Waiting for the second flight ...

Hi there,
Can you please give me the interpretation of this dream :

I dreamed that I was on a trip by plane, and that I had to change the plane in an international airport. We were going to Tangier (the city where I live now). We were all in the airport waiting for the second flight to Tangier.
In the same flight were some tourists who were going to see Tangier for the first time, I said "Hola" to one of them who was sitting on the stairs, he seemed to be Spanish because he was speaking in the phone this language. I also talked to an american girl a little bit.
After a while, I realized that I was on the second floor of the airport, and that I left my bag in the hall unattended !! I look down to the hall, I found few people still waiting there. I realized that many others left the hall to take the plane. So I rushed through the stairs down to the hall. There I found that my bag was alone there waiting for me, I was surprised why I left it there, but also happy because it was untouched. The hall was empty, I fairly saw a Chinese guy with the Spanish guy running along a corridor, I thought that sure it was the last call for the flight boarding.
I began running along the corridor following the two guys that were far from me. I had no clue where the plane was, which gate was the boarding, and worse I hadn't time to stop and open my bag to read my flight ticket because I was risking to loose the two guys from sight.
I went on running, my bag had wheels and their sound seemed like a race car, the sound was pleasant, like if I was in a race !!
I entered a gate, I could see more people from our group, but it was strange, we were in a garden instead of the airport corridors, I said to myself : the plane can't be in a garden !! I felt that we were lost !!
People of the group became fewer, it seemed like if they disappeared one after the other, then I arrived to a gate where I could see a street and a women begging. I stopped for a while, I realized then that I was in Tangier. I was shocked because I didn't remember taking a flight to Tangier, but I accepted the situation and I thought : all that race to catch the flight was for nothing, I'm already in Tangier !!!

Thanks

Hi, Could you tell us a bit about what is happening in your life, what is important to you, what's on your mind? Any issues and changes especially? It is hard to do an interpretation of a dream without having some extra background information because a similar dream may mean very different things for different people or even for same person at different time in their life. Context can make a huge difference in interpretation.

A few initial thoughts though:

I wonder whether the "second" flight is not a different meaning and does not stand in for "last second" flight. There is a sense of urgency, rushing, racing to get there. Only to discover that you are already there. There are times when we are in such a rush to meet our goals and think that we will only have one last second, and sometimes we discover that if we had only stopped to think we would have seen that there is no need to rush, and no need to go anywhere, no need for all this change, because where we are is where we need to be, and we discover that in the last second when we were all ready to make changes.

I think it is significant that in your dream you are heading to the city you live in. Is that heading home, or do you consider another place home? Anyway, you are returning to a place that is familiar and safe. Now this dream of returning to familiar place may be about returning to home ground in terms of to an activity or mental state that you are comfortable with and feel safe and good about. Returning to previously held beliefs or habits.

Forgetting the bag, leaving it unattended, may be about not paying attention to details along the way or not watching out for your stuff or your interests, while the change is taking place. But you are lucky and your lack of attention did not have negative consequences.

Not having your bag with you may also represent that you are not ready. Maybe that's also why you need to take "the second flight" because you were not ready at the first opportunity to do this (whatever this is).

I am thinking that this dream may be at least in part about the need to stop and think, plan and prepare, and to check whether the changes are really needed, instead of stressing out about racing to get things done. Check to make sure that you are not already "there" in some sense, and also to ensure that if you do need to change that you have what you need to do this (whether it is your bag or ideas of what needs to get done).

However, since I do not know what is happening in your life right now, as I said additional context might help. And even with the context, dream interpretation can be wrong of course, so if anything sounds wrong, please discard those suggestions.

