Ask most folks why they like flying dreams and they'll probably answer,
"Because they're fun." They're expansive, energetic, expressive
and euphoric. They feel good. Of course, we're talking about the best case
scenario, not flights where you're frightened, frustrated, fatigued or flummoxed.
Dream flights span the range of emotion and sensation, but even those at
the negative end of the scale can be beneficial. While fun may still be
topmost on your list of motivating factors, there are plenty of others to
ponder. Would any of these ABCs inspire you to have dream flights?
Award for Awakening
Once I incubated a series of flying dreams when I'd been feeling so stiff
in the mornings that I practically hobbled out of bed. During the third
of my dreams, I dreamt I was dancing in the air. As the dream drew to a
close, my radio alarm clicked on. It was tuned to a station that was broadcasting
a song with a rollicking beat. Dancing in my dreams became dancing out of
bed and around the room. There simply was no physical stiffness left. The
emotions and energy of a buoyant nighttime flight can certainly carry well
into the day. On the other hand, if flying causes us to wake while we're
still asleep, we get another sort of award. It's called lucid dreaming.
Browsing the Body and Brain
Have you ever had an in-the-body experience? I don't mean inhabiting
the physical body during the day. I mean traveling through it, deep in the
night, as a fairy-like bit of consciousness. For dreams, it doesn't matter
what size we are. Our awareness of self can shrink and become a traveler
on a fantastic voyage through the body's systems, but the pictures will
be produced for normal size comprehension. For instance, the flash of light
created by the visual nervous system might be perceived as a storm with
lighting in an inky dark landscape. When we're small enough, the lungs may
seem to be a huge cave of howling wind. I bet you didn't know that Hades
is located in the intestines! The flyer is graced with a gift to keep the
underworld under her skin from being too overwhelming. She has the ability
to rise above it.
Courage to Confront; Choice to Create
In the schema of American psychologist Abraham Maslow, there are two
major motivations that help determine our thoughts, feelings and behavior:
basic needs and growth needs. When our basic needs (like air, food, safety,
companionship and esteem) are not met, we worry and fret, even agonize and
fear. These reactions are converted into the normative nightmare and anxiety
dream. The flyer has a tactical advantage regarding threats: flight or fight.
We can run away from problems (flight) or come back to confront them (fight).
When basic needs are satisfied, the energy that had been forced to fulfill
them is liberated for the growth of human potential. Instead of trudging
through trouble, we are free to fly. As we fly free from survival imperatives,
we expand our artistic horizons. We sculpt creative dreams; we create our
own reality.
Decoding Day Residue
Flying dreams have been labeled "bizarre," that is, they don't
conform to the constraints imposed by the physical world. It's true that
your physical body will walk or run or drive a car down the street. But
your inner body-sense surely doesn't. It floats along for the ride. Your
physical body may break into a smile over a happy event, but your inner
body leaps for joy. Your physical body may sit on an office chair, while
a spark of your inner consciousness soars to the South Seas in reverie.
Comes time to form a dream about daytime events and the sleeping mind is
not limited to a literal depiction of life. Rather than a mundane description
of your daily commute to work, it may well depict a slow but steady flight
through city streets. Or perhaps the orchestral sounds from your car's loud
speakers may invoke uplifting emotions that evoke an ecstatic flight to
anywhere but city streets. Thus, when you get ready to decode a flying dream,
ignore the blatant "bizarre" imagery. Dig underneath it. Concentrate
on sensations, emotions and thoughts. These are the elements that echo an
actual waking event. Dream pictures don't have to be photographic records
of a recent daytime experience. For flying dreams, the mind reveals the
hidden side of self. It paints how you feel.
Emotional Environmentalism
Dreaming together with other people doesn't guarantee a communal high.
If it happens spontaneously, it's far more likely that a shared dream will
be a nightmare or anxiety experience. It's deliberate co-dreaming that's
likely to shift focus towards mutual agreement and harmony. Successful mutual
dreamers have this in common: most all know how to fly. Although their dreams
may begin as an anxiety event, resolution can occur in-dream and the dream
will end on an upbeat note. This is the Environmental Effect: the conversion
of negative to positive while the dream is still happening. Instead of shadow
land, the dream becomes a land of light. In the long run, the percentage
of negative dreams drops rather dramatically. The flyer is, then, a dream
environmentalist, recycling the residue of daily waste and polluted programming
and retrofitting our minds with attitudes and aptitudes that build us new
Edens.
