Snapshots from a dream of Tallinn

 

I plucked this report of a visit to Estonia from an old journal. Its content seems uneasily relevant to the current situation in Europe; see the last quotation in particular. 

Tallinn, Estonia
April 21. 2011 

I walked past Fat Margaret, the massive medieval tower that guards the north gate of the Old City, and down Pikk Street. Just before 9 AM, it was nearly deserted; while the word "Suletud" on the doors of shops and restaurants and museum simply means "Closed" in Estonian, I was able to enjoy blissful solitude, in the more familiar sense, instead of tourist crowds . 

I walked up to the pink palace that houses Estonia's parliament, then down Toompea Street to a great unhewn block of stone that has been turned into a monument. On August 20, 1991, the day of an attempted coup in Moscow, the Supreme Council of Estonia declared independence. This was one of the rocks that nonviolent independence fighters hauled to block the roads to the citadel against Soviet tanks that (for once) never came. 

At the foot of the hill, I turned west to visit Freedom Square, where a man-made monument greeted me. It is a Victory Tower constructed entirely of glass, honoring Estonia's earlier struggle for independence in 1918-1920, when Estonians, supported by a British fleet and international volunteers, had to fight on two fronts - against the Red Army and against the German Iron Guard, in league with the Baltic German Landswehr. The glass tower, surmounted by the Cross of Liberty, Estonia's military medal, resembles an ice sculpture, suggesting both the difficulty of building a free society, and its fragility in a country whose geographic misfortune is to be situated in the "Bloodlands" between Germany and Russia. 

I walked up the Hill of the Hartu Gates, above the glass tower. A group of Russians were rough-housing with a Samoyed. I heard angelic singing behind me, as I stood under an ancient linden, and turned to find a troop of school girls chorusing a folk song. 

I arrived at the Museum of Occupations at opening time. This was at the top of my "must-see" list because I felt a strong need to understand the long nightmare of the 20th century from which the Estonians emerged, singing. I saw old suitcases piled everywhere, a mute tribute to all the Estonians forced to flee their homes or their country. A sinister inner gateway loomed in front of the exhibits. It looks like a cross between a tank and a border checkpoint, embellished on one side by the red star and on the other by the swastika, emblems of the twin evils that invaded and oppressed Estonia in World War II.  

Beside this iron gate, the museum's statement of intent included these words: 

The loss of memory and gaps in memory are dangerous for a people. 

Yes. And it takes remarkable bravery to own the memories of a history in which so many were not only brutalized or murdered, but compelled to fight in the uniforms of foreign armies commanded by psychopathic despots. The exhibits are understated: a collection of every-shifting identity cards, an NKVD trooper's body armor, a bottle of homemade vodka, a photo of Forest Brethren - who took to the woods to resist the Soviets - smoking cigarettes under a tree. The testimonials of survivors, speaking in documentaries running on monitors above the display cases, are more graphic. A woman speaks of the "smell of burned meat" after the Soviets arrived to "liberate" her district. 

I leave the Museum of Occupations with all the material in English I can find and walk up to Town Hall Square to drink a local beer - A. Le Coq - at a sidewalk table in the sun. Suddenly a large group at two long tables behind me burst into song, quite beautiful song. When I thank them, they tell me they are Swedes, a choir arrived for a singing competition at the Concert Hall. At my request, they proceed to sing a "summer hymn". And I wish that all international conflicts could be resolved in a singing contest. 

My walk brings me back to Fat Margaret, once a prison. Now the thick-walled stone tower houses a maritime museum. I wander inside and contemplate images of Neolithic Estonians in skin boats, of fish-factory ships, of the salvage from warships sunk in the Baltic. There's a copper deep-sea diving suit from the 1920s, worthy of Jules Verne. It's hard to image anyone in that kind of armor surfacing again from the deep; the commentary notes it was never used. Just above the right shoulder of the deep-sea suicide suit is the first painting in special exhibition of seascapes by an Estonian artist, Rein Mägar. It's dated 2011, and shows a wild spray of blue and white. The title? Unistus. "Dream." Perfect. Another nudge to keep on doing what I have come here to do.  

Leaving Fat Margaret, I look at the interesting building across the street, which pays distant homage to the Tudors. Now a children's library, this building at 73 Pikk was formerly the Tallinn headquarters of the Soviet KGB. A nice progression. At the Museum of Occupations, I watched the former deputy head of the KGB in Tallinn, Vladimir Pool, recalling on camera his experiences when he was trying to monitor the growth of the Singing Revolution in 1988, three years before the popular movement in the Baltic countries helped trigger the collapse of the Sovet Union. The KGB boss had his agents phoning in estimated numbers of Estonians arriving for a songfest that had been shaped as a cry for freedom from Soviet rule. Pool was astounded as his agents reported ever-growing numbers of people. He lost contact with one of his agents. The man called in. "Fifty thousand now," he reported. (The number was to get much larger). Then the agent added, "Soviet power has just gone down the toilet."