Hi JoannaB,
I'm really really grateful for for what you wrote and I thank you for all the time that you put to read and explain my dream.
I agree completely that The interpretation depends on the context, the situation and the timing.
I read many times what you wrote and I can say that it has a lot of meaning regarding my current situation. But still I don't know exactly what does "the change" means, since there are many changes that already took place and some others in the road. So let me give you some elements :
- I'm a man, married, I have three kids
- I'm a university professor, I began working in the university without having a PhD 17 years ago, it was possible at that time. But after a few years I decided to prepare a PhD, a process that took a lot of time and effort, specially hard when you have a family and 3 kids. I'll have to finish the PhD in a few months and this requires a lot of efforts, but the PhD won't add a lot currently to my position in the university, since I'm already a professor But even that this sounds a good projection of the dream, I don't feel the dream is really about the PhD
- indeed Tangier is the city where I was born and where I'm living now with my family, I have my own house, a beautiful place, I'm still constructing some parts of it which requires big amounts of money. In addition to these requirements, my kids are growing and so are their expenses, so a few months ago I began working with a company in my spare time to have an additional income but that created more stress in my life. During the last month, I was thinking of making a big change which is resigning from the university and from my second job and go abroad to work in another country. I'm still not sure of what to do... I love my city and my job in the university but the income is not enough anymore and it is difficult to do 2 jobs and prepare the PhD the same time.
I have the feeling that maybe this dream is all about this decision to quit my country to work abroad, what do you think ?
Thanks again for your patience and for this wonderful forum.
PS. I have some other dreams that hold surely deep meaning and also some dreams that I see repeatedly, I'd be very glad to know their meaning, for example very often I see myself in a classroom doing an exam, the exam seems to be quite easy but I haven't prepared and I have always a deep feeling of regret that I would have answered all the questions if I knew about the exam and prepared well, .... That's a dream that I saw more than twenty times in different versions

I strongly believe that dreams do not have just one interpretation. Most often our subconscious mind is struggling with several issues and it then makes a mental association between the different issues and weaves them into one dream. I think that dreams are in part about creative problem solving, where your subconscious mind takes several issues and ideas that you have encountered and then draws a connection between them to see whether the issues can be solved or ideas can be viewed in a new light by connecting thoughts that your conscious mind would never connect without your subconscious mind. So if you see that this dream could be about any number of changes in your life, consider the fact that maybe it is about all of them or at least several of them. Whenever an interpretation of my dream occurs to me or is presented to me by someone else, I examine it, and see whether it sounds right to me intuitively, and if it makes sense to me on some level, I accept it as one interpretation, but that does not mean others are not possible as well.

I think maybe your mind is struggling with the decision of whether to pursue your teaching career and PhD or change careers. Since you have not made up your mind yet, and the dream cannot make up your mind for you: even if you dreamed a dream that clearly showed one decision, your conscious mind would then get to decide whether this seems like a good choice to you or not. A dream may however if it is a meaningful and useful dream hopefully give you a starting point for additional thinking in a new direction, and may help you thus reach a decision or maybe consider an option which had not before occurred to your conscious mind without the subconscious help. So if I were you, I would use this dream as a tool to maybe enable additional thinking about changes in your life. That said the ending of this dream where you discover that you are already there where you were going seems to suggest that part of your mind may be questioning whether a drastic change is necessary or whether you can reach your goal without needing to fly a long time. Now your conscious mind's answer to this may still be that no a long flight (a drastic change such as quitting job and moving abroad) is needed, and that you really do not see how you could get where you want to go for your family's well being without a drastic change - but that is up to your conscious mind to decide, and up to your subconscious to question and attempt creative associations of ideas for, but the ultimate decision is with your conscious mind.

Aha! The being unprepared for exam dream! Interestingly this is a very common dream: I have this dream sometimes or a variation on it, and I finished my studies a long time ago; my boss who is in his sixties also has mentioned having this dream, and it is a dream that many people report. I think school and college leave a very important impact on us all, and this impact continues throughout life. I suspect that this dream can mean different things for different people in different situations. One possible meaning is that it is pointing out that we are not prepared yet for life's lessons or exams (challenges) that life is currently throwing at us. But there certainly are many other interpretations possible.

Just to add a few ideas, I think that the repeating dream about the exam holds the key to the problem being shown in much more detail in the airport dream.

In general, an institute of learning and its exams would tend to represent, on analogy, certain expected collective roles and attitudes that an individual in a given society is expected to meet as part of fitting in with the group.

For instance, schools and colleges are mostly funded by taxes and/or “established” alumni groups which have certain views and standards about what constitutes a “good education” etc. etc.

So in your overall situation, there may exist some ongoing but perhaps mostly unconscious anxiety in yourself about the degree to which certain outer expectations of others in general are being met by you in your role as a professor.

These unconscious concerns might be motivating you to behave in a certain “desired way” too much of the time through a perhaps almost compulsive “chase” (running through the airport at times) to obtain various outer signs of status such as a PhD. and a larger house for example.

The idea of an intellectual pursuit might be shown in the current dream in the form of the airport.

Planes are “technical” and “mechanical” objects and, of course, fly through the sky which in turn is generally a symbol for thinking and the intellect overall.

Also, an airport is mostly run by collective agencies and governments, again suggesting the idea of “group values” as opposed to more individual ones.

