Have you had an airport dream recently?
Did it leave you energized and excited? Or anxious?
My guess is that for many of us airport dreams are often stressful and highlight areas of our lives where we are highly reactive.
It’s not surprising. Preparing for and checking in at the airport are not the most peaceful of activities, nor is navigating the airport. It’s understandable then that airport dreams, like airports, are often saturated in chaotic energy.
For me, airport dreams have shown me how (in general) I yearn for control and ease, and yet I believe I can and must do “it all” by myself.
Recently, though, I had a beautiful “upgrade” of an airport dream. When I woke up and wrote the dream down, I knew something different had occurred. I knew I had been different in this airport dream. And as a result, I woke up feeling different than I normally do after an airport dream.
I believe this upgrade was a result of efforts I have been making in both my dreamwork and waking life to be “willing to receive.”
What do I mean by “willing to receive?” Well, let’s look at the dream for some examples.
In this recent airport dream, I was in a parking lot and realized I was running late for a flight. Boarding was in ten minutes! I quickly pulled out my phone and tried to open the Uber app. It wouldn’t work! The phone was glitchy.
I started walking toward the main road, when all of a sudden a woman appeared. She said, “I can give you a ride.” I took a moment to check in with myself: Did I trust this woman? Pretty quickly I realized I did.
I accepted the ride from the woman, despite her being a “stranger,” and she got me safely to the airport “on time.” (I put “on time” in quotes because if we look more closely at the dream using only the lens of our waking life mind, we can easily deduce all that would have taken a lot longer than ten minutes in waking life. Our dream minds don’t easily think rationally or logically. Nonetheless, they still like to judge, fix, and react!)
Despite this gift from the stranger, the dream continued to bring me obstacles.
Why?
I don’t know. Maybe to show just how habituated I am to thinking airports are hard or travel is hard or life is hard and filled with problems to solve.
But guess what? The dream brought me more help, too.
A security guard rushed me through a crowded line.
A staff member granted me VIP access to interesting and unexpected features of the airports, while showing me short cuts to the gate.
By the time I reached the end of the dream, I was not even sure I was in an airport anymore. Or if I had been, I was inside an airport filled with interesting museum exhibitions and standup comedy.
I no longer felt worried or alone. I felt special and taken care of. I was no longer stressed nor even thinking about my flight, to be honest. I was simply enjoying the entertainment.
I woke up feeling relieved and relaxed.
What a gift to wake up relieved and relaxed rather than worried over where I left my passport or was I going to catch my connecting flight!
So, does this one dream make me “cured” of the stressful recurring airport dream?
I doubt it. Our conditioning is strong, and so is the mind, as well as the ego.
Dreamwork is the work of a whole lifetime, I believe, if not multiple lifetimes.
Fortunately, there is no end goal with this type of work, just an ongoing cycle of sacred encounters — with opportunities during each sleep for me to show up differently than I did before, in ways that allow for more feeling, more connection, and a deeper knowing of my soul.
