Steps toward forgiveness

Dreams are usually the mind's way of deeply processing the events and feelings of the day or two before the dream. So let me tell you about what I was thinking about yesterday, train-of-thought syle, before sharing the proceeding dream:

Of course, I was still thinking about how to process the breakup that happened awhile back.  I have a strong intuition that I'm ALMOST done with this, but have no idea what to do to actually BE done with this.

I was also noticing that my comments and such on the dating site I've joined tend to be a bit cautious, concerned that I will offend people.

This brought to mind my tendency to absorb the energies and styles of the people around me, and this is something about myself that I find a bit discouraging. I wish I could be more oblivious sometimes, just be myself, and not give a flying leap about what others do or think, and not take on their baggage unintentionally.  I attribute this "absorbent" feature to my Pisces Moon in my natal chart.

This reminded me that the ex I am trying to process through had a 12th-house sun and Venus-- the 12th house is the Pisces-flavored house.

So then I got to thinking of all the things I didn't like about Pisces--deception, confusion, being wishy-washy, hiding, and so on.  (An exercise in self-loathing is never too good right before bed. I don't recommend it!)

So this reminded me to read my personalized horoscope at www.astro.com, and what do you know. Transiting Mars is opposing my Neptune... ruler of Pisces.  (Neptune squares my moon in my chart, so there's a double-whammy...)

Astro.com's interpretation of this transit said that this may be a time of temptation, or of someone trying to deceive me, whether intentionally or not.  (I thought of the several men who have contacted me on the dating site... which one of them is it??  ha ha ha)  It said that I may have to face the consequences of previous action at this time, which I would rather avoid.  Hmmm, interesting.

I did an online search for other possible interpretations of what a transiting Mars opposition Neptune might mean, and one site in particular jumped out at me. This long article went quite in-depth about this transit, and a lot of it was not applicable to me (I don't do holotrophic breathwork!) but there was one paragraph that kind of circled itself to me:

At the biographical level, Mars-Neptune transits can evoke in individuals a major evaluation of their ethical conduct in the world. People examine their overall strategies for pursuing and satisfying their desires and focus on specific incidents where they were not straight or aboveboard in their conduct. They may also recall episodes in their lives in which other people did not act in a straightforward way with them. By feeling the emotions on both sides and the consequences of their human mistakes, subjects can reach states of forgiveness. They realize that forgiveness is not something we can actively will into being. Like Divine Grace, it happens to us when we deeply feel the emotions on all sides.

(emphasis mine.)  I needed to read this!  Whether it actually has anything to do with Mars or not... I have my suspicions... but this paragraph was, nonetheless the point of my search.  Forgiveness. That's what I have been wanting to do with my ex, and I've felt like I couldn't, because I don't know enough, something's missing, I don't know how to process it.  This paragraph told me the missing piece.  I needed to try to feel the emotions on the other side.  (By the way, I really loved the point about forgiveness not being something we can intentionally conjure up. It has to happen naturally. So true.)

I have definitely done my share of trying to figure out, mentally, what happened on his side.  But to really let go, I need an emotional experience.  I couldn't really come up with anything, though... I couldn't fathom how someone could be so incredibly jerky... and it was getting late, so I went to bed.

I dreamed a long dream that I won't share the entirety of here. But the basic idea is that someone in my family died of heart failure.  Then I realized that if heart failure ran in my family, I was at risk for getting it too, and I got scared that I might die young as well.  That fear woke me up.
In that half-awake stage, I noticed an unfamiliar song running through my head. It sounded folksy or easy-pop-worship style:
Behold
the lamb of God
Who takes
away the sins
The sins
of the world
The song made me think about forgiveness. And how I needed to feel my ex's feelings in order to forgive.  Then --suddenly-- I felt like I was feeling what my ex felt.  (For sake of a truly immersive experience, I'll use first person, as if I were feeling FOR him)--
Underwater, I'm overwhelmed, not seeing straight, and there's so much darkness in my life. Above the water is SR, shining like a bright light. I don't want to drag her into my darkness and mess. I don't want to quench that light. I want to go to her, but I don't want to. I'm afraid she'll be drawn down here instead of me going up there. I want to protect her from this.
Shit happens. I'm swept away by the waters. Someone else is alluring...  I don't want SR to know. I don't want that light to go out. I need to know that it will always be there sparkling above me, but I don't want to tell her the full story. She needs to be protected. I don't want to hurt her. Damn, it's too late, I have to tell her.  I brace myself.
The angry email arrives. She doesn't ever want to speak with me again.
There's a warm, painful sensation in the center of my body. It's regret, and immense, enormous frustration at myself. I totally blew this. Hurting her was the LAST thing I wanted to do, and it's the very thing that happened. This heat inside me, at my very core... so painful. It's rising up from me, it comes up, it comes up... but it stops at my throat. It can't come out. I don't acknowledge these feelings.  I can't.  I stuff them down and feel only numbness. I try to think about the situation, what to do, and there's just a blank white space in my brain.

I (the real me now) snapped out of this reverie and pondered for awhile.  I'm surprised I didn't cry.  Maybe I was too tired to cry (this was happening at around 5:30 a.m.!) Maybe I was too surprised. I've never had something like this happen to me before, that I know of.  Was this experience accurate? I could never know. Maybe it's wishful thinking. Maybe it's the power of suggestion, since I'd been thinking about the concept of trying to feel his side of the story, only minutes before falling asleep.  However, it IS one POSSIBLE explanation of the story, and since there's no way to verify whether it's true or not... and since I do need to be able to forgive in order to move on... maybe this is what my mind is giving me to help me do just that.  Should I take this and go with it? Is it nonsense? Is it helpful?  Well, let's cautiously go with it.

My first thought was... It's so touching that he felt the need to protect me.  I think it's totally unnecessary. He underestimates my strength I guess.  I felt like I could have helped him!  But still, that's romantic and sweet.

Seeing me as a bright light is flattering. Really?  Oh, I wish this part were true.  I'm so hard on myself, and sometimes I wonder if I'm ever of any good to anyone.
Wouldn't it be nice to know that someone whom I considered to be pretty darn amazing actually looked up to me???  Even if it didn't work out between us, even if things weren't right for an actual romance, that's a flattering thought.

And so sad that he's so overwhelmed, and on top of everything else he has to deal with, he is trying to avoid feeling regret and irritation at himself for what happened with me-- as if he needed any more painful feelings in his life!  I feel so bad about that heat in his body, unable to find expression.  Maybe he will find a way to express it, write a song or something.  I hope so. I hope he finds relief and healing.

How sad that nobody even wins. It's not like he got ahead in life at my expense.  If so, I could, at very least, console myself with the thought that I helped him somehow.  No.  We both lost something.

I can't say I'm at a point of true forgiveness yet, but this experience was interesting. I probably need a little more processing...

Well, to put a bow on things here-- after I fell asleep again, the next dream I had was strongly Piscean in nature, and it reminded me that Pisces can be awesome! It reminded me not to be hard on myself and other Pisces-flavored people because the bright side of Pisces is pretty kick-butt!  I'd share that dream, but this blog post is already long enough!