A few weeks ago, I began reading a book called Anastasia, the first book in The Ringing Cedars Series, that someone had mentioned to me over a year ago. It is another “magical” book—series of books really—infused with powerful energy. I finished reading Anastasia and one night last week, before bed, I picked up the second book in the series and laid it on top of my dream journal as I prepared for bed, intending to read it next. That was all I needed to do to have a profound dream experience, touch the book with intent. Here is the dream I had that night:

I give birth to a girl child although I am not pregnant. In the dream, I go to the bathroom and, sitting on the toilet, I begin to feel and intuit that I am having a baby. At first it feels like a log, like I have a huge log stuck in my vagina. I try to feel with my hand if the baby is in fact down the birth canal or if the cervix is dilated. I move off the toilet after I see blood and go to look in a mirror. In the mirror I see the head has already emerged and so I know for sure that I am giving birth. I also know, from experience, that once the head is out the hard part is over and that the baby will come fast now. I have a moment of panic that it will get stuck like this, halfway out, and that I will have to walk around with a half-birthed baby protruding from my crotch. But in the next instant the baby pushes out. I catch her easily and bring her up to my breast. We bond immediately. She smiles up at me, looks deeply into my eyes, and snuggles against me. I hold her close, knowing that the warmth of our two bodies is enough to keep us safe, even in the coldest of climates.

I remember the book Anastasia at this point in the dream and the title character who contends that a child can survive in the world, even naked, as long as it is held close. I don’t know if she actually says this in the book, but this is what I get in my dream and she herself had survived in the Siberian Taiga through close nurturance and care by animals.

At this point, I take the baby to my parents who are sitting at a cafe table talking to my brother who died. I tell them I have had a baby and I show her to them, but they do not even look at her or show the least bit of interest. They say nothing and just stare blankly, gazing right through me, as if I don’t even exist. My brother looks at me tenderly and shrugs as if to say: “What did you expect?”

I walk away from them and bump into a few other people I know. I am aware that I have dried blood on my legs and that the baby and I are almost naked. I am wearing a short white shift, similar to what Anastasia is described as wearing, and I have the baby wrapped in a shawl. The people I meet acknowledge her, but only in uneasy glances. She is not well received or given any attention. I accept this, even though at first I am puzzled by the lack of interest, because I am having a most amazing experience, full of insight and intuition and I feel totally calm and at peace with this baby in my arms. I also know that she belongs only to me, that she is my responsibility and that I do not really need acknowledgement from others.

The details of the dream get fuzzy at this point, but the child grows almost immediately into a small thin creature, more doll like than human. I watch her running and skipping around. She can talk from the moment of birth like a well educated, spiritually evolved adult, full of wisdom and insight. I know that I must watch her carefully, not let her stray too far from me, and that I must keep her warm so that she not only survives, but also thrives.

As time goes on, I realize I have been forgetting about her more and more, that I forget to warm her against my body, that I am neglectful of her. When I notice she is looking cold I grab her, hold her against me and apologize for my lack of attention, but then I let her go again. At one point I see her lying in the shawl on the ground, not moving, and when I pick her up I see that she has dried up and that her right arm has cracked and broken off, as if she were made of clay. I feel terrible because I forgot all about her and let her get cold and dehydrated to the point of partially crumbling into dust. I am worried that she is dead. I am aware that I must take better care of her, that I must never forget about her again.

The dog woke me at 5:30 in the morning and I immediately forgot this dream. After I let the dog out I returned to bed, feelings of the significance of the dream staying with me, but still unable to recall it. The only thing I could remember was that I had dreamed of a log. As I lay in bed I felt a heavy feeling, almost a soreness in my pelvic floor. I heard a voice say: “Do a Kegel exercise,” which any woman knows is an exercise to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles, especially recommended after giving birth. As soon as I squeezed the muscles I immediately recalled the dream. I had indeed felt like I had given birth in the night and my body held the memory of it until I recaptured it! From that point on the dream reemerged and as the day went on more details became clearer.

