What does it mean if you have a dream about flying through the air strapped to a toilet? Dare I ask? How could I not?
Since ancient Mesopotamia, where dreams were first recorded, people have meandered the path of wonder in search of meaning in dreams. Dreams have inspired music, literature, mythology, political decisions, and scientific advances. Einstein was spurred toward his theory of relativity by the memory of a childhood dream.
Somehow, I don’t think my recent experience has potential on that scale. In the dream, I was with my sister in a bright New York coffee shop. We were having some sort of flat-bread sandwich, and I was marveling at how pretty and strange she looked in the poufy 1950s housedress that she had apparently modified to suit her expanding middle. I excused myself to find the restroom, and that’s when the surprises kicked in.
It turned out the bathroom didn’t have any stalls, just an extraordinary selection of unusual toilets. As I wandered about, trying to decide which toilet to use, the room grew and shifted, becoming something along the lines of an enormous warehouse with toilets in every shape, size, and color. It was hard to commit to a commode, but finally, I did. I chose one that sat like a throne atop a ten-foot pyramid of stairs. Slowly, I climbed. In the dream, the fact that the toilet had a seatbelt didn’t sound any alarms. But it should have. Because as soon as I’d slipped my pants down (glancing furtively toward the door the whole time) and belted myself in, the toilet propelled itself from its high perch and swung forward and down and up again in a wide, thrilling arc through the bright open air of the warehouse. I felt awkward about my pants being down, and peeing was out of the question, but the ride itself was enchanting.
Carl Jung and other dream researchers have agreed that flying dreams are about ambition and achievement, while a swing as a dream symbol suggests issues hanging in the balance that can be made to swing in your favor if you are patient and cautious. Toilets, I’ve learned, are widely acknowledged to symbolize purification and self-renewal. Public restrooms with no stalls, on the other hand, can indicate frustration about not getting enough privacy. And public nakedness might point to an experience of embarrassment or vulnerability. That’s a lot of material from one strange little dream.
But there’s probably even more to it than that, because many dream researchers believe that through dreaming we access a certain collective unconscious, and that’s why our dreams might be considered products of a certain universal symbology.
Kelly Bulkeley is a theological scholar, author, and researcher who started an interesting study in 1996. He gathered dream reports from college undergrads of all political persuasions and ultimately compared the dreams of twenty-eight highly conservative people to those of twenty-eight highly liberal people, with men and women equally represented.
At an academic conference in the summer of 2001, Bulkeley presented his findings, with the disqualifier that his sample was way too small to be conclusive. But still, it was interesting. People on the right had more nightmares, more dreams in which they lacked power, and more lifelike dreams: “Female rights were especially anxious about family relationships, and male rights had dreams almost devoid of girlfriends,” said Bulkeley. Meanwhile, lefties had fewer nightmares and more dreams of good fortune, personal power, bizarre elements, and, among the males, an “unusually high” number of female characters.
Bulkeley’s findings (much to his amused surprise) were snatched up by the national media, and political partisans on both sides spun the issue, despite Bulkeley’s disclaimer about the sample size. How could they resist? Terry McAuliffe, Democratic National Committee chairman, quipped, “If George W. Bush were the leader of my party, I’d have trouble sleeping at night, too.” “What do you expect after eight years of William Jefferson Clinton?” retorted Kevin Sheridan of the Republican National Committee.
However we spin or dismiss our dreams during the waking hours, the significance of dreams is too well established to wave away. Some people can even will their own dreams, after much disciplined practice. Which means that you, too, could take a ride through Manhattan on a flying toilet, if only you set your mind to it.
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