Posts Tagged ‘dream analysis’

Fist

Graspingness, selfishness, anger, arrogance, aggressiveness. tension. See Hand

Five Fifth

The alchemists called this quintessence, because it arises from the other four elements. It symbolises the human, due to two arms, two legs and head, as in a five pointed star. It is the unity that arises from the four elements, or aspects of self. Five may also represent your hand or foot. Mostly the symbol of man incarnated in a physical body, and functioning therein. Here, all four aspects of being are expressing in a fifth quality, physical life and consciousness.

The astrological sign is Leo, the king. The fifth house of the horoscope relates to children or offspring, and Leo rules the heart. See: Numbers.

Because the five pointed star looks like the human body five is sometimes used to depict yourself or your body – either that or personal consciousness in your body. It might also link with the hand. Five is sometimes called the number of marriage because it unites all the previous numbers – 1+4 and 2+3. It could also refer to the five senses, which might appear in some form in your dreams.

Five may at times represent an immediate change in your situation, or something divided by five. Because it connects with our fingers and toes, five may be associated with expression of yourself into activity or movement.

Numbers can have a personal or symbolic significance. For instance you may have had three children, so the number three in a dream about children could be connected with your feelings or fears about them. So a number may refer to a particular year of your life; the number of a house; the months or years that have passed since an important event or relationship; your family group – or it could have a general significance such as indicated in language – i.e. three’s a crowd; seventh heaven; nine days wonder, etc.

Idioms: a fifth wheel; as useless as a fifth wheel; fifth business; fifth column; bat five hundred; five o’clock shadow; Group of Five; high five; in the pipe five by five; take five; The Group of Five/The Reginal; five star hotel; nine to five life

Useful questions:

What memories or associations do I have with five?

Are there memories of importance from my fifth year or fifth grade?

The pentacle usually has a circle around it, and this depicts separation – the human sense of isolation – do I feel this?

See Secrets of Power Dreaming – Processing Dreams – Life’s Little Secrets

Flag

This can represent pride, either as ones connection with the group as in nationalism, or as an individual. The flag is also used to depict occasions of rejoicing such as marriage or victory, or mourning as with someone’s death.

Flags can be used to signal a message or an event, and a white flag says ‘surrender’. But it depends what the flag is and what you associate with it.

Flag at half mast definitely has a connection with death or a project that doesn’t work well – but it can be the death of a project or hope as well as a person.

Flags are planted to show success as when reaching the top of Everest, or in claiming and occupying land, so this might suggest your experience of entering new territory in yourself or life, or succeeding in reaching a difficult goal. Flags are also used to give signals or when joining in a celebration.

Useful questions and hints:

What is the flag being used for or signifying in the dream?

What feelings do I experience or are suggested in the dream?

Do any events such as a gathering or celebration suggest the significance?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions – Edgar Cayce

Flames

Life itself – our life as it moves through experience leaving only memories; the mystery of consciousness underlying our personality. Flames can also indicate passion or anger. See: fire; candle; fireman.

Although a flame is very real you cannot grasp it. In a similar way you can’t grasp your own life or consciousness. So flames sometimes show the burning flame of personal awareness that leaves only ashes behind. Flames can also be an expression of love, passion or anger.

Sometimes a flame, a passion, a love, is passed on through the generations.

Flames can be warming or destructive, as can be your life. So a flame thrower could indicate destructive emotions directed at someone.

People like Victor, the young boy raised by animals in France, and studied by Dr. Itard, never attain self-awareness. Lacking human contact in childhood they do not develop a human personality. They have never been handed that mysterious gift that transforms them from an animal lacking self-awareness into a person. The absence of human contact meant they were never given that precious mystery that constitutes the human soul – i.e. conscious decision making and self-awareness..

This mysterious gift from one human to another is often symbolised by a flame or light. We are given a soul by those who share themselves with us. Perhaps through their act of accepting us a fellow human. This divine spark, like the flame from another lit candle, becomes ours personally as we live our life. We can pass that gift on to others by letting our light, or flame, fall into their lives. The Christian mystery of baptism is when we are ritually given a name and are accepted as a human person in the society of our birth. Of course this is a formalised dramatisation of the mysterious process of passing on the flame of self awareness – the soul. But the lit candle, lighting others is a beautiful symbol of this. The flame itself may represent the life, the mystery which, although we make it ours by living it, is beyond us, is universal, like the flame that can light a thousand other candles. It remains individual and collective all at the same time.

That mysterious flame is as old as human beings. It is a mystery no one really understands yet. So we represent it in religion with various symbols. Nevertheless it is the common daily bread of our life experience. If some care not to acknowledge that flame and its strangeness that is their loss. They never kneel before it and bathe in its depths, and gain from it the sharing in its eternal life. For beyond our personal colouring of the flame, it has a universal life, touching all beings, gathering them into itself. Without some wonder in us we never share, through it, the community with all other beings. This is the meaning of the sacrament of communion using the bread and wine.