Immediately I noted the significance of having set the intent to read the second in that magical book series. I won’t go into details, but the series is based on the experiences of a Russian man who, in 1995, meets a woman, Anastasia, living in the forests of Siberia. She is energetically alive and evolved. His experiences in her company remind me of Carlos Castaneda’s experiences in the company of don Juan, and of my own experiences with Jeanne. Anastasia tells him things that he cannot imagine ever happening and yet they do, similar to my own experiences with Jeanne. Anastasia is directly connected to and channels energy and insight related to the planet and the environment. Whenever I have asked Jeanne questions about the environment, she has always stated that there are other soul groups working on that and that it is not her expertise. Jeanne is connected to a soul group that is involved with soul advancement. This distinction struck me, as I read the first book and thought that perhaps Anastasia is connected to this environmentally concerned soul group energy.

Anyway, that was my first insight as my dream unfolded, that I had set the intent. The second insight I got was that this dream was about my personal transformation. When I recapitulated my childhood, when my abuser did in fact molest me with wooden objects, I rid them from my body as I relived each memory. In the dream, perhaps I feared that this was just another wooden object, another memory to be removed, but then I see life, a real baby instead of a log. I see this as indicative of the transformational process; having released the trauma I can now allow myself to give birth to new life within myself.

When I attempted to show the child to my parents and other acquaintances neither it nor my transformational process was given any attention. In every attempt to introduce this innocent child to the world, the old world, there was no resonance. My personal experiences did not matter in that world. I received the insight that I must further detach from that old world now and more fully embrace this new world that the child represents. Anastasia’s story influenced my dream experience: I knew that the child must be nurtured to thrive. It was pretty clear and simple. All I had to do is keep her with me at all times. I am enough; I am all she needs.

However, I seemed to still need reminding of something, some piece was missing, because every time I laid the child aside, apart from my physical body, something happened to her. She got cold or brittle, and eventually dried up. When I discovered her all dried up and with a broken arm, I immediately felt deep remorse, regret, sadness and extremely guilty for leaving her to fend for herself. I realized that I had not been doing something right. I was killing her by forgetting about her. In the dream, I instinctively knew that I had to keep her close to me, that we did not need anything else, we were enough; that we were done with the old world, had already left it behind. We had already done the work of transformation. I was reminded, as I picked up the broken child in the end of the dream and held her close once again, that she is my innocent self, and that I must stay connected to her at all times, not just when I feel like it. I must remember that this is what my wholeness feels like, and yes, that I am enough. I also knew that if I stayed connected, bonded with her, that everything else would take care of itself, that life would unfold, as it should.

As the day went on and this dream stayed with me, I received a final insight. Pictures of the Virgin Mary holding the Christ child kept popping into my head, paintings from my art history books that I’d studied a long time ago. Each time one of these paintings came to me, I re-experienced holding that child in my arms in the dream, nestling against my chest, snuggling in, totally trusting me, totally calm, knowing that she was exactly where she belonged. As I re-experienced these feelings throughout the day—utter calmness, contentment, wholeness—I saw the significance of these paintings; virgin and child, maturity and innocence; appropriate symbols of giving birth to the Self and to true spirit innocence, which, in my case, I worked so hard to reunite with and nurture into life during my years of recapitulating my traumatic childhood, a time when I was mostly concerned with simply surviving. With this insight I now clearly understand the symbolism of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child as Whole-Self, complete. I had gotten it right, finally the missing piece was found.

We are all the Virgin and we are all the Christ Child in her arms. No matter if we are male or female, we are all totally capable of giving birth to the total Self. This is not the wounded child self, but Christ as innocence within, Self and God-Self fully merged. I know I must not be afraid to embrace this wholeness. I must not put her aside again or depart from the path. I must stay connected to this magic within. I know she was not damaged throughout the whole childhood journey; she remained whole, waiting for me to reconnect.

I know how hard it is to stay connected to this spirit self at all times. We must all deal with the reality of our lives and remain connected to this world, but I also know that the magic is available to us, reminding us that this is really the biggest challenge, to keep turning toward it. Once we have connected to the magic of our true spirit self, whether through our experiences, dreams, processes of inner work, through our intent to change, or through the books we elect to read, our challenge then becomes to never put it aside again, but to hold our experiences as close as a child in our arms, remembering why we are here and what we are really seeking. The magic is really inside each one of us.

I humbly offer these intent-dream-book-insight-magical experiences as we enter a new phase of winter magic. Happy Holidays! May they be magically meaningful, personally, by intent.

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Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan