“Married at 22 to a jackass, I spent 10 years with a cheater, and 10 years dreaming that I was falling. I never hit the ground, and I knew I was dreaming, but there it was: falling. And, it was scary.

After that divorce, I found a gem of a husband who looks after me and treasures our love. Guess what? Now, the dreams are of flying. I am flying, and I’m good at it, and I know it’s a dream and I don’t care because it’s fun.”

Laurie posted this on mamamia.com last week when I was guest blogger talking about recurring dreams. There were over 100 posts as Mia’s readers shared their dreams, and I spent some time replying, interpreting, giving tips. (Read them here.)

I replied to Laurie:

“Isn’t it enlightening when you spot the metaphor in the dream? Often we can only do this in retrospect, as we are so often blind – in denial – to our situation at the time.

Dreams reflect the unconscious, and it seems you had an unconscious belief in falling (in not flying), low self esteem perhaps (and falling ever lower), until something happened to reverse that thinking, and you transformed that negative unconscious belief. You saw the possibility of flying, of having higher self esteem, of reaching a higher potential.

You wouldn’t have stayed in that 10 year marriage unless it matched your unconscious feelings of falling.

Good work, and congratulations!

Here’s something interesting: If I had heard about your falling dream way back then, as well as exploring your dream to understand it, I would have given you a visualisation. I would have asked you to visualise yourself back in your dream, only this time to fly out of the fall, to grow wings and fly up and up and out of the dream, and to summon up a wonderful feeling of high self esteem and limitless possibilities as you did this. It’s what I call a Dream Alchemy practice. It’s a way of working with your dream symbols (e.g. falling) to change them; a way of reprogramming your unconscious beliefs from negative to positive by speaking the language of your unconscious (which we know, from your dream).

What would have happened if you’d done this? You’d have automatically seen the light and broken free earlier. But hey, here you are today, and life is wonderful. Enjoy your wings.”

Read my guest blog and replies to mamamia’s dreamers.

Related articles you might enjoy