Dreams are self-luminous: they shine of themselves as gods do. Myths are public dreams. Dreams are private myths. By finding your own dream and following it through, it will lead you to the myth world in which you live. ~ Joseph Campbell in Sukhavati: Place of Bliss
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| Krishna in all his blue glory |
One of the first times I consciously acted on an invitation to make art from my dreams, I was having re-occuring dreams of blue babies. They would come in all shapes and sizes, sometimes talking, sometimes flying, sometimes crawling, but always in the same shade of blue.
Soon, I was seeing this blue color everywhere I went, and the synchronicities became overwhelming. I would see this brilliant blue in mundane places like cars and clothing, and I would see it in more "higher " and "cosmic" places like beautiful illustrations of the Hindu God Krishna, the Medicine Buddha, and Lakota Land Spirits.
Finally, I decided to actually manifest my own blue babies in waking life, and to stay open to new information that I could learn from the dream and my divine inner self. I started by drawing them. This felt good, but I knew there was a lot more I wanted to do. I didn't want to just illustrate my dream, I wanted to communicate with it - to have a dialog with these blue babies.
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| Blue Medicine Buddha |
I realized I wanted to make an actual 3D baby. This meant moving into the world of sculpture, which I had never been to before. I decided to start with something easy, so I went to the Goodwill Thrift store and started searching in the toy section for baby dolls. As I was digging in the giant pile of dolls and doll parts, a little girl walked up and asked me what I was doing. I told her my plan and she understood immediately. Soon I had three kids helping me look for baby dolls in the giant pile of toys in the corner. They totally got that I had to make something and I needed a doll to do it. It was so beautiful to have these kids understand my confusing creative path so quickly and immediately...no long explanation needed!
Finally I found about three dolls that seemed like they might work. I bid goodbye to my tiny helpers and bought some blue spray paint that closely matched the blue of my dreams and sprayed all three dolls. I propped them up, next to my bed, to see and feel what the next step may be.
Through my dreams, I discovered that the next step was to bring them to my Shamanism & Dreams class at John F. Kennedy University. This scared me to death...what would people think? These blue babies are kind of creepy, aren't they? But I had made a commitment a long time ago to honor my dream life and if I felt I was being asked to do something, I should do it!
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| First Dream Blue Baby made real. |
As soon as I pulled them out of my bag, I started hearing stories from many people in my class about their own dreams of blue babies and blue deities. It was truly amazing! I again understood that dreams are a direct tap into the universal consciousness that Carl Jung and many others speak of. We all share universal archetypes, once we delve down into the unconscious.
As no dream has one meaning, so my blue babies have many different meanings for everyone who interacts with them, including myself. A couple of women in my class where very disturbed by the babies, because they themselves had been born "blue" (not getting enough oxygen in the womb). I wondered if the same was true for me and I called my mother. She told me that in fact, my umbilical cord had wrapped around my neck in the womb and I was a bit bluish when I was born. This experience is just one example of the way working with Spirit through dreams and art has healed and transformed my life, giving me insight about unconscious memories and experiences.
I find, when we honor these synchronicities, by working with our dreams and the symbols connected to the dreams that appear in our waking life, it is a divine path to health and wholeness.
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