Example: Now we are very close. His shirt is off. He has beautiful golden soft skin. I want to caress it. I’m laying very close to him. He says, “I see your candle. Is it the one I gave you?” I look at it. It’s a beautiful candle, a soft fragrance, pretty color, with lovely colored flames. I say, “No I burned your candle. It’s all gone. But I got this one because it’s like your candle and I liked it.” I am embarrassed because I am indirectly telling him I like him.

Flames coming from the head: We all have areas of the brain that are seldom developed – you know the old story of only 10% of our brain is used. The flames show that in some way you are awakening those higher brain functions. You may at times while awake feel a tickling or tingling feeling on the top of your head, and that may be a sign of the awakening.

Idioms: Baptism of fire; between two fires; fire up; go through fire and water; play with fire; under fire; add fuel to the flames; old flame; the old illness/love flared up.

 

Useful questions and hints:

Is this flame acting as light, as warmth or destruction?

In what was is the flame being used?

How am I responding to the flame?

See Colour and Energy in Dreams – Clicking On – The Dream as a Code

Flashlight

See: Searchlight.

Flesh

If this is human flesh it suggest the vital life, or processes that keep you alive. It is something that is essentially an expression of the person whose flesh it is. It might in some dreams suggest a part of yourself so linked with another person, that if they go, that part of you feels as if it is torn out. Flesh is the most sensitive part of you, so your feelings. It is also bodily life, so the urges of the body. See: Body; Meat.

Example: as I do so notice there is a hole in the back of my hand, in and out of which wasps are flying. With great shock I look in the hole and see wasps eating my flesh away, so my hand is almost hollow. I awake with the feeling of being old and decrepit.

The dreamer explored his dream and said about it: In looking at my hand I realised there was a hole in my life. Just prior to the dream I had experienced a lot of anxiety about whether my marriage was breaking up. The dream made me realise that niggling thoughts and emotions were eating away at my self confidence leading me to feelings of being near to the scrap heap, having outlived my usefulness.

Example: Have I known you? Then I have known Death. Have I betrayed any? Then I have betrayed Death. And its face is beauty for it is all things – naked, udressed of flesh, leafless, exposed, unclad Life – without the garment that our selfhood is. Bathing me in regret that I had to often forgotten my love for the Naked Beauty.

The message of the above is that at death we take of our flesh like clothes we have worn and are now naked and pristine. The Naked Beauty.

Example: I wonder whether you grew up in a rather orthodox or religious environment, because you seem to be still having a battle with it. You are trying to become independent from it, but that is difficult because it is the past pattern that is difficult to get out of your flesh. I put it in that language because past environments are in some way built into our body, and to change them takes work.

I have seen in several dreams that if we are born from parents who for generations have lived in a particular religious or political belief, it becomes a part of their structure. I liken it to the way that wasps were at one point in evolution independent creatures, but gradually became a colony and their bodies changed. So to some extent our bodies/flesh change through being exposed to certain beliefs or environments.

Example: Now the imagery gets more specific and I watch/experience an exquisite Japanese ritual of meeting, touch, massage, that is leading to sex. Several young women are with me in a large bath. They are not trying to be directly sexual, but are getting close, touching me, massaging, allowing me to feel their flesh near me. The beauty of it is in understanding how wise and artistic the whole approach is. I see it is to lead my awareness out of being bound by everyday affairs. It diffuses concentration on particulars of external life and gradually opens my senses to feel and allow pleasure. It helps the mind to drop fixation on externals and allow it to drop boundaries until one senses oneself as in a semi dream state. This allows sex to be not just a particular thing; not just a physical penetration or being entered, but something that connects you emotionally and mysteriously with another person, and to the huge mystery that is that person and oneself. Ones partner is not simply a human being, but the very essence of the female principle, merging with the male principle.

Example: I remember a dream told me by a friend who had been fasting for two weeks. She dreamt that she was eating the flesh of her thighs.

Condition of the flesh: We know a lot about a person by seeing their skin. So the flesh in your dream can suggest health or sickness, male or female, warm or cold, healthy or sicketc

Marks on the flesh: Because the flesh is what your life has created, your fate, or karma, any marks suggest something that you carry with you as your history, fate, or destiny. Some experience has marked you. The story of Cain and Able illustrates this.

Flesh eaten away: Feeling that life is draining you, or you are under great stress.

Bloody flesh: Sometimes during menstruatioin one dreams of seeing bloody flesh – not necessarily ones own.

Idioms: flesh out; in the flesh; pound of flesh

Useful questions and hints:

What does the flesh communicate to me – desire – repugnance – health?

Is there a particular sensation or desire connected to the flesh – is so what?

If the flesh is hut or injured, in what way and how does that refer to me?

