulate a question you would like to ask a power animal or spirit guide. Make your question simple and concise. Begin with a single question. The best questions begin with where, what, how and who. Answers to multiple questions can be confusing. Since you are trying to get as much information as possible from your journey, avoid yes/no questions. For example, you might ask “How can I best manage a certain work situation? or “How can I use my creative energies to create a positive future for myself” or “What changes do I need to make in my life in order to stay healthy over my lifespan?”

Begin by drumming or rattling or listen to drumming. Concentrate on and repeat the question several times as you enter into Non-Ordinary Reality. Let go of the monkey mind and concerns of the day and focus on the drumming and intention of the journey. Find a time of day to journey when your mind isn’t cluttered with work and details.

Find a quiet, comfortable place to lie down or sit where you are comfortable but won’t fall asleep. Be sure to turn off your phones and shut down any electronic devices that might interfere with your journey. Some people prefer to use an eye cover or darken the room. Begin by taking some deep breaths and releasing any tension or chatter on the out breath. Open your heart, relax the mind and bring your focus to your heart and imagine you are breathing through your heart. Shamans “see with their hearts.” If you lose your concentration during your journey, simply come back to this heart breath and repeat your intention. Visualize a place in nature where you will launch your journey to the Upper, Lower or Middle World and leave your everyday world behind.

It is important to clearly define when you are entering into and leaving Non-Ordinary Reality. Shamanic journeys are done with purpose and intention. Your journey needs to be focused and deliberate, a sacred time to work with your spirit guides. If you find that a noise or intrusion interrupts you or brings you out of the journey, simply refocus on the drumming and heart breathing, allowing yourself to return to where you were in the journey. To signal a time to come back from the journey it is common to use a return beat, which commonly consists of 4 sets of 7 short beats followed by rapid drumming and another set of 4 sets of seven beats. Be sure to thank your spirit guides and say goodbye before beginning to journey back the same way you entered your journey.

Treat your journey time as if you were entering a church or sacred sanctuary, because you are! People have been traveling to these other worlds for tens of thousands of years. You are stepping into what biochemist and philosopher Rupert Sheldrake calls a field of morphic resonance, a collective memory that is inherent in nature and natural systems. In a journey we are accessing the wisdom of the ages.

After quietly reflecting on your journey, you might want to take notes about key points and pertinent information. Below is an actual text for a journey to the Lower World simply to explore the Lower World.

Start your drumming or rattling music. Take a few deep breaths, pulling energy from your lower abdomen to the top of your head. After a few deep breaths, bring your attention to your heart and breathe in and out through your heart.  Review your intention for this journey—to journey to the Lower World to explore its landscape— and continue to listen to the drumming, breathing in and out through your heart. Now imagine that you are walking out the front door of your heart into your field. Off in the distance you see a large tree. The tree calls to you and you walk toward it. Feel the ground beneath your feet. As you approach the tree, you notice how beautiful and large the tree is. You realize this is the world tree. As you stand before the tree, state your intention—that you wish to journey to the lower world just to explore it. Imagine that the tree opens to you, and you enter into the tree. Feel the energy of the tree. You might even feel the sap of the tree flowing through you. State your intention to journey to the lower world and begin to descend down through the roots of the tree, passing by the bedrock and all the levels of the earth until you step out of the tree root. You notice a stream and the water calls to you to lie down in it to cleanse you of anything that you should bring into the lower world. You lie down and let the water wash over you, cleansing you. The water carries you downstream and washes you on to a beautiful garden. As you stand there, the guardian of the Lower World approaches and asks you your intention. This guardian may be male or female. It may even come in the form of an animal. If you are uncertain, just ask if it is the guardian of the Lower World. If it says no. Just ask to speak to the guardian. You tell him or her that you have come to simply visit the Lower World, to get acquainted with it and ask permission to enter. The guardian may or may not grant you entrance. Occasionally but rarely, it is not a good time to visit the Lower World and the guardian will not allow you entrance. If the guardian tells you that it isn’t a good time to visit the Lower World, thank him/her and return to the stream and let it carry you back to the tree roots and back up into the tree and journey back into your heart. If you are allowed to enter the Lower World, thank the guardian and enter. The guardian may offer to accompany you as you explore the garden. If not, just place your intention to explore the Lower World and walk through it, exploring it. You might meet animals, enter caves, climb mountains, swim in rivers, sit by lakes, etc., etc. Just let it unfold. You are here simply to explore. If you are listening to a drumming track, listen for the call back. As you return, thank the guardian for allowing you to enter and journey back to the stream. Lie down in the water and let it wash you cleansing you from anything you should not bring back with you from the Lower World. Let the water carry you back to the tree roots. Enter the tree roots and journey back up into the trunk of the tree. Step out of the tree. Thank the tree for allowing you to enter and walk back into the front door of your heart. Bring your attention to your heart and anchor yourself back into your body and into your room.

After the journey, you might want to journal some of your experience. Next week, we will explore the shamanic concept of power animals and journey to meet a power animal. Next week, I will also provide you with an audio of a journey to meet a power animal.

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Shamanism is an ancient spiritual practice that maintains there is a physical world of matter and a spiritual or unseen and invisible world of energy called non-ordinary reality. Shamanism teaches us that everything is alive, conscious, dynamic, connected and responsive. Just like quantum physics describes a field of energy that connects all of life, shamans speak of a web of life that connects everything.

The word “shaman” means one who sees in the dark.  A shaman is a man or woman who travels into this invisible world and works directly with the spirits to gather information and guidance, to perform healing and restore balance and harmony.  Shamans address the spiritual aspects of an illness or problem. They perform soul retrievals, remove spiritual blockages, and divine information for the community. Shamans act as healers, doctors, priests and priestesses, psychotherapists, mystics, and storytellers.

Prompted by my dreams, I entered formal training in shamanism and energy healing in 2009 at the Four Winds Healing the Light Body School. Having completed that program in 2013, I have continued to study and train with shamans and integrate shamanic healing into my practice as a social worker and psychotherapist.

Below is a link to an article I wrote on a shamanic approach to healing trauma.  If you would like to read more on shamanism and shamanic and energy healing, sign up for the paid version of my substack. Each week I will post something on shamanism and energy healing. In the meantime, check out my article “Healing Trauma: A Shamanic Approach” at https://shamanicpractice.org/article/healing-trauma-a-shamanic-approach/

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lying deep within the human soul is an unknown land, a land with its own characters, its own laws, and its own story. Somewhere in that land is a place where we put all the rejected parts of ourselves, the parts that have been wounded and hurt by others, the parts that for some reason we haven’t been able to embrace or have been told can’t live, even parts unknown to us—both positive and negative. All the feelings and emotions that are hard for us to feel like shame, guilt, sadness, anger, and jealousy are here. Sometimes feelings of happiness, joy, and pride, even our gifts and talents that for some reason we’ve been told are not acceptable or valuable, live in this land. It is a place of shelter for all that we have pushed away and disowned. This place is where we put all that doesn’t fit into our lives yet are parts of us that long to live.

It is also the place where we often put Spirit—our connection to the divine light that lives in us. If we make the journey into the rejected places of the soul, we will find this divine light, lying there, just waiting for us to embrace it and bring it into our lives. It lives among the shadows of this place. It not only lives there, it accepts unconditionally all those rejected and disowned parts of the soul and holds them in love. To embrace and live this story is the longing of the soul.

This book has been primarily the revelation of my inner journey to find and live that story, the story of the other man living in my soul, a kind of psycho-spiritual memoir. While this inner journey resulted in shifts in consciousness, shifts in perceptions, and even major changes in my personal life, there was at the same time another story—the story of my family and the effects of my inner journey on their lives. “The years have a wisdom the days know nothing of” is a para- phrase by Hilda Studebaker, a dear friend and frequent image in my dreams, of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s saying that “The years teach what the days never know.” At the writing of this book, I am into my seven- ty-fifth year. My wife and I have been married fifty-four years. For our fiftieth wedding anniversary, we took our children, their partners, and our grandchildren to Folly Beach, South Carolina, staying together in a house on the ocean to celebrate those fifty years and our lives together as a family.

The years following my revelation to my wife of my same-sex attractions and my affairs with men were a devastating and tumultuous time in our lives. As I became increasingly aware that if I were to divorce my wife and pursue a homosexual life, I would end up at the end of my life knowing what I already knew intuitively and what my dreams were telling me—that my same-sex attraction was about more than being gay or bisexual. We re-affirmed our love for each other and made the commitment to our marriage, whatever that would come to mean. At the time of that decision our children were six and eight years old. During this time, our son began having nightmares for which we sought help from a therapist. In discussions with the therapist, my same-sex attractions and affairs were discussed. While the themes of my son’s nightmares didn’t deal directly with my homosexuality or my affairs, my wife and I did feel that he was picking up on the unrest, hurt, anger, and betrayal that we as his parents were feeling and what was vibrating in the unconscious of the family. After discussing our options with the therapist, we made the decision not to tell our children about my bisexuality or about my same-sex affairs at that time.

I understood his nightmares as evidence of how children often pick up on what is going on in their parents’ lives and express it or act it out in some way. Happily, the therapist was able to help our son work through the nightmares, which stopped soon thereafter. My wife and I both worked diligently to protect our children from my indiscretions, knowing the adverse effects such revelations would have in the small conservative community in which we lived and the ramifications they would then suffer. My wife and I decided to stay together and yet we also agreed that we would revisit this decision periodically to make sure it was working for both of us.

This was the mid-seventies, just a few years after the Stonewall riots. Not only were homosexuality, gay rights, and sexual and gender diversity seen in a negative light in the community in which we lived, but the society at large held a similar view. So we focused on providing our children with the safe and secure environment that we knew all children need, and we worked hard to keep their lives as normal as possible. Today, both our son and daughter look back on those years as their “happy childhoods,” and for that my wife and I are exceedingly grateful.

As I followed my journey into dreams and the story that was unfolding in the depths of my soul, my wife struggled to find her place and to make some kind of sense of what had happened, given that I had shattered her dream of our relationship. She fell into self- blame, with feelings that if she were “more of a woman” I wouldn’t have these feelings or have had these affairs with men. She also felt that she was somehow “not enough” because she couldn’t satisfy my same-sex need because she wasn’t’ a man, saying she didn’t know how to compete with a man. While I was stepping into discovering myself and this other man living in me, my wife felt lost. However, we both felt a strong commitment to each other and to our relationship and our children and to what might emerge from all of it.

During the several years after coming out to my wife, as we took on the task of repairing and re-imaging our relationship, we continued to be active in the church, the community, in our children’s lives, and in each other’s lives. We continued to have a supportive group of friends, although only a very few of them knew of the death and rebirth process that was happening in our relationship. To the outside world our lives and the life of our family looked normal—going to work, actively involved in music and church activities, going to ball games and school activities, and visiting with friends.

Internally, however, my wife and I were often involved in tense conversations; fighting and arguing over expectations, hurt feelings, and individual needs; working hard to both manage and repair the hurt, the betrayal, the anger, and the distrust that happen when a husband is not only having affairs, but is having them with men. My wife is a remarkable woman and to her credit she somehow had the ability to hold space like a crucible for the fires of transformation that would slowly occur, encouraging me, even forcing me at times to face the truth of my own soul and own the depths of who I was.

In the process we each eventually laid bare our souls to each other, began to slowly untangle our projections and different perceptions and realities, and discovered respect, humility, acceptance, and an enduring love. This certainly didn’t happen overnight. It took many years. I often say that we went through several divorces and remarriages in this process to arrive at where we are today—a loving couple who honors and accepts the best and the worst in each other.

As the images of my dreams and inner world came into conflict with the images of my outer life, I had to make changes. These changes, detailed throughout this book, not only affected me, they affected my wife and children. There had been ongoing changes in the inner worlds of both me and my wife. They included our leaving the church, closing the bookstore, and selling our home to pay off the bookstore debt. They began when our children were in middle school and high school. Since our son and daughter were active in band, sports, cheerleading, and dating, we were active supporters of their lives while continuing to work and be a part of the community. But life moved on . . . the children graduated high school. Our son went off to California to pursue his dream of becoming a model, and our daughter went off to college. It appeared that we had managed to provide an adequate container for all of us to not only get through these years but to embrace them and live them fully and successfully.

Although I didn’t frame it this way at the time, my relationship to my own feminine and androgynous natures resulted in my being open, accepting, tender, caring, and sensitive to the needs of my family. As I was learning to accept my various parts and diverse interests and learning to trust and follow my own dreams, I was able to support my son’s interest in music and sports. I was able to take the criticism coming my way for allowing him to be the first boy in his high school to get an earring. I drove him to Indianapolis weekly to attend the John Robert Power’s Modeling School. I helped him get his first car and had ongoing discussions about girls, sex, alcohol, and drugs with him.

Our daughter’s middle school and high school years were emotionally tumultuous. She suffered from severe PMS with its emotional challenges and at one point was accused by her peers as being a lesbian. Daughters often become the carriers of the father’s anima projections. Looking back I can see how she carried the unspoken same-sex issues that were rumbling around in the unconscious life of the family. These then caused her to become a target of those same-sex issues by her peers. I spent many hours sitting with her, talking to her, holding her as she struggled with the emotions associated with PMS and feelings of rejection by her peers. But even in the midst of all this, she had a good group of friends, was a cheerleader throughout high school, and reports feeling supported, valued, and loved. Certainly, being a teacher in the school our children attended, being active in many of school activities they were involved in, and teaching many of their friends threw me automatically into their lives in more ways than if I had worked elsewhere. Looking back, we all agree that those were good years.

Then 1989 rolled around. My wife, who is often the first to sense what wants to come into consciousness, sensed it was time for our children to know the story of their parents’ lives for the past fifteen years. I too had been having relevant dreams. In them, I would tell our children about my bisexuality. I also had dreams wherein they already knew about my bisexuality. Of course, knowing now how the unconscious works, our children did know at some level, that something was going on. This was confirmed later when both our children told us that especially through their elementary school years when this all came to a head they felt the tension in our relationship and felt “there was always something untold” and “feared that we would divorce.”

Now in college, our daughter was having difficulty in her relation- ships with men. She was constantly disappointed in them and always looking for something that the men she chose didn’t seem to be able to give her. My wife thought that maybe she would stop looking for a man “like her father” if she knew the complete story. There were also some people in the community who knew the story, and we feared that our children were at the age now where someone might say something to them. We didn’t want them to find out from someone else. So we decided it was time to tell them. But we didn’t know quite how to do this. After all, it had been over fifteen years since I had revealed this part of me to their mother. As a couple, their mother and I had worked through so much and were in a much better place in our relationship. How did we bring it up now and go back through all those years? Well, as often happens when we hesitate to act, the unconscious will force things upon us.

During one of the times our daughter was hurting and angry and blaming us as somehow being the cause of her distress, my wife told her that there were things that she didn’t know that might help her understand some of her pain and anger at not being able to find the man she longed for. This became known as the “secret” between her and her brother. In the weeks between this revelation and our actual disclosure, she reports that she and her brother had many conversations about the “secret,” wondering what it was.

When I finally told my son about my past, he was actually relieved. He had been afraid that I had killed somebody. He didn’t put being bisexual in the same category as killing someone (although I can certainly understand his reference to “killing someone” as an accurate description of what I had done to his mother.) Since it was now fifteen years in the past and not happening currently, and I assured him that I had no desire to divorce his mother and return to a homosexual life, he seemed satisfied and happy. However, he did confess later that he worried that someday I might decide to return to a homosexual life and he didn’t know how he would deal with that.

My wife and son had gone to see our daughter at college where she was cheerleading for a basketball game. From the stands he yelled “I know the secret.” Later that evening while sitting in our daughter’s dorm room, the “secret” came up and my daughter didn’t think it fair that her brother knew and she didn’t. So my wife made the decision to tell her. My daughter admits that she was in shock, and felt angry, hurt, and felt betrayed. After her mother and brother left, she went to talk to friends to find solace and comfort. She told them that if I called to try to talk to her, she didn’t want to talk to me. However, later that night she called me. She was still angry and hurt. I did my best to allow her to have and express her feelings. Later she told me that I had let her say what she felt and in so doing, I had honored her feelings. This was the beginning of another shift in our family dynamics—not only my own relationship with my children—but in the relationship both my wife and I had with our children.

When my daughter found out about my hidden and dual life, she reportedly went through various stages often associated with grief and loss. At first she denied it, saying she “couldn’t be a child of a homo- sexual. How could a man as perfect as my father like to touch other men?” She didn’t care that my last same-sex encounter had happened over fifteen years ago. To her it was like it was happening now. She felt betrayed. I wasn’t the man she thought I was. She learned I wasn’t perfect like she thought.

To my daughter’s credit and perhaps to our relationship, she took the risk of telling me what she felt. If she was having a day when she hated me, she told me. If she was angry and didn’t understand it, she told me. She didn’t care if I hurt, for in her mind I deserved to hurt. She found it hard to hate me and love me, understand and not understand, all at the same time. At times she would take the side of her mother and say things that she thought her mother should say to me. At other times, my daughter found herself sympathizing with me but not siding with me. It was two years of anger, hurt, yelling, coming together, pulling away, holding, crying, and yes, even laughing at times.

At the end of those two years my daughter wrote, “He is no longer perfect, actually he never was, but as a father is like no other, as a friend he is the best, as a man he is exceptional, and as a husband he is coming along nicely.” It would take several more years and my daughter’s suicide attempt before the evolution and transformation of this family would evolve into the open, loving, accepting, tolerant, and respectful family it has become.