 In the evening, I walk along Soo Street, northwest of the Old City, to a studio in an old wooden building where I open the first session of my Active Dreaming workshop. People are excited; some have read Conscious Dreaming in its Estonian edition. 

As we go round the circle, making our introductions, I feel that a grand communal adventure is beginning. 

A young Estonian man tells us, "I am here because I feel an ache in my belly when I have to come back to the body from my dreams." 

An older woman says, "I am here because your book gave words for how I have dreamed all my life." 

A computer programmer says, "I'm here because my dreams have returned after years of amnesia but I'm clueless." 

A beautiful woman announces, "In my dream, I saw Russians driving around crazily on a monster, aggressive lawnmower in front of my dream home and I want them off my grass."

Photo of Tallinn Sky by RM

 

Forest singing to wake up the spirits

I am teaching in Estonia again. Here is a scene from my first visit, early in 2011.

Pärnamäe, Harju County, Estonia

The gate is a simple weathered beam, fastened to young birch trees to make an arch. I tap three times with the wooden beater hanging below.
    "Tere tulemast minu juurde," says the smiling, bear-like man standing in the midst of the grove. "Welcome to my roots."
     He helps me to see the tree-sisters around us. Lindens, where ancient Estonian women offered sacrifice for fertility and domestic harmony, still held to offer psychic protection and many forms of healing; "bee-trees" in summer. Mountain ash. Birth. A solitary oak whose trunk divides into three near the roots. The oak, so important to my ancestors, is a rarity in Estonia these days. Once called "peasant's iron," the oak was the preferred wood for ship's timbers and barrels and much else.
    The trees are leafless in this season. Spring fire comes late to the Baltic. We feel spirit stirring, however, as we drum and sing together. "My house is built on the wind," sings the big man. He smiles again, after many verses, and says, "Some of the big spirits are sleepy. We have to sing runo-songs for a long time, to wake them up."
     Later in spring, he will bring school groups and their teachers into the woods and the groves, and teach them - as he says - "that a fox is not as big as a horse" and thaty inspiration, in-spiriting, comes in communion with nature.
     What does he want for the people he re-connects with the animate world of the forests? "That you can speak to everything, including your own body. And your soul. You can say to your soul, May you be like a beautiful berry."
     His English is excellent, but the strangeness of that Estonian phrase requires further translation. "A berry is good. A berry is full of juice. A berry is whole," he tries to transplant the thought.

When you are whole, you soul is a beautiful berry.

Still not sure I can take this in, until it hits me that this is Bear-talk. The Bear, lover of berries, would get it immediately.

    The man of the grove laughs when I make this observation, and mimes the action of the Bear eating berries. He grabs me in a powerful bear-hug and says, "Meel sa meeldid mulle. You come close to my soul."

Art: Albrecht Dürer, Three Linden Tree

Flying in Dreams and Awake: The Winged Art of Reet Kalamees

When I arrived in Tallinn, Estonia last month to lead a dream workshop, I found the hotel lobby filled with marvelous paintings of luminous winged beings. I was thrilled to learn that the artist, Reet Kalamees, was coming to my workshop and that her theme was "Flying in Dreams and Awake". Our meeting received a little nod from the universe. Her exhibition at the Euroopa Hotel had been scheduled to end a week before my event, but had been unexpectedly extended.
   At our first meeting, Reet told me how she felt that one of her pictures was for me. She showed me a striking canvas with a blue figure whose huge wings are crackling with sparks of light. She explained that the image had come to her in a powerful vision, in which she felt the presence of a great bird, six months before we met. With great generosity, as described in my last post, Reet insisted on gifting me with the painting - "He Sees" - and it is now at home in my home.
   Over lunch that weekend, Reet described how her paintings are often inspired by dreams and visions. I asked her to write an account of her work, and to let us know the birthing process for some of her individual paintings. Reet has now generously contributed the following inspiring account, with the stories of several of her pictures:

PAINTING WITH ANGELS

by Reet Kalamees

For years now I've felt a strong urge to paint. And not just paint, but to paint angels, beings of light and the beautiful spiritual world. For me angels represent the connecting link between heaven and earth, between humans and the Creator. Cooperation with them has been truly inspiring. 
Visions of my new paintings are often given to me through dreams and meditation.
I've had over twenty exhibitions and my paintings have found homes all over the world.

Mostly I paint in two ways:

1. According to the vision I get from my dream or meditation or a vision related to a person I’m painting for.
2. Without a vision- I just open my heart and I accept what the universe wants to express through me.

I would like to thank the Universe and the Creator for the inspiration and support.Who am I? Angel artist? Spiritual artist? Visionary artist? All of my paintings have a very special purpose - to help people - whether you are in need of spiritual guidance, positive energy, support at a difficult time, to strengthen your relationship with someone etc. 