Finding Friendship
As the flyer matures, flight away from life into the long night of the
hermit's cave transforms into tentative return. The flyer becomes more willing
to risk human relationship and finds new courage to attempt communication.
When I'm lucid and other dream characters share the same scene, I often
ask if anyone would like to come fly with me. The characters may raise their
hands or simply come forward to join me. A co-flight can be parallel, hand-in-hand
or enmeshed with co-mingled bodies. This flow of interaction carries over
to the waking state. As a whole, flying dreamers are more likely than most
to share their dreams with other people when they wake up. Flying dreams
are a highly prized gift of relationship.
Glimpses of a Gorgeous Globe
Since there's no need to breathe in the hyperspace of dream, there's
no limit to how far you can fly. Dream flight can send you streaking through
the stars, en route to a distant planet or rounding the moon and sun as
if you're propelled by a celestial sling-shot. But there's one spot where
stopping and hovering is a glorious joy. That's where you can view the whole
of our Great Blue Marble supported only by the infinite dark. Many people
write about "oneness" as if it's some abstract concept in the
land of mental ambiguity. This dream is an opportunity to actually see it:
the beauty of the whole Earth from a vantage point aloft. The flow of the
pen may produce promises or release an ancient longing, but the fulfillment
of human hope happens in Technicolor, feelie-vision, surround-sensation
and the utter reality of suspension in space.
Herald of Health
How healthy are you? Your dreams can hand you the clues. Because dreams
have a high relation to sensation and feeling, they can picture such aspects
of your being. They might indicate that you are in less-than-perfect health.
Conversely, they can display the activities of a robust and vigorous psyche.
Flying - how fast, how far, how high - serves as a thermometer of health.
Do I fly through fair skies or foul? Do I get airborne at all? The styles,
moods, obstacles (or lack of them) can indicate the state of my emotional,
mental and physical health. They can signal that well-being is on the way
or warn me that I need pay closer attention to my body, my car, my relationships
with other animals and people. I incubate flying dreams to get my dreaming
self moving away from sickness and other sub-standard modes of being. We
both feel better that way.
Intentional Imagination
I'd like to quote British poet W. H. Auden here: "The trouble with
dreams, of course, is that other people's are so boring"! Oh, my, can
we have boring dreams? Yes, indeed. Once in a dream group, a dreamer related
a long tale of trying to become lucid. When she finally achieved her goal,
she found herself in a empty room, without any characters, without any props
or scenery or a script being automatically produced just for her. Since
there wasn't anything interesting going on, she shrugged her mental shoulders
and let go of her lucidity. After this, she had no desire to have any more
lucid dreams. That shocked me to the core. But I came to realize the fundamental
difference between fate and free will. The fated dreamer lets only happenstance
direct his drama. The flyer understands she had a choice to be either passive
or an active agent in the emergence of her story. In flight, we awaken the
Inner Child who is never bored or boring because, in her theater of dreams,
she remembers how to play. She knows how to release her emaciated imagination
from its stark cage and let it take flight.
Jokes and Jumping Jehosephat
Do you recall the last time you laughed in a dream? Have you *ever* laughed
in a dream? Here's another quote to ponder. When psychoanalyst Victor Monke
was asked about proactive dreams, he responded that dreams were the results
of "conflicting emotional needs at the same time." If a person
truly were able to direct the course of a dream away from its "natural"
conclusion, said Monke, "he wouldn't be having the dream" in the
first place. As our legacy from Freud, we are weighed down by the grave
supposition that dreams are repressions of some seriously perverse psychological
problems. There is an insipid inference that only troubled dreams warrant
our attention. Humor has little foothold in such a fault-finding occupation
of the mind. It comes as no surprise to me to find out that Freud never
had a flying dream in his life. Did you know that, in dreams, it's possible
to jump, laugh, sing and giggle yourself into the air? After all, aren't
flying dreams premiere examples of "levity"? Before you groan,
you might like to know that flying dreams are great punsters, too. Our dreaming
selves can have a very humorous perception of waking life.
