Boundless Flight
Dear Ian
I’ve had this dream many times during my treatment for cancer. I’m flying over a large lake towards snow tipped mountains  I can see people waving to me from the tops of the mountains and my deceased mother is just beyond the top of the highest peak. She is holding out her arms to welcome me. I’m conscious that I’m dreaming and the colours are very clear. I can fly like a bird using my hands and arms to steer toward the mountains. I swoop down to the water and touch but sometimes I go right under the water and then am swimming and can go right up from the bottom of the sea into the sky again. Although I know I can fly anywhere I like I never reach the mountains and the water is always calm. Can you tell me if this dream is predicting my own death?
Yours, Margaret

When we dream of flying like a bird, it is an expression of pure freedom and a release from earthly constraints and physical limitations. The sky represents your thoughts and ideas, and the water reflects your feelings and emotions. This ability to swoop from the sky into the water and emerge again suggests that you enjoy using both your head and your heart to experience the world around you.

Your experience of a life threatening illness has given you a unique perspective on the world that goes beyond the mundane routines of everyday life. Rather then viewing your physical condition as a limitation, you are using your experiences to help you explore some higher thinking and to find a deeper peace within yourself. Your explorations elevate your own spirit and this gives a lot of inspiration to the people who are around you.

The mountains symbolise an awareness of the boundaries of your mortality, and some of the people with you in the dream, such as your mother, have already crossed that boundary and gone beyond the mountains. You know that you will pass on and go beyond your own physical existence one day, but that time is not now.

Intimate Intrusion
Hi Ian
I am in the airport returning from holiday with my husband when customs stop me and say that I am importing illegal drugs! then they bring out this big metal pair of knickers. They want me to take off my clothes and put on the knickers so that they can use instruments to poke around inside me! I say that I am not doing this and it is against human rights and what evidence do they have – all this is still in the middle of the airport and is creating a scene.
Mandy

Dreaming about being in possession of illegal drugs often shows that your own personal view of a particular situation is different from the views of people in positions of authority. Being at the airport and returning from holiday suggests that you have just successfully completed some sort of project at work. Going through customs indicates some type of project review where your performance is being examined by your management.

Although your project has been successful, the managers want to review your methods in more intimate detail and this begins to make you feel quite uncomfortable. The metal knickers show that their demands are precise and unyielding and this is making you feel very vulnerable. This is not an invasion of your physical intimacy, but a probing of the personal beliefs and values that you hold dear.

This makes you feel that your freedom to work the way you choose is being threatened by those in authority. Although they may be trying to ensure that you follow their customary practices, it seems more like an invasion of your personal space. To protect your private life and ensure that your talents are recognised, you need to set clear operating boundaries with your work colleagues.
Crazy Woman
Hello Ian
I am in a safe house for spies and all the rooms are tiled in white like in a public toilet or a mental house. The rooms are full of all sorts of different coloured bottles. A crazy skinny screaming woman is chasing me in the house and I lock myself in the bathroom but she is banging on the door to break it. I am terrified and I know that she wants to kill me  She screams my name all the time and sometimes she threatens me – other times she tells me she is in love with me. I know that she will smash all the bottles and then drown me in the bath if I let her in.
Elizabeth

The safe house in your dream symbolises your own self and your need to feel safe and secure. The different rooms in the house represent the different aspects of your own character. Tiled white rooms suggest that you always try to keep your emotions under tight control so that you don’t end up in any messy situations. Although you appear calm and in control to the people around you, the coloured bottles show that you are bottling all your feelings up inside you.

Your emotional self appears in your dreams as the skinny, crazy woman. She is skinny because you are limiting your emotional growth by keeping other people at a distance and she is shouting crazily because you try not to listen to your own real feelings in waking life. By locking yourself in the bathroom, you are trying to lock away your own needs but they just won’t go away.

You are terrified to express your needs to other people in case you might release a whole lot of bottled up feelings and end up drowning in self pity. However, you need to find a healthy outlet for your feelings, rather than just spying on them from a safe distance.