    I have loved to draw and paint since childhood. As grown-ups, we often forget the child in us and tend to take life too seriously. But then some life event(s) will remind us who we really are. Already as a child, I had a strong feeling that besides our ordinary everyday world, there is something way greater-the invisible, eternal and infinite Universe. In my childhood, during the gloomy Soviet time, dreams were a great way to escape and I have always been a great dreamer.

    A few decades ago I was brought back to painting, because all of a sudden through my paintings beings of light, angels, spiritual guides, teachers and counselors showed up. For years now I have been painting the world that remains invisible to many, with all its power, energy and the characters from its light vibration. And this journey has been so incredibly fascinating, enriching and full of blessings and miracles.
     Often when I start painting I do not have a clear idea what I will paint, I simply open my heart to allow the Universe to express through me what it wishes. For me it is important, that through my paintings I can bring people more light, higher vibration and that, without exception, we are all divine beings.    With my creation, I would like to thank all those extraordinary people who have played an important role in my spiritual journey. I would like to thank the Universe and the Creator for all the inspiration and support. May these paintings touch all the people who have an open heart and are willing to take on more magic and miracles into their life.

 The story behind some of my paintings:

JOIN ME
Stay in the wind of my wings.
Keep close to my heart.
To take flight, all we need is to believe.

This is one of my first oil paintings from 2007 and it is very special for me. The vision for this painting was given to me in a  fraction of a second. I saw two different sides of a whole, which formed a divine union in higher consciousness. Everything and everyone is connected in total synchrony and harmony. When I look at this picture, I still to this day feel a great longing. A lot a people have given me feedback on this picture and said they feel a sense of recognition when  looking at this painting as if they are reminded of  something they have turned away from.

Many pictures are coming directly from my dreams:

Heavenly Horse or Creature of hay

  

HEAVENLY HORSES
Heavenly horses in their heavenly stable.
Talking to the stars.
Say a word on behalf of the humans.

CREATURE OF HAY
Heavenly horse galloping through a dream.
Looking into our hearts.
Touching our longings.

Heavenly horse is a dreamlike mystical being resembling a horse and vibrating in a very high frequency. In my dream the horse was made of hay and was not in any way an ordinary creature All over its body were doors and gates, which served as hideouts during danger. Like a heavenly Trojan horse. In that particular dream I was with my mother and we went to hide in the horse and came out after the danger passed.

     Somehow I knew that heavenly horses protect our dreams as well. Consequently, I have drawn a lot of heavenly horses for children to bring them warm, safe and supportive dreams.

At the Source of Life

Standing midst flowing light.
Letting go of all that has been.
The presence is all that remains.

Two transparent creatures standing midst running spring water. The water is not the water we are used to, but a liquid flowing light. In the dream the beings of light consume that light, they drink that light and pour it all over themselves until one moment they will become that light  and diffuse into eternity.

TWIN SOULS

Reflection within a reflection
Light within a light
To be where you belong and present.

In my life I have met a lot of souls, whom I remember and know from previous lives.  Some of them have been my twin souls. Meeting those souls creates synchronicity and the feeling of being present. Even if those encounters are meant to be brief, they create a new impulse, help me better perceive my journey and make it more meaningful. 

All art (c) Reet Kalamees. Please visit her website, where you will find both prints and original artworks available. You can find some of her art with English commentary on this American site. 

He Sees: an extraordinary gift

There are artists who help us remember that the soul has wings. Estonian artist Reet Kalamees is one of them. Look at one of her pictures of light beings in flight and you will feel your soul beginning to shake out its wings.
    I met Reet last month in Tallinn where she explained to me how her wonderful pictures are often inspired by dreams and visions of flight. Now she has gifted me with an extraordinary painting. She sent me this letter explaining the origin of her painting "He Sees" and why she has given it to me:

"I painted this picture six months before you came to Tallinn. While I was painting, I felt the presence of a large bird, like a hawk or eagle. As the painting, emerged, I felt that the picture is connected to the powerful and wise soul of a man. .
   "This being of light has enormous wings. They are somehow illuminated. In my vision as this bird-man flies, hundreds of sparks of light fall to the earth from his winds. The sparks explode, creating marvelous waves of light. This is a way he brings gifts to earth..  
   "Robert, when I first saw you in Tallinn, I realized in an instant, that the soul that is connected to this picture, is you. I want you to have this picture, because I know it is for you and my guidance is that it will bring you a message beyond my words.
   "I named this painting 'He Sees'.
   "I wrote this little text about it, as I do with all my paintings:
    
HE SEES 

He sees
He touches souls
Even if you don't realize"


Art: "He Sees" by Reet Kalamees.