As I have read back through my almost forty years of journals in the writing of this book, I realized that the way I interpreted my dreams and the various synchronicities determined many of the decisions I made. These decisions set the course for both my life and the life of my family. I realized that if I had interpreted my dreams in some other fashion I would have probably made different decisions, which would have had a very different outcome for me and for my family. Most likely we would have had a very different life. To that extent, I created my life and that life affected my family and eventually influenced their lives—even to some extent who they are today.

But of all the ways I could have understood a dream or have given a certain meaning to a synchronicity, what caused me to interpret the events the way I did? Why did I interpret a dream in a certain way? Why did I see specific synchronicities? Why did I see certain images in my paintings and not others? Is there some underlying presence, some transcendent function that directs it all, influencing our way of seeing? The shamans of Peru talk about “destiny lines.” They believe that each soul has certain destinies associated with it. We can fall into a destiny unconsciously and live it much like fate. We can fight against a destiny that wants to live by being in constant conflict and longing, or we can wake up to the spiritual realm of archetypal forces vibrating in our soul, cooperate with them, and co-create a destiny. I do know that looking back over my journey I see a thread that wove a particular theme into my life.

For me it was a return to earth, a return to an awareness, and the experience that everything in the world is alive, conscious, dynamic, interconnected, and responsive and that nature—including human nature and the nature of our own souls—contains within them a directing intelligence that is the source of all knowledge concerning the nature of a person’s being and becoming. We are in a reciprocal relationship with these forces in a way that we can engage them and influence them, not by mastering them or forcing them or controlling them, but by merging with them and working with them as partners in a larger story. This larger story encompasses the story of the Green Man, the story of the shaman, the story of the two-spirit soul, the story of the other man, the story of the heart—the soul’s longing.

As I came to the end of this book, I decided to step into the shaman in me and journey into non-ordinary reality to see if I could consult with the spirit of the berdache, to inquire if the two-spirits had any additional message for me.

I ask my guide, Huascar, if I may visit the two-spirit people, telling him that I want to ask them if there is any message that the two-spirits want me to share with my readers. Suddenly I am traveling deep into the Underworld through dense vegetation. I come to a clearing, like a village. Many people are milling around, working, going about various tasks. Huascar tells me that this is the place of the two-spirit people, where they live.

I am introduced to one, an elder. I tell this two-spirit that I am writing a chapter in a book on the relationship between homosexuality and the berdache, or two-spirit, and wonder if there is any message that the two-spirits would like for me to include. The elder two-spirit says to me, “Tell your readers that the two-spirits are real. We exist. We are neither male nor female, yet we are able to live from the spirits of both. Having found unity and harmony within ourselves, we live in harmony with all that is. We are returning to bring harmony and balance to the earth. While the current focus in your world seems to be on sexual and gender identity, sex with its various expressions is simply an expression of the creative energy that will eventually evolve into a creative union of spirits that will live in harmony with all spirits.”

With that I thank the two-spirit. As I turn to leave, the elder hands me a small branch with a leaf growing out of it. He says, “Plant this branch, feed it, water it, and nurture it. It is the future.” (Journal, 1-6-16)

Notes and Exercises

Now that you have finished reading the book and completing the exercises, what is the rest of your story? What is your longing? What calls to you? What longs to live? What parts of you have you gotten in touch with that need to be embraced, accepted, and loved? Where did you feel validated and affirmed? What resonated with you? What did you learn about your own erotic longings or sexual attractions? What changes might you make to live more authentically. What will be the rest of your story?

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On this journey as the title of my book, The Other Man in Me, suggests, I discovered another man living in me, the Green Man. As an archetype, the Green Man represents the spiritual intelligence in nature and dissolves the split between spirit and matter. The Green Man connected me to the shaman in me. In future posts, I’ll be writing on shamanism and energy medicine and how to heal the split between mind and body, between spirit and matter and living in harmony with ourselves and the world. To get future posts sign up below.

Disclaimer

The content of this book is for information purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any condition or disease. You understand that this book is not intended as a substitute for consultation with a licensed professional. Please consult with your own physician, mental health specialist, or spiritual advisor for matters related to emotional health, mental health, or spiritual concerns. The use of this book implies your acceptance of this disclaimer.

While everyone is androgynous to some extent, certain people are more directly connected to the two-spirit archetype. The two-spirit soul is seeking to be lived in its many expressions. For some that may be within a certain spirituality that their two-spirit nature puts them in touch with—an inner healer, an inner shaman or an awareness of the value and unity of all things as a companion of the Goddess and Mother Earth, living in harmony with her.

Are you a two-spirit? In this chapter I explore the historical and archetypal expressions of the two-spirit and how the two-spirit may express itself in homosexuality and bisexuality.

I dream that

My former lover Sam and his wife have returned. They brought with them friends, another couple. They are putting on a play. My wife is in the play. She has a table with a projection screen, and she is to roll out the table with the projection screen. There is also a second cart with a projection screen that another lady has. Sam is in the singing group. His friend is leading the group. They sing a song, “She’s a strong man-woman. He’s a strong woman-man.” I say, “Well, praise God! Androgyny has finally come to the church.” (Journal 4-22-87)

My decision to trust the dreams that told me “the healing of your homosexual self is in freeing him from the parsonage” and “homosexuality is the treasure hard to find” as the voice of God in me resulted in a long journey into the depths of my own soul and the discovery of archetypal forces from an ancient time. The twists and turns of listening to my dreams, trusting synchronicities, following my intuition, and interacting with the spirit world through meditation and my paintings led me into the world of shamanism, the recovery of the Green Man, the discovery of the berdache or two-spirit archetype and a new under- standing of my relationship to both the masculine and the feminine. I came to understand that the bull that had chased me up the tree in that early dream and that had chased me into a barn in another dream where I discovered a woman hiding behind the mask of a dog was the remnant of an ancient masculine living in the depths of my soul—a masculine that had not lost his connection to nature nor to the Great Goddess and Earth Mother. I would discover him as the shaman in me. I would discover him as the Green Man in me. I would discover him as the healer in me. I would discover him as the Divine Masculine in nature. I would discover him as the light in matter. I would discover him as the divine light in the depths of my own soul connecting me to the Earth Mother as one with her. As the dream with which I started this chapter had indicated years earlier, I would discover androgyny and my two-spirit nature.

The connection to the feminine and especially to the mother has long been a common way the West has viewed homosexuality. Multiple studies have held that one of the causes of homosexuality is an over- protective, dominating mother and the absence of the father in a boy’s life. While modern brain research provides evidence that the origins of sexual orientation are far more complicated than simply the influences of parental complexes, there is evidence to suggest that the masculine and feminine archetypes as spiritual forces do set up a psychic condition whereby homosexuality emerges. Parents, to the extent that they become the carriers of archetypal forces already vibrating in the soul of a child, may assist in bringing to life the expressions of these very archetypes.

As a child I was close to my mother, identifying with her because of my natural interests in art, crafts, music, and activities typically associated with the feminine—baking, knitting, babysitting, growing plants and flowers, taking care of hurt animals, and dressing up in women’s clothes. As such one could say that my ego become overly identified with the feminine, driving the more masculine characteristics into the unconscious that, as I moved into adolescence, became projected onto men with whom I longed to connect in an effort to experience the masculine—a masculine different from the one I knew in the parsonage. As my dreams began to uncover and reveal the unconscious and archetypal dynamics underlying the conflicts of my soul, I discovered other forces at work in me. I discovered that my same-sex attraction was only a small piece of a much larger story. I discovered the shaman and the Green Man and their relationship to the Earth Mother. I discovered that my identification with my mother and the feminine was only the manifestation of a much larger dynamic, one that may have been present from my birth. I discovered that not only is there the archetypal configuration of the masculine as a consort and companion of the Goddess and Earth Mother, there is also what the indigenous cultures call the berdache or two-spirit soul.

I am indebted to work of Walter Williams and his review of the anthropological studies of berdachism as well as his own extensive field study of berdaches in many American Indian and indigenous cultures as detailed in his book The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Cultures. This chapter is not intended to be a review of berdachism. For those who might become interested in the topic, I refer you to the work of Walter Williams. Also, although there are female berdaches, my references are to male berdaches.

I am neither intending to apply nor impose the traditions of berdachism to Anglo-Americans. Such traditions clearly belong to the Native American and other indigenous cultures as sacred and intimate parts of their tribal stories. However, what does interest me is the archetypal aspects of these traditions and how the archetype of the berdache or two-spirit may now be emerging in other cultures and societies and how that archetype may apply to my own story.

A berdache is anatomically male but does not fulfill a standard man’s role in society. This person is often seen as effeminate, but a more accurate description would be androgynous. Berdaches mix together the behavior, dress, and social roles of both women and men. They often dress as women, do women’s work, and care for children. They gain social prestige by their spiritual, intellectual craftwork and artistic contributions to their communities, and by their reputations for hard work and generosity. Because berdaches are not seen as men or women but as having an alternate gender that is a mixture of diverse elements, they serve as mediators between women and men as well as between the physical and spiritual worlds.412 In fact, most important is their spiritual role as mediators between the physical and spiritual worlds, between the visible and the invisible. A relationship to the invisible or unseen world is critical to the berdache. Where the Western culture stigmatized the berdaches and wasted their spiritual power, the indigenous cultures recognized their capacity to mediate between the physical and spiritual worlds and successfully used these skills and insights for the good of the community.413

Berdaches often have a predisposition as a dreamer or visionary that some cultures believe connects them to the supernatural or spirit worlds. In fact, berdaches often receive their call and instruction through a dream or a vision. They often assist shamans or serve as shamans and medicine men.414 Such people have a clearly recognized and accepted social status and special ceremonial roles in their communities. In their sexual lives, they generally take a nonmasculine role, either being asexual or taking the passive role in sex with men. In some situations, a berdache becomes the wife of a man, and they live together as husband and wife.415

Of note, because of negative connotations associated with the word berdache due to its linguistic roots, in the 1990s Native American anthropologists replaced it with the term two-spirit to refer to what was traditionally known as the berdache.416 I have chosen to use the word berdache when I am referring to its long-standing historical use and to use the term two-spirit when speaking more about current times and the role of two-spirit people moving forward. In either case I am using the terms to refer to a person born with an androgynous spirit, as existing somewhere between the characteristics of women and men, and who possess the insights and perceptions of both. These are persons who have the perspective that others of a single gender don’t or can’t see.

Although berdaches may take on the dress and social roles of women and live with a man in a same-sex relationship, berdachism is ultimately a reflection of spirituality.417 In many indigenous cultures, everything that happens is due to the spirits and the spirit world. Physical, emotional, personal, and even community health has to do with our relationships with the spirit world. Whether we know it or not, we are always interacting with the energetic world. I was told in a journey to the Place of the Hummingbird that “the energy of the one is continually exchanging itself with the energy of the other.” It is the respectful, reciprocal relationship with all that is that sustains and improves the health of all.

My own psycho-spiritual-physical health is dependent on the health of my soul. The health of my soul is dependent on my relationship with the spirits and the universe. My own personal journey into dreams and into the world of shamanism has revealed this to me over and over. While shamans are not necessarily berdaches, because of the berdache’s spiritual connection they are often associated with shamanism and are considered to be powerful shaman or are the people from whom shamans seek advice.418

In Native American and indigenous cultures, families recognize the marks of a berdache early on in the life of a child. In fact, in many indigenous cultures, it is obvious from birth that a boy has the spirit of the berdache. They are often beautiful boys with effeminate voices and behaviors, avoiding rough-and-tumble play, seeking instead the play of girls. The mother often recognizes this early on and encourages the boy to participate in more traditionally feminine things such as cooking, sewing, and crafts.419

The day I read the description of a child born in American Indian and other indigenous societies that was recognized as having an androgynous spirit and given to things associated with the feminine who then became a berdache, I saw myself. Perhaps I wanted to see myself in that description. It gave me a context whereby to reimagine my childhood, to see it differently, to see myself differently, to feel differently, to understand myself differently, and to accept myself and my childhood. Again, the berdache is described as a non-masculine, effeminate child who likes to play with girls and girly things. He is also inclined toward the arts and enjoys dressing in women’s clothes. That pretty much described me as a child even into my early adolescent years. I was that child. I was non-masculine and described as effeminate, often being made fun of, called “sissy” or “a girl.” I didn’t care for sports or aggressive play and preferred playing with dolls and playing house with the girls in the neighborhood. I also had natural inclinations toward music and art, spending time drawing, painting, making crafts, baking cookies, knitting, and making artificial flowers and flower arrangements.

While my brothers were playing ball with the boys in the neighborhood, I was tramping through the woods, playing in the ponds, catching tadpoles and gathering up frog eggs, taking them home to watch them hatch, or bringing home a wounded bird to take care of. While I did have male friends, they were more like me—preferring art and music to sports and activities more associated with an aggressive masculinity.

In my early teens I took a liking to caring for babies and became obsessed with taking care of a newborn baby in the church, holding it during church services and then returning home with its parents so that I could care for the baby. Later, I became a babysitter as a way to earn money.

I liked wearing women’s dresses even into my adolescent years. Although today I have developed a greater sense of my masculinity and have no desire to dress as a woman, I can still find that part of me, and I could take her shopping, and I know exactly how to dress her.

Along with those characteristics developed a same-sex attraction. It all seemed to fit together in a package. In same-sex relationships, like the berdache, I also preferred the passive role. So in many ways, even though I wasn’t born into an Indian culture, it would appear that I exhibited many of the characteristics of a berdache. However, the culture of the Judeo-Christian evangelical parsonage in to which I was born didn’t have a framework for such a child and while my non-masculine, musical, artistic, and nature-oriented attributes were not necessarily ridiculed and in many ways were even encouraged, the sexual side of this archetypal configuration was deplored and judged as morally wrong and a sin. While I made the choice not to live the same-sex attraction out in external relationships, I refused to reject it and made the choice to honor my two-spirit nature, my androgynous spirit. I found that other masculine inside me that allowed me to step more fully into the other characteristics of my two-spirit nature—the artist, the dreamer and ultimately, as my dreams would eventually reveal, the shaman and healer.

This book has been the story of my search for this other man living in my soul. As the book has revealed, I began to develop more of the masculine aspects of this two-spirit nature and to feel more balanced in the expressions of my masculine and feminine spirits. Williams points out that in his own field study and interviews with many berdaches he found a pattern that is more individual and unique and more androgynous than strictly feminine.420

In general, the West believes that sex is a certainty, and that one’s gender identity and sex role always conforms to one’s anatomical sex. Western thought tends to divide groups into dichotomies that are mutually exclusive: male and female, black and white, homosexual and heterosexual, right and wrong, good and evil. However, other world views are often more accepting of the ambiguities of life. In his study of multiple Indian cultures, Williams talks with Indian people themselves and explores how certain cultures are able to accommodate gender and sexual variation beyond the man/woman dichotomy without being threatened by it. In fact, acceptance of gender variation in the berdache tradition is typical of many native cultures’ approach to life in general.421

Williams points out that Western psychiatrists are often more interested in finding out the cause of a boy becoming feminine or homosexual as if there is some need to change or prevent such behavior. American Indians on the other hand are more interested in the social position of such a boy. Indian parents see no need to change such a child. In fact, they take an active role in encouraging a child to become a berdache or, at the very least, accept his inclinations as a reflection of an innate spiritual character. In these cultures, gender variation is an accepted reality and families accept that this is simply who their child will be.422

Because of the general acceptance by the community of a berdache there is no suppression of his feminine behavior. Neither does he internalize a negative or poor self-image as is often the case in Western culture where such behaviors and inclinations are considered deviant. As a result, berdaches who value their position have fewer incidents of problems related to alcohol and suicide. As one Crow traditionalist said, “We don’t waste people, the way white society does. Every person has their gift.”423

Some anthropologists suggest that the boy who chooses to become a berdache is the boy who shies away from the pressure to develop an aggressive masculinity, fearing the masculine role of warrior in many cultures. However, Williams points out that if that were true there would be berdaches in all warlike tribes, and there are not. Another theory for the existence of berdachism is that it is the result of too much “mothering.”