Knowledge versus Kryptonite
The Kryptonite Effect is the nemesis of the flyer. It's everything that
keeps her grounded, makes it hard to launch, slows her progress and creates
a glass ceiling for her efforts. Understanding these obstacles, and how
to overcome them, translates into helpful hints and an attitude that aids
in solving problems in related sorts of dreams. For instance, if you come
to realize that phenomena like sleep paralysis, myclonic jerks and floating
feelings are quite natural and common on the borderlands of sleep, then
the surprising sensations of flight will intrigue rather frighten. Cognitive
therapy can change a negative mind set for flying. Behavioral therapy helps
convert knee-jerk reactions to more positive activities. Programming for
flight is practice in incubation, a primary tool for any proactive dreamer.
The more you know and put to use, the better your dream adventures. Comprehending
Kryptonite means reviewing one's biochemical, psychological, physical and
psychic health and selecting the appropriate tools for the job of healing.
It's a holistic approach to dreams.
Launching the Lucid Dream
My body's fatigued, my mind is mush, my self-discipline is practically
nonexistent and my dreams are few. I don't know if you've ever been at the
bottom of the barrel, but I sure have, more times than I care to remember.
A highly desirous goal, like becoming awake as I dream, seems totally beyond
my reach. Pie in the virtual sky. There's only two ways I know to win the
prize. One, take a tremendous leap and hope you land in the treetops rather
than atop a footstool. Pull yourself together, take a deep breath, activate
your will with all the power of an Olympic weight lifter and jump. However,
the number of times I've leapt tall buildings with a single bound is very
low indeed. For the second option, take the slow and easy way, one step
at a time. This approach is longer, but along the way, you can have some
pretty interesting dreams. My dreaming self begins in low gear; I take a
walk around the block. My dreaming self starts to walk; I walk and imagine
flying. My dreaming self begins to fly. Only then, do I give myself the
directive to go lucid. This route from flying to lucidity, from slug to
Super Hero, has been used successfully by many dreamers.
Mundane Milieu To Mary Pop-ins
What's the most tedious dream you have? For me, it's a slight variation
on some trivial activity in waking life. It's when my dreaming self is acting
like my clone, and a pretty robotic one, at that. Flying is certainly not
mundane; it's a promise and fulfillment of fantasy. So, what's a fantastic
alternative? How about Alice Through The Looking Glass? Instead of staying
in mundane reality, you imagine yourself into a mirror. Or into a story,
a movie, even a symbol. My dreaming self likes Pop-ing Into A Picture best,
so that's what I'll choose to look at before I sleep: solid visual blocks
with which she can build the scenery, props, characters and even story line.
Flying into the picture in my imagination translates into flying into realms
of adventure when I sleep. Or I might try Pop-ing Into A Picture on the
borderlands of sleep. During hypnogogia, I watch the scenes flash like a
slide show, then take a mental breath and launch myself into one of them.
I can start a flying dream that way. Boring, they are not.
Nullifying the Nightmare
Flight or flight is an automatic response to fear bred from millions
of years of evolution. Since dreams can react to instinctual promptings,
running away from terror is a very common theme. The flyer has an advantage
over surface dwellers. She can leap above grasping hands or sharpened teeth.
But fleeing is only a first step in the flyer's defensive repertoire. She
can turn and watch the threat from above or return to fight, frighten, negotiate
a cease fire or befriend. Should she stand her ground, learn to face down
fear, she still knows, deep in her soul, that she has a back-up plan. She
can always get airborne if need be.
Opportunity for Out-of-Body
Flying in dreams is preparation for astral projection. The feelings of
floating and soaring are already known. It's simply a case of shifting the
scenery. Instead of a fantasy landscape, a change of consciousness provides
awareness of one's own bedroom. Being stuck in the thrall of sleep paralysis
may be scary at first, but the flyer soon realizes she can escape that heavy,
frozen feeling. By relaxing and reaching back in her mind for the memory
of gravity-free movement, she can retrieve the sensation of lightness that
enables lift. If she exchanges her serious concern for levity, then out-of-body
she will float. Lightheartedness is the key.
Practice for Physical Life
Wouldn't it be great to fly like Superman in the physical world! Well,
perhaps someday, someone will find the key to unlock that secret. In the
meantime, flying is still good practice. It provides the self esteem to
stand up and face problems in waking life. It models movement for the physical
body. Since the sensations of flight in dream derive from sensations felt
in daily life, the dream can do an about-face and inspire still more movement,
now backed by the confidence and control that comes from practice in a safe
arena. Now matter if the goal is to roll a scooter, ride a horse, drive
a car or yes, even fly a plane, the dream builds experience for such activities.
