What’s your superpower?

What's your superpower Dreams Jane Teresa Anderson

It was the middle of the night, both in reality, because I was asleep, and in my dream, because it was dark and no-one was up. No-one apart from me and the young boy I was teaching to fly.

I had been walking down the staircase like a normal human being, when I started to joyfully fly over a few steps at a time in a kind of loop the loop fashion. “It’s my superpower,” I confided to the astonished wide-eyed young boy. “Hold my hand, let’s fly.”

Flying’s really easy when you know how, and I’m very practised at flying. I’m always surprised to wake up and discover that my superpower doesn’t translate into waking life. Or does it?

I had the dream last night, and it was the first time I used the word superpower to describe my special gift, and the first time I took someone else flying to show them how to do it. Since everyone in a dream represents something about the dreamer, I knew the young boy is another aspect of myself that is ready to acknowledge my superpower and put it into action. After all, I led the way by acknowledging it in my dream, “It’s my superpower!”

How can your dreams help you to discover your superpowers?

I’ll let you in on one of my waking life superpowers (hint: it’s not flying) toward the end of this blog, but first, hold my hand and let’s fly over your dreamscape to discover your superpowers.

Let’s look into your dreams. Oh, look, there’s one of your superpowers. Did you know you had this gift? Look, there’s a couple more, hiding under that pile of leaves, what talents have you been trying to hide, or discarded? And over there, look, deeply asleep, those are dormant powers, and, oh, look over here, in this little bundle of recurring dreams, your continually overlooked yet-to-be discovered gifts! Ah, but wait a minute, you’ve discovered them now in our flyover, haven’t you?

When you know how to look at your dreams (how to analyse and interpret them), you uncover more helpful information about your superpowers, and find out why you try to hide this one (what do you fear or believe will happen if you embrace it?), or why this one is still dormant. Is it time to awaken a superpower? Might your newly-discovered gifts find an avenue of expression and growth in your life?

When you know how to prescribe and create dream alchemy exercises to release limiting beliefs and blocks, to embrace, to heal, to blossom, you can easefully bring your superpowers out of their hiding places, burrows, and wombs, into waking life service.

Superpowers? That’s right, we all have more than one when you really look deep and acknowledge, awaken, or nurture them into action.

So what did my dream mean, and what is my flying superpower in my waking life?

Dreams process your conscious and unconscious experiences of the last couple of days, so that’s always a good clue as a starting point.

In my dream, shortly before I flew, I saw a building with a burnt out room upstairs. No-one had been hurt. After I flew, I checked on a sleeping baby I was looking after in another room. All was well.

The day before my dream, I had finished writing and uploading two new courses to The Dream Academy. They won’t be available for you just yet, as we still have to film the course videos, but the enjoyable yet challenging work of writing the courses was done, and the effort of that labour had left me feeling burnt out (like the burnt out room in the dream) towards the end after all those weeks of writing. Ah but, the birth after the labour! The baby (new courses) may be asleep for now, but when the videos are done we’ll bring that baby into the light of day for you to enjoy. The sleeping baby is also me, of course, sleeping off the work and ready to grow some more, and, boy, did I sleep like a baby last night, even though I was dream flying at the same time!

So what is my flying superpower? Partly it’s my ability to spring back, fuelled by the joy of creative accomplishment, following near burnout after a challenging project. Partly it’s my ability to rise above a situation and gain overview perspective when the going gets tough or the work begins to seem too hard. Partly it’s my ability to fly with an idea and get it done, though usually on a much bigger scale than originally envisaged. Partly it’s my ability to celebrate, to joyfully loop the loop in a way that energises and replenishes me. (These are all superpowers I have awakened and enlisted into action over years of exploring my dreams. It would have been so wonderful if I had been able to tune into these qualities earlier in my life.) Partly it’s my ease in working with dream therapy: like flying, it’s easy when you know how and have had lots of practise. But I’d like to think that this particular superpower is also my ability to create something of value for those of you interested in adding dream therapy to your superpowers.

The two new courses, Dream Therapy Professional Level 1 and Dream Therapy Professional Level 2, evolved and grew beyond my original vision. I have been teaching the professional courses for many years, delivering one to one, and planned to transfer these into the online learning platform we launched this year, The Dream Academy. But they took on a life of their own, and grew to be so much more. You can find out more about these courses here.

Portrait of Jane Teresa Anderson by Barbara Courtille

Talking about superpowers, Australian artist Barbara Courtille has amazing superpowers in creating symbolic portraits. This is my portrait, which she has named The Alchemist. It’s me, minus my glasses and minus more than a few years, and as to the symbolism of the snake, the pearl, the moon, and the indigo, you’ll be able to read all about that in my next blog for The Dream Academy which I’ll be writing in the next week or two. (Post script: You can now read that blog here.) Stay in touch by opting into my newsletter to receive news of all new blogs, podcasts, and so much more (this is what you get).

Here’s to your dreams, and your superpowers!

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