This idea is based on psychodynamic theory that too much mothering causes a boy to become anxious about his masculinity and ultimately reject it. Instead of identifying with his masculine and male role, the boy identifies with mother and the feminine. In this view, berdachism is a fear of and a flight from masculinity. Williams’s own field study of berdachism concludes that berdaches seem “anything but neurotic and their peaceful inclinations would be honored in many gentler cultures.”424 While in the West it has been a long-standing theory and belief that a boy’s relationship to his parents—too much mother and not enough father—is the cause of gender variance including homosexuality, modern brain research and a greater understanding of gender identity has caused the basic propositions of this theory to be rejected.425

From the American Indian and indigenous point of view berdachism doesn’t occur from outside sources such as an overprotective mother or an absent father but is a reflection of the child’s inborn character or spirit.426 To the Indians, a man is what his nature and his dreams make him. They accept him for what he is and for what he wants to be. They accept his gifts and find a place for him to serve within their society.427

Western homosexual and heterosexual identities are based entirely on sexual preference. There is no spiritual component associated with sexual identity in the West. For the Indian it is the character of the person that is of prime importance. Sexuality is a part of that char- acter.428 Also, for the American Indian, sexual preference and gender identity are two independent variables. One can be homosexual in behavior without being gender nonconformist and without having an identity different from other men. American Indian values recognize these differences, which Western culture confuses by labeling anyone who participates in same-sex relationship as “a homosexual.” By socially constructing only the berdache as different, with their partners as “normal,” Indian cultures avoid categorizing people into two opposed categories based on sexual behavior.”429

The fluidity in sexuality demonstrated by the ability of men who identify themselves as heterosexual to adapt to sex with a male is not accounted for in theories of homosexual orientation or heterosexual orientation. These men are responding to the femininity of their partner. The particular genital equipment is not crucial.430

Partners of berdaches are not considered homosexual. They are considered husbands. Therefore, they can leave the berdache and marry a woman. Since he was always a husband he is also suitable as a husband for a woman. For the husband of a berdache, heterosexual marriage is not ruled out any more than male marriage is ruled out for men married to women. Allowing for cultural and individual variation, the American Indian institution defines itself around gender role rather than sexual behavior.431 This allows for a greater diversity in sexual expression. While berdaches or two-spirit men traditionally had sex with men, there are reports of two-spirit males marrying a woman in order to produce and raise children.432

The fluidity of women’s and men’s role and the mixed-gender status of the berdache in American Indian societies open up other possibilities for understanding what we call homosexuality. What if instead of focusing on the sex between two men we focused on the spirit or nature of the men involved, recognizing that in the same-sex relation- ship they might be living out their different natures, their individual spirits, expressions of masculine, feminine, and/or androgynous spirits. Williams points out that “sexual behavior of berdache is often considered a serious reflection of their spiritual natures.”433 It might even be that there are other spiritual natures that express themselves in same- sex relationships besides what the indigenous societies call berdaches. Certainly, over the past several years, gender diversity and alternative gender expression have emerged other than the traditional male and female. Gender identity is much more fluid. Sexual attraction much more varied so that it isn’t tied to a particular gender. What if we, like the American Indian and indigenous societies, begin to focus on the spirit or the nature of a person with an understanding that a person’s spirit may also have an alternative sexual expression that is true to it.

For example, the transgender is a multifaceted term. One example of a transgendered person might be a man who is attracted to women but also identifies as a cross-dresser or as a woman. Other examples include people who consider themselves gender nonconforming, multi- gendered, androgynous, third gender, and two-spirit people. All of these definitions are inexact and vary from person to person, yet each of them includes a sense of blending or alternating the binary concepts of masculinity and femininity. We might begin to view these people as having particular spirits or inborn natures rather than seeing them as somehow flawed or the result of some psychological or emotional problem or the result of too much of one parent and not enough of another. Rather than forcing people to fit into the binary system of male/female and masculine/feminine, what if we evolved a system to include the spirits of such people as they are?

We must begin to open space for the multi-diversity of gender expression and allow individual spirits to make choices that are congruent with their soul. For some that may be two masculine men in a loving and sexual relationship. For others that might mean a masculine man in a relationship with an effeminate man or an androgynous male. For still others that might mean a bisexual man in a relationship with a woman. For others their same-sex behaviors may in fact be part of a larger identity with a certain spirituality that their two-spirit nature puts them in touch with—an awareness of the value and unity of all things. Each must find his or her own soul’s expression. As we each find space for our soul’s expression of our diverse sexualities and gender identities, hopefully the culture will begin to mirror the same and open space to embrace the diverse ways the soul expresses itself.

I suggest that pursuing and living our soul’s purpose is a more important part of our self-identity than who we are sexually attracted to or who we have sex with. As a bisexual man with androgynous characteristics (more feminine when I was younger than perhaps now, as that feminine nature has seemed to have given way to a gentle man) I can feel sexual attraction to either a man or a woman.

My personal journey has brought me into agreement with the Indian view that everything that exists is spiritual. Williams, in his admittedly generalized overview of American Indian religious values, says “[e]very object—plants, rocks, water, air, the moon, animals, humans, the earth itself—has a spirit. The spirit of one thing (including a human) is not superior to the spirit of any other. Such a view promotes a sophisticated ecological awareness of the place that humans have in the larger environment. The function of religion is not to try to condemn or to change what exists, but to accept the realities of the world and to appreciate their contributions to life. Everything that exists has a purpose.” 434

In the beginning I didn’t know this about my own same-sex attractions. I only knew somewhere deep inside me that my homosexuality was more than it seemed. As we have learned, in the Native American and indigenous cultures a person who is physically male might have the spirit of a female, might range somewhere between the two sexes, or might have a spirit that is distinct from either woman or man. Whatever category, this person is seen as different from men and accepted spiritually as “not man” in the community. Some cultures call this person a “man-woman” like the reference in the above dream. 435 They were believed to be born this way, with natural desires to become women and, as they grew up, they gradually became women.436 In many indigenous cultures such boys were seen as acting out of their basic natures and made berdaches by the Great Spirit and were thus accepted as such.437

An androgynous spirit is more important than a person’s anatomy or dress in understanding berdachism. Although berdaches are anatomically male, physical body parts are also much less important than a person’s spirit or character. When the American Indian refers to the nature of a berdache, they are referring to his spiritual essence rather than names that the white man uses to denote a berdache. These names include such terms as hermaphrodite, transvestite, transsexual, or homosexual.438

While in recent years there has been an increased tolerance and even increased acceptance of LGBTQ persons and other gender nonconformists in Anglo-American society, they are still met with discrimination, bigotry, and misunderstanding. Little tolerance continues to exist for gender ambiguities outside of opposites of men and women. Many gender nonconformists conclude that they only have one alternative: to make themselves into the other sex.

American Indian and other indigenous cultures provide alternative gender roles along a continuum between masculine and feminine through the tradition of berdachism.439 Just like in the dream above that refers to a “strong-woman man” and a “strong man-woman,” in indigenous cultures it is the mixture of the masculine and feminine that is important. Categories are less rigid and gender concepts more fluid. As Williams’s work shows, “just as berdaches can physically move freely between the women’s group and the men’s group, so the lack of boundaries marks their gender status as well. They mix the attributes of both female and male, and add alternative aspects that are unique to the berdache status.”440

As a bisexual and androgynous man born into a Judeo-Christian evangelical minister’s home that neither understood my spirit nor accepted it as normal, I am eternally grateful for my dreams. From the dream of “the bull that chased me up a tree to keep me from returning to the small town in which I lived” to the dream that said “healing the homosexual is freeing him from the parsonage” to the dream that said “homosexuality is the treasure hard to find” to the dream with which I started this chapter that says “androgyny has come to the church” to the dream of the orb as “my soul’s next manifestation,” they connected me to a forgotten and primordial past and to a spirituality that embraced who I was and am at the soul level and to the call to fulfill a sacred destiny—the soul’s longing.

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 The Green Man is the archetype that represents the spiritual intelligence in nature. As such the Green Man dissolves the split between spirit and matter. To accept the Green Man is to return to the awareness that there is a divine reality in matter.

The Shaman maintains a oneness with nature and discerns the wisdom and intelligence in nature, working with the spirits in nature. Images come from the depths of our souls. We try to think them when we should dance them, paint them, love them, befriend them, and allow them to carry us into their worlds to learn their stories—stories that will once again connect us to the spirit that connects us all.

In this chapter I explore how the entrance of the Green Man into my consciousness opened up avenues for healing the split in me between matter and spirit, between body and mind and ultimately the split in me between my heterosexual and homosexual selves.

I am at a religious service, like a church service. A man who is a healer is there. This man knows what to do when there is a need for a healing. He handles it. I tell him, “You are right where you are supposed to be. It’s nice to be right where you are supposed to be even though it was me that got you here.” By this I mean that this man came to see me because he was attracted to me. It was his attraction to me that put him right where he is supposed to be in order to take care of a healing situation. That is what he knows. He knows how to heal.

I reach up to kiss him. I put my arms around him. He is tall. I have to stretch up in order to kiss him. I think that he’ll embrace me and kiss me, that this is a mutual attraction, a coming together. However, he is hesitant. I kiss him. (Journal, 11-29-10)

As discussed earlier, dreams often mirror back to us what is happening in the unconscious, what is happening in the matter of our own souls. Dreams of a healer, healing, and energy healing had been showing up in my dreams for some time. I believe these dreams were part of what attracted me to shamanism and energy healing. This dream said that the healer was right where he was supposed to be, which I understood to mean that I was right where I was supposed to be. According to the dream this male healer was there because he was attracted to me. Not only was he attracted to me, but I was attracted to him.

I hypothesized that this attraction to the inner masculine as healing energy is what fueled my attraction to men and is what I sought in my same-sex relationships as an attempt to heal the masculine split in me. The man’s hesitance to embrace me in the dream mirrored my own ongoing hesitance to embrace both the healer in me and the integration of this other man in me. Both would heal the split between the inner man and the outer man, between the mind and the body, between spirit and matter and the split between my homosexual and heterosexual selves.

The dream ended with me stretching up to kiss this male healer. A kiss is a meaningful and highly symbolic act. Although the meaning and symbolism of a kiss varies according to the type and location of the kiss, a kiss on the lips represents a close union between two people, expressing a closeness of two hearts. Kissing on the lips symbolized the communication by one’s inner spirit to unite with another’s inner spirit. In other words, kissing goes deeper than the physical meeting between two people’s lips. Kissing touches both the heart and the mind.386

Because kissing involves an act similar to breathing into someone, kissing becomes a symbol for rebirth, renewal, and transformation. We only have to think of the symbolism of the kiss in fairy tales such as Sleeping Beauty.387 The “breath of new life” is delivered through the lips. Think about what happens when two people fall in love or are strongly attracted to each other. At the touch of their lips every cell in the body comes alive with new life and the soul awakens. The fact that I had to stretch up to kiss this masculine healer suggested that some stretching or expansion of consciousness or action was required to embrace the masculine healer.

Who was this other man I stretched up to kiss? Who was this healer with whom I longed to unite, into whom I longed to breathe life? Or was I longing for him to breathe life into me?

I dream

My wife and I are at a shamanic healing. A person hands me a note. The note says “Don’t panic.” The note also said “critical” and was signed “Ona.” I know that Ona is involved in a healing with someone and the situation is critical. She is handing out notes to ask certain people to be in prayer, holding the space to assist energetically in the healing.

I move up to a place and sit on the floor in order to be in the circle of people holding this space. Suddenly I start to vibrate. I vibrate so strongly that I start to fall over. A man puts his hands on my shoulders to steady me. He knows what is happening. However, the vibration becomes so strong that I start to fall over again, and he gently assists me to lie down. The vibration continues until I start to move. I float across the room and end up back in a corner where Ona is working with a woman who is lying on the floor. It is obvious that the woman is in serious trouble. Suddenly I start talking. I tell this woman that I am her grandmother, giving her grandmother’s name. I tell her that I am from South Africa and that I have been watching over her all her life and that I have come to heal her. I then tell her other information. I speak in some other language. I then hug her and whatever her problem was, it’s resolved. She sits up. At this point I wake up. My body is still tingling from the energy and my speech is slurred. My arms continued to tingle for some time. I feel overwhelming emotion, joy, and gratitude. (Journal, 9-11-11)

Here is another dream about healing and healing the feminine. But was this only a dream? Ona is a shamanic healer with whom I had worked on multiple occasions. She was also one of the faculty in the Light Body School of the Four Winds and one of my instructors during my training in shamanic healing and energy medicine. At the time of this dream Ona was also my mentor with whom I sought supervision. I shared this experience with her. She told me that at the exact time of this dream, she was in fact conducting a shamanic training. According to Ona, there was a lady in the training from South Africa who was in need of significant healing. Had I had a spontaneous shamanic journey while sleeping? Had I actually picked up on the healing session being conducted by Ona in another part of the world and somehow participated in the healing?

Whether this dream is describing aspects of my own unconscious with all the figures representing parts of me (which is certainly a plausible and useful understanding), or whether the dream is describing images and archetypal processes from the collective unconscious (another useful interpretation), or whether I had actually traveled to this healing session during my sleep to assist in this healing (a rationally more challenging interpretation), the dream could be adequately under- stood through the lens of imaginal sight as discussed in the previous chapter. These images were presented to me as real, not subjectively real but imaginatively real, not externally or objectively real, but essentially real.

To that extent, this dream and these images had a real and essential effect on my consciousness, healing the feminine in me and connecting me more directly to the healer in me. However, Ona’s confirmation that she was in a healing session with a woman from South Africa that needed healing at the exact time of the dream suggested there was some external and objective reality to this experience also.

Imaginal sight provides for the embodying of Spirit and the spiritualization of matter. As mentioned earlier, between mind and matter exists a psychic realm of subtle energies whose characteristics manifest in mental and material form.388 As we have stated before but bears repeating here, when we recognize that the realm of the imagination— the imaginal sight of the heart—mediates between the physical and the Spiritual then the split between them dissolves. In the physical realm Ona was participating in a healing in which she made a call for assistance from the spirit realm, a practice common to shamanism. That mental call made its way through the energetic web connecting us and showed up in my dream as images of a healing session in which I then participated.

Given the individual work I was doing at the time, I can certainly interpret this dream as mirroring my work with both the masculine, indicated by the man in the dream assisting me in the healing process, and the feminine, indicated by my being grandmother energy that assisted in the healing of the lady in the dream, representing some aspect of my own feminine energy. Ona, the shamanic healer, could symbolize the shamanic healer in me—some part of my own emerging self. However, I was at that time learning the skill of shamanic journeying, also known as astral travel or soul travel. Astral travel, soul flight, or the practice of shamanic journeying where it is believed that a piece of the soul or the luminous energy body leaves the physical body and travels to other realms and places, is often disbelieved in western science.

However, astral travel and soul flight was the subject of a dream I’d had eight months before this experience. I dream

I am involved in a court case, a trial. There is a woman there who knows information. When we ask her to testify, she claims immunity. Dr. Dzera is there and says something about astral travel. He says, “I would never have believed it (astral travel) possible, but I saw Linda Finch do this. It was a dark night and I saw her just take off and go zoom (flying through the sky).”

He then puts on an astral travel suit, buckling it up at the waist. This has something to do with him being able to travel to get information regarding this case. I am getting ready to leave to go to some training. As I leave I stop by Dr. Dzera’s office and get something. I am driving on the road going to the training. (Journal, 05-29-10)

At the time of this dream I was continuing my study and training in shamanic healing. Shamanic journeying into non-ordinary reality to track or “see” phenomena on the physical, emotional, mythic, and energetic levels was a central part of this training. The doctor in this dream was a psychiatrist with whom I worked. He symbolized the rational, Western, scientific, medical model of treatment and healing. The woman named Linda in the dream was a master shaman and at the time was the dean of the Light Body School and one of my instructors. The dream showed that the more rational, scientific, medical model part of me (the psychiatrist) was accepting the shamanic reality of astral travel (Linda) because of what he had seen. This dream showed that because of my experiences in shamanic training and actually my personal experience with shamanic journeying, the more traditional, Western medicine man in me was putting on the consciousness and the way of the shaman, symbolized by the “astral travel suit.”

The previous dream where I participated in a shamanic healing, a healing that my shamanic instructor and mentor had confirmed was actually happening at the time of the dream, can also be understood as astral travel or soul flight. Part of the training and initiation into the shamanic path is to learn to send part of the soul forth intentionally on a soul flight. One of the purposes of the soul journey is to obtain information (another topic of the dream), information that can be used for healing, spiritual growth, or to work through emotional and psychological issues.

The point of this digression into astral travel or shamanic journeying is to emphasize its central role in shamanic healing. Putting these three dreams in chronological order, the dream on astral travel that came first showed the merging in me of Western psychiatric medicine and the indigenous ways of the shaman. The second dream where I kissed the male healer showed my embrace of the healer in me. The third dream showed my participation in the healing ceremony with Ona. It brought these two aspects together—astral travel and the healer—resulting in shamanic healing. But who was this healer in me? In January of 2012 I awoke early in the morning with the urge to paint. Painting had become a way for me to interact with and bring into consciousness the images stirring in the unconscious or in the depths of my soul. I had learned to pay attention to such urges. These urges come from a place deep in my body, somewhere around the heart and solar plexus.

 I proceeded to paint a background as instructed by the “painting dream” ten years earlier. As I stared into the background I saw the image of a man’s head. The image reminded me of a man in a previous painting. I also kept being drawn to two other paintings, The Call and The Gift, which have already been discussed in a previous chapter. Since the image that wanted to appear on this canvas called my attention to these three men, all painted green, I wondered if “green man” had any meaning or significance. Acting on that hunch, I Googled “green man” and to my surprise I came upon a whole body of knowledge related to a concept called “the Green Man.” I then realized that I had been painting a “green man” in various forms for the past nine years. In 2003 I had painted an image of a green man. I called this painting Emerging. (See figure 15.)

Figure 15. Emerging

 In my search for the collage of the heart and hands discussed in the previous chapter, I discovered that the theme of the Green Man had entered my work many years before but had remained completely cut off from my consciousness. In fact, I was quite surprised to find the presence of the Green Man in a collage that I had done in response to a dream eleven years earlier, back in 2001. At that time I dreamed

I enter a large house that is being remodeled. My wife and a man are with me. I am wearing two shirts. I take one of the shirts off and am now in my underwear. We walk through the house, which is in various stages of remodel and repair. We go to the very last part of the house. My wife has been doing the floors—removing old tile, stripping the floors of their old finish. There is only one floor left. It is hard work. She is working on her hands and knees. The owner of the house and his female companion arrive. I walk back up through the house. I’m a little concerned about being in my underwear. The house is dark. I can’t see and therefore I have to sense my way up and through the house. (Journal, 4-15-01)

I had this dream on Easter Sunday. In the years that I had been involved in church music, serving as music director, Easter was a significant and important day in the life of the church. As music director I had often been in charge of the music on Easter, directing choirs and writing and arranging musicals celebrating Christ’s death and resurrection. To have such a dream on such an important day, not only in the life of Christianity, but in my previous life in the church, going all the way back to the life in the parsonage, seemed significant to me. On that Easter Sunday and in response to this dream I wrote:

We go through deaths all the time. Every death resurrects into a new form. The physical (ego) resurrects as the spiritual, which is actually a transformed awareness. If we allow the resurrection power, the remodeling, the remolding, to do its work, the old transforms into the new. The statement in the dream that “I have to sense the way up and through the house” suggests another kind of seeing. (Journal, 4-15-01)

At this time in my life I often made collages in response to a dream as a way to work with the dream and to allow the unconscious to speak to me through its images. I would hold the dream in my mind and search through magazines, choosing pictures, words, and phrases, anything that might speak to me or attract my attention or, in some cases, repel me. I took these images and shaped them into collages. Here is the collage that I did in 2001 in response to this dream.

