In dreams, levitation often comes when you least expect it – the floor drops away and we are surrounded by air. Or, we are startled by something and jump, and don’t return to earth. Sometimes I’ve felt that I’ve seen something on the ground that I don’t want to step on, and I hop my legs up so I don’t touch it, and I just keep moving along with my legs tucked up a bit so my feet don’t touch the ground.
I’ve experienced levitation in dreams as distinctly different to flying. Where the flying dreams are movement and momentum based, often aiming to rise safely higher in the air, in levitation dreams I am often only slightly off the ground, moving at a walking pace or not at all, in very regular situations, like levitating next to a friend who’s walking along a path and talking. Or levitating in my bedroom, in a controlled way, under a spinning fan – having the finer control to not shoot up and hit the fan or fall to the floor.
While levitation is without doubt a mystical and mysterious experience, in dreams it can come as an everyday occurrence.
One facet of levitation is bliss, and connection to a greater world. In deep meditation or at special earth power places, real levitation becomes more possible. St Teresa of Ávila is one famous example. Her experiences of levitation were described as happening spontaneously in rapturous or bliss states. She experienced levitation multiple times while meditating, particularly in power places in the mountains in Spain. She was said to have been not in control of her levitation happening – that she merely had to stay conscious and handle the overwhelming experience in her body.
Let’s explore a levitation dream, so that we can explore this symbol more deeply, and what it might mean on a metaphoric level.
We are on a walk with a friend, out bush – walking along a red earth track with dry trees and shrubs. We are walking from the carpark down to a gathering space. We join with others in the space, and a class or nature experience unfolds. Later, we are walking back up the sloping path to our car, again with our friend. We wave to a man driving a maintenance vehicle, and in this moment of inattention, we raise our feet up off the ground and are floating in a slight jumping position, just a bit off the path, but still moving forwards. We are aware that we’ve just jumped up a bit and we could return to the earth at any time, and half expect that to happen at some point, but in the meantime, we continue levitating forwards at a walking pace, conversing with our friend.
This dream on the surface, particularly upon waking, may seem a little light, a little easy to ignore or pass off. There’s no strong emotional charge, perhaps the scene didn’t evoke any particular memories, and the friend, the people, and the maintenance man may not have reminded us of anyone in our life. Everything was casual, friendly, muted. But it’s worth recording such dreams, because as we wake we are not in the usual brain-state, and things which would feel miraculous to us at midday often seem as easy and commonplace as putting our shoes on, in the liminal time of waking up.
So, it was only after writing this dream down that I realised there was more to it than I’d expected.
Let’s glide over and check it out, part by part.
The dream scene is out in the bush, a dry place. We saw dry trees and red earth. We could say the lack of water mirrors the lack of emotion we and others felt. This could support an interpretation that this dream isn’t (strongly) about the emotional realm.
There are other things to add about the setting, which may have different meanings depending on your experiences. For now, I’ll mention that we may consider the red earth as a place of ancientness and power.
Moving on from the lack of water just explored, what elements were present? We had earth, and it was red, which is earth at its fullest extent of generativeness – full of ‘blood’ in the form of iron. It shows the fullest extent of strong, healthy earthy qualities. Body, bones, blood, physical.
We also have the element of air represented, through the experience of levitation, and through the conversation with our friend – sharing mental (air) thoughts together. Air could be significant, because of the levitation being something out of the ordinary, and because of the dryness of the landscape we are in.
So, in the storyline of the dream: we go to a learning experience and we return, along the same path. In what other situations in life, do you go and return the same way, and come back transformed? You can ask yourself, does this mirror an actual learning experience in life, or an experience you’ve had recently?
This progress out along a path, to a destination, and back the same path can also mirror a shamanic journey, where the descent and ascent (or entry and exit) are taken along the same route, and the journeyer comes back changed, often with new abilities or skills or perception / perspective.
Something else to keep in mind is the learning circle. Although the details eluded us, it may have been a transformative experience, even if gently so. And when we return, although the normal everyday life and maintenance of the body (symbolised perhaps by the maintenance man driving by) continues, we suddenly find ourselves above the ground, in the air floating along.
So, we now step into the levitation as a symbol. We’ll approach this from an open angle, as with such a mystical experience, it may mean any or all of the following, or something else entirely, for you.
Returning to our saint who levitated – levitation can be a symbol of inner threshold states such as deep meditation or travel between worlds, especially as a blessing given, rather than an experience sought. Levitating can also symbolise travelling or bridging two realms; and while you are there, you can receive information and messages, maybe to pass on through to your everyday world.
With a Jungian lens, the levitation could be compensating for what in your waking life is heavy, overburdened or weighed down. It could be showing or giving you the felt experience of lightness. Being able to have bodily experiences, especially if you remember their feel, can be very freeing and help to break patterns that are not supporting you. Knowing and recalling the feeling in the body is a big step to freedom.
When you think about levitation, perhaps the part of the body that comes to mind the most is the feet. Here we enter another potent symbol. The feet as agents of movement, choice, exploration and experience in the world, are lifted from the ground, the place that they push off from to have these experiences. In air, feet have less agency, less power.
Having said that, in my levitation experiences in dreams I have not had trouble moving where I want to go, with the same ability I had when my feet were on the ground. Maybe you have experienced something different?
In my research for this piece, I realised that in the dreams I have levitated and written them down, it always happens without fanfare, almost without noticing, and usually after a gently transformative experience. It is like a blessing after an initiation, a resurrection after the trial, a momentary, visible change of state.
Levitation could be seen ultimately as a symbol of transcending limitations, and being able to accept a transcendent experience, rather than trying to achieve one.
How do you experience levitation? What do you associate it with? And what happens when you do it? I’d truly love to know.