Dreams of flying symbolize the psyche’s movement towards expansion, a striving for new heights or perspectives. The air elemental helps us break away from what is fixed, rooted, concretized and take on eagle eye perspectives. We may feel weightless, and the quality of lightness helps us rise above, whereas before we may have felt chained or weighed down. Sometimes dreams of flying indicate inflation, hubris, or an over extension. In those cases, we may feel ourselves falling from high, rushing back to the earth, needing to find land once again.
Questions to consider:
Does the act of flying feel easy or difficult?
By what means are you flying - on your own, in a plane, etc?
What emotions accompany flying in the dream?
Share your flying dreams in the comments below. I’ll be offering some reflections (utilizing an archetypal and symbolic perspective). Feel free to comment on other dreams if you’re inspired or have an insight to share.
Often when I’m flying there’s this sense of “oh right, I can do this”, like I’d forgotten how to do something as natural as walking or something. Also, many times when I’m flying it’s to get away from something that feels threatening.
What do you think flying represents for you, in that sense? Something that is instinctual, second nature, especially in response to overwhelming or threatening elements. It could be the ability to zoom out, get space, dissociate, see the threatening aspect from a different perspective, etc.
My flying dreams always feel innate, a skill that I’ve possessed for eons. I’m always on a mission, like there’s a destination and a large sense of responsibility and urgency to complete the mission or else deal with the repercussions.
Interesting, any sense what flying might mean in this case for you?
I dream often of casting magic, usually when in need of protection or to draw upon my strength. I've related this to my intuitive-style personality (referencing Jung's framework of personality types - https://www.theartemisian.com/t/personality-type). I also have a draw to characters like sorceresses and spell casters in books, movies, myths, etc.
Perhaps flying carries a similar personality flavor for you?
I only discover I can fly when I’m escaping something. At first I can feel threatened, and when I start flying I feel empowered, and it thusly turns into an adventure. It gives me a new sense of confidence, that I can out ‘run’ the threat.!
Perhaps flying symbolizes something strong and resourceful in your personality. I have consistent dreams where I cast magic when threatened, and for me it ties back to my intuition. What might flying tie back to in this case for you?
Oh wow… that feels like truth in my body. What an insightful question. It expands my capacity to see, having a bird’s eye view brings me clarity… I think it ties back to Sight, in the physical and metaphysical sense. I feel like I am able to create space within and expand that beyond my body to gather information, which also ties into intuition. Wow. Thanks for the opportunity to gain more insight about myself!! 🙏🙌🙏
You're welcome, dreams can often prompt this sort of deep reflection and insight. Sometimes it's difficult to know what questions to ask to get us there, happy I can help :)
I'm curious! I've had a lot of dreams of jumping really high or jumping far down. It's as if I'm flying mid jump, but there's an arc and a sense of leaping. Curious if you have any thoughts about this! <3
What's the emotional tone of these dreams? Does leaping feel exciting, difficult, scary?
There's certainly different symbolic qualities to jumping vs running, although the jump can be seen as the "running leap", the lead up to taking flight. Jumping feels more earth-bound, without the ability to ascend, rise above. Without the boundless, limitless freedom that flying brings...and so...is it perhaps a reflection of that reaching towards the expansiveness, but not quite getting there?
I recently had a dream where my feet were so buoyant that with each step my whole body elevated into the air several meters up amongst the treetops. I felt some trepidation but a lot of elation!
Amongst the trees, that sounds beautiful. The act of rising higher slowly, with each step, rather than jumping or taking off, that feels interesting to me. More gradual, gaining altitude slowly, an incremental process. Perhaps the dream speaks to working with the flying theme in a way that is more accessible and measured.
There’s a hogwarts like school I’m trying to leave, I’m lucid, and there’s a theme of lucidity. I’m helping students fly, jump across cathedral buildings, go underground, and get where they need based on arguments, the arguments relating to lucidity, flying, jumping (leap tall buildings in a single bound, ie early superman), and getting from here to there as fast as possible. Being lucid I ask a woman who looks like she knows what she’s doing in an administrative role how much the lectures/school is and she says $15 million to contribute/encourage income. The school seems related to a hogwarts combined with grace cathedral, there’s resistance underway, related to lucidity and students going underground.