Figure 16. The Remodel

This collage had been archived away with many other collages and paintings. In 2012, eleven years after I had completed it, it entered my life again through a seemingly unrelated event. As I searched for the collage of the heart and hands discussed in the previous chapter, I came across this collage. Several things jumped out at me that had previously escaped my attention. First, in the center is a man dressed in green. But more importantly, in the lower right corner is a reference to the Green Man. The statement under this image says “The Quest for the Green Man.” For some reason I had put pictures of three tombstones in the collage. On one of the tombstones I had put a picture of John Matthews’ book, The Quest for the Green Man. Underneath the tomb- stones and the picture of the book, it said “John Matthews tracks this ancient archetype of the green and growing world through forest and woodland, folklore and ceremony, and world mythologies to produce the widest-ranging book on the Green Man to date. A colorful history aimed at reconnecting humankind to the spirit of nature.”

I had no memory of placing the specific image of the Green Man into this collage. I was completely shocked and surprised by this discovery. Although I had apparently forgotten its appearance into my life until I happened upon it while searching for the heart collage, it appears that something in me had been attracted to the Green Man for some time. In light of the fact that I had the dreams on which this collage was based on Easter Sunday and that I had placed this reference to Green Man on a tombstone spoke to the idea that something that had been dead and buried in my soul now wanted to return. Apparently, it now wanted to rise from its burial ground in the depths of my unconscious, seeking resurrection. Even though I had been painting a green man for several years, I had lost awareness of this connection and certainly did not know its meaning nor its archetypal significance. Nor did I know how the Green Man was connected to my journey into shamanism and energy medicine or my soul’s attempt and desire to heal the mind-body, spirit-matter split in me.

However, further investigation would reveal that long before the making of this collage and my paintings of green men, a hint of the Green Man and its transformative process had entered a dream. Of course, I didn’t understand it at the time. But way back in 1978 at the beginning of this long journey, I had dreamed I am riding a bicycle along the ocean. I fall off the bike and into the water. I get up and notice that I am covered in what looks like green paint. I go back home and clean up.

I am again riding the bicycle on the beach along the ocean. Again I fall off the bike and into the ocean. Again I get up and walk out of the ocean. Once again I am green, covered in what is like green paint. I awaken with the feeling and taste of sand in my mouth. (Journal, 1978)

Green is the color of nature and a symbol for growth, renewal, and rebirth. The color green is associated with the heart and the heart chakra. As such, green creates a balance between head and heart. This alone would have great significance and meaning for my journey. But looking back, I wonder if the Green Man had begun to make his appearance in this dream some twenty years earlier, long before I knew there was such a concept as the Green Man. Could it be that the archetype of the Green Man was behind this journey all along, pushing and pulling me to bring into consciousness this other side of the masculine—a masculine that is the spirit in nature?

Was this dream in 1978 the beginning of the man that would eventually emerge from the ocean as my soul’s next manifestation, which I had painted in response to the orb dream? Was this the man that was behind my same-sex attractions?

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When we split off matter from spirit or mind from body and elevate spirit and mind to a superior place over body and matter, something in us dies. We suffer a loss of connection, not only to nature, but to our own souls.

Ancient traditions have long held that the heart is the seat of the soul. Vibrating in the heart are not only feelings and emotions, but memories and images of our past, our ancestral stories, early traumatic events, our wounds and painful places as well as images of our future. Imagination is the authentic voice of the heart. This makes the heart central to a spiritual or symbolic life and raises our understanding of compulsions and desires—sexual or otherwise—to their spiritual or symbolic meaning.

In this chapter, I explore out outer images and events are carriers and therefore patterns of energy at work with us. I examine how an image reflects is own consciousness, putting wisdom, divine intelligence, transpersonal reality back into nature and matter, back into the object, even into the object of our desires.

I dream

I am walking with a female psychoanalyst. I put my hand over a spot on her back at her heart area. I feel energy of a wound or illness. As I hold my hand there I begin to feel the energy moving, as if I am extracting or healing this energy. This experience intensifies. She begins to convulse. She falls to the ground as if having a seizure, eyes rolling back into her head, contorting. I become somewhat anxious, wondering if she is going to be okay. She goes back in time to where she falls off a tricycle, hits her head, and dies.

Suddenly she quiets, eyes return. She gets up and says, “I haven’t felt this good after ten heart surgeries,” indicating that she has heart disease or a heart condition, something I didn’t know. Her husband is waiting for her in the car. She says that she is going to send people to me. I say, “I never did this before,” intimating that I may not be able to do it again. I just noticed that when I put my hand on your back, I felt dark and heavy energy there and the healing just started happening.” (Journal, 11-01-08)

The feeling in this dream was intense and powerful. I had this dream after doing a soul retrieval journey. In that journey I entered into what is described as the four chambers of the soul, which compares to the four chambers of the heart. In the first chamber you explore an original wound. In the second chamber you discover and renegotiate your soul’s contracts that have kept you bound to repeating the events of the wounding. In the third chamber you retrieve the soul part that was lost because of the wounding, and in the fourth chamber you receive gifts that will help the recovered soul express and live its purpose.353

When I did this shamanic journey, I did not have any particular images come to me in the various chambers. I just accepted that whatever was happening was occurring on the energetic level where every- thing is pure energy. Even though I wasn’t aware of anything happening on the soul retrieval journey, the dream would indicate otherwise.

This was another dream about energy healing and healing the feminine. This time the healing was at the heart level. I was healing the heart of the feminine, or perhaps I was getting to the heart of the matter of the feminine. I am reminded of the Swan Lake dream where the lady in the dream says, “When there is a conflict of priorities, one must follow the heart.”

But what does it mean to follow the heart? The lady in this dream was a psychoanalyst. She was the same psychoanalyst in the dream that ended chapter 14, where she asked her husband if he was finally going to admit that he did energy healing. In this dream she made reference to having a heart condition. What was this heart condition? Since I accepted that dream figures represented parts of me I had to ask “What is the issue at the heart of the psychoanalyst in me?”

A psychoanalyst is someone who explores how unconscious factors contribute to problems in a person’s life, believing that bringing unconscious factors into consciousness can result in the elimination of problems, contribute to healing, and move us toward greater wholeness. I have long accepted the idea that unconscious factors influence most of what a person does. My journey into Jungian psychology and my own Jungian analysis had proved that to me. Although we think that our problems are with the people or the circumstances of our lives, such problems are often reflections of the conflicts between parts of ourselves.

At the time of this dream, I was in a psychotherapy practice with a group of colleagues, two of whom were trained in Freudian- based psychoanalytic theory. One of them was the psychoanalyst in the dream; she was in training to become a psychoanalyst. My own personal journey into shamanism and energy medicine was taking me increasingly into the nonrational realms of non-ordinary reality and transpersonal subtle energy states. As a result I came up against the Freudian psychoanalytic view, represented by my colleagues, which tended to pathologize attempts to carry ascent development to its transpersonal conclusion beyond Piaget’s formal operational stage of cognitive development and rational world view. These latter two constructs are widely recognized by conventional psychotherapies and mainstream science, which view such ideas as neurotic immaturities of a prerational, magical thinking stage of development. They are there- fore deemed to be inferior and less developed when contrasted with elements of possible, higher stages of development such as vision-logic, psychic, subtle, causal or non-dual, suggested by some developmental researchers.354

As the psychoanalytic and shamanic stories, with their differing theories and assumptions, increased in their power and presence, the core conflict between these two world views collided and became activated. I felt as if my colleagues saw my journey into shamanism as invalid, regressive, and inferior and that they believed psychoanalysis to be superior. However, I did not have any concrete evidence that either of my colleagues held such classical Freudian beliefs or world views and because both were very supportive of my journey into shamanism and energy healing, I had to assume that this conflict was entirely within me and had become projected onto my colleagues, given that they carried the hook for such a projection.

As mentioned in the previous chapter, the assumption that humanity exists as a unique entity only because of our capacity for rational thought is still the metaphysical base that prevails in our culture and in much psychotherapy, perpetuating the soul-splitting effects of the Cartesian mind-body, spirit-matter dichotomy. This spirit-matter, mind-body split was the underlying archetypal cause of the conflict that emerged in me between my heterosexual and homosexual selves, between the masculine consciousness of the parsonage in which I was raised and the one emerging from the depths of my own soul.

This conflict now emerged between the psychoanalyst and the shaman in me. This most recent conflict seemed to get at the heart of the matter by throwing me headlong into a reality in which there was no such split. Spirit lived in matter, one with it. Perhaps this is what is at the heart of matter. And perhaps this is also what is at the heart of the feminine. Is this what the feminine knows? Is this what the heart knows? Is this what is vibrating in matter—there is no separation between mind and body, no separation between spirit and matter? My journey into shamanism and energy medicine had brought me face-to- face with this ancient wisdom. As I held these opposing world views, much like I held my homosexual and heterosexual selves as both being contained in some underlying whole, a journey into the Under World would provide an answer. From my journal:

I travel to the Underworld to visit with Huascar, the guide and guardian of the Underworld. We come to a pool of water surrounded by beautiful vegetation. I notice many hummingbirds. Huascar tells me “This is the Place of the Hummingbirds.” I look into the pool, which is crystal clear. Mist rises from the pool, and Huascar tells me that the mist rising from the pool is the wisdom of the hummingbird. He instructs me to visit this place regularly and that I will learn to read the mist rising from the pool.

Suddenly I hear these words, “Look deep within the pool that is inside you and you will find the wisdom of the universe.” I’m thinking, “I don’t know whether these words come from Huascar, the pool, or the hummingbirds.”

It is as if Huascar hears my thoughts and answers “It doesn’t matter because they are all one. Energy of the one is continually exchanging itself with the energy of the other.”

I think “But then how does one distinguish between them?”

Again as if hearing my thoughts, he answers “There is no distinction. It is the human mind, the ego that has the need to separate.” As I continue to meditate on this image, I see mist rising. The mist takes various forms. (Journal, 5-6-12).

There is no separation between mind and body, no separation between spirit and matter. The energy of one is continually exchanging itself with the energy of the Other. This was the message—a message that science itself is now asserting. Everything is made up of energy and everything exchanges that energy with everything else at all times.355 The above dream suggested that a memory of a previous lifetime continued to vibrate in the heart. The psychoanalyst in the dream said that the energetic healing of the wound that she carried in her heart left her feeling better than ten heart surgeries had. This dream showed the effects that energy healing can have on what we carry in our hearts.

But what is it that we carry in our hearts? What is it that the heart knows? We experience our emotions, our passions, our longings, as well as our hurts and wounds—the very essence of who we are—in the chest and heart area. One only has to recall the pain of a significant loss or the excitement of falling in love to know that these events register in the heart. The dream infers that an earlier traumatic event had created a disease or condition of the heart—a condition I knew nothing about. What was the heart condition?

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The ancients believed that Nature, including human nature, contains a directing intelligence which is the source of all knowledge concerning the nature of a person’s being and becoming. The rejection of spirit in matter is often the source of our conflicts.

The memory of this ancient time is a call from the soul to correct our one-sidedness and heal the wounds occurring from our rejection of spirit in matter. The energy field of the soul connects us to other energy fields that match its energies and brings us back into relationship with nature herself, which is non other than our own nature.

In this chapter my dreams and my paintings continue guide me on this journey of self-discovery into the meaning of my same-sex attractions.

My dreams, my paintings, and an increasing awareness of certain synchronicities between my inner and outer worlds resulted in a growing interest and pull toward the study of shamanism and energy medicine. With this, I made the decision to enroll in the Healing the Light Body School of the Four Winds Society and begin training in shamanic healing. This school had been founded by psychologist and medical anthropologist Alberto Villoldo.

As I moved more and more in this direction, I noticed that my dreams on the themes of homosexuality and becoming a Jungian analyst diminished. In fact, for the most part, they stopped entirely. I found myself thrust into the world of the shaman. In this world, every- thing is energy, alive and connected. It vibrates with its own conscious awareness, putting wisdom, divine intelligence, and transpersonal reality back into nature and matter, back into the object—whether that object be a stone, a tree, an animal, an organ of the body, or the earth herself.

My dreams over the past several years—of seeing energy, traveling to alternate worlds, seeing into the invisible realm, seeing and interacting with spirit beings, seeing the invisible or spiritual causes of people’s problems—and doing energy healing, slowly became my awakened reality. They unfolded before my eyes—not as dreams waking me in the middle of the night—but as aspects of my training in energy medicine waking me to another reality. Was this the other man in me? Was this the reality behind my same-sex attractions? Was this the “treasure hard to find” that the dream had told me was the goal of my homosexuality? Was this the meaning of the dream that told me the “healing my homosexual self would be freeing him from the parsonage?” Was this somehow the voice that on that January morning in 1978 said, “Listen to your dreams for I will speak to you through them?” Was this the bull that had been chasing me in my dreams? All I knew was that as strange as it all felt, even disorienting at times as I struggled to understand and integrate these parts of myself and my experiences, it also felt like I had come home. It felt like I had somehow found a part of myself that had been longing for me, some part of me from which I had been estranged and separated.

I dream

I am meditating and I see an orb. I know it is my orb. As I look closer I see a small image of me in this orb. As I look even closer I notice that I disappear, and it is all pure energy. I become aware that this orb is my soul’s next manifestation. (Journal, 10-19-08)

At the time of this dream I did not know what an orb was. My only association was the mention of orbs showing up in the photographs of Alberto Villoldo, with whom I had recently completed a weekend workshop on the energy medicine of the Americas. The idea of orbs is very controversial. Some people believe that orbs are the emanations of spirits, soul energy, what we are when we leave our bodies, spirit guides, angels, or other paranormal phenomena. Others believe they are simply light reflecting off particles of dust and water. I have no intention or desire to debate the existence or meaning of these translucent spherical masses of energy that often appear in photographs and video recordings or that are reported to be seen by psychics and others who have the capacity to see into the spirit or energetic world.

Like all images that appear in my dreams, I understand this image of the orb as a symbolic message from the unconsciousness. While it is true that I have had dreams of events and people that did in fact manifest in outer reality—not only in symbolic form but literally as dreamed—I first understand a dream by it subjective inner meaning. This dream defines the orb as my soul’s next manifestation. In chapter 2, I defined soul as “the part of us that transcends our personal history, our family and ancestral patterns, transcends our beliefs, even what we might hold to be valuable and true and connects us to the Divine Spark in us that longs to fulfill its destiny.” This dream suggested that the soul evolves or at least has different ways of expressing itself.

This dream also pointed to the idea that at our most basic level we are pure energy. I felt compelled to paint this dream. I began by painting two orbs, one with an image of me in it and another just pure energy. Then I came to a block, a standstill. I couldn’t finish the painting. I set the canvas aside and began another painting.

I painted a background based on the dream. This time I painted the larger orb, the one that was pure energy. As is my process, I then stared into the background to see what I could see. First I saw a horse, then a human face, then a black panther. I developed these images. Then, quite surprised, I saw a fetus in the orb. I painted the fetus. I then felt drawn to add the eagle, the hummingbird, and the serpent, all important animals and symbols in the shamanic medicine traditions of the Incas in South America, the shamanic tradition in which I was being trained at the time. It is as if the horse, the black panther, the hummingbird, and the serpent, as well as the human, were awaiting the birth of the next manifestation of my soul energy. I call this painting Anticipation. (See figure 6.)

Figure 6. Anticipation

The first iteration of this painting sat in my office, unfinished, for three years. Then I took my shamanic training entitled “Working with the Sacred.” In this training we learned how to step beyond the body and the mind and enter the domain of the soul, where the archetypal forces shape and inform our lives. We also learned how to negotiate with these forces of nature. After this training, I found myself pulling the canvas out and was able to finish the painting. As I worked on it, I saw cords of energy flowing out from the orb in the painting into everywhere, into the sky and the sea, as if impregnating or inseminating the universe with pure energy. The energy was moving. The soul’s next manifestation was happening. Thus I call this painting The Happening. (See figure 7.)

Figure 7. The Happening

As I continued to reflect on the orb dream and this painting over the next several months, the painting continued to evolve. It was as if the paintings reflected the emerging manifestation of this Other living in my soul. (See figures 8, 9, and 10.)

Figure 8. The Happening Phase 2

As I focused on the wave in the first painting, I saw a man’s face emerging from the sea.

Figure 9. The Happening Phase 3

In Phase 3, I saw a man emerging from the water in the midst of two white horses. The fact that the horse motif appeared in these paintings about the orb dream suggested a connection between the painting Steed Rising from the Sea presented in the previous chapter as a symbol of the union of spirit and matter, and the man emerging from the sea, as my “soul’s next manifestation.” Perhaps this was the consciousness of “spirit in matter” that was rising in me.

Figure 10. The Happening Phase 4

In the next painting (Phase 4) the man emerged more fully from the water, flanked by the two horses. Was this the man for whom I had been searching?