See Emotions and Mood in Dreams –  Life’s Little Secrets – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Float Floating

Often appears in dreams where the dreamer is getting close to someone of the opposite sex and some aspect of sexual feeling is present. At times it can be an experience of awareness expanding beyond the usual boundaries of the persons beliefs or of their physical senses. Also it often happens in flying dreams or in lucid dreaming.

Floating away from being practical or grounded, feeling light headed or ‘floaty’. Descent may show coming ‘down to earth’ or a feeling of setback.

On water: Relaxation; opening to power beyond the ego; being indecisive; being carried along by events. To be moved by passing feelings instead of by inner purpose. To be hopeful and buoyant. See: Flying

Earth floating off it: Losing connection with one’s roots of family or culture. This may also be occasionally shown as being on a high building.

Floating away: If you mysteriously and are perhaps white or glowing, it can represent feelings about a dead person who has ‘floated away’ from physical life.

Floating on air: This relate to your mind and mental attitude, idealism or lack of it. It may show how you manage to escape from ‘reality’, or painful things such as shyness, by thinking beautiful thoughts, or creating a mental world inside yourself through such things as reading or meditation. In a positive sense it shows an ability to change your state of mind at will.

Example: My boyfriend and I were at a local beach. I had been there before but he hadn’t. It was at a dam situated just up from the beach. I was floating in the air about ten feet above him, and he was dead. He had drowned. Since I had this dream we have broken-up. I still love him very much. T.H.

Example: ‘We were both shy of each other but as the dance went on I found I could move so well to his steps that we felt like one, it was so effortless that it felt like floating.’ Heather.

Example: After a transition that I don’t remember, I was floating in darkness wondering what was happening to me. I was going through some personal crisis I did not understand. Though I was not particularly aware of my (dreamed) body, I felt myself drift up. Sud-denly I entered the light, which I happily recognized. I knew then that I was again in the presence of God, and that this time I had died. The light was brilliant and filled my vision. There was a point above the level of my eyes from which the light appeared to radiate.  George Gillespie

Idioms: a pine float; float your boat; back teeth are floating

Useful questions and hints:

Am I experiencing hopeful and buoyant feelings, as in ‘floating on air’?

Am I floating through a situation without clear direction or purpose?

Does this indicate sexual involvement or feelings?

See Secrets of Power Dreaming – Jesse Watkins Enlightenment – Edgar Cayce

Flocks

Any flock of animals or birds suggests the feelings of conformity or unconscious social drives that move you. Or to follow blindly. In Christianity the flock is said to be cared for by an abiding spirit of love. In some drams this is felt.

Flood

You can be flooded by water, by emotion, of fear, a flood of energy, flooded by sense impressions, by sexual feelings, hatred or anger, flooded with feelings and memories.

Depression could be seen as an inundation of negative emotions; anxiety a flood of fear; an overflow of usually unconscious or uncontrolled feelings and urges into consciousness. The flood can of course be of positive feelings like love. In any case, floods can be enriching to growth if handled well. In many flood dreams it is positive energy the dreamer is anxious about.

This usually indicates powerful and difficult emotions causing you to feel swamped and threatened by their intensity. One can also  be ‘flooded’ with anxiety, a flood of fear, or even an overflow of usually unconscious or uncontrolled feelings and urges into consciousness.

The flood can of course be a release of positive feelings like love. In any case, floods can be enriching to growth if handled well. In many flood dreams it is positive energy the dreamer is anxious about.

In any case, floods can be enriching to growth if handled well. In many flood dreams it is positive energy the dreamer is anxious about. See: Deluge; Avoid Being Victims

A flood dream for Artemidorus indicated misfortune in litigation or ill tempered masters; and it has virtually the same meaning for the Africans.

If you have a tendency toward fluid retention a flood dream could be showing that, so drop your salt intake and take some green tea which flushes you out. This often shows as strange feelings  in the head, headaches or even migraines.

Flooded house: This might indicate you have water retention or health problems or else that a tremendous emotional upset has happened.

Example: So when I imagine standing at that spot I am flooded with feelings and memories. I am aware of the changes that have gone on over the many years I have stood in that place.

Example: The family image would be tarnished if feelings trapped beneath the surface heated up and became visible. Mary was stunned by these comments but recognised their validity. Suddenly she found herself flooded with previously repressed memories about specific incidents of physical abuse and emotional trauma from her childhood. These were memories that had been totally blocked from awareness during the intervening years.

Useful questions and hints:

Do I feel as if I might be overwhelmed of late – if so what by and can I avert it?

If this is positive energy how am I expressing or sharing it?

What power of change is rising around and in me?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Edgar Cayce – Martial Art of the Mind

Floor Floors

Your support, your physical life. You can be floored or overcome. Lying on the floor and finding it difficult to move represents being overpowered by gravity and life experiences. Basic things. Humility.