Flying dreams, spirit boats and inner voices

Tallinn, Estonia

I was met at Tallinn airport by a delightful five-year-old named Sophia whose mother told me that they go flying in dreams together. Then I found my hotel lobby filled with wonderful paintings by Estonian artist Reet Kalamees, whose exhibition has the theme "Flying in Dreams and Awake". This seemed like a very clear wing-brush from the universe.
    When I made contact with Reet, she told me that the exhibition was supposed to end before my workshop but was unexpectedly extended for a week-  so these magical pictures were there to inspire our frequent flyers during my weekend workshop - and that  she herself was coming to the workshop.
     The night before I opened the program, I wondered how and where I might go flying from my bed in a a hotel beside the Old Town Harbor. As I started drifting towards sleep, I realized I had taken to the air without noticing the transition. I was not flying in one of my usual modes, in some simulacrum of my regular body, swimming through the air or shooting off Superman-style, or on the wings of a bird, or traveling as a disembodied thought-form. Nor was I  in a plane, a spaceship or vimana.
     I was seated in a boat, a solid wooden boat of very old design. Seated in front of me were three figures wearing simple earth-colored, hooded garments. They were doing the work of navigating and making the vessel fly through the air. I could see the landscape of islands and forests quite clearly below us. I thought we must be sailing over Saaremaa and some of the smaller Estonian islands in the Baltic sea. We were close enough to the ground for me to see the excited faces of people who were turning from their usual occupations to snatch up gifts we were dropping to them from the flying boat. They were very happy for the gifts but appeared to be unable to see where they were coming from.
    At this point, I heard a voice say to me, "You have the support of the Heirs of Ars." I was not quite sure how to spell the last word.
    When I surfaced from this dream, in high excitement, I wondered if I had been drawn into a scene out of Estonian mythology and perhaps even into direct contact with ancient spirits of the land. This has happened to me often in my travels, and has inspired many ventures in dream archaeology, as described in The Boy Who Died and Came Back.
    What was the flying boat? Who were my companions? I thought of the spirit canoes of the Pacific Northwest, and wondered if there was a Baltic equivalent. Who were the Heirs of Ars? Had I gotten the last word right? It sounded like Ars, which is Latin for "art", but perhaps the spelling was different.
     When I met my Estonian translators, Robert and Piret, on Saturday morning, my first question was whether the word "Ars" has meaning in the Estonian language. "Aas - that is A-A-S," Robert corrected my spelling, "means Meadow or  Clearing."  Piret added, "If you are supported by the Heirs of Aas," it could mean that you have been welcomed by the fairies and the spirits of the land."
     After a wonderful morning of dreamplay, I lunched with Reet Kalamees, the painter of flying dreams, and we talked about different modes of dream flight. "With me, it is mostly will," Reet explained. "I feel myself pumping up, expanding my energy, and then I go straight up. I dream I am teaching these techniques to others." She told me that now that she met me she was sure that one of the paintings she had on display - of a blue man with angel wings - had been inspired by a dream encounter with me months before.

I start my Sunday in Tallinn by playing the quick bibliomancy game I have recommended to my workshop group. I open a book at random and find myself looking at a section title that reads "Leaning to Trust Inner Voices."   
    At the breakfast buffet, I am joined by a woman from my group. Her name is Helle. I ask what it means in Estonian. It means "Voices."
    Helle says to me, before we have finished our first cups of coffee, "I want to ask you about whether we can trust inner voices in our dreams." She proceeds to give me an example of that deep inner voice that we learn to rely on. She was told, "Don't think you can heal people who are not ready to accept healing."  We agree that this is simple, and very practical, wisdom.
    I talk about my own experiences with inner voices, and how we learn to practice discernment by trusting our feelings and seeing whether inner counsel and messaging proves to be reliable and helpful in our lives. I recall one of the most important messages I ever received from an inner voice was this: "Robert remember this world is not your prison. It is your playground." Wonderful counsel, especially on bleak and dreary days. 
    We discuss ancestral voices. Wherever I go, I seem to hear voices from the land, speaking in the local language. When I pick up words, phrases and symbols in a language I do not know, this gives me great research assignments. When I am able to find a translation and a context for these words and symbols - taking me far beyond what I previously knew - this confirms for me that I am authentic contact with the local spirits. 
     I recall the inner voice that told me the previous night, that the Heirs of Aas support me Then I remember that I still have to research the spirit boat I was riding in, above the earth, when I heard those words. I ask Helle if there is a tradition of spirit boats in this part of the world, perhaps analogous to the spirit canoes of the Pacific Northwest. She amazes and delights me when she tells me that she has seen Estonian shamans seated in a small wooden boat, drumming together for a group journey. 

    


    I can't resist sharing this sequence with the whole workshop group - over 120 people - when we start the Sunday session. More than a dozen excited Estonians proceeded to share their knowledge of Baltic and Northern traditions of spirit boats. One had trained with a Sami (Lapland) shaman who had people sit together, as if in a boat, for healing journeys and rituals. Another made the connection with Viking ship burials. Several people mentioned the remarkable boat of Kalevipoeg, the legendary giant who is the culture hero of the Estonian national epic. He had a magical boat, called Lennuk, which could sail through the air as well as on water. The modern Estonian translation of "Lennuk" is "plane", as in airplane. In our morning quick dream-into-art exercise, one of our Estonian dreamers had actually made a colored drawing of a boat of this kind before she heard my story.
   I am discovering again that the best entry ticket to an ancient tradition is the right dream, and that when you carry such a dream, synchronicity multiplies around you in magical ways.