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“All life sings. It is your birthright to express your soul through song, adding to the universal song of life.” —Sandra Ingerman, Walking in the Light

The psyche seeks its goals independently of external factors or the ego’s desire, a process that provides a path to self-discovery, healing, personal growth and even one’s destiny. The symbolic meanings of sexual dreams, fantasies and attractions may represent the soul’s desire to bring alive some other part of us.

 When we are unable to express a thought of a feeling, the body may create a symptom to express it for us. The symptom becomes the symbol. Seeing something as a symbol allows us to get in touch with something that cannot be known in any other way.

Images in our dreams or images that we create with our intentions are connected to that particular energy as it exists in the energy or spirit worlds. Our relationships with this subtle energy as the forms in our dreams and creations may serve as guides and helpers or avenues for healing.

In this chapter I show how images in my dreams and that began to appear spontaneously in my art became guides on my journey.

I dream

I am in an office with two Jungian analysts. One of the analysts is working on one of my dreams. I say, “You have what ego-consciousness does and you have what the unconscious does. It is these two working together that influences a life.”

The other analyst then draws a model of three circles. He says the other analyst doesn’t accept this piece—God— pointing to the third circle. This analyst says “There are three things that influence a life—the unconscious, which is revealed through dreams, ego-consciousness, which is the I you know yourself to be, and God, which is a force that transcends both and acts on its own. It is all three that determine one’s life.” (Journal, 8-14-94)

I have maintained throughout this book that there is some divine spirit or transcendent purpose in my same-sex attractions and fantasies. This divine spirit is that numinous and highly charged transpersonal vital life-giving energy that responded to my cries in 1981 to sing my song by coming to me in a dream as powerful swirling rings of energy described in a previous chapter. I have maintained that this divine spirit and transcendent reality carries the highest creative function and ultimate reality of the psyche and invokes the sacrifice of the ego on behalf of its purposes.

Three years after our move to Indianapolis, I completed my Master of Social Work degree and began a second career as a clinical social worker and therapist for a community mental health center. The MSW degree and job as a therapist provided the container for me to continue to pursue my interest in dreams and psychotherapy and provided me a new lease on life—one that was more congruent with the images that I had discovered living in my soul.

My original plan had been that once I obtained my MSW degree and gained some clinical experience I would pursue my interest in Jungian psychology and begin analytical training to become a Jungian analyst. However, once I completed the MSW and began my work as a therapist, I found that my motivation and need to continue such training had decreased. Also, the logistics of paying off a school loan that had been necessary to get the MSW—an additional minimum of five years of study and the projected $50,000-plus it would cost to pursue analytical training at that time—seemed beyond my grasp.

Although my dreams continued to bring up the topic of studying at a Jungian institute and becoming a Jungian analyst, I began to understand those dreams as symbolic of a process happening inside me. They referred to my continuing individuation process rather than my potential striving to achieve the more tangible goal of becoming an actual Jungian analyst. I still hold some sadness around the loss of that dream. However, I came to understand through years of working with my dreams that there is indeed a process in the psyche that seeks its goals independently of external factors or the ego’s desires—a process that provides a path to self-discovery, healing, personal growth, and even one’s destiny.

As stated earlier, when the unconscious purpose of a behavior has been fulfilled, the energy then moves on to a next gradient or level of development. 313 As I came to understand that the internal spiritual and symbolic meanings of my same-sex dreams, fantasies, and attractions were my soul’s desire to bring alive another man living in me, I began to make choices to give that man life. This energy had become the impetus to the many changes I had already made, including leaving my former life as musician, church leader, and high school teacher, to become a psychotherapist. In many ways becoming a psychotherapist was yet another projection of my own soul’s longing for healing and expression.

As I settled into my life as a therapist, my dreams began to point me in another direction—one I had not anticipated or ever contemplated—shamanism and energy medicine.

I dream

A woman is sick. I am called to come heal her. I go to the house where the woman lives. Her husband comes out to meet me as I walk up to the house. He stops me and says he doesn’t know me and won’t let me in the house to see his wife. A lady, his wife’s mother, comes to the door and says, “He’s okay. I called him to come.” He then lets me enter.

I go to the sick lady’s room. She is in bed. I sit on a chair beside the bed and just sit quietly with her. Suddenly I see myself with bird feathers—like a headdress you might see a Native American wearing in a Native American dance. I’m just sitting there with this feather headdress on. I then realize that I take the lady’s ill energy into me and it is transformed, that is, it is healed and made healthy as it passes through my energy and returns to her, much like blood is cleansed by passing it through one of those machines that removes contamination from diseased blood. I wake up with a peaceful, healed feeling and a sense of “okay-ness” and purpose. (Journal, 4-21-96)

Although this dream may be understood as the continued healing of my own feminine, it might also be understood as a call from the feminine to become an energy healer. This theme of the call of the feminine and energy healing continued in another dream. I dream

I am with a chiropractor and energy healer. She is training a group of us to heal pain in the body through energy. She demonstrates by touching the area where the pain is located and then touching the herb that is needed for the healing. She then touches the body in various places to balance the energy. It is the balancing of the energy that eliminates the pain. I ask her how she knows what herb to use. She says that she sees it. She sees the herb the body needs. The body tells her. (Journal, 8-25-96)

I dream

My daughter and I are walking in the town where we used to live. We are walking on familiar streets. We come to another street and turn left. Suddenly we are walking in a different place. Everything is different. We turn again, trying to figure out where we are when we meet a man, a woman, and a little girl living in a house up on stilts. We don’t know them, but they look vaguely familiar. We tell them we were in Bluffton, and we made a turn and suddenly we aren’t in the small mid-western town anymore. (Journal, 09-10-00)

Either I woke up and went over this dream in my mind, or I woke up in the dream and went over the dream. I then dream

What has happened is that we had walked into another dimension. Upon this realization, my body is filled with chills. I realize that this is what happens to people who can see into the spirit realm. They go into another dimension. I then practice going into this other dimension, moving back and forth between the two realities. I go into the other dimension and then struggle and struggle to come back. My body is very heavy. I can’t move. I have difficulty swallowing. I know there is this other realm or reality happening simultaneously. I had walked into that realm. I am discovering that I can do it at will, move in and out of these two dimensions at will or consciously. It is for the purpose of seeing into this other realm, to see the sources of people’s problems and to help them heal. It is a strange and powerful, yet somewhat frightening experience because it is almost like I can’t get back. (Journal, 9-10-00)

It would be several years before I would understand the implications and importance of this dream. As I began my study of and training in shamanism, I discovered that central to shamanic healing practices is what is called “shamanic journeying.” When journeying, the shaman enters into an altered state of consciousness and travels outside of time into the hidden realms, which are called non-ordinary reality or the spirit realm. In these hidden realms one is able to see the root cause of problems. In these realms are helping spirits, compassionate spirits, who offer their guidance and also their healing and help on behalf of all life on earth.314

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I dream

There is a large bull running toward me, which I am to stop. I am somewhat anxious and not sure if I can stop it. I have two cardboard gates that I plan to put up in front of the bull to stop it. There are two sizes, a large one and a smaller one. There are men there to help me, but mostly it is my job. The bull is coming. I am holding up the smaller cardboard gate. A man at the other end sees the bull and indicates that I should use the larger, wider gate. He says, “wider, wider, wider.” I put up the wider gate. The bull comes. I stop the bull with the cardboard gate and the bull falls down. I grab its horns and subdue it. The others come to assist. (Journal, 12-31-89)

In many ways this dream could be a scene out of the Mithraic mysteries where the Roman god Mithras subdues and kills the sacred bull. In other esoteric teachings of Mithraism, Mithras himself was the bull that represented his lower nature, and by slaying the bull he was sacrificing himself for the redemption of humanity. Mithras, in the form of the slain bull, lay like Christ in a tomb for three days, before being resurrected to join with his Higher Self.

I have maintained throughout this book that the bull in my dreams represented the Earth Masculine. This is the masculine principle inhabiting nature, that generative male procreative humid force of the chthonic masculine that is also a symbol of the life-giving, death-dealing, regenerating forces of the chthonic feminine—the ancient Goddess herself. As such, it was the embodiment of my bisexuality and the shadow side of my patriarchal, fundamental Christian parsonage consciousness. In its first appearance in my dreams you may remember that the bull chased me up a tree. In its second appearance I was able to enclose and contain the bull in a barn. In this dream I physically subdued the bull. In this act of grabbing its horns, I was taking on the power of the bull, taking control of this energy. This was symbolic of embracing and integrating the bull energy.

In antiquity, ritual killing of bulls and washing in their blood was believed to be necessary for cleansing, eternal life, and salvation. This was followed by a meal of the bull’s flesh. The adherents of Mithras believed that by eating the bull’s flesh and drinking its blood they would be born again. Participation in this rite would give not only physical strength but lead to the immortality of the soul and to eternal life. This dream not only mirrored remnants of an ancient archetypal process, it showed a slight shift in the archetypal story—one from salvation through sacrifice, killing, and the drinking of blood. This, I will shortly show, is shadowed in the drinking of semen in the act of same-sex fellatio, to salvation through subduing, relating to, and the integration of the split-off, rejected shadow energy.

As we have established, archetypes are invisible fields of energy that determine human existence. They are the riverbeds along which psychic life flows. Like the invisible jet stream that determines the course of the weather, these hidden currents shape our lives. In many ways we fall under their spell and live out their lives unconsciously as fate. To wake up to the influence of an archetype is to begin to participate in its drama with some awareness.

Personal growth depends on our ability to transcend the limits of our personal stories. To do that we must recognize the multiple hidden meanings beneath our thoughts, desires, fantasies, and behaviors. Beneath our seemingly conscious lives is a whole other world. Understanding these hidden currents, these archetypal forces that lie beneath our drives, our obsessions, and our longings will radically change our view of ourselves and ultimately our personal stories and our lives.

A compulsion can be understood as a struggle against a part of the soul that continues to remain unconscious and is projected onto an object in the environment. We might think of it as an undifferentiated part of the Self that longs to be differentiated and brought into conscious life. In compulsive sex—whether it be masturbation, or oral or anal sex, for example—some part of the soul continues to be undifferentiated and placed onto or into the object of the desire in the outer world. To continue to repeat this behavior is to remain stuck in the personal story. To transcend the personal story is to get at the archetypal meaning or unconscious and nonpersonal meaning or purpose of the behavior.

Whenever we have a conflict or are caught in ambivalence about making a decision in a practical matter, the basis for such a dilemma is often our inability to distinguish between the concrete and the symbolic meanings of the pondered action. The concrete and the symbolic are two different levels of reality. These two levels need to be separated out and considered separately. When this is done, the objective decision is often easily reached. 300

What is happening on the personal level, as troubling as that may be, is not as important as what is happening on the archetypal level. For example, a conflict between a son and his father on the personal level may be a manifestation of the archetypal story of the death of the old king—the death and destruction of a ruling consciousness. It may be that the ruling consciousness of the internalized father (in the son) is the source of the conflict—a consciousness that is in opposition to the one of the son or the one emerging in the son or the one wanting to emerge in the son. This conflict can certainly get projected out and onto the father-son relationship, resulting in fights, arguments, or outright rejection of the father if not understood from its archetypal source.

This aspect of the masculine longed to initiate me into its life. I could no longer kill or deny this energy as the Mithras ritual had done. Rather I had to allow it to initiate me into another masculine image. I dream

I am observing a male initiation rite of an indigenous tribe. In the ceremony the men are tied to a rope like a clothesline, naked with their erected penises hanging down. The tribal leader comes up and kisses the end of the erected penises. I am quite surprised by this action as I do not expect it. The scene changes and now I am one of the men in the tribe that is being initiated. I am tied to the rope in front of the tribe of men with my erected penis hanging down. A man comes up and kisses my penis on the head. I do not ejaculate, which means that I pass the initiation into manhood. (Journal, 7-2-91)

As my own personal consciousness evolved, I continued to have spontaneous same-sex fantasies and attractions, with periodic longings to act them out. However, my dreams also revealed to me that these desires were about something else. Over the next several months I had a series of dreams showing what was going on in my unconscious in the desire of this other masculine to find a consciousness that I didn’t yet understand and a man I couldn’t yet put a face on.

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Mythology, fairy tales, religious traditions, world literature, and modern movies are strewn with stories of a man’s journey to overcome some obstacle in his search for selfhood and his desire to fulfill a longing of the soul. Whether it is Perseus who rescued his future bride, Andromeda, from a monster; Prince Phillip who freed the maiden, lifeless Aurora, in Sleeping Beauty from the clutches of the witch; the biblical character Joseph who eventually reunited his family and saved a nation from starvation; King Arthur’s quest to find the Holy Grail; or Luke in Star Wars who redeemed his father’s darkness—they all ventured forth from the world as they knew it into unknown areas and uncharted paths where they encountered forces they had to overcome or endure in order to get the treasure they sought. Transformed by the process, they returned home to share their gift with their community or the world. In this process, a man must overcome multiple obstacles. If successful he frees this Other—the treasure hard to find—that lies hidden in his soul, and a new consciousness is born. I dream

I am living at home with my parents and my brothers. My father has established a lot of rules that don’t allow us to do hardly anything. Everything I want to do, my father won’t let me. According to him, these things are wrong, even evil. My brothers agree with him. Finally I confront my father and mother about these rules. I tell them it is their own fear of life that has made these rules. My mother just enforces the rules of my father.

The scene changes and now I am with a group of people from a church. There are three spots, circles, on the bath- room wall. According to the people from the church, this is a sign that what I want to do is evil, a sign from the devil that confirms that what I want to do, even my confronting them, is evil. I tell them that those three spots are their own projections onto the wall, the projections of their own evil onto the wall and not the devil.

The scene changes again and I meet Hilda. She tells me that I must leave home. (Journal, 1-19-88)

This dream captured the masculine-feminine experience of the parsonage and the relationship of my own masculine-feminine energies. My father represented the fundamental Judeo-Christian patriarchal consciousness of the parsonage in which I was raised. My mother simply obeyed this masculine point of view. I was now confronting these voices in me. This dream also pointed out that we project what is unconscious in us outside—onto others and onto our environment. In the end I meet once again the feminine figure Hilda and she tells me I must leave home.

As mentioned earlier, Hilda has been a consistent figure in my dreams through the years, representing aspects of my anima and inner wisdom. Overall, she was a trusted inner figure and guide. This voice in me in this dream told me that I must leave home. I must leave the parental images and all their projections. I could no longer live under the rules of the masculine as represented by my father and as obeyed by my mother. Nine nights later I dream

I meet the minister of the church that I attend. He asks me about my plans to buy a new house. I tell him that I am “going for broke,” meaning that I am going to put all my assets on the line to build this house. He responds in a way to show the seriousness of such a decision. I know that he is thinking that I can borrow the money from my parents, but I know that my parents don’t have that kind of money. He tells me to investigate all possibilities.

I talk to a man named Mr. Butler. He tells me that he got money he needed from his brother. I now see the minister walking down the street. He has lost a lot of weight and is very trim, appearing in good physical condition. I particularly notice that his shape has changed, especially how his legs and hips are attached causing a different shape from the buttocks and waist down, causing a different shaped butt. His butt is raised up higher and protruding. (Journal, 1-28-88)

This dream indicated that I was putting everything that I had into building a new house, into building a new consciousness, a new psychic structure. The dream also said that I couldn’t get the energy (money) that I needed for this new consciousness from the point of view of my parents. They didn’t have what I needed. I must get it somewhere else, from Mr. Butler’s brother. The end of this dream suggested the possible meaning of the dream’s reference to Mr. Butler’s brother. In this dream the minister’s buttocks had changed shape. This dream showed the change in my own inner masculine minister-father image.

The body reveals the way a person is in the world, demonstrating a relationship between various parts of the body and a person’s emotions and attitudes, even his consciousness.284 Ron Kurtz in his book The Body Reveals points out that the pelvis assumes the position that expresses a person’s set attitude toward living. For example, when the pelvis is tucked under, the tight buttocks allow for only a dribbling out of emotion and feeling. In this situation the person can’t allow the pelvis to swing back and gather strength for the forward thrust associated with full emotional discharge. Emotions can, at best, only be squeezed out. In the opposite extreme where the pelvis is retracted, or held back, the individual is unable to release. In this situation a great charge has been gathered in the pelvic region but is unable to swing forward. Individuals with such a pelvic situation often have a fear of letting go.285

In general, a tight, contracted, and small pelvis is associated with immaturity and a lack of development of feelings of sexuality and instinctual drive or with a strong containment of these instinctual feelings.286 The pelvis is the place where we carry our sexuality and phallic energy. The buttocks are also a symbol for the shadow, for what is “behind” us, unseen, out of view. We call a person an “ass-hole” or a “butt-hole” when he acts in ways that are offensive or in ways that we would not. Thus the buttocks become the carrier for all that we reject and disdain, in my case, my rejected masculinity and sexuality. The buttocks are also connected to the symbolism of anality. Basically, anal- ity represents self-assertion; assertion of existence, power, and control over mother, objects, and people as well as over oneself. It expresses the holding and wielding of might and power.287 The dream showed that the minister-father masculine image in me had changed the way it held this energy. This suggested that the energy for this new psychic structure lay in how I held and carried my shadow energy and what I did with it. Currently held in its high, protracted position suggested that I was in the position of discharge and letting go.