The floor also represents basic attitudes and confidence. The floor often appears without much emphasis in many dreams. This suggests it is depicting the present situation, attitudes, feelings or environment you are in that you barely notice. For instance first floor or second floor would suggest a different situation in which the events of the dream are taking place.

This points to your basic attitudes, principles and confidence; what supports you and you may take for granted, such as health, good will of others, the house you live in. The different floors of a house or building indicate different levels of your body or mind – such as physical sensation and process at the base; sexual and emotional level; thought and speech; intellectual understanding and thought; expanded awareness beyond the body senses. But the floors can also suggest different departments of your life. See: House.

In the US the first floor is the ground floor in the UK, and so on up.

Ground floor: Practical everyday life, sexuality; hips and legs.

First and other middle floors: Internal needs, rest, sleep, hungers; the trunk. Also the emotions and ‘heart’, so relates to feelings about other people and relationships.

Floor and floorboards: Basic attitudes and confidence; what supports you and you may take for granted, such as health, good will of others, the house you live in. The first floor or second floor would suggest a different situation in which the events of the dream are taking place.

Top floor or attic: Thinking; the conscious mind; memory; the head. Sometimes depicts higher awareness that sees beyond the limitations of our senses. Occasionally contains something frightening. See: Attic.

Example: I am in an unknown old building with unsafe floors. I vaguely feel it belongs to my long dead father. Around me are rats, which have young. I am hysterical because they keep multiplying. People with me, unknown, although my husband is there, don’t seem to care about them. I usually wake shouting because one of the rats touches me. I am not frightened of rats when awake. Dorothy C.

This clearly shows Dorothy’s feeling of lack of support. The dream goes on to say the connection is with the long dead father. This is unclear because Dorothy has not yet made it conscious what the fear is that arose in herself from her relationship with her father.   Useful questions and hints: Is the floor stable or sinking? What is my relationship with the floor in my dream? What ‘floor’ am I on and how des that relate to my life? See Avoid Being Victims – Nothing Can Hurt You in Your Dreams – Processing Dreams

Flower Flowers

Growing or growth, the opening out of abilities or feelings, as in flowering. Flowers can stand for a type of awareness, or faculty of the mind, like the Chakras of Indian philosophy. Also a sense of beauty, love, emotions. Flowers are used to express your feelings, as in giving red roses. And to lose virginity is called defloration. So the context of the dream is important.

Sense of beauty; flowering of a feeling quality or ability. Flowers are the sexual organs of plants and can indicate your own sexual feelings or organs, depending on shape. Flowers can also mean transitory beauty of life – or your youth, or the flowering of our ripeness to live, love and reproduce, and its passing.

So they can indicate a young woman’s sexual flowering – not just her sexual prowess, but her wonderful flowering to womanhood. Woman hood is to be a balancing and caring opposite to maleness. Being a woman means that she is more in touch with her emotions than many men because of her hormonal activity; she is more at home with caring professions such as nursing and social intervention, with children. She is the Great Mother whether she has born children or not, because she is the creator, who even if she does not bear her own children has the power to create. It is her innermost secret. See hysterectomy

Flowers have qualities too. Some are gaudy and showy, others shy and tiny. Some flowers call to you from a distance with their perfume, others repel in the same way. So your dream flower may be expressing subtle qualities.

Example: ‘So for the third time I held the woman and made love. The woman’s vagina was like a flower. I don’t mean to look at, but in physical sensation. My penis felt like it was penetrating petals of flesh and touching with great pleasure a central receptive area. I was left with the feeling of being able to make love again and again without any negative effects. It was a very positive and healthy feeling.’ John T.

John is feeling confident about his sexual drive. Although a powerful drive, subtle feelings and fears have an intense influence not only on the pleasure of sex, but also the response of the physical organs. The relationship with the penis and sex act in one’s dream shows what fears, hurts or attitudes are influencing the sexual flow.

Also: Feelings of pleasure; youthfulness; time of flowering.

Bud: Penis or vagina in the sense of growing male or female qualities.

Bloom: The bloom of a flower is usually either about the beauty of an opening heart, of feelings, of female sexuality and love, or about something coming into fullness, such as a creative idea, a creative work etc.

Flowering bulbs: Like a seed a bulb can point to a potential that can grow and flower in the right environment. But unlike seeds, a bulb carries a rich store of experience from the past. So it can depict things you have done in the past that still have potential for growth or fruition at the time of the dream. This suggests you have an enormous amount within you that has never been known before, just like a seed which has never produced all the potential of its growth, so appears to be a small dried up insignificant piece of matter. This potential needs the right environment and conditions to express. The conditions are now right for it, and it is emerging.

Giving flowers: Giving love and tenderness.

Many flowers growing: Feelings of well being and relaxation.

Dead flowers: Death or old age; dying love or abilities.

Giving dead flowers: Wishing someone dead or out of one’s life; dead feelings.

