Dreams of Magic and Flight

From time to time, I like to share a particularly interesting dream that I've had. I just woke up after an amazing dream, so here goes...

I'm not sure if I remember the very beginning of the dream, but the beginning may not be relevant. What I do remember as the beginning is probably the most spectacular scene of the whole dream, and it may have been inspired by yesterday's beautiful lunar eclipse.

It was late at night, and I was looking up at a very cloudy night sky. The clouds were so thick, in fact, that I could see no stars anywhere, and the sky looked inky black without the usual tufts of indigo that I see on most cloudy nights.

As I looked up at the sky, something amazing happened. A large circle in the clouds opened up, and I could see a tapestry of stars. Then, a brilliant beam of silver light illuminated this opening in the clouds. This beam was the same color and width as a full moon, but brighter and much longer. The surrounding circle of parted clouds exploded into a burst brilliant rainbow colors. This all happened very quickly, with the opening of the clouds, the flash of rainbow light, and the appearance of the silve beam occuring almost simultaneously.

For a few moments, the silver beam danced about as if alive, spinning around a bit and condensing into a moon-sized ball. Then, once it was fully condensed, it flew down from the heavens and struck me in the solar plexus, filling my body with light.

This alone would have made for a great dream. But then, the dream continued.

Apparently, the ball of light had granted me the power of magical flight. I was still in disbelief a bit, and wasn't used to flying, so I still had very minimal control over it. But with a bit of focus, and a bit of luck, I could float around through the air, mostly in a slow and horizontal manner, but picking up a bit of speed and altitude as I put my mind to it. I think I was originally in Carbondale, but as I started flying, I came to a few taller objects such as a highway-type overpass and a tall hotel or apartment complex.

This flying lead to a lot of attention from passers-by. At first, this was a very mellow and happy occurence -- people looking on in wonder as someone flew slowly in front of them or above them. But then my antics captured the attention of the Technocracy.

For those of you unfamiliar with them, the Technocracy is a villainous organization in the role-playing game Mage: The Ascension. They arguably started out with good intentions, seeking to bring order to the world by convincing everyone of a common scientific worldview and thus eliminating the chaos created by random mages bending reality to their will with magic. Over time, though, they became a fascist organization, using mind control, social engineering, and brute force to control society. One of their primary goals is to neutralize "reality deviants" -- people who use the power of magic to mold and shape reality in unauthorized ways.

So, the Technocracy somehow caught wind of my newfound flying abilities, and soon I was on the run. I looked around in Carbondale for people or places that I could turn to, but didn't seem to have any luck. I went into some large office building to hide, but it turned out to be controlled to some degree by the Technocracy, so I had to rush through a security turnstyle and fly out of range of my pursuers.

At this point, I wanted to fly really fast and really high, but still hadn't learned how to do so. Instead, I floated fairly close to the ground and headed east toward Carterville, where I knew I could find a friend of mine who would understand.

It took a bit of thinking to remember where exactly she lived, since I don't drive and it was nighttime again at this point. But soon enough, I found my way to the house where she and her husband live. Their house was new for some reason, but I found my way in and started telling her about my adventure.

I can't remember her exact reaction, but I think she was excited about the flying and worried about the Technocracy. At first, I was worried that they would have gotten to her before I made it out there, but we speculated that since she too was a Mage, this somehow protected her from immediate scrutiny. I knew that I couldn't stay for long though, so after talking with the two of them for a while, I head back out onto the road.

At this point, the dream started to lose momentum and clarity. I think that my plan was to travel north to visit my brother in the Champaign/Urbana area and tell him what had happened. I met him in a train station halfway between here and there, though. He was apparently stuck due to some sort of missed or delayed connection, and I ended up talking to him about that first rather than my flying adventures. I think the dream may of continued slightly beyond this, but that's where my memory of it ends.

Pretty interesting, eh? Here are a few of my thoughts on what it may mean...

The moonlike beam/ball of light that came down from the sky was obviously symbolic of the presence and power of spiritual inspiration in my life. From a sea of inky blackness, a burst of brilliant light emerges... it doesn't get more straightforward than that. The very colorful and bright explosion of light inspired an incredible sense of wonder and joy in me, which leads me to believe that this symbolized the greater role that ecstatic experiences and practices are taking for me.

The fact that the light struck my solar plexus indicates to me that this has a lot to do with personal power and my sense of purpose and direction in the world. This is largely based on ideas about the chakras that not everyone may be familiar with... but even without any of that information, consider the anxious churning feeling that occurs here when we're not sure of our personal power, and the "gut feeling" that we get when we know of something that we need to do.

The flying, of course, is an extension of that concept of personal power. The fact that I could only fly a little bit, and without full control, indicates that this sense of empowerment still feels very new and uncertain to me. The fact that I had to run from the Technocracy also indicates an uncertainty of this new power. However, I didn't feel anxious during most of this chase... just conscious of my need to fall back and learn how to use my newfound abilities. This is a good sign that anxiety is playing less and less of a role in my life, and that I realize now that the disappearance of this anxiety is clearing the way for me to develop aspects of my personal power that I previously left undeveloped.

In any case, whether you agree with this analysis or not, I hope you found the dream itself interesting... :) I believe that our dreams are very important, and I encourage everyone reading this to pay close attention to your dreams if you don't already. If you don't remember your dreams, you may want to keep a dream journal by your bed or under your pillow for a while. Writing them down can help you to improve your memory of them, while also giving you something to look back on later in the day, either for curiosity's sake or for the sake of figuring out what's going on in your subconscious.

That's enough dream work for today. Now, it's time to move on to the waking work... :) Let me know what you think, and I hope you have interesting dreams...