in the previous installments, we’ve explored a myriad ways of taking flight. i believe it was douglas adams who said, “flying is merely the art of throwing all of yourself at the ground and then missing.” and isn’t that just so? the art of flying isn’t a matter of conceptualizing and optimizing the mechanisms for flight; it’s rather achieved by invoking the intent for its fulfillment continuously. of course, we are conceptualizing now with various methods, but these methods employ magical thinking—a child’s thinking. the methods aren’t necessary so much for their efficacy as for creating a thread of alignment between our intent and the fulfillment of our desire. when i weave, my intent is the warp and my desire is the weft. in time, and with discipline, desire matures into love. it’s like this: i’m in love with the sky, and through flight, i conduct my courtship with the sky. i yearn for the sky, and i hope piously for him to be my partner and lover.
so thanks to some suggestions from readers and my own reflections, i’ve come up with some more methods!
method iii – swim through the air
i love swimming, especially in the summer when it’s warm enough to swim in natural bodies of water, or at least outdoors. so i usually have dreams like this in the summer after i’ve spent a lot of time swimming. underwater, i like to wear goggles and hold my breath for as long as i can. i love being underwater where the sounds of voices are absorbed into the tide; we have to find other means to communicate. i try to inhabit the world underwater, and pretend i live there like a mermaid, or more simply, an aquatic being unburdened by the need for constant breaths.
if you do this enough and become familiar with the state of being underwater while you are awake, then when the dream comes, it’s just a matter of transposing that familiarity to whatever situation you find yourself (out of water) in the dream.
now let’s go to the dream: you find yourself in the dream, not underwater but in the open air. start with your hands, cup them, and then focus your attention on them as you move them through the air. by focusing your attention on the sensation of the air trapped between your fingers, you can thicken it, enhancing resistance as your hands traverse through the layers of air. then feel the air enveloping your body—at this point, if you don’t feel too bashful, it’s just a dream, remember, it may be helpful to take off your clothes. feel that the air is very thick and feel your body and limbs drift gently as you move through it. now, attune your breath to influence your body’s buoyancy; if your lungs are full with a breath, you’ll start to float up, but by exhaling your body will grow heavier and start sinking down.
at first, it’s hard to get up in the air; you have to take a really deep breath and then swim up as high as you can. when you exhale you’re going to drop down again like a heavy stone, so at this point you have two options: (a) you can focus on using your arms and legs to swim about in the air; this will give you more control, but it will be very strenuous and exhausting. or, (b) you can focus on your breath control and increase your buoyancy on the inbreath and try to limit the sinking effect on your outbreath.
it’s good to try a combination of both of these in alternating stints, if you rely too much on your arms and legs you’ll just exhaust yourself, but if you rely on your breath buoyancy too much you will find that you don’t have much control outside that vertical axis of floating and sinking (be careful! the lack of control can invoke anxiety, which could summon ground creepers to appear and make a nightmare situation!).
if you’re still having trouble getting enough buoyancy, you can try this other thing, though—i’ll warn you—this gets a little bit weird. in a dream the relationship between the breath and the body is a lot more malleable. the dream body is sort of putty-like and air can suffuse through it not just in the lungs, but all throughout your body. so, try this: as you take a deep breath in, don’t just bring the air into your chest, but also pull the air down into your belly. you’ll find there is a lot of room in your belly, and after a few breaths you’ll find that you can hold a lot of air in there, but of course this is going to make your belly puff up like a blimp, which is pretty embarrassing to be honest.
but, you know, it’s pretty effective, so if you’re having trouble getting up into the air, it’s worth trying at least once.
one thing to lookout for, though. as you create the association of being able to swim through the air of the dream environment, don’t let the environment take on the characteristics of being underwater! try to keep bearings through the landmarks below like trees and houses, or track birds and clouds in the sky. otherwise, you might suddenly find yourself deep on the bottom of the sea, which can be really scary—i’m sorry, but being in deep water in a dream is by its nature very scary; it’s not going to be like in the little mermaid…
Continue reading How to fly
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Originally published by Sophie G. on Questionable Cave.
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