I am in a deep connection with a man in my dream, I once in real life really loved, the kind of love that you know has come through many timelines and lives and you recognize that. I choose to leave out labels because I did that to it once, I know we like to do that and put it in the right box, put it all into a tight little label. . We were never in a ‘relationship’ , but what I describe as a deep magnetic connection that sent us both on a journey that I could write one hell of a book on. My heart ached around him, I felt safety but also extreme danger and we really knew one another on the inside, often without communicating it. I felt his brokenness, his vulnerability under his muscles, and his hard exterior and I wanted to fix him.
Keeping away from one another was difficult, we were pulled back by an unknown force and spent time in each other’s company as if we were half of each other. My day's thoughts were stolen by thoughts of him and I never really settled in myself unless he was there. I would sigh in his presence as it gave me deep comfort. It was unsettling for a woman like me, ambitious, adventurous, and absolutely wanting to be single and experience life away from a long relationship I had been in, this was not what I wanted to be embroiled in, yet another part of me drank up the connection.
The connection brought up so many things for us, it brought all our shadows out, it brought everything to the surface to be on full show. It became increasingly difficult to be in each other’s company ( he was in a relationship and I had started dating) it consumed us, it became an addiction I suppose to hide from the rest of the world, our lives, and our own self in each other’s company. We were in turmoil with it , yet when we were together, It was like a place where we felt complete. We both knew we had much to heal and much to venture into on this wild spiritual path and that our connection would not be anything more, though an inner unknown longing pulled us .
Parting was excruciatingly painful, I felt as though half of me was gone and I ached and longed for his company. I felt like I had a hole in me, that I carried around, a hole that could never be filled. I was confused, so confused, this was not a romantic relationship, but the love was deep and unbound.
I found it incredibly difficult to admit as a strong independent woman that part of me was grieving and felt like it would forever. I couldn’t rationalize what this was, unwilling to label it even though a million authorities wanted to label it twin flame/soul mate blah blah as a way to bypass the actual feelings and emotions and pointers into my own soul that it was trying to show me. I just had to feel this heartache, this storyless story, and learn from it. It took me deeper into me than I had ever gone and onto a journey of discovery that I could never have imagined, and it was without him, though it was about him.
In my dream last night he came to be with me (he is so often in my dreams) and this time we wouldn’t be parted, he was moving in. We built a place together, we, but what we had together and decided to be together. He held my hand and I sat my head on his shoulder and my heart sighed right into itself I felt my whole soul awaken. I felt at home. I felt complete, nothing mattered at all, just that we had come together forever.
I cried, longed to go back into the dream, into that space in me where the love, the contentment, the feeling of great happiness was. I took my dream journal out and knew … that this dream was my animus, he is my animus. Tears roll down my face as I write this to connect to him in deeper space, to bring him home, love him … because I have so rejected him in me. When I knew how he had controlled me, I felt rejection was the only way to deal with him ( well it is my core wound!)
I am an animus-driven woman. My masculine principle is so strong, It has been a driving force all my life as a way of making me feel, worthy, good, powerful but most of all safe.
My animus bites and flares up when I don’t feel safe, he pulls out his sword of truth his, the shield of defense and he tears down those that may hurt me. He is my protector, my guardian, my Celt masculine ancestors all in one line ready to defend the line.
Over a year of him coming to my dreams letting me know he was there, that he needed attention, that he wanted to recognize. Working with my shadow that fought by his side of him, I began to reject him. I rejected the masculine force because I so longed to resurrect the feminine in me, the feminine I had rejected for so many years because she didn’t feel safe to enter a world where she could be harmed, to delicate, too sensitive, too vulnerable, too magical and powerful of a woman … she would be slayed by the opposition. The animus kept her safe, behind his wall of words, his ambitions, and drive, the very fire in his belly.
The man in my life who I mourned was a reflection of my animus, I was projecting the animus outside of myself onto him. He was trying to show me my animus and all the ways he needed to be conscious so I could work with him and no longer be in his possession. Our separation was symbolic of the beginning of my consciousness that animus lived within me. It is so hilarious to recall how he would call me ‘Colin’ and now I totally get why.
I began to notice this masculine principle in me and how it had taken over my whole life, how it powered me through life and how my feminine principle was not being protected at all, she was being imprisoned.
“A woman possessed by the animus is always in danger of losing her femininity” Jung
My journey began to free my femininity.
After many years of work in feminine healing, Sacred teachings, retreats, and training, my feminine left the patriarchal energy of ambition, career, and will to overpower and I entered a void and walked into the psychological, somatic, and therapeutic work and eventually the Jungian work.
The animus came to me again to be worked with and over the last year and a half I have been doing exactly that. My dream last night came after I have been exposed to working with my Father's wound and realizing that the man I separated paths withheld many of the wounds my own father held and indeed I held from my own childhood. Jung in his psychological works deduced that a woman’s animus is colored by her personal father and she tends to relate to men just like him or the complete opposite. He in my dream was my animus .. after a day of heartache and pain of feeling the wound of childhood, my father wound, and the pains my own lineage hold: he came to me. This morning I embraced this wounded animus in me and held him in my heart, I gave thanks to the man who broke it as a way to show me my wounded animus and how he has led my life. I feel like this dream has connected a long line of dots that remained unconnected and here I am. Here I am holding the animus in love within me, healing him, loving him, and working with him. He no longer has to possess me.
I have been feeling a deep change coming, for my work and how I deliver it, in how I create from this sensitive, shy, soft, magical feminine principle that waiting to run free from the shackles of the animus, now he is no longer holding space as the brave protector, the one who will save her if she gets hurt. Instead, he has her hand and her heart and he knows that it is her in fact that has the strength to carry him through this second part of his life.
I thank my dreams, I love my animus and will hold him tenderly as he supports the navigation of my feminine principle. I will work towards healing these parts of me , work steadily towards individuation to the heiros gamos - the Divine Marriage within. I will get there in one lifetime soon, I promise myself that. I am deeply grateful to the Jungian work I do and the mentors that have allowed me to see the potency of my animus should he be recognized and the graceful feminine work I live, breathe, and teach as a way of resurrecting the divine feminine principle on this planet.
If you want to work with your animus and anima, then I will be holding a workshop at https://www.templedelarose.com/animus and I also have the availability for one to one work in the next month.