Naturally, there is nothing inherently wrong with such group beliefs etc. as long as the individual is able to pursue their unique path in life to some reasonable degree.

As JohannaB pointed out, “going home” is involved, and perhaps this includes the idea of your own personal uniqueness being a goal.

From what you’ve written about your life and the important context for the dream which this has provided, it’s clear that you have passed the meridian of life where your career and family life has generally been well established.

Once the first half of life has been passed, dreams often spontaneously begin to indicate that certain potentials and skills etc. that the person had to leave behind in the hard struggles of the first half of life should be looked at with a view to developing them in order to round out the dreamer’s overall personality.

These aspects of yourself perhaps are partly symbolized by the tourists in the airport who are going to visit Tangier; that is, they could symbolize the idea of certain potentials etc. becoming more “familiar with” and “integrated with” you as symbolized by Tangier itself.

The incident with the unattended bag could be meant to show how certain collective values etc. are very active in your life in a particular way.

For example, in our times, an unattended bag would very soon be taken away and even blown up as being a suspected terrorist bomb by the airport anti-terrorism squads.

But in this case, the “collective authorities” don’t bother with the bag, perhaps a way of saying that certain inner values and outlooks etc. are not going to interfere with your usual hectic pace for instance, the idea being that you yourself would have to take some appropriate action regarding your usual “baggage” on your own.

The “baggage” could also additionally symbolize certain outworn habits of thought and action which could potentially “blow up” and cause great damage to yourself and others if not dealt with in some reasonable way over time.

You might be only vaguely aware of these habits etc., maybe partly symbolized by the hectically running Chinese man and Spaniard who are “foreign” to you and not fully understood.

Running to find the plane in time is something like the idea of not doing well on an exam because certain collective “goals” have been set (e.g. the departure time of the plane is collective and not something an individual can control).

Maybe the dream is hinting that any change in your behaviour will be hard to make because you really enjoy the hectic nature of your life at some basic level (enjoy the sound of the baggage wheels which is like a race car).

Then perhaps the dream changes pace in order to show what the real means of your movement forward overall as a person could be, that is, by way of the garden.

A garden can symbolize the soul and its enclosed space has a feminine feeling to it where things grow slowly and have to be attended to quietly and with patience.

Your so-called “feminine” side is also suggested by the image of the begging woman, perhaps pointing to the idea that some areas of your emotional life aren’t being nurtured enough overall.

As JohannaB pointed out, perhaps there are certain issues that have to be looked at more carefully and it doesn’t look like this can be a straight forward or uncomplicated task.

For example, obtaining your PhD. apparently is not necessary in order to continue at your present university and therefore pursuing it may have its origins mostly in wanting to lessen any mostly unconscious fears you have that some colleagues might be questioning your “competence” as a professor.

Also, enlarging your house could possibly be a way to enhance your status in the community but isn’t strictly necessary because according to your own words, it’s already beautiful.

As a general suggestion, it would appear that relieving yourself of these two issues would help to lessen the need for an increased income at this time.

However, I’m not underestimating how difficult slowing down or calling a temporary halt to these two very complicated issues would be at this time.

If any of these additional ideas seem to make some sense in your personal circumstances, you might like some books by analyst James Hollis regarding how to make the best of the second half of life.

Also, if by chance your emotional reactions etc. have maybe caused some upsets at times, here is a paraphrase of some ideas on the subject of what the “emotional” and “feminine” side of life consists of by analyst Marion Woodman:

1) Presence in the moment, the here and now; for example, paying complete attention to a person that you’re dealing with and not letting your mind drift to other matters. Presence in the moment includes not dwelling on yesterday or tomorrow.

Also, avoid the “if only” attitude of mind, e.g. “If only I had taken Swahili in college, all would be well now”.

2) Awareness of the body; for example, muscle tension, or the pure joy of complete relaxation.

3) Apprehension of beauty through the senses, having emotions about this, valuing this aspect of the here and now.

4) Receptivity. Being non-critical. Listening to someone, accepting them completely. A feeling of resonance, relationship.

5) Separation from the mother’s body, being one’s own person.

6) The “process”, the “journey” being more important than “reaching the goal”.

7) The acceptance of and reflection on paradoxes as well as the non-causal, e.g. you dream of a white horse and the next day, a white horse escapes from a circus and runs by you on the street.

8) Accepting all of life, its ups and downs, limitations, and restrictions.

9) The need for the regular practise of reflection, meditation.