Lotus and Lily: As these grow from mud, through water to the air and light, they sometimes represent our wholeness and growth, showing our connection with the universal as we develop individually.

Rose: Love; the flowering of personal qualities, your soul or self. Sometimes the vagina. colours of roses

When the shape or number of petals is featured: A flowering of a new aspect of the Self. See: castrate; growth; plants; shapes.

 

Useful questions and hints:

Is it a particular flower – if so what do I associate with that flower?

What type of flower is this and what does it express?

What feelings do I experience in the dream and what does the context of the dream suggest about them?

Is this about sexual love or about the transitory nature of physical beauty?

See Using Symbols to Change Life Problems – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Martial Art of the Mind

Fluid

Water is the great solvent, so the meaning will depend just on what fluid is dreamt of – medicine – poison – cleansing fluid? Put a word to it to help understanding. But fluid is also the beginning of life – the sexual fluid.

Basic to fluid is that it can take any shape and can flow. So see: and Water. See: Flow; Water

As we try to grow and develop our inner self, the first thing we have to do is to build a shed/cabin in the inner world. That is our first stable thing in a very fluid and shape shifting world. From there we can start to enter into what are very strange surroundings when seen from our experience in the body. It means that our sense of identity of ego is a very fragile thing and one needs to have great ego strength to venture into worlds o fexperience that question everything we know.

Also we go through the whole of evolution in the womb, from simple cell growth, through a creature with gills living under water, to readiness for an air breathing mammal. We carry these changes in our brain. So the amniotic fluid is often met in out dreams, which are often about our life lived before we developed self awareness. See Levels of the Brain

The fluid in our dreams can have magic properties like healing or radically changing things.

Example: I had climbed through a whole bunch of metal tunnels and shafts with another girl. She kept messing up and putting us in danger. After we made it out my father applauded us on our success. Awhile later I was with the girl again and was talking about what happened when I noticed something strange. The miniature x-ray, which I conveniently held, showed that the girls’ heart was different then a humans. I immediately started to tell her it was okay, I wouldn’t tell anyone when she killed me. It happened mid sentence and I would feel my body being filled with something else (fluid, or maybe melted?). After my death the dream carried on and I could see my own body mutilated with the eyes melted out in almost a green acid. For some reason I woke up not upset over what had happened, but with understanding and indifference.

The dream shows a period in which you matured and grew up. The girl wasn’t messing up, but purposely putting you in danger to see how you handled it. Obviously you did well as you got approval from the father you carry in you. The x-ray was there because during the trials you had developed a whole new way of seeing life, and the girl was actually a part of your own self. I believe the acid effect was probably due to you having developed this new view of life and to know and feel a difference in your ‘heart’. And of course any real change in you kills the old you, eats it away because the new view cannot exist along side it. And death is usually a normal part of dream life. It happens several times in our development – the death of our child self as it becomes adolescent; the death of adolescent self as it merges into adulthood.

Example: I also remember the weird fact that there was a plastic tub full of water in the hospital room in which I had given birth. Inside the tub was a sealed plastic bag containing amniotic fluid. Its form kept changing between the fluid and the placenta. I’ve tried, with no luck, to make sense of these dreams. Any more insight would be greatly appreciated.

Example: I dreamt I step into fluid, fluid is warm, I lay in it, I can breath under it. . I am a seal (the baby who can emerge from the water). This is the way, of lightness. . I want out. . just fluid. Hold me here forever. The essence of life. You can live and dwell in this. . I want out. . . I ‘m still in the bubble, but standing up. . fairy land, sparkle & images. . uncertain. fluid stuck to me still attached. Reproductive organs.

Useful questions and hints:

What type of fluid is this and what might it do or be used for?

Is this a fluid I know – if so what do I use it for or associate with it?

What is happening to or in the fluid?

What do you do with the sexual fluid in your dream?

See Energy Sex and Dreams – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – The power of Habits

Flute

Harmony of the feelings. The expression of your best, or the spontaneous expression of your unconscious. Some folklore and mystics say that God plays us like a flute. The flute can also, due to its shape, have a sexual significance. So it could be the play of passion.

Fly

See: insects; flying; flies; airplane.

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Flying – not in airplane

This has many levels of significance, depending on the dream. It can mean you are flying or fleeing, from something you find difficult to face. This is usually something in your life you try to get away from by using distractions like social life, media entertainments, reading a book or watching a film, becoming over idealistic, religious, or living in the clouds of fantasy. See airplane

When flying we do not have our feet on the ground and so it can suggest either that you have found a positive expression to your energy, or that you have lost a practical grasp on what is happening. The positive flying when you are not fleeing from something, often indicates independence and the ability to deal well with your emotions or fears.

Example: I dream I was in my bed and had a magic carpet that I could fly on and I flew off with my dog.

