Two Flying dreams

I have a history of flying dreams that don't end well, here are two recent ones - but the second seems a significant development in my psyche as finally it has a happy ending!

A few nights ago I was back in my usual 'flights ending very badly' nightmare. I was on a plane landing in very windy conditions and it was being buffeted around. I looked out the window and we were just a metre from the ground and I thought "phew we are going to make it".

But at the last minute the plane pulled up steeply and from there on I was in a terrible nightmare, a bit like being in a Stephen King movie! I think at one point there was even a clown flying the plane, certainly there was lots of graphic violence. I won't describe the details of this except for one motif that stands out in my memory - a woman being killed by having her head caved in violently with a sledgehammer.

I highlight this detail as I feel this dream is an egoic one, basically to do with armouring developed against a world perceived to be ruled by fear and violence. In some ways I feel embarrassed that I still have this dream, surely have I seen through this fear based experience of things by now?

However as brutal and graphic as the head caving was, I can't help but feel that something was necessarily being destroyed in this action. That even this nightmare with it's brutality, has its Kali like place in uncovering the true self, an expression of the destruction of thought structures perhaps, that keep me attached to fear and suffering.

Because what happened a few nights later was extraordinary ...

A lighter way of flying

I have been taking some wonderful herbs, and in my dream last I met my herbalist. She had constructed a flying machine out of scraps of flowery fabric and hazel poles. She took me for a spin up in the clouds over a beautiful woodland. "Not too high!" I yelled at times, she laughed and we never went to high. Indeed it was a delightful experience.

Next we went up again in a different but similar flying machine. I understood this was one I had made, it still had a very natural and home made feel, but where as the last one was just "like Mary" (my herbalist) the design of this one was very much me. It had broad wings and a triangle like structure at its core.

In the craft were Mary, myself and a man who had joined us. I was in charge of flying this time and we went over woodlands and then the sea. It was a very delightful journey! Then the time came to land the craft and I became uncertain wondering "do I know how to land it, I am not sure that I do?".

I worried that I had not been studious enough studying the manual and perhaps now I was putting my passengers at risk. Still I carried on thinking "how hard can this be?" and just focused moment by moment, on little micro adjustments of my hands and body, each dipping the craft a little lower again and again till we were rushing close by the ground at an exhilerating speed!

In fact it reminded me of the landing during a hang gliding experience I had undertaken some years ago Hang gliding in Rio 2014

I was scared but we landed safely. We were a few fields away from where I intended, but I checked with my passengers and they all seemed quite capable to find their own way to their intended destinations. We had some discussion and then parted ways, I felt very happy.

And upon waking, I am amazed that finally - I have had a good outcome to my flying dream!

The Clown

2 Dreams:

I found myself at some kind of ‘car’ show – maybe it was a BMW event, in any case it was very prestigious. I had sat at the front directly in front of the main speaker of the day, a very prestigious man. I looked up to a big plasma screen and saw that I was ‘in the frame’ right next to the big man – I sat smiling and proud thinking “all of my friends will see me and be impressed”. I saw also that I was young, sitting upright - a very well behaved schoolgirl.

Next it was night-time, after the event described above. I was in bed trying to sleep but I was oh so hot! I tossed and turned and just could not get comfy, I felt suffocated by the big quilt engulfing me but did not seem to want to cast it off.

I started to look round the room from my bed. I was in an old amusement arcade, part of a fair ground. All of the lights were off, except once again for a big flat Plasma screen, a robotic voice chatted away quietly from this and I understood that it was the car designers working late into the night.

I lay on my side, I felt myself breathing, my eyes were (trans)fixed on something in the dark. As the darkness lifted I realised that I was gazing straight into the eyes of a man.

He reclined on the floor opposite me, he seemed tired, exhausted – I wondered why he had just flopped there on the floor and did not make him-self comfortable. I lay on my side and gazed deeper into his eyes. They were silver blue grey, beautiful, so beautiful. As I took in more of him, I realised that his face was painted white - he was a clown. I saw also that he was so very sad and tears started to pour from my eyes.

I sensed somehow that we were meant to have met, I thought about going over and inviting him into my bed. I saw he was big, strong – I wondered why it was that we weren’t together in bed - just the two of us, in that big amusement arcade.

His gaze moved away from mine. I turned over and over some more, feeling still the sadness in his/my heart. My thoughts got distracted though as I began to wonder if the door was locked – didn’t it look open? I wanted to ask the clown to check, but then it occurred to me that he was big, and much stronger than me. What if he decided just to ‘take’ – to rape me? I started to feel terror and thought it best not to go to sleep - at this point I (really) woke up.

Despite the sadness and fear of this dream, I felt as if I had that night met the deepest part of my soul, far deeper than I had ever touched before - I felt privileged to have journeyed so deep into my being to heal the sadness therein.

I understood the clown to be gypsy / itinerant / Irish: the kind of man who would have a horse. I remembered my Dad saying we have Irish ancestry. I remembered also a conversation I had with a female friend about the nature of masculine / feminine power – how young girls dream of / ride a horse (a symbiotic relationship with a living power) and boys dream of cars (a power relationship dominated by control over an inanimate object).

I went back to sleep imagining myself close to the clown; inviting him over, connecting with him, letting him know that he is loved and welcome. Next I dreamt myself lying in bed, my top half naked and exposed - my arms slung in a deeply relaxed posture above my head. My exposed flesh (armpits, breasts) was being gently caressed as I slept, I heard giggling and realized that angels / pixies / fairies were tickling me with red feathers. I felt blessed, loved and deeply happy.