If you think over all of the ideas which you’ve received about the exam dreams as well as the current dream, and if something seems to continue to make sense in the overall approaches, then the exam dream should stop or at least occur less often, especially if you take any actions which seem to be appropriate in the circumstances.

I hope that these additional ideas can be helpful in some way to explore the important personal messages contained in these dreams.

Thanks JoannaB for your additionnal comments that are very interesting.

Athanor, What a beautiful interpretation ! thank you !

You are absolutly right about the society and the lifestyle that it imposes on us, I completely agree. The PhD that I'm preparing is more a prestigious idea than anything else, I even feel that I'm too old for this kind of things, but anyway, in a few months it will be over, I've already crossed 80% of the road. But it was/is a painful experience indeed.

The adventure of the house is also painful, It seems like if I'm working just to build this house, but at the end it's an investment, and now my kids have more space where to live. But I agree that a bigger house is also another presitgious idea.

As you pointed out, it's difficult to stop once you take these commitments, but I'll try to slow down right after completing the PhD. For the house, it's now on standby :)

I agree about the hidden dreams and skills that look for a way to reach the surface. During many years I wanted to be a trainer/speaker in personal development, that is something that I love since it goes hand in hand with my desire to help and contribute to the success of others, but I haven't found the time to do it, I tried many times but I failed and also I dream of a better way of teaching but I also never found a time to describe my method as a clear system ready to be used, it stays in my dreams area.

Now I feel really exhausted, I haven't taken a holiday since three years, because in these last three years I worked on another project, I tried to open and run a private school but I failed, I hadn't enough students to keep running.

Yeah I agree I have to slow down, and look for other ways for income doing what I love.

I had also the following dream two weeks ago that might be sending a similar message :

I dreamt that I was riding a big shuttle like a big truck and on the seat beside me a man, I don't remember his face, but he looked like a wise man or a high personality.
I was speaking with that wise man when I noticed that the shuttle that was going with a high speed and sometimes making some harsh turns which may cause an accident.
So I stopped my talk and said to the man : "don't you notice that the driver of this shuttle is driving bad ?". The wise man stared at me like if he were surprised of my comment ...
Then I realized that I had also the control of the shuttle and that I could also change the gears and the speed but when I released the control some kind of driver that was unseen takes the control.

Ah yes, indeed, you are rushing too much, you are in the driver's seat, but you forgot it, and are doing things on autopilot. One thing to consider: you are probably also the wise man in this dream, which means that you know what is wrong and how to fix it yourself. All the best!

Thanks JoannaB for your kind answer.
So as I understand from those interpretations, many faces that I saw in these dreams are just a representation of my inner ideas, beliefs, struggles, ... etc, so the wise man is maybe the wise side of me, the chinese and the spanish some habits that I'm not aware ... Quite interesting
Could you please tell me about a book on dream interpretation for further reading
Lately I have been questioning many of my religious beliefs and I rejected many of those beliefs, but I still believe in my religion, this is another inner struggle, the voice of logic and the voice of belief, interestingly enough, I dreamed yesterday that I was home and a police helicopter flying on the roof, they were trying to capture me, I ran down the stairs and went out the street from a back door, I walked quietly for a long distance, then two men came from the back, one of them grabbed my hand and told me : "you can't go further, fortunately we grabbed you before you quit the city, before if you quit the city your situation will be worse!"
Is this my religious side talking to me or something else ?
Thank you

Ok, I can't recommend a book because my approach to dream interpretation is based on a combination of my own intuition and problem solving and mystery solving, and on an apprenticeship with other dream interpreters on this site. Basically, I have been active on this site since February, and in the meantime a lot of dream interpretation requests have been posted here, and I have been learning while doing, and learning from other dream interpreters - some of whom stick around and some of whom have come and gone. Some of the tools of dream interpretation I learned from others include the interpreting other characters as aspects of dreamer's personality and interpreting houses as representing the mind, for example. I also have been expanding my intuition in different ways, and applying it to dream interpretation of others and my own dreams. I always like getting feedback from others including the dreamers and other interpreters because I learn from such feedback.

As for your religious spitual quest, I think the airplane travel in your original dream may also represent your spiritual quest.

I think your latest dream may be about your attempt to free yourself from authorities, including religious authorities perhaps yes. You are trying to go your own way. The fact that you got captured may be symbolic for your not really desiring to escape authority overall, so for example if you do not want to leave your religion or academia all together, but you just want to have more independence and more individual rebellious thought within the borders of your religion or academia.