I dream

I am reading a book on the sacredness of sexuality. I read a section on the sacredness of my homosexual needs and on the sacredness of watching pornography and masturbating. The book says these—homosexuality, watching pornography, and masturbating—are manifestations of the sacred experience of my anima. (Journal, 1-27-88)

Why would I have such a dream? What was the unconscious trying to tell me? The word sacred means (1) dedicated or set apart for the service or worship of a deity, such as a tree sacred to the gods, (2) devoted exclusively to one service or one use as to a person or purpose, such as a fund sacred to charity, (3) worthy of religious veneration, holy, and (4) entitled to reverence and respect. Using these definitions, homosexuality, watching pornography, and masturbation are dedicated and set apart for the service of the anima, dedicated exclusively to her use in ways that are worthy of religious veneration or great respect and reverence, not to be profaned, violated, or made common. These expressions belong to the experience of the anima.

I have pointed out elsewhere that the anima is an archetype. As an archetype she is a powerful force in the unconscious, pulling us under her spell with a god-like fascination. Without knowing it we worship her. Mircea Eliade in his book Image and Symbols points out that sexuality has everywhere and always been a manifestation of the holy.288 According to Eliade, the purpose of sexuality is to reveal to human beings that which is beyond ego, or in religious terms, that which is divine.289

Sexuality as symbol will broaden and deepen humanity’s under- standing of itself and of the enormous forces that live in the unconscious, which if not made conscious, will live out in harmful and destructive ways. If sexuality is to reveal that which is beyond ego, that which is transcendent or divine, then understanding its symbolic and sacred meaning becomes a means of self-knowledge about what our sexual compulsions are really about. Sexuality or to use the dream’s references—homosexuality, watching pornography, and masturbating—hold within their very manifestations revelations of the archetypal and sacred character of the unconscious. To miss their meaning is to live them out unconsciously and remain stuck in the repetition of compulsive sex while missing what the soul is longing to bring into consciousness, its connection to the transcendent or the divine in us.

I dream

I see a man reading a book. He tells me that he read something in the margin of a page that explains the problem that he and his wife are having. He shows this to me. It is a French word for woman, le femme. It is defined as “yes and no.” The man smiles and laughs for now he understands his wife’s dilemma, the reason she is acting like she is. (Journal, 2-01-88)

At the time of this dream the man in the dream and his wife were friends of mine. They were having marital problems and both were in counseling. His wife had decided that she had been “too good” all of her life and now wanted to “be bad.” She found herself attracted to another man, had become intrigued with another religion, and had decided to go back to school. She said that she had played a role all her life and now she wanted to live her life.

While this actually referred to what was happening in the life of these friends of mine, it also mirrored what was happening in my own life. Often the world around us will mirror to us our own conflicts if we are but willing to listen. My anima was tired of the role that I’d played all my life. She was attracted to another man, other masculine energy (my same-sex attractions), and another religion, and another sacred expression (the inner divine image), and wanted to go back to school and find another expression (my longing to leave teaching).

The dream mirrored my ambivalence not only about my sexuality but also about whether to leave home or not. This is my Hamlet’s “To be or not to be,” to choose life, my life, or not, which would be a kind of death—a suicide—much like Hamlet contemplated. The dream also emphasized the challenge of the anima; she was both “yes” and “no.” She had no definite point of view, and she had all points of view. That was the dilemma of the anima and thus the dilemma of the ego that had fallen under her spell. She was both “yes” and “no”—thus must consciousness decide.

But we can only decide if we have some hint as to what she is up to, for she will pull us into life and just as quickly destroy that life. Just as, over the past several years, I had struggled with the “yes and no” conflict about whether to leave church music or not, whether to leave the church or not, whether to leave my marriage or not, whether to embrace homosexuality or not, once again I was caught in this “yes and no” dilemma. This time it centered on whether to leave teaching or not, whether to stay put or move to another city and pursue my desire to become a psychotherapist.

My dreams continued to both show my dilemma and provide hints for the journey. I dream

I am sitting at a table with several others, both male and female. A woman named Regina is sitting at the table. She says that she had a dream. She sings the dream. She sings it in a beautiful, clear, very pleasing melodious, high soprano voice. It is simply beautiful. The last line of the dream that she sings is “And here I am at this place in my life again.”

When she finishes I turn to her and say “And that is exactly where you are in your life, at midlife where once again you must choose what you will do with your life just like you did at the beginning.” I then say “No matter how this turns out (meaning the interpretation of her dream) with that beautiful voice, you must be singing someplace every week.” (Journal, 2-17-88)

This dream was clear about where I was in my life and what I must do. I was reminded of the previous references to “singing my song.” This reference had marked my journey from its very beginning, starting when I lay in bed that morning listening to the singing of the birds and thinking I just want to sing my song. Later it manifested in the dream where I climbed the ladder to get “my music.” The feminine in me had a dream to sing. As I reflected on this dream, the association that jumped out at me was that Regina means “queen.” She is the feminine side of the king/queen syzygy that Jung speaks of in his book Mysterium Coniunctionis.

I opened this book to the last section on the king and queen, Rex and Regina, and my eyes fell on the last paragraph. It says

The Queen of Sheba, Wisdom, the royal art, and the “ daughter of the philosophers” are all so interfused that the underlying psychologem (archetypal psychic structure) clearly emerges: the art is queen of the alchemist’s heart, she is at once his mother, his daughter, and his beloved, and in his art and its allegories the drama of his own soul, his individuation process, is played out.290

Its message is clear to me. My work with my dreams and my work to understand the meaning of my same-sex attractions—my archetypal psychic structure—was where the drama of my own soul and my individuation was being played out.

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My analyst tells me that he had a dream about me. He dreams that

I call him and tell him that I’m being held at Calvary Church. I say “They really have me. Therefore, I can’t make it to my session.” My analyst says that he understands and when I can talk about it, to call him and we will reschedule. (Journal, 7-29-87)

In response to this dream, my analyst asks me if I feel caught in some kind of a closed, rigid system. At the time of this dream I was caught in the struggles between my heterosexual and homosexual selves, between staying married or divorcing, between continuing to teach high school Spanish or to leave teaching and purse my interest in becoming a Jungian analyst. I was also experiencing a growing conflict about whether or not to continue or stop my therapy and analysis.

Our discussion that particular day centered on the conflict between my heterosexual self and my desire to remain married and my homosexual self with its desire to be free of the marriage so it could spontaneously pursue same-sex relationships. Living within the bounds of marriage and my commitment to my wife felt like a system that I was caught in from the perspective of my homosexual self. But my analyst’s dream didn’t say I was being held by my marriage or by my relationship to my wife, but by Calvary Church. What if my association to my literal marriage was a projection of the inner marriage?

The “inner marriage” is the often stated goal of a Jungian analysis— the union of the opposites, the union of the masculine and feminine, the conscious and the unconscious—which brings about the birth of the Self and one’s unique individual destiny. His dream said that I was “being held at Calvary Church.” “Being held” suggests “beyond my control.” Something had me. Some power was holding me against my will, against my ego’s will, or my conscious will. The dream said this power was Calvary Church, suggesting this system was the “church system.” The dream also said, “They really got me.” Why did the dream say “they?” Why didn’t the dream say “it,” since “it” would be the natural and appropriate pronoun to refer back to the word church as a singular noun?

Could it be that my analyst’s unconscious had picked up on these conflicts and viewed them as an archetypal story, like the one played out in the Christian Church? Certainly my psychic system had been indoctrinated into and contained in the Christian story by the mere fact that I was born into and lived in a fundamentalist Christian minister’s home. Was I still caught in the personal story of the parsonage from which the earlier dream had told me I must free myself in order to heal the homosexual self? Or did my analyst’s dream point to something else—an archetypal story playing out in me that transcended the literal church and my own personal story?

During this time my wife and I had many intense and serious conversations about our relationship and my same-sex attractions and whether to divorce or remain married. She was becoming clearer that she was no longer able to carry my homosexual energies. At times she felt that she was just a substitute for my same-sex attractions, and even felt that sometimes the sex we had was nothing more than masturbatory fantasies on my part. We also had many discussions about my desire to leave teaching and move to Indianapolis in order for me to go back to school and become a therapist. Either one of these decisions—to divorce after twenty-one years of marriage or to leave teaching after twenty years—would disrupt our lives.

As mentioned above, if we ignore a conflicting situation from the outside and look at it from within with a kind of relative exclusion of the outer situation, this forces the situation into an inner vessel where it can be understood as a drama playing out inside us. The question, of course, is what was the drama? If my analyst’s dream suggested that I was being held in some archetypal story, what was the story?

The church is a mother symbol. We speak of mother church. To the extent that the church serves the collective purposes, it corresponds with Moore’s definition of the feminine as the active, group, procreative purpose of the psyche that serves the survival of the group or species.269 Calvary refers to the place of the Crucifixion of Christ on the cross. The cross or tree is another mother symbol. This is the archetypal story of the death of son-ego and his return to the mother for rebirth and transformation. Numerous myths tell how the hero was enclosed in the maternal tree trunk.270 The various meanings of the tree as sun, Tree of Paradise, mother, and even as phallus are explained by the fact that it is a symbol of libido. The basic underlying reality is the libido. However, it is not the real mother who is symbolized here but the libido of the son whose object was once the mother.

Every sun myth illustrates the idea of entering into the mother in order to be reborn through her. But here the incest prohibition intervenes. As Jung points out, the incest prohibition acts as an obstacle and stimulates the creative imagination to find avenues for the self-realization of the libido. Consequently, every rebirth myth devises every conceivable kind of mother analogy for the purpose of canalizing the libido into new forms and effectively preventing it from regressing to actual incest.271 In this way the libido becomes spiritualized.

This is also a way of understanding the Christian story—a rebirth and transformation of the soul-image (Christ) through death and resurrection. My analyst’s dream said that I was caught in such a system. If I considered that the tree was basically a mother symbol, then the meaning of this mode of burial became clear. The dead were delivered back to the mother for rebirth. This seemed to be an adequate explanation if we hold that the tree or cross is only a mother symbol. However, the tree is a much more diverse and complicated symbol, representing not only the mother or the feminine, it is also a phallic and masculine symbol. The tree became another symbol for my bisexuality.

The cross itself is a symbol of primordial androgyny and nature’s dualism, again suggesting the bisexuality that is inherent in nature. Beyond that, the cross is a symbol of the union of the opposites, the union of the masculine and feminine, with the vertical line representing the connection with the spiritual, the heavens, the masculine, and the horizontal representing nature, the earth, and the feminine.272 As such, being held on the cross represents the integration of man’s soul into the union of opposing forces: the masculine and feminine, the spiritual and the earthy or, in my case, the heterosexual and the homosexual awaiting the birth of the new man. Being held at Calvary Church suggested containment. Containment signifies the latent state that precedes regeneration.273

According to my analyst’s dream I was caught in the archetypal process of transformation and self-realization of libido, the sacrifice of the ego-self for the realization of this other man living in my soul. Jung has suggested that “No man can change himself into anything from sheer reason: he can only change into what he potentially is. When such a change becomes necessary, the previous mode of adaptation, already in a state of decay, is unconsciously compensated by the archetype of another mode.”274

Seen in this light, it is really the transformation, rebirth, and realization of the masculine God-image that began chasing me as a bull in my dream nine years ago. It seemed that this was a process that would not let me go—thus held in Calvary Church, held in the crucible of the conscious and unconscious energies—awaiting the resurrection of the Self. As Helen Luke so aptly puts it, “. . . the true peace does not come until one has been through all the struggles of the ego, and until one has accepted boundaries and conflict—to the bitter end. That’s what the whole Christian story is about. That’s what the cross is.”

Many men with same-sex attractions find themselves suffering silently in the church. These are often sensitive, loyal, and responsible men who feel a great sense of commitment to their upbringing, their families, and to God. Unfortunately, these loyalties often force an abduction of the Self—an abduction of that true, unique, authentic, individual sacred Self living in the soul. This unconscious Other often becomes projected onto the church, and we fall under the spell of the archetypal Mother/Father complex and God-image.

Yet the longing of this other man breaks through in same-sex fantasies and attractions, compulsive masturbation, and secret homosexual encounters and affairs. Suffering under a conflict of priorities—how to be loyal to both the church, our families, and ourselves—we face the great challenge of withdrawing this projected Self from the church and giving ourselves permission to embrace our own sacred masculine and to live our own lives as determined by our relationship with the Divine living in our own souls. This will most certainly be a Herculean task, but for many it is a necessity task. This process often feels like being nailed to the cross as we hold the tensions of these opposing forces, waiting for the resurrection of the new God-image—one that can embrace our homosexual and bisexual natures.

Holding this tension was frequently extremely difficult for me to maintain. At times there was a strong desire to choose one side over the other—a man over my wife. But something inside me would not permit it. I refused to say that I was one or the other. Somewhere deep inside I knew that I was both, and that I could hold both within. I could relate to the feminine and masculine energies within me and allow them to work in creative ways, bringing to birth the other man living in my soul. How I lived these energies out in my sexual life was another issue that the unconscious continued to speak to.

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I dream that

My wife and I are reading a book. We each have our own copy of the same book. A man tells us the Jung himself was confused on whether to call homosexuals, homosexuals, saying “One time Jung would refer to them as homosexuals and then after the next session with them he would refer to them as heterosexuals when he wrote in their records.”

This man takes a pencil and draws a circle around the paragraph in the books that we are reading where it states that Jung himself says that in his own writings. He circles it first in my wife’s book and then in mine. (Journal, 1-20-87)

For me, Jung symbolized the wise old man, a representative of wisdom and meaning that symbolized the preexisting knowledge living in the soul. This dream brought attention to my confusion about my own sexuality—sometimes I was a heterosexual and other times I was a homosexual. The fact that the man drew a circle around this passage in both my book and my wife’s book emphasized the importance of this observation.

From the point of view of the unconscious there are two energy systems at work in me. At one time the heterosexual energy system was at work, and at another time the homosexual energy system was at work. Sometimes I was drawn to the feminine (the heterosexual) and at other times I was drawn to the masculine (the homosexual). I would call these archetypal (typical and universal) systems that operate within the psyche as expressions of how the masculine and feminine energies may interact. Dreams show things as they are at the unconscious, thus my confusion: Was I gay? Was I straight? Or was I both—bisexual? Or was I neither?

This is just one of the myriad ways the psyche functions. The soul expresses itself in images of the masculine and the feminine. In my own journey, the interplay of these two archetypal energies became critical in understanding the energy that expressed itself in my same- sex attractions. It was this inner relationship between the masculine and feminine energies that began to reveal to me the meaning and purpose of the longing behind this other man living in my soul.

Critical to this discussion is what I mean by masculine and feminine energies. While this next section may become laborious for some, I ask you to bear with me as I take you through my own journey of defining masculine and feminine. I will say at the onset of this discussion that by masculine and feminine I am not referring simply to men and women or to male and female but rather to a complex of energies that express themselves in certain patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior that appear in both men and women. I will then give examples of how these two archetypal energies played out in my own life and how my same-sex attractions played into this masculine-feminine relationship.

 John Moore in his book Sexuality and Spirituality correlates the masculine and feminine with the right and left brain hemispheres respectively. Moore defines the feminine as the active, group, procreative purpose of the psyche that serves the survival of the group or species. It corresponds to the left-brain hemisphere and is directed toward procreation and physical survival. From this arises dispositions toward a legion of inclinations, preoccupations, and behavioral traits, for example, habit, tradition, conservatism, protection, defense, productivity, expansion, and longevity.241

According to Moore, “the feminine is centrifugal (moves from the center outwards) proliferates, expands, multiplies, works in terms of continuous movement in linear, passing, or historical time (being concerned with the past and future). The feminine is group—or family—identified   ”242 According to Moore’s definition, my loyalty and service to collective values, to my family and family values, to religion and religious values, or any institutional system and its values, would be an expression of and an identification with and service to the feminine.

On the other hand, Moore defines the masculine as individuality in both men and women and says that it corresponds to the right brain hemisphere. According to Moore, the masculine “tends toward the abstract, the ideal, the inner meaning, the metaphysical, the immanent and the visualized perfection.”243 According to Moore the masculine “is centripetal (withdrawing towards a center), penetrating and with- drawing pulsation   being only concerned with the immediate, the moment now. It is individual self-concerned and self-sacrificial.244

According to this definition, any interest or desire in me that would go against collective values and beliefs, go against family, religious, or institutional values for my own individual voice and personal needs, would be masculine.

The feminine, as defined by Moore, serves the sexual-socio-economic-procreative-collective purpose of life and is centrifugal, moving from the center outward. The masculine serves the spiritual concern of personal destiny and self-realization—the advancement of what Moore calls the “real-self;” it is centripetal, withdrawing toward a center.245 Using Moore’s definitions, the interplay between the masculine and feminine can be understood as the interplay between my personal and individual needs of my “real-self” and the demands and expectations of family and collective values.

I dream

I am walking on a sandy beach although I am not aware of an ocean. I am walking with Hilda, a man, and a small boy. We come to a high sand wall. I know that we have to get into some place by climbing this wall of sand. I attempt it but slide back down. It seems we all attempt it. Hilda is giving the instructions.

Finally I get to the top and clear away sand, which reveals the tunnel area that we are trying to get to. I think that all I have to do is pull the wall down and we’ll be in. However, instead, the wall caves in and forms a path on which we can walk. There is a lady inside showing us the way. (Journal, 7-8-87)

At the time of this dream I was working on understanding the meanings of my attractions to same-sex anal sex, oral sex, and masturbation. According to Moore’s definition, this activity itself is a masculine endeavor. On one hand these behaviors and my attraction and interest in them went against the primary collective values of the 1970s and certainly went against the family and religious values in which I was raised (Moore’s feminine), on the other hand they served as an individual journey in search of their inner personal meaning (Moore’s masculine).

