Today we have a guest blogger, Susanne van Doorn, Ph.D., a Dutch psychologist and blogger on Mindfunda.

 

“Women’s dreams mirror the tides that move the fluids of their bodies. Just as the waters of the earth swell and recede, so our dreams change over time” Patricia Garfield, Women’s Bodies, Women’s Dreams

 

When Patti asked me to write a blog post to contribute to her Heart-Centered Dreamwork I was thrilled. Patti and I share the same dream of creating a platform to share knowledge about dreams, spirituality, and mythology.

Looking back at my life, I see three crossroads I have passed through. I matured from childhood into womanhood, I choose my partner for life and entered a life stage of companionship and motherhood. And now at this point in my life I say farewell to my fertility and welcome the Crone stage. (In the ancient societies there where three stages of womanhood: the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone, all manifestations of the triple Goddess.)

 

Crossroad From Childhood Into Womanhood

My earliest memory of a dream is a nightmarish dream I had about an airplane being stuck in my closet. I was scared about the noise it made and how trapped it must feel in that little closet of mine. We used to live near a military airway. I later on deciphered it to be about the way I had to tune down my energy in the big family I grew up in. I am the youngest one in a family of 7 siblings. We had nine people living in our house. So it was always fun, always busy and there always was the need to tune in or tune down. I think my dream supported my longing to fly out, to spread my wings. I left home relatively early at age 17, doing just that. You can see that a dream that is concerned with showing you new roads on which to travel, often uses symbols of travel. In this dream it is an airplane. The air and the wind flow and chill, but it also supports transportation into new endeavors.

Ralph Metzner talks on Mindfunda’s Youtube channel https://youtu.be/-fJcYnuB8R8 about the battle between the Aesir sky gods and the Vanir earth gods as the battle between old and new technology. To resolve this battle Odin showed both tribes how to conduct rituals based on mutual respect. The earth tribe in my childhood home was my father. Being the principle of the local high school he was all about rules. Teaching the rules, playing by the rules; do your homework. He liked things that where tangible. I was more “airy”: I saw ghosts, spirits, I could talks to them for hours. I was a dreamy girl. It took me several decades to engage in a ritual based on mutual respect to build a bridge towards my father’s knowledge. A dream paved the way for that. In this dream of mine I foresaw his death. After having this dream I asked him if he wanted to do anything before he was gone; anything he had not gotten around to in his life? He talked with me that night about his life, about how wonderful it had been and about how much he loved my mother. He had enjoyed the company of his children and told me how I always amazed him with my analytic skills and my guts to ask questions other people only thought, but never said out loud.

Crossroad From Womanhood Into Partner And Mother

The next step in my life was finding a partner. It took me a while before I had the inner peace to settle down with someone. When I was in my thirties I began to feel so alone. I missed a companion; someone to share my life with. Somebody with whom I could raise a family. I decided -very unromantically to make this a mission in life. I started dating, I started incubating dreams about my dates and my romantic life and it took me a while to develop the intuition I needed to guide me through this process. Then one night I dreamed: “I am on the train and it is a very sunny day. The window is open and while we are crossing the lake beneath us some water touches my arm. It feels like a caress from love that gives me faith and pleasure in my travel”.

Again, like in the first initiation dream, a form of transportation used as a symbol of transformation. The train of life passing above the waters of love. Where in the first initiation dream from childhood into womanhood the element of air played a big role, in the second dream the element of water has the upper hand. The first dream encourages me to rise above the things I was thought in my elderly home. The second dream encourages me to feel the depths of love. I dreamed this the day before I went on my first date with my future husband, the father of my children.

Crossroad From Partner and Mother Into Crone

 The last dream I want to share with you is a dream I have described in my blog. It is called “Hathor, the Goddess of dreams”, http://mindfunda.com/hathor/. Injecting the uterus of a cow with frozen meatballs doesn’t seem like a very pleasant endeavor, but waking up from the dream I felt really good. I had done something very important. Something that had to be checked, and had to be kept warm.

Brenda Ferrimani (http://brendaferrimanidreamart.com/art/), dreamer and artist wrote me this about my dream: (I) Couldn’t help making a connection to Patricia Garfield and her book “Creative Dreaming”, and her horned/branching woman. You know the ovaries almost look like horns growing out of the uterus. So I get the physical connection with “frozen eggs” and perhaps the message, that my body is no longer producing eggs naturally but Hathor the horned Goddess assures me that I will still be a creative force in the world. I also thought of the “meat balls” as cow testicles. That I was placing something very potent inside the belly of the cow, if this were my dream. Kind of feels like a willing sacrifice happening so that the pregnancy can take place. In a way the bull has given his life to make the cow pregnant. Interesting how the “balls” are not only fertile but nutritious for human consumption. Maybe the dream comes to tell me about my future creative life, how I may be instrumental in bringing soul nourishment to others.

I was so thrilled that Brenda made the connection with the horned Goddess. The Horned Goddess is an ancient archetype, based on the full moon. The antlers of the Horned Goddess rise up in the sky to select the right energy and information for intuitive knowledge. This dream is linked to a dream of mine where I was in the bathtub and there where antlers growing out of my belly.

I hope I inspired you all to look at your dreams from this “crossroads” perspective. Take into account your life cycle and the initiation rites that are buried, but still vital for us in our current society.

You can follow Susanne’s blog at http://mindfunda.com, making the fundamentals of psychology, mythology and spirituality easy to use in your personal life.