Flying, in a plane, or without it, can also symbolise attempts to gain a view of what lies ahead of you in the future, or your potential. From the air we can see ahead, and back. We quickly review where we are heading, and the possibilities of our possible directions.

But flying does not necessarily mean movement, for in dreams flying indicates that you are in control of your fears and urges so you can hang in space.

Example: ‘I was floating atop a tree near houses and a rising walkway. I was saying to people around the tree that I had found something wonderful. Reaching out my hand I told them they could join me if they accepted this possibility in themselves. Some thought it was a publicity campaign, but were enjoying the spectacle. A few reached out and were immediately with me, until there were about six of us, men and women. We joined hands, experiencing a most amazing sense of well being. Then we slowly and effortlessly flew to a great height, leaving a trail of coloured smoke which could be seen for miles. It was to demonstrate the triumph of the human spirit. We then descended and were going somewhere else to show others.’ Margareta H.

There is a negative side to flying which depicts how we try to move away from internal trauma or fear by disassociating our feelings and mind from reality. We may do this by constantly reading books, watching television, or by internally deadening our feelings and body sensations. Thus some victims of sexual abuse dream of flying as an escape from their internal pain. Willa’s dream below expresses her own fear of her father who abused her, and shows how she attempted to escape this fear by ‘flying’.

The example below illustrates how much will, effort and learning can be involved in flying in dreams. This aspect of flying connects with the gaining of independence and the expression of one’s potential. Adler saw flying dreams suggestive of confidence and ability to solve present life problems. They portray the overcoming of obstacles and the people who have them are positively directing their life. The positive side of flying almost certainly depicts the ability to hold a steady state of mind against the difficulties of life. The negative side of flying shows a retreat from such difficulties.

 Example: I was held prisoner by an ‘evil scientist’ who appeared as an older white man, short, and wearing a white lab coat. We were in a room that looked like a laboratory high up in a tower. He seemed to want to conduct some kind of painful experiment on me. My fear was immense. I tried to escape by flying out of the only window in the room. I did fly out, but he came after me and pulled me back inside. Willa. Quoted from Sexual Dreams by Gayle Delaney published by Piatkus.

Example: ‘I was in a building with a group of people. I was being chased and suddenly fly up in the air to escape my pursuers.’ Michael O.

Example: I often dreamed I was being chased by boys or men. I would suddenly take off like a helicopter and fly away, sometimes narrowly escaping from my pursuer. M.C

Learning independence, and the ability to make decisions despite what others feel, may be done by ignoring our own feelings. This may be achieved by always keeping busy; never having quiet moments alone; filling empty periods with entertainment or company; smoking, drinking alcohol, taking sedatives or tranquillisers; rigid positive thinking. Then, as Michael does in his dream, we fly from issues we are pursued by instead of resolving them. This may lead us to the extremes of being either rigidly materialistic, or as rigidly ethereal. In either case we lose contact with everyday human issues, and may begin to have the ‘escape’ type flying dream, or out of body experiences. See Nothing Can Hurt You in Your Dreams

We are all born into a certain paradigm or ‘reality’. At one time, part of the ‘reality’ for most Britain’s was that anyone without a white skin was a heathen or savage. At other times the ‘reality’ has been that anything heavier than air could not fly. Meteors did not exist because theory discounted them – and so on. To break free of such paradigms and from the ‘gravity’ or hold our parental and social authority has on us, and to find a measure of emotional and intellectual freedom, takes the sort of will, effort and learning depicted in some flying dreams. See Archetype of the Paradigm 

‘During childhood I learned to fly in a long sequence of dreams. Each linked very clearly to the last. I would go to the nearby churchyard and in the beginning I would run along as fast as I could then jump and just manage to extend the jump by a great effort of will. In subsequent practices I managed to gradually extend the jump for many yards; and eventually I could skim along indefinitely. The next stage though was to extend my height, and this took enormous effort of will and body. I made active swimming motions and climbed, but only held altitude with great and constant concentration. With further practice still, this clumsy mode of flying was left behind as I learned to use pure motivation, decision or will to lift me into the air and carry me easily and gracefully wherever I wished. At this stage my flying was swift, mobile and without struggle.’

It is important to learn to fly because it is an excellent training for decision making, concentration, pure motivation and perseverance. You can train it first by imagination, by seeing if you can take of and not be afraid of falling/failing.

Flying expresses also the dealing with other internal influences which hold us down, such as self doubt, anxiety, depression.

Example: ‘I was flying. I felt nervous at first that I would fall down, but not afraid. I soon became confident and felt very happy and wanted the sensation to continue. I was flying over a building, could have been a small church, crematorium or graveyard but did not feel afraid or upset. When I woke I lay in bed and tried very hard to keep the feelings with me and, for reasons unknown, I do not wish to forget it.’ Mrs S. M.

