What Does your Dream Mean?

FLYING DREAMS: Have you ever dream of flying through the sky and looking down below with eagle vision? You can see very minute details, even an ant carrying its dinner into a hole. As you glide way up high in the sky you feel a sense of freedom and excitement. Your heart is pounding rapidly with the excitement. You feel that you have actualized and that all is well. Then you saw an old woman crossing the street and a car is about to hit her so you swoop down and you awake with a start!

THE CHASE: Have you ever dream of being chased by a bull? You are running as fast as you can and the bull is gaining on you. It is about to buck you with its deadly horns and then you yank open a door just in time to escape the wrath of the crazy bull.

FALLING: How about swimming in a crystal clear water of the ocean? As you swim you are gracefully treading water, you smell the ocean and it calms you, you also taste the salty water and you almost gag as some goes down your throat. You spit it out and then you start to sink like a rock to the bottom of the ocean. You panic and just as you are about to hit the ocean floor, you wake up gasping for air.

Karl Jung sees dreams as a way of communicating and aquainting yourself with the unconscious. Jung argues that dreams are not attempts to conceal your true feelings from the waking mind, but they were windows to our unconsciousness. That means that dreams allow you to understand with a little more clarity what is happening to you in challenges of daily life.

I suppose then that the flying dream means that unconsciuosly, you want to be free or maybe you want to be Superman, rescuing the vulnerable from evil villians. Jung would analyse the flying dream above as suggesting that one is in top of the situation and that it may also mean that you have gained a different perspective on things.

Karl Jung would analyse the chase dream as steming from feelings of anxiety in your waking life. Running is an instinctive response to physical threats in your environment. In these dreams, you can be pursued by an attacker, an animal or an unknown figure, who wants to hurt or possibly kill you. In turn, you run, hide or try to outwit your pursuer. Your actions in the dream parallel how you respond to pressure and cope with fears, stress or various situations in your waking life. Instead of confronting the situation, you are running away and avoiding it. I agree with Jung here as an avoider personality dislikes confrontation, so flight not fight.

The falling dream is anlaysed by Jung as an indication of insecurities, instabilities, and anxieties. You are feeling overwhelmed and out of control in some situation in your waking life. This may reflect the way you feel in your relationship or in your work environment. You have lost your foothold and can not hang on or keep up with the hustle and bustle of daily life. When you fall, there is nothing that you can hold on to. You more or less are forced toward this downward motion without any control. This lost of control may parallel a waking situation in your life. Again Jung is correct, I've had this dream when I am most stressed at work or whenever I feel totally out of control.

I think this also begs for one last analysis, that of swimming. To dream of swimming suggests that you are exploring aspects of your conscious mind and emotions. The dream may be a sign that you need to seek some sort of emotional support.

We can become aware of life's challenges through various ways, our dreams is one way. Another means which is all encompassing, is seeking directions from God through prayer, meditation and stillness or through the reading of his word. Whatever means we use, it is important that we become conscious of the unconscious to learn life's valuable lessons.

See also Dreams of Reptiles, Insects and Fish.