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Issue 11, July 1999
Plane Thinking
& Flights of Fancy
©Jane Teresa Anderson, July 1999
All the conditions were right. My very hot, very
strong, black coffee was brewing and percolating ideas on the back-burner
of my mind while the coffee cup warmed my Brisbane winter hands. I had
nothing left to do but sit back on the sofa, finish my caffeine hit and
vacantly gaze through the window at the trees being danced by the sun-shafted
wind. It was time to write a new Jane’s Dream Sight article and I
was ready and waiting for the muse.
I had paper and pen by my side, but that’s just
part of the game. It always remains blank, not through writer’s block,
but through irrelevance. Handwriting is far too cumbersome for the muse
whose sudden fanciful flight arrival announces the title of the article
and then delivers the whole idea in one packaged timeless moment. I dash
to the computer keyboard to encapsulate the memory of the piece before
it fades. That’s how it always is.
And so it was this morning that the plane dream theme
was delivered. As the computer launched itself into readiness I pondered
the instantaneous plane dream ideas lining up ready for take-off and realised
that of all the plane scenarios I have ever dreamed, I have never been
the pilot. I fiddled with the pen in my hand (the pen that never writes!)
and then laughed. The muse had amused again: the make of my pen was a
‘pilot’. I was on a roll, the flight of fancy and plane thinking
was on.
In earlier years my dream planes would be seen high in
the sky, climbing at exponentially steep angles which inevitably threw
the planes backwards into fatally explosive somersaults. Looking back
I feel these dreams reflected my fears of aiming too high, too fast, too
soon.
Air often symbolises the mind, or thought (‘airy’)
in contrast to the ground which can symbolise the solidity of more physical
things (‘grounded’). Dreams about planes tend to show the outcome
of our thinking patterns (our planes of thought) or ideas. Ideally we
would hope that all our ideas ultimately reach their destination, and
‘ground’ themselves in physical form. An idea for a book, we
hope, will ground itself onto a shelf in a book shop. So our plane dreams
can help us to see how whether our thinking processes are working with
us or against us. If your dream plane reaches its destination, you can
be pretty sure your thinking and ideas are sound enough to manifest your
chosen goal. If it’s having difficulty getting off the ground, or,
worse still, you’re having difficulty getting to the airport on time,
then perhaps you need to examine your thinking more closely.
Missing the plane, running late or losing your ticket
is a very common dream theme which generally reflects your hesitation
about your goals. We’re all pretty brilliant at putting obstacles
in our path, delaying success through fear. The details in these dreams
can reveal where your thinking is at odds with your desired goal and what
to do to change this. I have taken this one further and got as far as
the plane and then decided not to board because I feel it’s going
to crash. Such a dream may reveal your project or thinking does indeed
have a fatal flaw, but it may also just underline your fear. A few weeks
ago a huge hi-tech looking plane was wheeled onto the dream airport tarmac
for my consideration. I felt fear but it moved closer. Closer and closer
it came until it was so close I could no longer see that it was a plane.
The other details in the dream woke me up to the fact that it was ‘now
or never’ and only a fear of ‘something big’ that stood
between where I was and where I was going. I got on the plane.
Thankfully we are free to take many flights of fancy
before we make grounded decisions, and our dreams can help us to look
ahead and fully understand all the implications of our ideas and plans
(?planes?). Below the surface of our tip-of-the-iceberg conscious thoughts
lurk the imponderable unconscious ones: the thoughts drummed into us as
children which are no longer appropriate to us as adults, the fearful
thoughts stemming from our past experiences, the limiting thinking patterns
of our cultures and so on. Our plane dreams may reflect how our unconscious
thoughts affect our ability to ground our conscious plans at our chosen
destination.
I have had dreams of seeing planes explode in mid air,
or even crash, while I watch calmly, feeling settled and peaceful afterwards.
I may even wander over and help the survivors. My feeling about these
dreams is that they reflect the ending of inappropriate thinking, or the
head-on crash of conflicting thoughts that would have got me nowhere at
all. Better to see such endings, I feel, to ‘clear the air’.
The survivors, in these peaceful dreams, seem to me to be the worthwhile
aspects of the thinking that survive.
So why do I never dream of being the pilot? Who knows?
I probably will tonight! Meanwhile I have offered you my musings on my
plane dreams. Work with your own dreams until they speak to you, for regardless
of whether or not we dream of being in sole control in the cockpit, we
are all both author and pilot of our own dreams.
PS: In the middle of writing this article, I received a phone call from
someone who told me that she is hoping to get some work on a pilot (film)
for a series. Don’t you just love synchronicity?!
Jane Teresa Anderson
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