The dream does seem to reflect themes from your recent post; that sense of wanting to support a resistance to established societal structures, grappling with the exorbitant amounts of money that individuals will pay (Heather's substack, which, btw...wow, wtf!!).
I enjoy the play between ascension and descension in the dream (as I write that I also think of
dissension...a potential play on words?). It's not just an abstraction, a zooming out, a perspective shift...it's going deep, getting entangled with chthonic elements, above and below.
Flying on high, jumping across buildings, feels like a play with rising above the structures of the school/cathedral. Being able to support, encourage and lead the way for those in a position of learning. It's not just a desire to influence...but feels embodied in the dream. "I'm showing you the way by action, I'm participating too..."
Lucidity, trying to activate a greater sense of consciousness within the student body, and thus, the greater community you touch with your work, perhaps?
Lastly, I wonder what your associations to hogwarts and grace cathedral are. Seeing as there was an actual student rebellion in the books, I wonder if psyche is playing with this theme?
There's a desire to teach and need for support, so an underground approach; facilitating movement to the underworld. I love the descent/dissent you bring up, which feeds into the anti-heroic, shadow, union of opposites...Grace Cathedral was an integral part of my life for nine years, it felt like a castle, so a school/castle brings that together with Hogwarts. As a now graduate student studying magic, the content seems fused with the memory of a place of formative learning experiences; perhaps a puer aeternalis theme. The rebellious archetype also relevant to Prometheus, light-bearer, lucifer, lucidity...Christ/Heracles liberating Prometheus (forethought, somewhat related to gnostic ennoia) from the underworld and the punishment of the gods. Student protest seems to be a theme these days... thanks!
My mom and older sister often have expansive flying dreams they love it. I tend to struggle to fly in my dreams, so far I only flew very short periods and either woke up or had to push myself up, couldn’t hold myself up and easefully fly. I always found this intriguing especially as I tend to be more anxious and overthinking then my mom and sister, they are more confident in themselves and what they want and stand for. I wonder if there’s a connection.
I think it's a connection to consider for sure. There can be such a lightness to the theme of flying. Trust that you can do something radical, what you're not built for (we are land dwelling creatures). Giving yourself the runway to take flight, to believe in one's capability to defy odds.
I have had flying dreams since I was a teenager, but always flying to escape danger, and I’ve come to realise that potentially for me it might symbolise a kind of disassociation or disconnect from facing reality or troubles head on. Flying always gives me a kind of joy in dreams. But it’s an escapist kind of joy that never really pays off for long, just allows me to escape for a while, like a coping mechanism.
That sense of dissociation is a common manifestation with flying dreams. It's part of the airy quality, the breaking away, flying on high. Sometimes that's virtuous, useful, gives perspective or space. But if we do it too often, we lose that sense of ground, reality, don't know how to come back down to earth and experience.
When I was a young child, maybe around 6, 7, or 8, I had a memorable flying dream. I was home. My mom, aunt, and 2 of her daughters were calling me to go with them to the farm to pick strawberries, but actually instead of strawberries we were going to pick worms. To get out of it, I stormed out of the house and ran towards the backyard. Just in front of the backyard fence were all sorts of scary creatures - lions, large bugs, predatory animals, etc. I sprinted towards them, and just before they could devour me, I flew up into the air, above them and above the fence. I was free. It was liberating and I felt in complete control up there.
Over the years, I've been able to distill some of the essence from that dream. I'm not sure about the feminine aspect. However, it did feel like the expression of a puer aeternus. The worms are of the earth, and all those animals in the backyard (backyard = unconscious, maybe?) were representations of the instinctual and primal. It was my desire to escape it all by being up in the clouds, in the ethereal, in the fantasy, in the abstract even. Its a dream that has stayed in my memory all my life. Also, when I was a child I had lucid dreams quite often. So consciously deciding that I would fly in my dream would be normal for me at that age. I rarely lucid dream anymore.
What do you think about it? I'm open to a different interpretation, and I have the sense that I'm just scratching the surface when it comes to the depth of its meaning.
What stands out to me is the desire to run away from picking worms. Something that should be sweet, an activity a child would enjoy, becomes...gross? Repulsive? Something to run away from.