On the day prior to this dream I had spent time at the library researching Jung’s collected works on masturbation. As I was leaving the library and heading to my car, it dawned on me that I hadn’t looked up any references to the hand—the auxiliary organ in masturbation. So I went back to the library. However, when I went to the shelf where Jung’s works were stored, the shelf had been cleared.

As I was looking around in the nearby areas for the books, I “came upon” Anthony Stevens’s book Archetypes. I was happy about this because I needed it to footnote my reference to Stevens’s idea on initiation and homosexuality. As I browsed the book, I immediately came upon a quote that I had used in my writing at the time but whose source I hadn’t been able to locate. I felt this to be a synchronicity. Given the circumstances under which I rediscovered this book, I decided to reread Stevens’s book. As I did, I came across his definitions of the masculine and feminine. I noticed that in his definitions the movements of the masculine and feminine energies were the exact opposite of Moore’s definitions.

Stevens says the masculine is essentially centrifugal, outgoing, and extraverted. According to him, the masculine is energetic, dynamic, and assertive and its realms are heaven and spirit. In its phallic, penetrating aspect it arouses, produces, and creates. In its aggressive form it combats and destroys. It is positive and impulsive, but also disciplined and ascetic.246

On the other hand, Stevens says it is the feminine that is centripetal, in-turning, and introverted, concerned with the realms of earth, nature, the womb, home, and family—giving form to the energy of the masculine and bringing life out of darkness.247

The discrepancy between how these two scholars described the movement of the masculine and feminine energies caused me to call into question my use of Moore’s definitions in my own work on the masculine and feminine as it related to my own homosexual/heterosexual conflict. In fact, these opposing viewpoints felt like an obstacle to my moving forward, just as the dream had shown a large sand wall in the way of my journey. However, the dream also showed that in my climbing the wall, in my facing this seeming contradiction of the masculine and feminine expressions—and by extension the seeming contradiction between my homosexual and heterosexual selves—I not only discovered the destination for which I was searching, but the wall itself became the path on which I could walk.

In other words, that which seemed like an obstacle became a path forward. According to the dream, the feminine was showing me the way.

I considered this dream, the rediscovery of Anthony Stevens’s book, and the context under which it all occurred, to be a synchronicity and a significant one. It was none other than the voice of the Self where the inner and the outer worlds came together in a meaningful way to further clarify and direct my work on the masculine and feminine and their interplay in my heterosexual-homosexual dance.

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My dreams continued to indicate that my same-sex desires and attractions were not only about having sex with a man. Rather they were about what wanted to come into consciousness in me through the creative union of these energies in my soul that I projected onto and sought for in a man. I dream that I tell someone that the Atman is the true self. It is necessary for some men to project this aspect, the Atman, onto and search for him in another man. (Journal, 2-15-86)

Atman refers to the innermost essence of each individual, the supreme universal self. It is Sanskrit for breath and soul. According to Hindu philosophy, Atman refers to the non-material self that never changes, one’s real self or essence. This again is “the treasure hard to find” that the earlier dream suggested stood behind my homosexuality and same-sex attractions. But what was my real self or essence? How did it wish to manifest? Who was this Atman? A symbol points to something unknown and mysterious and is often the precursor to a transformation.232 Therefore the man that attracted me was a symbol that carried this projection. But what was the meaning? What was this essence that was projected onto this other man? What was it that wanted to come into consciousness?

As I meditated on this question, the word coyote suddenly came into my awareness. Why the word coyote? Coyote comes from coyolle and coyotl, which mean a “prairie wolf,” and is related to the wolf. I recall the active imagination I did with the boy in the dream that I released from the parsonage that a later dream identified as my homosexual self. In that dream the boy also took the image of a green snake and a wolf all in one. (See the introduction.) In that work the green snake-wolf-boy identified himself as instincts, drives, needs, my younger brother, my other self, my primitive self, the part of me that desires the masculine.

The animal is also the symbolic carrier of the Self, one’s true self and essence.233 As such the animal becomes a symbol for the Atman. Coyote is a trickster figure, appearing at times as the Creator himself. At other times he is the messenger, the culture hero, and the fool with the ability of the transformer. In some stories he is a handsome young man. In others he is an animal. Yet others present him as just a power, a sacred one.234 As a transformer, the coyote is a demiurge, a skilled workman and creator, a lunar animal, and the spirit of the night. As such he has a dual nature. On one hand he is a culture hero and imparts knowledge of arts and crafts and secures fire and sun. On the other he is a bullying, licentious, greedy, erotic, and fumbling dupe. The wolf is the companion of the coyote and his beloved brother. Could it be that the wolf in me sought his companion and brother, the coyote, in my same-sex attractions and desires? But what was this coyote-spirit that I sought?

The trickster is the first rudimentary stage in the development of the hero myth in which the hero is instinctual, uninhibited, and often childish. The fundamental goal of initiation lies in taming the original trickster-like wildness of the juvenile nature. There are three kinds of initiation. First, there is the arousal and violence of a Dionysian Thunder Act such as a violent uprising of the unconscious. This one might be experienced with a serious illness. A second initiation is a submission to a religion, and a third initiation involves not integrating oneself with any religious doctrine or secular group consciousness, but rather liberating oneself from any state that is too rigid, too fixed, or too final. This third way is marked by a transcendence of any confining existing patterns, and a segue to a more expanded and mature stage of development, resulting in a union of conscious with the unconscious and the realization of the transcendent function by which man achieves his fullest potential and the Self.235 It appears that the third way is the way of my initiation—to choose one’s destiny or purpose. The symbols of transcendence, of which the phallus is one, are the symbols that represent man’s striving to attain this goal. These provide the way for the unconscious to enter consciousness.

The symbols are manifold but at the most archaic levels of this symbolism is the trickster figure. But now he is no longer the lawless would-be hero, but the shaman, the medicine man, a primitive master of initiation.236 The coyote is the shamanic spirit whose magical practices and flight of initiation symbolized by his antics stamp him as a primate master of initiation. Here I also connect the swan maiden of my work on Swan Lake. A swan maiden is also known as the shaman’s spirit wife—intuition working through a medium—an individual who is capable of obtaining knowledge of distant events of either the future or the past. This confirms my initial hunch that the coyote was the shaman. He was my shamanic spirit, the shaman in me.

The trickster is not only sexual but also the messenger, a god of the crossroads, and finally, the leader of souls to and from the Underworld. His phallus therefore penetrates from the known into the unknown, seeking spiritual messages of deliverance and healing. The shaman’s spirit first entered my consciousness in the form of the coyote as I reflected on the meaning of the Atman—my true self and essence—that I project onto a man in my sexual desire for him. Could it be that my homosexuality on the spiritual level was my desire to seek this spirit in me, to penetrate the unknown, the unconscious, seeking messages of deliverance and healing? But how could I bring this unconscious Other into consciousness? How could I embody this other man rather than seek him in the body of another?

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In this chapter, I explore the unconscious, symbolic and spiritual meanings of three main sexual behaviors of gay and bisexual men: oral sex, anal sex and masturbation. The material in this chapter contains explicit and graphic sexual content. The dreams, fantasies and other reports are not meant in any way to be erotic or pornographic but are used within the context of a therapeutic frame only to demonstrate how our repressed and split-off parts manifest sexually in an attempt to become recognized and get into life. For example,

I dream that

I perform oral sex on a man who is an officer in the military. When I finish I turn to go. The man orders me to go out into the field and perform oral sex on all the soldiers. Because I had performed oral sex on him, I have been initiated into this group and am now under the command of this officer. This is a military unit and I am to perform oral sex on all the soldiers. (Journal, 1-3-85).

Later that night I dream that I am in the military. I am lined up with other soldiers on a field. We are doing drills in the nude. We are told to bend over. As I do, the man behind me performs anal intercourse on me. (Journal, 1-3-85)

Sex divested of its biological function serves the purposes of the soul.155 Anal intercourse, oral sex, and masturbation are central themes in same-sex dreams, fantasies, and behaviors. Operating on the idea that spiritual meaning is born when images and behaviors are recognized as carriers and therefore symbols of patterns of energy at work within the individual, we can begin to explore the symbolic meaning and spiritual intent or unconscious purpose of such desires, fantasies, and attractions. Symbolism reveals aspects of reality that escape other modes of expression.156

As pointed out earlier, most human thought and behavior is symbolic rather than literal.157 The symbol carries the unconscious projection,158 and it is the symbol that moves the energy from one realm to another.159 To understand the meanings of the symbols that carry this energy as it plays within the man who has same-sex attractions is to gain some insight into what it is that he actually seeks through these acts and fantasies. To give symbolic meaning is not intended to diminish the sexual aspect, nor is it to negate or deny the biological and environmental determiners of homosexuality and same-sex attraction. Rather, it is an attempt to bring meaning and understanding to these same-sex fantasies and behaviors, a meaning that might contribute to the actual realization and fulfillment of their unconscious purpose and spiritual intent. When the unconscious purpose of a behavior has been fulfilled, the energy moves to another level of development.160

In the dreams and fantasies of men, unconscious masculine energy may express itself in the image of a homosexual.161 As a phallic expression of the unconscious, he simultaneously represents the chthonic aspect of the masculine and ultimately the initiating spirit.162 In certain expressions of homosexuality it seems that some part of the man is under the influence of this chthonic aspect of the masculine. This part seeks a sexual relationship with a man onto whom this unconscious masculinity is projected. Thus, same-sex attraction can be understood as the longing for the concrete manifestation of that potential that is contained in the Soul and corresponds to the quest for the soul’s realization. In homosexual love, the partner often becomes the carrier of the soul image and through the power of the relationship may unconsciously assist his lover, as the initiating spirit, in bringing that potential to birth in himself.163

The anima as the feminine image and urge for life in a man’s soul initiates the development of the personality164 and brings about not only feminine elements but also a dominant masculinity.165 In the previous chapter I suggested that this soul image may initiate a same- sex relationship at times by falling in love with a man right through the ego in an attempt to establish a relationship between the man and this unconscious other living in his soul. The soul longs for the inner unity and wholeness of the personality and becomes the agent for this union.166As symbol, the same-sex partner becomes the carrier of the unconscious image that longs for consciousness.

I am operating on the assertions of quantum physics that everything is energy, both the physical plane of matter and the more abstract plane of the mind. I’m also operating on the idea that all behavior and thought are symbolic. Therefore, sexual fantasies and behaviors are symbolic expressions of energy at work in an individual but whose purposes are for the most part unconscious.

In discussing so-called perversions, the late noted Jungian psycho- analyst and homeopathic physician, Edward Whitmont. in his book Return of the Goddess says that same-sex oral and anal sexuality can be understood as meaningful patterns of energy as it plays at creation and development, expressing basic, unconscious, and unacknowledged urges for the purpose of balancing a one-sided position. As such, they are archetypal in that they express the call of a basic power that is essentially of a religious and numinous or spiritual character.167

The focal point of the energy in anal intercourse, fellatio, and masturbation is the penis. This yearning for contact with the male organ represents symbolically a deep need for connection with the soul, represented by the phallus, which I have shown elsewhere is a symbol for the Divine Masculine and the creative masculine spirit.168 The symbol and the libido or psychic energy associated with it are unknown quantities, hard to recognize, never quite definable,169 something little known or completely unknown.170 Psychic energy is the common denominator of all symbols. Their common meaning lies in the fact that they are all analogies of the same thing.171

For example, phallic symbols are supposed to stand for the penis and nothing more. However, psychologically speaking, the penis is indeed itself but also a symbol of something more, the meaning of which is not necessarily easy to determine. Primitive people, like the ancients, would never confuse the phallus as a ritualistic symbol with the penis. For the primitive, “the phallus always means the creative mana, the power of healing and fertility, the ‘extraordinarily potent,’ . . . whose equivalents in mythology and in dreams are the bull [italics mine], the ass, the pomegranate, the yoni, and the he-goat, the lightening, the horse’s hoof, the dance, the magical cohabitation in the furrow, and the menstrual fluid, to mention only a few of the thousand other analogies. That which underlies all the analogies, and sexuality itself, is the archetypal image whose character is hard to define, but whose nearest psychological equivalent in perhaps the primitive mana-symbol.”172

As detailed in chapter 1, the phallus is the source of life and libido, the creator and worker of miracles, the inseminator of the earth. It stands for the creative divinity working in darkness to create a living thing.173 No matter how clearly a phallus symbol appears as such, it does not denote the sexual organ. It is always a symbol for the libido. A symbol points to something real or to a structure in the world. The phallus, the erect penis, is the symbol of archetypal masculine and points to archetypal masculinity as an originating psychic force.

Given that sexuality is “a fundamental expression of psychic energy”174 and “in its symbolic dimension has a spiritual function,”175 same-sex anal intercourse can be understood as the sexual manifestation of the spiritual desire of an aspect of the individual to surrender to the masculine spirit of the soul, which contains his unconscious masculine image that longs for relatedness and connection but gets projected onto the other man. The desire inherent in anal intercourse is to surrender to the soul’s longing for some unconscious and unrealized aspect represented by the phallus. In my own experience of anal intercourse, whether in fantasy or acting it out with another man, I had the experience of complete abandonment of myself, a giving of myself over to this other man without reservation, saying “do with me as you want. I am yours.” I longed to be ravished by him, carried off and raped by him, impregnated by his spirit, and indoctrinated into his mysteries so that I could give birth to the other man in me—the man I imaged him to be.

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I dream that a lady, the mother of a student of mine, comes to the desk in the classroom where I am teaching Spanish and lays a book down on my desk. I glance at it and think the title is The Sheldon-Sam Story, a book about my same-sex relationship with this man, but I didn’t know one existed. Meanwhile I tell the student that he will fail these nine weeks because of missing so many classes. His mother says that they had planned for that.

I average out his grades for the first nine weeks; he gets an A. Since the grade for the last nine weeks will be an F, his average will be a C. I tell the student that whatever he gets on the semester test will average into that. I tell him that he can play around with different grades to see what he can make on the semester average. It is like he can see what his semester average will be by what grade he decides he wants to get on the semester test. His mother asks if he can come in the mornings to get help and make up the class. She suggests twenty minutes. I don’t think that is much time. I tell her that I am at school by twenty minutes to eight. The student doesn’t want to do that. They leave. As they leave, I say, “When one has a conflict of priorities one must follow the heart.”

After they leave, I look at the book she put down on the desk. It isn’t The Sheldon-Sam Story but The Swan Lake Story. This chapter, The Call of the Swan Maiden” is how its reference to the ballet, Swan Lake, provided insight into my same-sex attractions and became the beginning of the story and journey that became this book.

The Call of the Swan Maiden

Five years had passed since the dream where I turned to face the bull that had chased me up a tree to prevent me from returning to the town where I lived. Facing and beginning to integrate the bull energy, that powerful masculine energy from some ancient time that was also somehow connected to the lunar energies of the ancient goddess, had resulted in a slow evolution of consciousness and changes in my relationships in the outer world.

As stated, I ended my same-sex relationships, and my wife and I sold our home in order to free ourselves from the financial burden of the bookstore that we owned and operated. Working with this energy as it revealed itself in my dreams also initiated the journey out of the institutional church and the parsonage consciousness in which I had been raised. The dreams continued to directly and clearly address the importance of the past as to the origins of my life patterns, including my same-sex attractions. They even made a statement about the origin of my homosexuality. The dreams indicated a path forward into a new life, the life of this Other living in my soul.

I dream that

I go to the church in which I was raised to hear the minister preach. He is telling the congregation about his ancestry and heritage. He tells them that he came from the jungles of Africa and that his rejection of the highly emotional African heritage has made him the way he is. I know that he has discovered this because he has been reading a book on how people make unconscious judgments. He has discovered that generations of our heritage still live in and through us unconsciously. His sermon is a confession of that reality to the congregation, a kind of setting things right. I know it is the rejection of his African heritage that resulted in him believing in the theology he believes in. I wonder if I should stop him and pray for the breaking of these unconscious judgments. Instead, I leave without speaking to him. I have come to hear this final sermon before he moves, a kind of farewell. (Journal, 5-16-83)

This dream referenced the ancestry of the minister as being from Africa. One of theories on the origin of the human race states that all humans came out of Africa.112 Did this dream reference such an origin in general or did it simply refer to the origin of this particular man or my own ancestral origin? I do not know the ancestral history of the minister in this dream. But the dream stated that it was the rejection of his “highly emotional African heritage” that caused the minister to believe in a certain theology, in this case a Christian and biblical theology. Theology is the systematic study of the existence and nature of the Divine and its relationship to and influence upon other beings. Was this dream suggesting that this masculine minister part of me believed what he did because he was cut off from the emotional truth of his pre-Christian, more earth- and nature-based African history? This dream also continued the theme of the previous dream wherein I told the minister’s wife that we make unconscious root judgments that affect our lives. The minister in this dream was my former pastor. He represented my traditional Christian training and theology and the evangelical minister in me, the “parson” from the parsonage in which I was raised. This dream showed that this part of me was beginning to alter its point of view about the roles that the unconscious and our past play in our development and beliefs—not just our personal past but the ancestral past as well.

This dream also hinted at the split, the departure so to speak, from our pre-Christian and earth-related connections symbolized by the reference to the “African jungle.” This theme of the influence of our ancestors on our lives was reflected in another dream.