Incidentally, I too have been on a spiritual quest lately. I am Christian, but lately I have also been looking at what I can learn from Buddhism as well as Christian mysticism. I do not wish to abandon my Christianity, but my beliefs have been changing and expanding in new directions. Is that kind of like what you are going through? Personally, I believe that doubt and questioning are an essential part of serious faith, in my opinion, and my understanding if Christianity for example is that we are called upon to question and to go on spiritual journeys, figuring out how to follow God in the way that seems best to us. And I think this is true of other religions as well.

Hi again,

I’m glad my interpretation helped in some way, and you’re correct, the dream about the big shuttle is sending a similar message.

Dreams often talk about the same theme from different angles in order to help the dreamer understand, but of course, the language of symbols that they use isn’t always very easy to comprehend.

Usually, driving any type of vehicle symbolizes how the dreamer is using and directing his or her energy and interests in their current life. The image also includes a picture of overall bodily health and its present or potential condition.

Driving a vehicle like a big truck is probably not at all what you would ever do in outer life, so it likely is meant to represent an “inappropriate” and “over-sized” use of your albeit large amount of energy, directed towards your PhD., enlarging your house and the other ventures and goals which you described.

Not being fully in control of the vehicle in this dream and its being on “auto-pilot” as JoannaB suggests seems to be something like the idea which appeared in your other dream; that is, unfortunately a kind of compulsion can apparently sometimes take over, leading to “dangerous situations” (high speed turns which can cause an accident).

Another approach to the image of the wise man in your dream is that it tends to symbolize a kind of guiding center of your overall mind and body, a center which can “see” a larger area of the situation than the ego.

The latter’s viewpoint can often be compared with the narrow beam of light shining from a lighthouse. Much is “still in darkness”, and the Self figure can be understood as the “dream-maker” who provides the complete and objective view of a situation as well as hints on how to proceed in an effective way.

The wise man (a wise woman in the dreams of women) also represents the unique potential of a person, made up of such things as the many various and interrelated skills and abilities one has, the genetic factors impacting on their life, the instincts and how they deal with them, along with all the influences that were present as they were growing up etc. etc.

The idea is that a person has to become as conscious as possible of these many factors which affect him or her, and also has to develop in a balanced way various potentials in order to make them as real as possible in a three-dimensional way, this of course being a very difficult task.

Doing so to the best of one’s overall ability, however, fulfills the promise that is inherent in one’s unique makeup and therefore tends to give a sense of meaning to life.

One school of psychology calls this central figure of “meaning” the “Self”, and this inner figure often appears in dreams directly or indirectly during the second half of life in order to help to ensure that any neglected aspects of the dreamer are worked on consciously.

In your dream, this figure looks on in surprise at your comment as if to say something like “So, get to it! Take the controls YOURSELF, CONSCIOUSLY, and COMPLETE THE TRIP SAFELY!”

Regarding your dream about the police, an additional approach to JoannaB’s could include the idea that the police might represent some unconscious and understandable feelings of guilt arising from the fact that you are questioning beliefs and ideas that have been present since your earliest childhood and which perhaps your parents and other family members still feel very attached to.

If you would like to get a clearer idea about the “Self”, the book “Man and his Symbols” edited by C.G. Jung would be very useful. The long first chapter also contains very valuable ways to approach the practical interpretation of dreams.

I personally believe that it’s best to have a very solid foundation when analyzing one’s own dreams or those of others, using techniques that would not be unfamiliar to professionals who are analyzing the dreams of clients for example.

So some additional books which are written for the normal, everyday type of dreamer but which are firmly based on reliable, professional methods include: “Inner Work” by Robert Johnson, “Jungian Dream Interpretation” by James Hall, a chapter on dreams in Mary Ann Mattoon’s “Jung and the Human Psyche”, Donald Broadribb’s “The Dream Story”, and “The Dream and its Amplification” edited by Erel Shalit and Nancy Swift Furlotti. There are additional books but these should get you started.

Just a friendly warning though: the methods, techniques and ideas found in these books can be very strongly attractive when you first meet them, so try to avoid going on a kind of “auto-pilot” about them!

Anyway, to help with the hard task of looking at your belief system, here is a quote related to a lecture available online called “The Human Experience of the Divine: CG Jung on Psychology & Spirituality” given by Murray Stein and which you might find helpful:

“Approaching spirituality from a psychological perspective does not contradict traditional religious practices and beliefs. It offers a richer appropriation of religious images and doctrines on a personal level, and for many it provides a way back to religious thought and belief that have lost their meaning in modernity”.

Again, I hope that these ideas can be helpful in some way.