It makes me wonder about that symbol change...from strawberry to worm. What might that symbolize in the child psyche? It's certainly interesting that a feminine quaternity is leading the activity, but it won't go as expected, and so you need to run off, take flight. In both cases, (farm and backyard) you have those wild animals, bugs, etc. There's an invitation to engage with them by going to the farm...since that can't happen, they are in the backyard. You run towards it, but at that moment of meeting, you fly. It seems there is a desire in the dream to get you in contact with those elements. Perhaps they are instincts...but I also wonder if there is something more shadowy at play. It feels like the reverse of chase dreams where scary animals are coming after you.
I recently dreamt that I was going home on a familiar path. It was nighttime and very dark. I couldn’t see anything. Off to my right a huge lightning bolt burst across the sky. I wasn’t afraid or worried because I knew the path, but I wanted to get home quickly. I remembered that I had the ability to run. (I used to be a runner). I was so pleased and empowered that I could run home. As I started running, my feet lifted off the ground. I wasn’t really even running anymore I was coasting along about a foot above the path. It was a marvelous sensation. End of dream.
There's an interesting detail with darkness, not being able to see, and yet a sense of ease in the environment. Rather than the dark bringing a fear, it seems like the lightening might have brought some concern? Did it feel threatening?
From running (which may carry associations of strength, capability, and physical prowess given your history with it) to flying. What sticks out to me is that you note that you are coasting, not speeding along in flight. Does it feel like the momentum slowed down a bit?
I wonder what the shift in action (and possibly perspective) may speak to. Placing the dream in the context of what was happening in your life would be helpful in this case.
I haven’t had a flying dream in a while, my favorite flying dreams are when I start flapping my arms and lift off, leaping high and soaring. It gives me such a wonderful feeling of release.
Keep an eye out, sometimes it's not obvious at first. I like to write down what was happening recently when I get a recurring dream motif, what happened the day before even. It can reveal some interesting insights.
Often when I’m flying there’s this sense of “oh right, I can do this”, like I’d forgotten how to do something as natural as walking or something. Also, many times when I’m flying it’s to get away from something that feels threatening.
What do you think flying represents for you, in that sense? Something that is instinctual, second nature, especially in response to overwhelming or threatening elements. It could be the ability to zoom out, get space, dissociate, see the threatening aspect from a different perspective, etc.
I have this too! I only fly when I’m escaping a threat.
My flying dreams always feel innate, a skill that I’ve possessed for eons. I’m always on a mission, like there’s a destination and a large sense of responsibility and urgency to complete the mission or else deal with the repercussions.
Interesting, any sense what flying might mean in this case for you?
I dream often of casting magic, usually when in need of protection or to draw upon my strength. I've related this to my intuitive-style personality (referencing Jung's framework of personality types - https://www.theartemisian.com/t/personality-type). I also have a draw to characters like sorceresses and spell casters in books, movies, myths, etc.
Perhaps flying carries a similar personality flavor for you?
I feel this too! Like I’m doing something I’ve always been able to do and just forgot about
I only discover I can fly when I’m escaping something. At first I can feel threatened, and when I start flying I feel empowered, and it thusly turns into an adventure. It gives me a new sense of confidence, that I can out ‘run’ the threat.!
Perhaps flying symbolizes something strong and resourceful in your personality. I have consistent dreams where I cast magic when threatened, and for me it ties back to my intuition. What might flying tie back to in this case for you?
Oh wow… that feels like truth in my body. What an insightful question. It expands my capacity to see, having a bird’s eye view brings me clarity… I think it ties back to Sight, in the physical and metaphysical sense. I feel like I am able to create space within and expand that beyond my body to gather information, which also ties into intuition. Wow. Thanks for the opportunity to gain more insight about myself!! 🙏🙌🙏
You're welcome, dreams can often prompt this sort of deep reflection and insight. Sometimes it's difficult to know what questions to ask to get us there, happy I can help :)
Yes definitely agree it can be difficult to know what questions to ask! I’m very grateful for this space you have created 😊
Really glad to hear that! Thank you for contributing and joining in the conversation.
I'm curious! I've had a lot of dreams of jumping really high or jumping far down. It's as if I'm flying mid jump, but there's an arc and a sense of leaping. Curious if you have any thoughts about this! <3
What's the emotional tone of these dreams? Does leaping feel exciting, difficult, scary?
