Baba Yaga Dream: I come out of a building and start to go down a road. I soon realize that it is the wrong way to go, and choose another road. It is a dead end – ends with a brick wall. I apologize to the people I have to cut in front of to turn around, and begin going the other direction on the first road I was on, realizing that I am now going the right way. I am carrying a broom that causes a big stir with the people I pass. A small group of them start making fun of it (the broom), calling it a special name (I remember it to be “Baba Yaga” when I wake up). I carry the broom past the people on the side of the road. Once I am clear of them, I start riding it like a pogo stick. It is so fast and so fun to ride that I pass a lot of people up on the road. Eventually, I come to an open field and keep bouncing along joyfully.
I came across this dream just minutes before I began work on the “Self-Discovery” learning module for the course. I am writing about this, because I believe that finding the dream at that time was a special synchronicity. It still illuminates inner states of mind for me as they relate to my life’s mission in this second half of life. It warrants being included here as well, because working with dreams and synchronicities through reflective journaling has been a real joy for me and a process that I work with in my spiritual mentoring practice.
In the above dream, some of the symbols signify choices I have made – wrong turns that delayed my progress and other decisions that turned me around to move ahead quickly in discovering passion and freedom in my life. As the dream shows, I am a person that doesn’t always follow the norm. I feel more at home in my own skin when I am off the linear, main road of life and checking out its mysteries in a more circular, spacious way that is portrayed by the open field symbolism in the dream.
When I had the dream, I was not familiar with the specific characteristics of the Baba Yaga archetype per se, but found this excerpt on the Internet describing her in part: Baba Yaga is the Arch-Crone, the Goddess of Wisdom and Death, the Bone Mother. Wild and untamable, she is a nature spirit bringing wisdom and death of ego, and through death, rebirth (“About Baba Yaga” at www.oldrussia.net/baba.html). I see a connection with this symbol and my own path of transformation of late. I was 60-years old when I had the dream. Now, at 64 and having retired from a long-standing corporate marketing job, I feel I am finally entering the Crone stage of archetypal feminine development that the dream presaged. The soul work I am engaging in in this second half of my life is shifting from the more culturally masculine focus, engendered by a career in business, to re-birthing the Feminine in ways that include focusing on unity, communication, creative writing, storytelling, and opening.
Dreams, synchronicities, stories, myths, and visions are the energy sources that charge my psyche and point me intuitively in the direction my inner life is beckoning. When I work with the symbols of my dreams and synchronicities, I feel in synch with the larger picture of my life. Finding ways to apply the lessons from my meditations, dreams and visions to my daily life is the grounding mechanism I use to stay focused. Writing about my experiences is the best way I know to share them with others. However, learning to apply my inner knowing to my everyday life has been an ongoing process for me. I have never found the work easy, and consider myself a late bloomer in the Life Mission department. I have certainly experienced my share of hitting walls at the end of dead-end roads along the way. But, by taking up the proverbial “pen,” or broom, again, I am finding a way to share my insights with others (creative writing is a gift that I exhibited in early in childhood and gave up in adulthood for the more formulaic writing called for in marketing and sales). I also intuitively know that I am on the right road that is leading me to greater passion and freedom in my life as experienced in the exhilaration of bouncing in the open field.
Another synchronicity worth noting here happened during those first weeks of working on my spiritual mentoring courses. I took a break from a Finding Your Mission in Life writing assignment and went to the local library in St. Petersburg, Florida where I then lived to get a few books for a research project I was working on. A laminated peace of paper fell out of the first book I picked up. It was a bookmark from Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I am well acquainted with Fountain Street, as a non-denominational, metaphysical church in the Grand Rapids Area where I lived for part of my life and the city where I have strong ancestral ties! On the bookmark, these words were printed: “We strive to be a vibrant church community that challenges individuals to craft their own spiritual journeys and engage in creative and responsible action in the world.” I humbly thanked the universe for giving me those special words (italics are mine). I couldn’t have expressed my life’s mission as a writer and spiritual mentor any better for myself.
Link to Jenna's blog: http://nina4667-funwithdreams.blogspot.com/2011/04/finding-my-mission-in-life.html