Pictures: Top and bottom, oil paintings by Reet Kalamees inspired by dreams of flight; middle, "Lennuk" by Nikolai Triik (1910)

Can't stop the dreamers drumming

Sivananda Ashram, Bahamas

Those in authority have decided to ban shamanic drumming for groups, in the way we practice this in Active Dreaming circles. They have concluded that the combination of drumming with personal dreams and imagery, used as portals for shamanic journeys, is just too powerful, opening direct access to the sacred and to self-healing.
    However, the practice has become so popular that it cannot be stopped. Efforts to interfere result in groups everywhere taking up the practice and it spreads like benign wildfire, cracking open the carapace of hand-me-down doctrines and entrenched skepticism. The mood is soon celebratory. Dream droughts are breaking everywhere.

I wake feeling very cheerful, even triumphant, from this dream today. I have the sense of a great wave whose ripples are being felt in many communities. My mind goes to the Singing Revolution in the Baltic. When I first visited Tallinn (where I am teaching again next month) I visited the Museum of the Occupations (note the plural noun) which preserves the memory of the suffering of Estonians under the heel of two totalitarian dictatorships, those of Hitler and Stalin. I will never forger listening to a recording of the chief of the Soviet KGB in Tallinn as people gathered in their hundreds of thousands to sing folk songs together, defying an official ban. As the singing crowd mounted, the Soviet secret police boss reported to Moscow, "We have lost". The collapse of Communism followed.
   I know the power of the combination of dreamwork and shamanic journeying that I have called Active Dreaming. There is an immense gift available in any image that comes to us spontaneously, especially in dreams we have not asked for and may or may not want. Any image that is authentic and personal can be worked with in the direction of healing and guidance.
   If you have been running away from something that scares you in dreams, you want to learn to go back and confront that fear on its own ground. You may find that what is waiting for you, beyond the fear, is your own power. You may find that by clarifying what is going on in the dream, you are able to avoid a crisis in waking life - an illness, an accident, the rupture of a relationship - that the dream has been trying to prepare you for.
    You may have met someone in a dream with whom you want to have an extended conversation, a departed loved one, a spiritual guide, an enigmatic figure you would like to identify.
    When you learn to journey through the portals of your own dreams, you will soon discover that a dream can be your gateway into the multiverse. You can use a dream door to travel to past or future or to a parallel self on a parallel life path. You can even find your way, through the space of a dream, to connect with a younger and brighter aspect or yourself that may have gone missing through pain or trauma or disappointment and bring her vital energy to reside in your heart and your life.
   This is the royal road to becoming a lucid dreamer any time of day or night.
   Steady drumming on a simple frame drum, of the kind that humans have been using for many thousands of years (first in Mongolia and Siberia) provides excellent rule and focus for this kind of journey. I have recorded my own shamanic drumming CD specifically for dream travelers
    They truly can't stop the dreamers drumming.

Photos: (1) drumming with a people of the Singing Revolution on the Bay of Riga in 2011
(2) scene on the beach in the Bahamas near the ashram where I am teaching today.

Drinking the forest

From Tallinn to Palmse to Riga

Birch and pine, forest and sea. I am driving with some of my new Estonian friends along the northern coast. Ma naen und, says Urva, "Ī see a dream." It strikes me, again, that this is a much more satisfactory way of reporting a dream than the limping English expression, "I had a dream."

Her dream is of the sea eagle, rarely seen in ordinary reality along this coast, but a frequent companion in her visions, sleeping and waking and in between. She describes how she and a whole group were amazed when a sea eagle appeared on a nearby birch branch when she was drumming for a shamanic journey, then came even closer until it was watching her from perhaps three yards away. The powers of the deeper world are hunting us, we agree. I recall how I knew the sea eagle in my boyhood, in Queensland, and how it has come to fly me back to my native country when there is something there it is urgent for me to see, and how the sea eagle was also a companion spirit of ancient shamans in the Orkney islands off the north coast of Scotland, the land of my fatherš ancestors.

We pause at the site of the prehistoric hill fort of Muuksi, and pick dark-blue juniper berries from the trees. It takes three years for juniper berries to ripen to this point. They have a slight aniseed taste on my palate. The Estonian wise women burn the berries and use the smoke for spiritual cleansing. I recount a dream in which I saw a circle of European women burning the juniper berries, together with oak, in order to produce a medium for visioning as well as a psychic shield. I promise to send the full details. It seems that yet again, waking life is catching up with one of my old dreams.