In flying, Mrs. S. M. is finding a way to look at death – the graveyard – which gives her a different viewpoint, a different feeling reaction to it, and she doesn’t want to lose that precious newly learned view. In their maturing process, some people learn to see their thoughts and emotions as things they experience rather than what they are. For instance I might feel a failure and thus believe I am indeed a failure. Or I might recognise the feeling of failure as simply an emotion I sometimes have which I can choose a reaction to. This brings the sort of new viewpoint and freedom seen in the above example. See Avoid Being Victims

Flying alone occurs most frequently, showing the independent aspect of flying. But because it often involves our positive feelings of pleasure, flying may depict our sexuality as below, especially aspects of it expressing freedom from social norms and restraints.

Example: ‘I knew I could fly. I picked up one of the young women I felt love for and flew with her. Laughingly I felt like superman, and flew easily.’ Simon W.

Example: I miss my flights. I miss the feel of the wind. Soaring to the closeness of the earth and in full lightless speed into the high sky. Soaring down to touch the brim of the water below and seeing the flights reflections. I miss looking to my left and seeing my flight partner, a beautiful Hawk with beautiful yellow eyes. Never did the Hawk fly ahead nor behind or above nor below. I learned to see far below from high above. And when the flight was over I felt complete. I miss soaring!

Example: Particularly I miss coming alive for the first time – really alive and with a knowing and awareness that was like quicksilver and penetrating. I was flying – out of the heavy almost blind body still lying on the bed, and below me I could see great radiations coming from places on the surface of the earth. Was it prayers reaching out?

Transcendence is also depicted by flying. The tree is Margareta’s personal life. She is at the growing tip, transcending, leaving behind her past. Being high in flight, or on a hill or mountain also represents the action of seeing our life as a whole, having a sense of our overall direction and destiny, our essential self. This frequently gives rise to the drive to give of one’s best to others, as Margareta does in leaving behind a sign – the spire of colour.

Some researchers believe flying dreams often precede lucid dreams. See: lucid dreams; out of body experience. See also: hill; mountain.

Example: As this occurred I had a wonderful sense of being a lovely bird that has been in some way ill all its life. This meant it never flew when the flock took flight. Instead, to deal with its own difficulty it felt feelings of not wanting to fly like the others, of not wanting to be like them and do the meaningless things they do. But with the healing came the realisation I could fly, and I took wing and joined the flock. Now I am a creature of spirit, which I have always been, and I asked the Light to help me learn the ways of ‘flying’ in the spirit.

Another view of flying is that it is a way of exploring one’s own awareness and possibilities.

Example: That night I dreamt I was on the hill behind my old “home” in Amersham. A strong wind was blowing, but it was warm, sunny, and peaceful. Spreading my arms I caught the wind in my short coat and rose up like a kite. Higher and higher I went, and I experimented with diving and gliding. Sometimes I lost the airlift and tumbled over and over, but at no point did I feel fear. I twisted and found the lift again. At one point I rose to an enormous height and saw the earth distant below me.

Then I glided down and approached the field to land. It was near where I used to live near council houses, and was backed right onto the open hillside above two old elm trees. A young girl of about six was playing in the field. As I came in to land she saw me and ran away very frightened. I was gliding in the same direction she was running and called out to her not be frightened. She stopped and I landed. In amazement she looked at me and said, “How did you get to be up there?”

Flying in the clouds: This can either be about a sense of yourself free from the usual limitations of body, of concepts learned in a materialistic culture – or losing touch with your everyday life and escaping into imagination and longings. If it is the first it usually involves recognising that your essential self is not the body or the thoughts and emotions.

Idioms: Fly by night; flying high; send flying.

Useful questions and hints:

If I climbed above the clouds by flying, what sense of myself and the world did I arrive at?

Did I fly to escape from something or someone?

Are there difficulties in flying or is it easy?

Where did I fly to and what did I find?

See More than you Presently Know – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Processing Dreams – Archetype of the Paradigm

 

Flying Saucer

This suggests a change in yourself, or personal growth. It can also indicate becoming aware of something new, or some new aspect of yourself, one that you are not familiar with, and so seems strange or alien. For instance a change might be occurring in the way you relate to people or events.

Our mind has the ability to view our experience as a whole, rather than in parts. What we sense unconsciously in this way is presented to the conscious mind as images such as UFO’s or circles of light. Another way of explaining this is to realise that our conscious self is only a tiny part of the whole process of life active in us. There are amazing potentials in each of us that might only be glimpsed in stress situations. Occasionally this more powerful or bigger side of ourselves breaks through and is experienced as an alien, or great being. Because of the hallucinatory aspect of the dream process, and the fact that in dreaming we see exterior imagery as real, when this breaks through while we are awake, it is often difficult to accept the source of it as our own unconscious. See: Reaction to the unconscious;altered states of consciousness; space; spaceship.

The ball of light or fire: This is a common waking experience as well as dream image. It occurs when the person touches their sense of wholeness as described above. We see this mentioned in the description of Pentecost – the flame on top of the head – and may account for cases of people seeing flying saucers.