I tell my dad that the beliefs and fantasies that our grand- parents and great-grandparents lived throughout their lives in their work, their religion, and daily living are important in discovering why a person is the way he or she is, why a person has a particular problem, a particular disease, or a particular lifestyle. I tell him there will be a new psychology called “biological archetypal psychology.” (Journal, 7-9-83)

Twenty years later with my journey into shamanism and energy medicine I would discover the truth of this dream—that the stories of our ancestors continue to vibrate in our energy bodies, influencing our lives unconsciously.

Bobby McFerrin, a genius of improvisation and a genre-bending vocal magician who “sings the territory between music, mystery, and spirit” tells the story of a woman who came backstage after one of his shows to tell him that she had just spent a year studying African languages that were extinct or near extinct and she wanted to know how he knew these languages. Bobby told her that he didn’t know what she was talking about, that he just opened his mouth and sang whatever came out, because to him that was a language. The woman told Bobby that she’d heard moments of precise phrasing of extinct African languages in his vocalizations.

Bobby said that incident caused him to start thinking that we are embodied memories of our ancestors. He had his father in him. He in turn was a memory of his father and so on and so on. Bobby wondered if he was accessing some ancestral memory when he sang and, if so, how far back did it go? Maybe a very long way indeed.113

This reflection by Bobby McFerrin agrees with what the Inca shamans teach. We each carry all of our past including our ancestral past in our luminous energy field. Do these memories emerge in our dreams? Do they influence our desires, our interests, and our longings? Shamanism asserts that we can access this information through “imaginal sight.” Imaginal sight will be explored in Chapter 16.

Sometimes when I am doing energy work, I notice a strong urge to vocalize sounds or utterances—what some churches might call “speaking in tongues.” Somewhere deep inside me, out of some space come these utterances, which I then speak. Clients have told me that they have found this “language”—these utterances—very powerful, comforting, and healing. Perhaps they are the memory of an ancient medicine man or woman or healer or perhaps they are the language of the energy itself, the energy in vocal form, which is accessed and expressed.

This awareness and understanding came years after I’d had the dream I mention above. At the time the dream simply caused me to reflect on the stories of my ancestors and to begin to see how the archetypal patterns of my ancestors had influenced my own life’s path. Both my maternal grandparents and great-grandparents were farmers, thus closely associated with the earth, nature, and the rhythms of planting and harvesting and symbolically with Mother Earth and the feminine—the Great Goddess of the ancient world. My maternal grand- father left the farm and went the way of higher education, becoming a teacher and school principal, symbolizing the rise of the masculine and the mind or spirit over earth and matter. As previously mentioned, in his thirties my maternal grandfather experienced a spontaneous healing and born-again experience. The story goes that while he was recovering from an illness at the family farm God instantly healed him from the illness and “saved him.”

After this healing and born-again experience, he began attending church and eventually was called to preach. He became a minister and rose through the ranks to become the district superintendent of the Northeast Indiana Conference. Symbolically this was the rise of the masculine in both his professional pursuits, the masculine as it found its expression in the archetypes of the teacher and the minister-savior. His son followed in the path of the farmer while his daughter, my mother, married a minister and carried on the path of the minister-savior archetype. This minister-savior archetype became dominant, cut off from the archetype of the farmer and its connection to the earth and nature. Financial power came through the maternal great-grand-other’s family who were wealthy farmers.

My maternal grandmother’s family also farmed. It is interesting to me that my grandmother also left the farm to become a teacher. She married my grandfather who had also left the farm to become an educator and eventually a minister. This mirrors the story that my mother lived out in her life, marrying a minister. While my mother says she always wanted to be a teacher or a librarian, she did not pursue either of those paths, but lived her life out as a minister’s wife. The story of the teacher was passed on to me and one of my brothers while my other two brothers followed the path of the minister-savior archetype. I don’t know much about my father’s ancestors. My father’s parents died before my father turned twenty-five and before I was born. I only know that my paternal grandfather was a factory worker and my paternal grandmother a housewife. My father was one of nine siblings. He accepted Christ as his savior at an early age and felt “called to preach” at age sixteen. He became the minister in the parsonage in which I was raised. Given the archetypal stories of these two family lines, full of teachers, ministers, and before that, farmers and earth keepers, it’s no wonder that I would fall under their spell.

The challenge is to become conscious of the archetypal patterns in one’s life and to build an awakened relationship with them so as to not live them out unconsciously as fate. The dream’s reference to a “biological-archetypal psychology” suggested the influences of both biology—the influence of inherited family patterns—and the influence of archetypes—transcendent and universal patterns swimming in the collective unconscious—on a person’s life’s path. This is none other than Jung’s concept of the two-million-year-old man that lives in every one of us, connecting us to the archetypal foundations of all human experiences, back to the hominid, mammalian, and reptilian ancestors who live on in the structures of our minds and brains.114 Not only do we harbor within us this two million-year-old man, we also harbor the universe itself, and beyond that, the divine, which connects us to the “primordial other,” the “indigenous one” of the psyche and its wisdom. This two-million-year-old man “supports our finite existence and animates our dreams.”115

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“Trust that which gives you meaning and accept it as your guide.” —Carl Jung

Dreams are nature’s way of attempting to bring to consciousness the unconscious material that is often at the root of our emotional, psychological, mental, physical, and spiritual conflicts. They are also nature’s way of revealing to us the parts of ourselves that have never been realized—potential ways of being that we may need to acknowledge, listen to, and integrate into our lives if we are to grow toward wholeness and healing and become the persons we were born to be. Dreams help us get in touch with these unknown and unacknowledged parts. The dreams hold up a mirror to show us what is going on at the deeper, unconscious level. It is as if the dreams show us the inside story. Therefore, to be in contact with the dreams is to have the hope of altering one’s conscious standpoint in the light of a larger reality and more complete point of view. In my case, my journey was none other than my individuation and my struggle for an authentic expression of the Self.

Over the next several years, my dreams commented on every area of my life—my relationships, my sexuality, my profession, my spiritual life, my marriage, my health, and even my past and my future. By paying attention to my dreams I had to face and come to terms with parts of me that I had repressed, parts of me that I didn’t like, parts I didn’t want to be and couldn’t accept, pain that I didn’t want to face, as well as parts of me that had never been conscious, parts of me that longed for life, longed to be loved, lived, and expressed. As mentioned earlier, I discovered that deep within me lived an unknown land—a land with its own characters, its own laws, and its own functions. In this land there was a story being written and played out, the goals and purposes of which were independent of external factors or my conscious ego desires. Each night I was allowed to see a page in the story. And slowly I began to live that story.

Four days after my initial meeting with Jungian analyst Dean Frantz, I dream

I am in an older department store. There is a new manager who has rearranged the layout of the store and added some new departments. I work at this store and am upset and irritated with this new manager because he has changed the area where I work and the special place where I hang my hairbrush. He has moved it. I question the new manager about this act and where my hairbrush is. I feel like he has no right to move my working area and my personal hairbrush without at least telling me. I have worked in this store for a long time. He shows no concern for my feelings and is unimpressed with my tenure and seniority. He points to a pile of hairbrushes lying on a shelf under a table. I begin to look for my hairbrush. I pick up a couple, but I don’t find mine. These hairbrushes have hair bristles. Mine has vinyl or plastic teeth. I am now at my working station and think that I’ll just hang my hairbrush up in its new place. Something inside me seems to indicate I get a new one.

Now I see a sign that is hanging from the ceiling near my station that says “counseling.” The new manager has added new departments in order to compete with other stores and remain in business. He has added personal service departments, one of which is counseling. People are coming out of the counseling area saying how beautifully it is decorated.

I decide to go in and see the area. There is a small waiting area. I push open a partially opened door and look inside. It is a restroom with a shower in it and part of an older building with tall ceilings. The walls are plastered. The room is painted a deep royal blue. The shower is running. I notice that where the water hits the wall, the dark blue is washing away and white or at least a lighter blue is showing through. I wonder why the shower is running with no one in it and that they must have turned the water on before the paint got completely dry or else the continuing hitting of the water is wearing the blue paint off. (Journal, 2-27-81)

This dream indicated that my psychic structure was being rear- ranged; not only rearranged but new departments were being added in order for me to stay in business, that is, in order for me to remain alive and viable, to have some usefulness and purpose. A new manager had changed the area where I worked and had gotten rid of my hairbrush. A hairbrush has to do with maintaining my hair and, by extension, my appearance or image. My hair and how it looks has always been important to me. I remember one time my father took me to get my hair cut and had the barber give me what was then called a “pineapple” hair cut—very short except right at the front, which was left longer, like the leaves of a pineapple. I was six or seven years old at the time, and I remember being excited about my new cut. But when I returned home, my mother was very upset and even cried because I had gotten my hair cut so short. I felt so bad that I ran and hid behind the sofa.

This early reaction reveals how sensitive my emerging masculine energy was to the power of the emotions of the feminine and how important my hair and its appearance would become to me and even to my sense of Self. Thus, like the witch dream where the hair was being forcibly cut, another dream showing that someone messing with the way I maintained my hair was significant; it focused on something very important to me. Besides my personal associations to hair, throughout time and across cultures, hair and hairstyling carried heavy cultural meaning for men. In many cultures the grooming of hair was a rite of passage, sometimes tied to religious rituals and could confer power or status. As I have noted earlier, hair symbolizes the life-force. Hair on the head is linked with individual spirit or the life-force of a person80 and the power of thought, virility, higher powers and inspiration,81 spiritualized energy, and the spiritual assets of a person.82 Hair then is a symbol of my life-force and spiritual energy.

This new manager had tossed my way of managing my thinking and spiritual self into a box with all the other employees without even consulting me. An experience of the Self, the center and unifying principle of the psyche and source of life that contains our wholeness, is a defeat for the ego because it requires the ego to expand it one-sided point of view.83 And although one might argue or question my calling this “new manager” the Self, it’s apparent from Jungian psychology that behind all psychological phenomena, including dreams, is a larger entity that guides the journey. This entity is called the Self84 or, as I have discussed elsewhere, the Soul.

In the rearranging of my psychic structure, a “counseling section” had been added. When I enter into this counseling section, I found a shower with the water running. Water is a symbol of the unconscious, the source of all potential existence, and is associated with the Great Mother and the feminine principle,85 an emblem of fluidity, dissolution, birth, and regeneration.86 This dream is an invitation to step into the shower and subject myself to the unconscious. Immersion in water symbolizes the death of the old and the rebirth into the new as the rite of baptism represents. Water dreams suggest the emergence of the alchemical stage of the solutio. For the alchemist, the solutio was a stage in the process of returning the differentiated matter to its original undifferentiated state—like a return to the womb for rebirth.87 This is what takes place in the psychotherapy process. The fixed aspects of the personality do not allow for change. They are established and sure of their rightness. For change or transformation to occur, these fixed aspects must first be dissolved. This is done by the analytic process, which examines the products of the unconscious and puts the established ego attitudes in question.88

This theme of water and the invitation to enter psychoanalysis, my journey through the unconscious, continued in another dream I had about two weeks later.

I am on a trip to Florida with a man, a woman, and a dog. We stop to eat. While eating I tell the man that because of recent rains, the roads are under water, inferring that we won’t be able to get to Florida. He says probably not the northern roads, which are the ones we are taking. He says the roads near the ocean usually get covered first. We see a map and realize the roads that we are taking are also covered with water. I suggest we stay a couple of days for the water to go down, but instead we contact a man who is a specialist at getting people through to Florida when the roads are covered with water.

We get ready to leave. We carry out three folding tables, but the car is not there. We store the tables in the church foyer. Finally, we are ready to leave. I go in to get the lady, but she is sleeping and isn’t ready yet.

The special driver arrives. He says that he is not the greatest guide, but that he has helped many people get through the water-covered roads. He invites us to get into his vehicle. (Journal, 3-15-81)

The dream showed that I was traveling to another state, suggesting another state of consciousness. My personal associations of Florida are sunshine, oranges, health, restoration, and the fountain of youth. Florida means “flowering Easter” and was named by Ponce de Leon for Spain’s Easter Celebration of Flowers.89 The word Florida is from the Spanish word florida, which means “florid, flowery, and full of flowers.” Flowers symbolize beauty, spring, youth, and gentleness, but also innocence, peace, spiritual perfection, the brevity of life, and the joy of paradise.90 Because of a flower’s shape, the flower is the image of the center and thus an archetypal image of the soul.91 Florida’s connection to Easter reinforces the idea of resurrection and new life, connecting it to the resurrection of Christ. Christ, according to Jung, is an apt symbol of the Self.92

The dream was clear. I was on a journey to another state of consciousness, but it also showed that I was somewhat hesitant or resistant to this process. I pointed out that the roads were covered with water and that we needed to wait until it went down. This would suggest that I wanted to wait for a more “favorable time” until the current crisis or unconscious pressure passed.

But the dream didn’t much care and offered a specialist that could get us through the water to Florida. When we were finally ready to go and carry the tables out, the car was not there, that is, the way, the means, wasn’t there.

Cars often represent ego-consciousness since it is the ego that moves us through life. The fact that the car wasn’t there appeared to be another obstacle to the dream’s goal—to get to Florida. The car not being there suggested that I was not yet ready to take this journey, which mirrored the ego’s continuing ambivalence and conflict about it. This resistance was also indicated by the “sleeping lady.” But she pointed out why she was sleeping. From my journal:

Sheldon: Why aren’t you ready to go, sleeping lady? Sleeping lady: I’m tired. I’ve been doing all the work.

Besides, the specialist hasn’t arrived yet.

Sheldon: I think you’re lazy. I don’t think you want me to get to Florida.

Sleeping lady: I’m not lazy. I’m waiting for the specialist.

He hasn’t come yet, has he?

Sheldon: No.

Sleeping lady: When are you going to contact him? I have brought you this far. Now you must make a conscious choice to continue. But you need a specialist to help you on to Florida, the state of renewal and wholeness.

Sheldon: I’ve already contacted the specialist.

Sleeping lady: Yes, in the dream, but when are you going to contact him in outer life?

Sheldon: I will do it soon.

Sleeping lady: When?

Sheldon: In the next couple of days. Sleeping lady: Okay.

Specialist: Hello. I’m here. Get in. This vehicle is a special kind for getting through the water. (Journal, 3-15-81)

The dream also showed me carrying three rectangular tables that I was to take with me. Geometric shapes are universal symbols that often appear in dreams; as such they may provide another layer of meaning. Throughout history, numbers and shapes have been ascribed long and often detailed, complicated meanings. Simply put, the number 3 indicates creative power and growth, moving toward overcoming duality, and connects with the triangle that symbolizes aspiration toward a higher unity.93 The rectangular shape indicates the number 4, referring to its four sides. The number 4 produces the first solid figure and is symbolic of a certain wholeness, totality, and completion.94 Combining the number 3 with the number 4 we have the number 7. The number 7 has a long symbolic history, but basically 7 is a symbol of completeness and the totality of the created universe (3 the sky + 4 the earth). It is the first number which contains both the spiritual and the temporal95 and expresses the creation within that man evolves.

Carrying around these three tables indicated that I was carrying around energy that was moving toward a new wholeness. Momentarily, while waiting for the car, I put the tables in the foyer of the church. This suggested that I was still contained somewhat in the mother church and the life of the parsonage. From my journal:

Sheldon: Tables, why do I store you in the church? Tables: Because you are still contained in the church.

But notice you stored us in the foyer, close to the door, close to the outer extremity of the collective church opinion. But you know you only stored them until the vehicle comes. You are not quite ready for this journey . . . (Journal, 3-15-81)

Tables also symbolize connection and communication. We sit around tables to eat and talk with family and friends. We sit around tables in meetings to discuss ideas. The presence of tables suggested that this journey would include communication—communication with the unconscious—but also communication between me and the specialist. This dream further indicated movement and confirmation of my journey into analysis. The specialist is the analyst. The vehicle is the analysis. One final observation is that when I first left to load the tables, the car, the energy for transformation, was not there. We needed a special vehicle. This suggested that I couldn’t make this journey in my usual way of travel, in my usual ego-consciousness or manner of doing things. It would require a new point of view.

This journey to Florida continued as evidenced in another dream, a dream which added meaning to the journey and began to provide more insights into my same-sex desires and attractions.

I am watching a movie on TV with my father and mother. In the movie there is a train with an erect penis in each car. There are three cars. They are large penises, probably eight or nine inches, not abnormally large, but larger than average. The train is going on a track on a mountain.

The movie takes place in Florida. At the end of the movie, I see a house. I come out of the house and see eggs all around the house in the shrubs and flower beds.

My father is upset about the movie. But I say every church should see this movie. The penis is a symbol for the Self, the God-stamped image within each person. Florida is the same meaning and the eggs are the symbol of new life and of the tomb, that when broken, new life comes out of, like Christ coming out of the tomb. I tell him that when one meets Christ, that is just the beginning of finding God. We have been wrong in teaching that when we accept Christ, we have found God, or wholeness. The Bible says that Christ is the doorway to God. So when we come to Christ and accept Him, we have put ourselves in the position to find God and thus Wholeness. That is a lifetime process. My father thinks this explanation is tremendous.

This dream suggests a re-orientation of my father complex and my relationship to the inner father and masculine energy in me. To read the rest of this chapter on how the Self often shows up in our dreams as a guiding factor in our development and how it spoke to my same-sex attractions, I invite you to upgrade to the paid version. If you have questions or comments, please place them in comments or engage me in the chat.

Get the paid version free by purchasing my book at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-other-man-in-me

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The content of this book is for information purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any condition or disease. You understand that this book is not intended as a substitute for consultation with a licensed professional. Please consult with your own physician, mental health specialist, or spiritual advisor for matters related to emotional health, mental health, or spiritual concerns. Reading my book implies your acceptance of this disclaimer.