On to Palmse, and a work around the yellow 18th century manor where once Baltic Germans lorded it over the local population, treating Estonian peasants as serfs. Lunch at the nearby korts (tavern) where the home-made butter, slathered on black bread or oat cakes, is the best I have ever eaten.

Next we drive south and west to the home of an Estonian shaman, Tonu Talimaa, who has created a magical world of stones in the midst of the forest. Concentric circles of stone, approached through a wooden gateway, define the pattern of a a cosmos and a place where people can bring the parts of the soul together. Deeper in the woods is a spiral path, defned by stones, climbing upwards in tight loops. "Space isn't straight here," says Tonu. "It spirals."

We drink tea in the afternoon sun and discuss the many kinds of gates, including how I teach people how to use dreams as personal doorways to the world-beyond the world.

Time to head south, along country roads, to the summer beach resort of Parnu and on to Ilka and the Latvian border. Yana, who is coordinating my workshop in Latvia, greets me with a big jug of birch juice, which she has tapped from one of the birches at her own place in the forest. The birth juice is very faintly sweet and smells lightly woody. Itš good to be drinking the forest.

Welcome to my roots

Pärnamäe, Harju County, Estonia

The gate is a simple weathered beam, fastened to young birch trees to make an arch. I tap three times with the wooden beater hanging below.
    "Tere tulemast minu juurde," says the smiling, bear-like man standing in the midst of the grove. "Welcome to my roots."
     He helps me to see the tree-sisters around us. Lindens, where ancient Estonian women offered sacrifice for fertility and domestic harmony, still held to offer psychic protection and many forms of healing; "bee-trees" in summer. Mountain ash. Birth. A solitary oak whose trunk divides into three near the roots. The oak, so important to my ancestors, is a rarity in Estonia these days. Once called "peasant's iron," the oak was the preferred wood for ship's timbers and barrels and much else.
    The trees are leafless in this season. Spring fire comes late to the Baltic. We feel spirit stirring, however, as we drum and sing together. "My house is built on the wind," sings the big man. He smiles again, after many verses, and says, "Some of the big spirits are sleepy. We have to sing runo-songs for a long time, to wake them up."
     Later in spring, he will bring school groups and their teachers into the woods and the groves, and teach them - as he says - "that a fox is not as big as a horse" and thaty inspiration, in-spiriting, comes in communion with nature.
     What does he want for the people he re-connects with the animate world of the forests? "That you can speak to everything, including your own body. And your soul. You can say to your soul, May you be like a beautiful berry."
     His English is excellent, but the strangeness of that Estonian phrase requires further translation. "A berry is good. A berry is full of juice. A berry is whole," he tries to transplant the thought.

When you are whole, you soul is a beautiful berry.

Still not sure I can take this in, until it hits me that this is Bear-talk. The Bear, lover of berries, would get it immediately.

    The man of the grove laughs when I make this observation, and mimes the action of the Bear eating berries. He grabs me in a powerful bear-hug and says, "Meel sa meeldid mulle. You come close to my soul."

Art: Albrecht Dürer, Three Linden Trees

Snapshots from a Dream of Tallinn

Tallinn, Estonia

I walked past Fat Margaret, the massive medieval tower that guards the north gate of the Old City, and down Pikk Street. Just before 9 AM, it was nearly deserted; while the word "Suletud" on the doors of shops and restaurants and museum simply means "Closed" in Estonian, I was able to enjoy blissful solititude, in the more familiar sense, instead of tourist crowds .

    I walked up to the pink palace that houses Estonia's parliament, then down Toompea Street to a great unhewn block of stone that has been turned into a monument. On August 20, 1991, the day of an attempted coup in Moscow, the Supreme Council of Estonia declared independence. This was one of the rocks that nonviolent independence fighters hauled to block the roads to the citadel against Soviet tanks that (for once) never came.
    At the foot of the hill, I turned west to visit Freedom Square, where a man-made monument greeted me. It is a Victory Tower constructed entirely of glass, honoring Estonia's earlier struggle for independence in 1918-1920, when Estonians, supported by a British fleet and international volunteers, had to fight on two fronts - against the Red Army and against the German Iron Guard, in league with the Baltic German Landswehr. The glass tower, surmounted by the Cross of Liberty, Estonia's military medal, resembles an ice sculpture, suggesting both the difficulty of building a free society, and its fragility in a country whose geographic misfortune is to be situated in the "Bloodlands" between Germany and Russia.
    I walked up the Hill of the Hartu Gates, above the glass tower. A group of Russians were rough-housing with a Samoyed. I heard angelic singing behind me, as I stood under an ancient linden, and turned to find a troop of school girls chorusing a folk song.

  I arrived at the Museum of Occupations at opening time. This was at the top of my "must-see" list because I felt a strong need to understand the long nightmare of the 20th century from which the Estonians emerged, singing. I saw old suitcases piled everywhere, a mute tribute to all the Estonians forced to flee their homes or their country. A sinister inner gateway loomed in front of the exhibits. It looks like a cross between a tank and a border checkpoint, embellished on one side by the red star and on the other by the swastika, emblems of the twin evils that invaded and oppressed Estonia in World War II.