There's certainly different symbolic qualities to jumping vs running, although the jump can be seen as the "running leap", the lead up to taking flight. Jumping feels more earth-bound, without the ability to ascend, rise above. Without the boundless, limitless freedom that flying brings...and so...is it perhaps a reflection of that reaching towards the expansiveness, but not quite getting there?
I recently had a dream where my feet were so buoyant that with each step my whole body elevated into the air several meters up amongst the treetops. I felt some trepidation but a lot of elation!
Amongst the trees, that sounds beautiful. The act of rising higher slowly, with each step, rather than jumping or taking off, that feels interesting to me. More gradual, gaining altitude slowly, an incremental process. Perhaps the dream speaks to working with the flying theme in a way that is more accessible and measured.
Wow, I had a lucid flying dream last night!
There’s a hogwarts like school I’m trying to leave, I’m lucid, and there’s a theme of lucidity. I’m helping students fly, jump across cathedral buildings, go underground, and get where they need based on arguments, the arguments relating to lucidity, flying, jumping (leap tall buildings in a single bound, ie early superman), and getting from here to there as fast as possible. Being lucid I ask a woman who looks like she knows what she’s doing in an administrative role how much the lectures/school is and she says $15 million to contribute/encourage income. The school seems related to a hogwarts combined with grace cathedral, there’s resistance underway, related to lucidity and students going underground.
Last thing I did before sleep was write the most recent post here ;) https://open.substack.com/pub/fairytalesfromecotopia/p/why-i-started-a-substack?r=2frou4&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web Look forward to any insight!
The dream does seem to reflect themes from your recent post; that sense of wanting to support a resistance to established societal structures, grappling with the exorbitant amounts of money that individuals will pay (Heather's substack, which, btw...wow, wtf!!).
I enjoy the play between ascension and descension in the dream (as I write that I also think of
dissension...a potential play on words?). It's not just an abstraction, a zooming out, a perspective shift...it's going deep, getting entangled with chthonic elements, above and below.
Flying on high, jumping across buildings, feels like a play with rising above the structures of the school/cathedral. Being able to support, encourage and lead the way for those in a position of learning. It's not just a desire to influence...but feels embodied in the dream. "I'm showing you the way by action, I'm participating too..."
Lucidity, trying to activate a greater sense of consciousness within the student body, and thus, the greater community you touch with your work, perhaps?
Lastly, I wonder what your associations to hogwarts and grace cathedral are. Seeing as there was an actual student rebellion in the books, I wonder if psyche is playing with this theme?
There's a desire to teach and need for support, so an underground approach; facilitating movement to the underworld. I love the descent/dissent you bring up, which feeds into the anti-heroic, shadow, union of opposites...Grace Cathedral was an integral part of my life for nine years, it felt like a castle, so a school/castle brings that together with Hogwarts. As a now graduate student studying magic, the content seems fused with the memory of a place of formative learning experiences; perhaps a puer aeternalis theme. The rebellious archetype also relevant to Prometheus, light-bearer, lucifer, lucidity...Christ/Heracles liberating Prometheus (forethought, somewhat related to gnostic ennoia) from the underworld and the punishment of the gods. Student protest seems to be a theme these days... thanks!
My pleasure! Quite a rich dream with many entry points for deeper reflection :)
My mom and older sister often have expansive flying dreams they love it. I tend to struggle to fly in my dreams, so far I only flew very short periods and either woke up or had to push myself up, couldn’t hold myself up and easefully fly. I always found this intriguing especially as I tend to be more anxious and overthinking then my mom and sister, they are more confident in themselves and what they want and stand for. I wonder if there’s a connection.
I think it's a connection to consider for sure. There can be such a lightness to the theme of flying. Trust that you can do something radical, what you're not built for (we are land dwelling creatures). Giving yourself the runway to take flight, to believe in one's capability to defy odds.
That’s a wonderful and inspiring perspective, a reminder I take to sleep with me tonight
Hope it stirs up some more interesting dream material :)
I have had flying dreams since I was a teenager, but always flying to escape danger, and I’ve come to realise that potentially for me it might symbolise a kind of disassociation or disconnect from facing reality or troubles head on. Flying always gives me a kind of joy in dreams. But it’s an escapist kind of joy that never really pays off for long, just allows me to escape for a while, like a coping mechanism.
