Helen – Don’t confuse waking life events – sandstorm – with what the rules of dreams are – for instance, whenever we dream its images are not like real life, because a dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an image like on a cinema screen that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear. So all the things that scare you are simply your own fears projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind.
From the dream point of view, you are facing one of natures tremendous energy releases – your own nature in fact. Storms are caused by cosmic events – the action of the sun, the earth’s cycles influencing the wind. So something important, a force of Life itself is acting on your inner life. You may feel it is something to be avoided, but if you meet it without fighting it, it is your own enormous energy enlarging you. That it is a sand storm says that your life has become stuck in a sterile situation where nothing livng can flourish - a desert.
Luggage can be the habits or attitude, duties, or the emotional environment we have created in our life. It can represent the past we still carry with us; things we can’t let go of in life.
You are obviously still trying to hold on to stuff that the energy in your dream is trying to get rid of. That many people were managing to hold onto their luggage is a statement of what millions do who are not in touch with their own vital life processes. See
http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/Tony