Sophie G. is a secretive cartoonist living somewhere in the Appalachian woods with her partner. She writes and draws stories exploring dreams, eros, and spirituality. After recurring anxiety dreams of appearing nude in public, she began cultivating lucid dreaming as a way of embracing her shyness and witnessing the unconscious on its own terms. She is currently writing her life's big book, The Sorceress's Wife, with collaborator and fellow cartoonist Celso. Their combined works are available at Question Cave.
yes!
indeed, you can fly! and without any clunky gadgets. no need for jetpacks or wings, my friend. how, you ask? dear, it’s simple mind-over-matter! that is to say—if mind is foundational to reality, or, if at the very least, reality is co-emergent with mind, then all appearances are manifestations of our mind. “buufaw!” you say? well, that’s fine. i’m not here trying to convince you of some metaphysical position. i’m interested in pragmatics, so grant me a moment of epoché and listen! i’m going to tell you a practical way for how to fly—with your mind!
…or at least while you’re dreaming. you see, dreaming is the training ground for the real. whatever we can practice and perfect in our dreaming we can eventually manifest in our waking because the waking is the cosmic dream (we are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives inside the dream). but perhaps i’ve lost you. it doesn’t matter. you don’t need to believe in my proposition—just read this as the instructions for how to fly in your dreams. that’s the point, and that’s the practical implication. flying in your dreams is not only fun, but it’s been scientifically proven to improve your sex life!
method 1 – changing the direction of down
so how to fly in the dreaming? well, there are several ways which i would like to document for you, and what follows is the first method i’ve discovered. it’s an odd method that may seem convoluted at first, but it’s surprisingly effective, which has led me to consider it the lowest hanging fruit for dream flight. it’s called changing the direction of down. like when you were a kid, did you ever lie on the carpet and pretend you were playing tomb raider in your house, but everything was on its side and you had to walk along the walls and scramble up the couch to jump over pit traps. i used to play this all the time (because my brothers would hog the controller and never let me play the actual video game >:p). anyways, in dreaming, it’s like that. if you focus your mind onto pretending that down is now another direction it will suddenly shift to that direction. it’s actually surprisingly easy to do in a dream; you simply focus your intent to imagine gravity pulling you from a different direction and before you know it, you feel it pulling you from the new direction. and so, this becomes what i consider to be the easiest method to fly in the dreaming. all you have to do is realize you are dreaming and apply the method of changing the direction of down.
i would recommend trying to dream that you are in an outdoor environment and then try to find a tree. urban environments are not recommended because there are too many wires and sharp edges to get caught upon. try to find somewhere like a nice open park or meadow and go up to a nice sturdy tree. you can even practice this in waking life ahead of time as a way to prepare a prompt for your dream. then “sit” or “stand” sideways along the trunk of the tree. this is before you apply the method; you want a nice ledge to start from before you leap into the yonder or up into the zenith.
then you just kind of change the direction of down. i can’t describe the method itself in any other way than that because the method is just to do it. you are sitting there on the bough of a tree and suddenly think “down is over there now” thinking in the direction sideways—west or east or whatever it is—and then after intending that suddenly you are sitting on the bough of the tree like it was a bench and your legs are dangling over the yonder abyss.
the scary part is jumping off and letting yourself fall sideways; if you forget it’s a dream at this point you’ll be paralyzed with fear and be clinging to that tree for your life.
..but you just need to take a deep breath, cross your heart and take that jump of faith.
in a way it’s kind of cheating because you are more falling sideways rather than “flying,” but as you continue to fall you will notice that you can continuously change the direction of down to whatever direction you like, and so for all intents and purposes you are flying, or “fall-flying” perhaps. i would recommend changing the direction of down to go up as soon as possible because otherwise, you’re soon to hit something hard on the yonder. but once you get up into the open sky you will have a lot more room to roam and wander and practice falling about. over time you’ll even adapt to the method and you will gain this inexplicable control and you can then fly about intentionally like storm or superman. but at first it will be kind of wild and probably a bit frightening. it’s good to fall up where you have more room, but do be careful not to fall too high up. i once had this dream where i kept going up into space and the earth became smaller and smaller until it disappeared and i found myself lost in a terrifying void. instead, go up a ways and then try to fall sideways along and above the horizon. if you want to slow yourself down, a good way is to change directions from east to west, or whatever it is; it’s a little disorienting, but for a moment you float up to a complete stop before falling in the new direction.
of course it is possible to lose control and slam into a cliff face or back into the ground and die. but then you’ll just wake up and realize it was just a dream. <|;)
Continue reading How to fly
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Originally published by Sophie G. on Questionable Cave.
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