     Beside this iron gate, the museum's statement of intent included these words:

The loss of memory and gaps in memory are dangerous for a people.

Yes. And it takes remarkable bravery to own the memories of a history in which so many were not only brutalized or murdered, but compelled to fight in the uniforms of foreign armies commanded by psychopathic despots. The exhibits are understated: a collection of every-shifting identity cards, an NKVD trroper's body armor, a bottle of homemade vodka, a photo of Forest Brethren - who took to the woods to resist the Soviets - smoking cigarettes under a tree. The testimonials of survivors, speaking in documentaries running on monitors above the display cases, are more graphic. A woman speaks of the "smell of burned meat" after the Soviets arrived to "liberate" her district.

     I leave the Museum of Occupations with all the material in English I can find and walk up to Town Hall Square to drink a local beer - A. Le Coq - at a sidewalk table in the sun. Suddenly a large group at two long tables behind me burst into song, quite beautiful song. When I thank them, they tell me they are Swedes, a choir arrived for a singing competition at the Concert Hall. At my request, they proceed to sing a "summer hymn". And I wish that all international conflicts could be resolved in a singing contest. 
    My walk brings me back to Fat Margaret, once a prison. Now the thick-walled stone tower houses a maritime museum. I wander inside and contemplate images of Neolithic Estonians in skin boats, of fish-factory ships, of the salvage from warships sunk in the Baltic. There's a copper deep-sea diving suit from the 1920s, worthy of Jules Verne. It's hard to image anyone in that kind of armor surfacing again from the deep; the commentary notes it was never used. Just above the right shoulder of the deep-sea suicide suit is the first painting in special exhibition of seascapes by an Estonian artist, Rein Mägar. It's dated 2011, and shows a wild spray of blue and white. The title? Unistus. "Dream." Perfect. Another nudge to keep on doing what I have come here to do.

    Leaving Fat Margaret, I look at the interesting building across the street, which pays distant homage to the Tudors. Now a children's library, this building at 73 Pikk was formerly the Tallinn headquarters of the Soviet KGB. A nice progression. At the Museum of Occupations, I watched the former deputy head of the KGB in Tallinn, Vladimir Pool, recalling on camera his experiences when he was trying to monitor the growth of the Singing Revolution in 1988, three years before the popular movement in the Baltic countries helped trigger the collapse of the Sovet Union. The KGB boss had his agents phoning in estimated numbers of Estonians arriving for a songfest that had been shaped as a cry for freedom from Soviet rule. Pool was astounded as his agents reported ever-growing numbers of people. He lost contact with one of his agents. The man called in. "Fifty thousand now," he reported. (The number was to get much larger). Then the agent added, "Soviet power has just gone down the toilet."
    In the evening, I walk along Soo Street, northwest of the Old City, to a studio in an old wooden building where I open the first session of my Active Dreaming workshop. People are excited; some have read Conscious Dreaming in its Estonian edition.
    As we go round the circle, making our introductions, I feel that a grand communal adventure is beginning.
    A young Estonian man tells us, "I am here because I feel an ache in my belly when I have to come back to the body from my dreams."
    An older woman says, "I am here because your book gave words for how I have dreamed all my life."
    A computer programmer says, "I'm here because my dreams have returned after years of amnesia but I'm clueless."
    A beautiful woman announces, "In my dream, I saw Russians driving around crazily on a monster, aggressive lawnmower in front of my dream home and I want them off my grass."

Photos of Tallinn (1) Great Coastal Gate (2) Prison doors in Museum of Occupations (3) Steps in Old City (c) Robert Moss

Sun of the Hanged Man in the Sky of Tallinn

Tallinn, Estonia

"Time to start dreaming" was the message of a card on the bed in my hotel room. Perfect counsel for a dreamer, especially after 20 hours of travel to Tallinn from New York, with long stopovers at JFK and at Stockholm's Arlanda airport.

But no dreams survived my first short sleep, a couple of hours when my aching body claimed some rest and relief. The restaurant was still open in the Wiegand restaurant downstairs, so I had a quick bite, preferring not to find myself waking ravenous in the middle of the night. I learned that the Wiegand in question - the 19th century manufacturer who founded the factory complex of which the fine modern Domina Inn Ilmarine is now a part - made a habit of feeding his workers a decent breakfast and lunch every day, so I seemed to be dining withing a good tradition. Wiegand produced the equipment for mass-producing vodka and other products (sugar, plywood). Optimistically, he named his factory after a character in the Finish epic, the Kalevala, who has a magic mill that spews out vast quantities of grain, salt and money. (The Estonian language is related to Finnish, and there is a lot of traffic across the Baltic between Tallinn and Helsinki.)