That sense of dissociation is a common manifestation with flying dreams. It's part of the airy quality, the breaking away, flying on high. Sometimes that's virtuous, useful, gives perspective or space. But if we do it too often, we lose that sense of ground, reality, don't know how to come back down to earth and experience.
Have you ever had falling dreams?
When I was a young child, maybe around 6, 7, or 8, I had a memorable flying dream. I was home. My mom, aunt, and 2 of her daughters were calling me to go with them to the farm to pick strawberries, but actually instead of strawberries we were going to pick worms. To get out of it, I stormed out of the house and ran towards the backyard. Just in front of the backyard fence were all sorts of scary creatures - lions, large bugs, predatory animals, etc. I sprinted towards them, and just before they could devour me, I flew up into the air, above them and above the fence. I was free. It was liberating and I felt in complete control up there.
Over the years, I've been able to distill some of the essence from that dream. I'm not sure about the feminine aspect. However, it did feel like the expression of a puer aeternus. The worms are of the earth, and all those animals in the backyard (backyard = unconscious, maybe?) were representations of the instinctual and primal. It was my desire to escape it all by being up in the clouds, in the ethereal, in the fantasy, in the abstract even. Its a dream that has stayed in my memory all my life. Also, when I was a child I had lucid dreams quite often. So consciously deciding that I would fly in my dream would be normal for me at that age. I rarely lucid dream anymore.
What do you think about it? I'm open to a different interpretation, and I have the sense that I'm just scratching the surface when it comes to the depth of its meaning.
What stands out to me is the desire to run away from picking worms. Something that should be sweet, an activity a child would enjoy, becomes...gross? Repulsive? Something to run away from.
It makes me wonder about that symbol change...from strawberry to worm. What might that symbolize in the child psyche? It's certainly interesting that a feminine quaternity is leading the activity, but it won't go as expected, and so you need to run off, take flight. In both cases, (farm and backyard) you have those wild animals, bugs, etc. There's an invitation to engage with them by going to the farm...since that can't happen, they are in the backyard. You run towards it, but at that moment of meeting, you fly. It seems there is a desire in the dream to get you in contact with those elements. Perhaps they are instincts...but I also wonder if there is something more shadowy at play. It feels like the reverse of chase dreams where scary animals are coming after you.
I recently dreamt that I was going home on a familiar path. It was nighttime and very dark. I couldn’t see anything. Off to my right a huge lightning bolt burst across the sky. I wasn’t afraid or worried because I knew the path, but I wanted to get home quickly. I remembered that I had the ability to run. (I used to be a runner). I was so pleased and empowered that I could run home. As I started running, my feet lifted off the ground. I wasn’t really even running anymore I was coasting along about a foot above the path. It was a marvelous sensation. End of dream.
There's an interesting detail with darkness, not being able to see, and yet a sense of ease in the environment. Rather than the dark bringing a fear, it seems like the lightening might have brought some concern? Did it feel threatening?
From running (which may carry associations of strength, capability, and physical prowess given your history with it) to flying. What sticks out to me is that you note that you are coasting, not speeding along in flight. Does it feel like the momentum slowed down a bit?
I wonder what the shift in action (and possibly perspective) may speak to. Placing the dream in the context of what was happening in your life would be helpful in this case.
I haven’t had a flying dream in a while, my favorite flying dreams are when I start flapping my arms and lift off, leaping high and soaring. It gives me such a wonderful feeling of release.
It's interesting to have that be the means of flying, very bird-like. Have you noticed any patterns of when these dreams occur in life?
Not so far….🤔
Keep an eye out, sometimes it's not obvious at first. I like to write down what was happening recently when I get a recurring dream motif, what happened the day before even. It can reveal some interesting insights.
One of my favorite flying fantasy songs: https://youtu.be/upH1QZU4Z0Y?si=5B0-fyzEMWTgek0Z
Beautiful song. The imagery is also very dream-like. Being taken off to flight by the snowman reminds me of Peter Pan as well!
So hauntingly beautiful, thanks for sharing!