It is a first-rate, custom made, flight simulator.
Questioning the Status Quo
Go with the flow. A wonderful feeling. A heart-swelling ecstasy. An effortless
ride. When you have no place special to go, catching the wind and taking
it wherever it may go is the name of the game. But supposing the flow isn't
sending you where you wish? Is it sucking you downward, shooting you upward
at too fast a pace? Then you may wonder whether the flow is flowing in your
best interest. Perhaps it is taking you exactly opposite your optimum path.
Flows come from all sorts of sources: illness and heath, peer pressure and
support, enthusiasm and warped will power. Only some of these are worth
your while. The flyer may catch the latest surge of energy if she wish,
but she is no victim of circumstance. She has the awareness to wonder where
and why and how and with whom she is going. And the determination to stop
and consider other options.
Religious Revolution and Reality Tests
In the annals of religious history, many a dreamer has been swept up
by compelling forces and flung skyward to serve almighty purposes. Should
the journey be rapturous, the dreamers may well respond with adoration and
awe. But their own wills and intentions are sacrificed on the altar of passive
surrender. Is this an admirable trait in a spiritual seeker? A spontaneous
surprise may offer little choice. But the dreamer has the power to awake
from the enthrallment of sleep; to wonder, to compare, to judge. There are
many religious paths, none of which are exempt from reality tests. Am I
being swept along by gods or ghouls, angels or demons, by aliens or fairy
folk, by friend or foe? Must I rely on others to reach enlightenment or
do I have some say about the route of my Hero's Journey? When the spirit
learns to fly on her own, her inner myth can't help but change. At this,
the dawning of the air-age of Aquarius, willful flying contains the seed
of religious revolution.
Sports and Skills of the Super Hero
Dream researcher Paul Tholey used lucid dreams to help perfect his skateboarding
skills. Then he taught other dreamers to practice the skills of their sports
in-dream, too. One dreamer was an Olympic equestrian. In order to improve
skiing prowess, Tholey suggested that another dreamer practice, but not
within his dream body. The dreamer flew along out-of-body, at the end of
his skis. Flying helps the physical athlete, but it also keeps the mind
flexible. Players of chess, board games and virtual reality toys are flyers.
Flying is a sort of dream air-obics. Many video games require an active
mind and quick reflexes as the player speeds from one onrushing scene to
the next. Flying is no sport for couch potatoes! Even if physically immobilized
or confined to bed, a dreamer with a strong and flexible mind can soar like
a Super Hero.
Traveling through Time and Space
If you wished to travel in Wonderland, how would you get there? Fall
down a rabbit's hole? The ability to fly might come in very handy just then.
There are all sorts of tight spaces that can be traversed with ease if you
have the ability to move in a unique direction. Not just forward and back,
but down into the depths of the underworld, up from dungeons and despair
and through long dark tunnels out into the light. I've always thought that
time travel would be most practical if it took place suspended in the air.
Less traffic up there. In dream, if I travel in time, I usually teleport
or go via space vehicle. Either way is an opportunity to try out variations
of the flying theme.
Understanding a Universal Symbol
Since flying dreams have been found down through history and across the
world wide, flying has a solid claim to be called a "universal"
symbol. But is it an archetype? It seems Carl Jung's primary experience
aloft was a vision induced by medication. Floating happened to Jung; he
didn't happen to it. He was fascinated by UFOs and little girls who turn
into birds, but they were objectified symbols at a safe distance away. The
most popularized flying myth is Icarus, the guy who fell out of the sky.
Why not Daedalus, the fellow who actually got it right? Hmmm? When I went
searching the annals of ancient legend and myth for tales of flight, there
wasn't a lot of positive adventures to pick from. So I looked further and
found examples in Chinese fairy tales, African-American folk tables, American
tall tales, Japanese comic books, British science fiction and, most especially,
the children's section of the library. Flying expands your world, in more
ways than one.
Visiting Virtual Reality
Ever seen VR images on TV? Virtual reality is a series of connected images,
a simulation of life on the move. In a VR helmet, you can visit locations
(such as a mimic of Mars) with all the visual reality of a physical trip,
but without the danger and expense of going IRL (in real life). Or you can
inhabit realms of fancy. In VR your point of view "flies" from
one angle, altitude and attitude to another. Whether fantastic or realistic,
flying provides unique perspectives no earth-bound individual can have.