Back in bed in the early hours, I made it my plan to dream into my coming days in Estonia. I am leading an Active Dreaming workshop here for the first time, and also exploring the Old City of Tallinn and the coast, and meeting some shamanic practitioners who are working to recover old ways.

I woke from the following dream:

I look across the frozen sea at the sun, a great disk low on the horizon. The sun shines with a brilliant white-gold light, and I can look at it without blinking. To my amazement, the sun does a complete flip, like a gold coin. It falls flat over the ice, then turns over and shines brighter than before. I have never seen such a phenomenon.

I say in high excitement to the group I am leading, "This is the symbol of the Hanged Man when he has emerged from his oppression and the light is reborn in his life. It is the greatest of prizes - a new sun in the heavens, infusing all of life with new purpose and energy."

My excitement spreads through the group. I sit down and draw an image of the sun's revolution, about the size of a Tarot card laid out horizontally in one corner of a large sheet of art paper. Then, with rapid strokes, I give the impression of tremendous activity, in the sky and on the earth, on the rest of the paper, and hold it up to show the group.

Someone shouts that he recognizes "Catherine" in the larger and more impressionistic part of the sketch. We won't talk about that now, I respond. We'll save the details and go with the big picture.

I woke from this dream to look out through my hotel window at the sun shining on the red roof and towers of the Old City of Tallinn. I felt deep gratitude for this dream, whose imagery seems highly relevant to my purposes in returning to the Baltic. The Baltic republics are located in what has been termed the "Bloodlands" of Europe, the territories between Germany and Russia that have suffered repeated attack and occupation by both those powers. At the start of World War II they were seized by the Red Army (as Stalin took advantage of the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a deal of devils to carve up Central Europe); then in 1941 they were occupied by the Nazis; and in 1944 the Red Army came back, to stay until the Baltic states won their independence in 1991.

The Hanged Man, usually shown as a figure hanged upside down, is the perfect image for an individual or a culture that has suffered oppression, which may include addiction. I am here to support the spiritual and cultural rebirth that can be born from the depths of suffering. The world saw the courage and rich folklore traditions of the Estonians at work in the Singing Revolution, when a quarter of the population came together to defy the Soviet tanks with their songs.

Catherine? Perhaps the wife of Peter the Great, whose bedroom survives in the cottage that the tsar used as a summer residence while Kadriorg Palace was being built.

Sunrise over the Bay of Tallin photo by Marko Kalmus

Life rhymes: Baltic calling

Coincidence runs in riffs, and working with it may involve pattern recognition over time and the kind of poetic consciousness that notices what rhymes in a day, or a week, or a longer period. Sometimes this kind of thing is hard to miss.

When I deplaned at Heathrow airport on a recent trip, I discovered that I had booked myself on the wrong coach to Bath. The woman at the National Express office who sorted everything out for me, saving me a couple of hours on the bus, had a name tag that read "Daiva". I recognized this as a popular Lithuanian name derived from a word for "goddess".
     I can't currently recall more than a few words of Lithuanian, but the word for "thank you" is hard to forget, because it sounds like a sneeze.
    "Ačiū!" I thanked Daiva for her help.
    "You've made my day," she told me. "People notice my name, but you're the first to come in here who knows where I'm from."
    After the ride to Bath, and a brisk walk from the bus terminal, I arrived at Pratt's hotel on South Parade, where I was welcomed by a tall young woman who proved to be Estonian. She corrected my pronunciation when I tried out my one Estonian phrase, also one of my favorite sayings in any language: töö õpetab tegijat. "The work will teach you how to do it."
    Back in London at the end of the week to lead a workshop for Alternatives, I met another Lithuanian woman, Marija, who shared a challenging dream of her childhood home and bravely agreed to reenter it, with the help of her sister and a third Lithuanian who had come to that workshop. Marija's conscious dream reentry journey, aided by her travel companions, brought through wonderful healing and resolution.
    The rhyming here is pretty obvious, its meaning quite deep for me. I am returning to the Baltic in April to teach Active Dreaming in Estonia and Latvia. A Lithuanian edition of my book The Three "Only" Things will be published later this year. I wrote in The Dreamer's Book of the Dead about my experiences of facilitating cultural soul recovery with a group of 45 Lithuanians during my first visit to their country, back in 2004, when I found myself in direct contact with an ancient priestess of Zemyna, the great Earth goddess. Right after the London workshop I received an invitation to teach in Lithuania for the fourth time.
    As I sat down to write this note, I received email confirmation that a book on Baltic mythology that I had sought unsuccessfully last year had at last been located and shipped: Norbertas Velius' The world outlook of the ancient Balts. At the precise moment I finished this note and hit the "save" button, an email came in from Ere, the dreamer who is arranging my visit to Tallinn, confirming our travel plans. She's the one who gave me the original Estonian words of that marvelous life principle: the work will teach you how to do it. Yes, it will.