Example: ‘A flying saucer dropped a man on our lawn. He was seven feet tall and stood in a ring of light. The sky was vivid pink and a peculiar aeroplane flew over. It was the shape of a cross.’ Mrs A.

The circle, the light, the shape of the cross and the big man, are all symbols of the Self or the huge part of us usually unconscious. It shows an enormous amount of feelings and experiences are trying to surface from deep within you. They are shown as aliens because your present education and experiences are very different from what you are capable of and what you hold within you.

Willian James the famous writer on the mind wrote, “. . . our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. How to regard them is the question—for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region though they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality.”

Example: I was sitting in a deck chair on a beach, with a female partner on my left, also in a deck chair. Behind us were another couple in deck chairs, and behind them yet another couple. So, we were in a line of three sets of two deck chairs. As we were relaxing on the beach, I looked up and saw an astonishing sight. A line of flying saucers moved very quickly across the sky. They were two abreast, and probably about 20 of them. They moved toward me, high up in the sky, and then out of sight behind me.

So, I moved to the couple at the end of the line of a deck chairs. I said to them what a wonderful experience it had been. It was the first time in my life I had ever seen something like that. They shared this enthusiasm, and told me that now I had seen a UFO, I would have many other sightings, and perhaps even encounters. I realised that this couple were also speaking from a fixed attitude. They had somehow classified the event into an already existing opinion they held of UFO’s being some sort of mechanical spacecraft holding aliens. This did not fit my own observation of the event. The things that flew over my head did not appear to be made of any type of metal. They had more of the appearance of living creatures. Also, I had the impression of flagella at the rear, like many living cellular creatures.

Example: At the time a big wave comes crashing in, a flying saucer-like object comes down and skips down the beach and stops at the feet of some people sitting at a picnic table standing in the surf. I sort of walk over there and see a miniature tank emerge from the shallow sea water whose turret turns and begins spraying a liquid on everyone around. I get some of this liquid on me. Everyone listens to my story sort of silently, then they ask me how I feel. I say I feel all right, but I am worried about what was in the liquid. This is an unusually clear dream. It is like I am made to tell the story in the dream as well as experience the events so that I won’t forget any of the details. I feel okay, but different, as if something potentially life-changing has happened to me.

Example: We are doing the dream dance. As we begin to spin faster and faster, it is as if we turn into a flying saucer and whirl into outer space. We come into contact with an awesome source of intelligence. Then we realise that we have never left the ground. What is really happening is that dancing together we are ourselves the higher intelligence, with a power of consciousness that none of us individually can withstand. When we stop dancing, we are left with only a vague nostalgia for a being greater than ourselves.

The ridiculous thing is that here we are searching the heavens for signs of other life forms – all the time seeking physically – but our signals were received two thousand years ago, and sitting right here with us is an ET. But we are so puny minded we cannot even recognise it, or conceive of it. It has to be mechanical or technological (thus our picture of flying saucer is as some sort of mechanical contact between far distant minds) – but the Christ, the part of us that is in contact with a cosmic mind or a great power of love is so advanced in actual life skills – in the real technology of the Cosmos, there is not even a need for a body. See Meetings with Christ

As an example of how our dreams create images that cannot be taken at face value:

Example: This morning I woke up and as I opened my eyes and sat up there was this alien creature there in front of me. I was amazed and felt wonder because it was real and solid and was trying to communicate with me. I felt so much love for this strange creature and its attempts to communicate even though I couldn’t understand what it was trying to say.

Then suddenly a switch must have been tripped inside me and I understood and knew the alien. It was my wife, and she was saying, “Tony, turn over you’e snoring.” I must have been coming from a level where my language centre hadn’t  yet been switched on and I was seeing my wife as a delightful alien.

Example: I saw the creature that had triggered the light to come on, it was a female humanoid alien; she was covered in fur, maybe a greyish colour. As I saw her she knew I had seen her and was very nervous and started to run away. I had the feelings that she had stood at the door seeking shelter, so I called out to her not to be afraid and I would let her into the house.

I did that and she came in and she was a very timid creature, and I felt she needed care and love. I noticed that her face and hands were slightly different to human hands – she had three fingers rather than four. I reached out to touch her breasts and she did not back away.

The dream was very impressive and I felt showed how I had accepted parts of myself never uncovered before. The three fingers showed how a very ancient part of me had been recovered.

See: hallucinations and hallucinogens; satellite; spiritual life in dreams ; spiritual path and dreams; unconscious, the; UFO

Useful questions and hints:

Did I feel fear when confronted by aliens or a flying saucer?

Was there any experience of being lifted up or herded?

How would I describe the meeting with the saucer or aliens?

See Life Changes – Martial Art of the Mind – Jesse Watkins Enlightenment – Processing Dreams