Just like dreams can do. Dreams are our own personal virtual theaters of
the mind. In VR you can fly through walls. In dreams you can fly through
earth, air, fire and water. Shrink to the size of a molecule, grow to the
size of a galaxy. Have experiences you've never "dreamed" of having,
here in waking life. Flying is a fairly comfortable introduction to even
more extraordinary dreams.
Wallop of Wonder
The first experience of any "big" dream can shake you to the
core. It's a sensory, mental, emotional explosion of feeling that impresses
you forever. It remains with you in the present to serve as an inspiration
for the future. And as a standard against which you judge all new occurrences.
Unfortunately, succeeding experiences may never come close to equaling the
first. Perhaps that's why some folks treat a flying dream as something sacred,
something they never dare repeat. It would diminish the awe and amazement
of the original impact, they presume. Now, that's just sad. It's true -
no flight will be exactly like another. It could be better! For me, one
of the greatest joys of flying is the view of the passing landscape. A dream
scene can outrank any VR or physical version with its vivid color, sparkling
essence and overall sense of realness that is unlike any other. I've lost
count of the times I've called out spontaneously, "Oh, how beautiful!
Oh, how wonderful!" while I watched a scene unfold in all its heart-filling
glory as I flew over, around and through it. Words of astonishment rise
like an underground torrent and gush right out of me. You may have heard
of repeating nightmares, but what about repeating big dreams? That's what
flying dreams are for me.
X-trasensory X-perience
What's the most common psychic dream? These days, it's likely to be the
preview of an air disaster. Airplane and space shuttles top the list that
includes prophetic dreams of Apollo, Challenger and the New York World Trade
Center. The theme of flight permeates of our culture down to the depths
of our dreams. Sometimes such dreams have great practical benefit: some
folks have been warned away from taking airplane flights that later ended
in tragedy. But there are also plenty of positive examples of flying psi:
clairvoyant, empathic, telepathic and mutual as well as precognitive. If
you want to visit another person in-dream, then at least one of you has
to travel. Mutual dreamers often use the premiere method of locomotion,
the out-of-body experience. When you move into extraordinary dream space,
where the unknown is the rule rather than the exception, being able to fly
will get you out of potential trouble spots and shift your paradigm. It
can change the way you view psi phenomena over all. Instead of a prisoner
of prophetic fate, you rescue your own destiny and place it back in your
hands.
You and Your Dreaming Self
What do you actually do in your dreams. Or, I should say, what does your
dreaming self do? Because, if you are a flyer sans vehicle, you know darn
well that you, as physical self, aren't doing the flying. The "you"
of waking reality isn't the "you" of dream space. Never in waking
life have I become invisible, shrunk to a pinpoint of light or metamorphosed
into a bird. My dreaming self has that sort of fun, although vicariously,
I come along for the ride. It's as if we lead parallel lives, each with
their own unique properties. They might be separate lives, if we pay no
attention to one another. When we learn to become aware of each other, though,
we can develop a reciprocal relationship. I suggest new ideas; she may or
may not carry them out. Instead of always asking her to serve my needs,
I ask, "What would you like to do?" I provide new building blocks
of vivid memories for her to shape the dream; she provides me with a life
of magic. Who gets the best of the trade? We do!
Zero In, Zone Out
If I had to pick just one benefit of dream flying, it would be this:
I am more. As a flyer, my concepts of both waking and dreaming reality have
been radically altered. I live in a wider, richer universe than even before.
It's multi-leveled meaning, not surface symbol. I feel myself to be bigger;
that is, there's more substantial me to fill me up. Fulfillment or enlightenment
aren't mental concepts to write about, with which to play literary mind
games. They are first hand experiences of beingness. Sometimes I wonder
if folks who write about extraordinary spiritual, mental, psychic or emotional
highs have ever actually been there. Imagining them is not the same has
having them. I wonder what would happen if we could separate speculation
about reality from reality itself.
But that's just speculation. Guessing, theorizing, writing, talking.
And talking. And talking. And talking... They're flimsy substitutes for
the real thing. So time to stop simulating sleep and start sleeping. Pleasant
flights!
Zzzzz. |
OOOOO |