When I was a kid, I routinely dreamed that I was flying; it was very exhilarating, but stopped as I grew older. A few months ago I was reading a book, ‘Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self’, by Robert Waggoner, and remembered those flying dreams.
After just reading a few chapters of this book one day, I went to sleep that night, found myself aware that I was dreaming, and said, “I’m going to fly!”. I flew again - making the very mistake that he mentions in the book, of trying to fly by using your arms, or swimming motions, to lift you up - so my flying was bumbling, not the effortless thing it was in childhood. I realize now that the ‘movement’ properly comes as an impulse from inside, and is a mental/feeling ‘movement’.
The point is that just thinking and ‘intending’ about this can cause you to be ‘awake’ in a dream. One of the most interesting things he talks about in the book is the possibility of ‘asking’ the dream, or people in the dream, questions; trying to find out what the dream is about, or just any old question. Dreaming must be a way of knowing deeper layers of ourselves, can be a problem-solving method, etc. But we generally just let dreams ‘happen’ to us.
I’m sure that most people have had the experience of going to sleep with a depressing problem, and waking up feeling much better about it, or even having found a solution; and then there’s the story of Kekulé and the benzene ‘ring’. That seems to have been more a ‘vision’ from imagination, than a dream; but it seems that we have all sorts of problem solving skills and knowledge that operate or are revealed when the conscious mind is somewhat in abeyance...
Yes, that's a very helpful thing to know.
I also think our dreams are responses to our moods. Sometimes we’re sad b/c of illness, death in the fmily....then dreams reflect that.
Seems to me when you dreamed of flying, you must have been a happy little girl....exuberantly spreading your wings..... fearlessly taking on the whole wide world without trepidation.