DREAM GALAXY

Research case · Flight & sky

Flying and Riding a Cloud

Not stated · Date unknown · contemporary study

Um I had a dream I was flying, and I got tired of flying so I caught a ride on a a cloud and then I just started singing along the way. I don't even know where I was going. And that's it.

Original text — Zhang & Wamsley 2019 dream EEG reports — krank curated text-only release v1, Jing Zhang and Erin J. Wamsley (research); Erin Wamsley, Jing Zhang and Megan Collins (archive); Remington Mallett / krank (text curation)

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Source
Zhang & Wamsley 2019 dream EEG reports — krank curated text-only release v1 — Jing Zhang and Erin J. Wamsley (research); Erin Wamsley, Jing Zhang and Megan Collins (archive); Remington Mallett / krank (text curation), 2019 study; 2025 curated release. Curated text-only release, de-identified report 141
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
Record type
Research case
Place
Not stated · American
Date
Date unknown · contemporary study
Uncertainty
Moderate — De-identified sleep-mentation report; the source does not establish a calendar dream date. Chinese title and translation are AI-generated editorial drafts, not human-verified.
Imagery
Flight · Horse · Sky · Stars · Music

Another way to look at this dream

Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.

Flight

How did flying feel — effortless, effortful, frightening? Is there something in your waking life you would like to rise above, or see from higher up?

Jung · Compensation

Jung thought dreams often compensate for a one-sided waking attitude: they show the side we leave out. A flying dream can be read either way — lightness someone lacks, or a height they have climbed too fast.

C. G. Jung, “General Aspects of Dream Psychology”, Collected Works 8

Early dream research Dream research

Ellis gave flying and falling dreams a whole chapter, “Aviation in Dreams”, and explained flying mainly through breathing sensations during sleep.

Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911), ch. VI

Classical Chinese medicine Historical medicine

The Lingshu says that when the upper body is in excess, “one dreams of flying”. This is a historical theory about the body, not medical advice and not a way to diagnose anything.

Huangdi Neijing, Lingshu ch. 43 “Yinxie Fameng”

All perspectives on flight →

Horse

Were you riding the horse, chasing it, or running from it? Did it go where you wanted?

Greek philosophy Philosophy

Plato pictures the soul as a charioteer driving two horses, one willing and one unruly — the self as something that has to be steered.

Plato, Phaedrus 246a–254e

Chinese poetry Literature

Xin Qiji, a general who no longer commands, dreams himself back among army camps and warhorses: horses as a life that has ended but still returns at night.

Xin Qiji, “Po Zhen Zi”

All perspectives on horse →

Sky

What colour was the sky, and how far away? Were you under it, or up inside it?

Daoist classic Classical text

In the Liezi, King Mu of Zhou is carried up into a magician’s palace in the sky. He returns to find he never left his seat: “we were wandering in spirit,” the magician says — “why would the body move?”

Liezi, “King Mu of Zhou”

Roman philosophy Philosophy

In Cicero’s “Dream of Scipio”, the dreamer is taken up among the heavens and looks back at an Earth so small that Rome’s empire seems a speck.

Cicero, De re publica VI (“Dream of Scipio”)

All perspectives on sky →

Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.

Dreams that share its images