How to Fly

Growing up, my sister often told me about a recurring dream she had where she would be walking up the stairs at our house and then push off and be able to fly out of the house and above the city. Every time she had one of these dreams I was so jealous because she said they were so realistic and vivid that she knew the feeling of actually flying. I wanted to fly.

Around late elementary school I heard about the concept of lucid dreaming. I had never had a lucid dream before but I decided that if I was ever going to be able to fly, that was the way to do it. If you don’t already know, a lucid dream is a vivid, realistic dream where you are aware that you’re dreaming and can control what happens. I wanted to learn how to lucid dream so that I could fly. I bought myself a book called A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming: Mastering the Art of Oneironautics, and read every word of it.

From that book (and other research) I learned that if you want to have a lucid dream a good way to do that is to perform reality checks throughout the day. If you do reality checks when you’re awake, then you’ll also do them when you’re asleep. When you do a reality check when you’re asleep, you’ll probably realize that you aren’t in reality and then your brain will understand that you’re dreaming. Some good reality checks are looking at your hand and counting your fingers every once in a while (in dreams it is very possible you won’t have a normal number of fingers). You can also look at the time, look away, and look back to see if the time has drastically changed. Another way to increase your chances of having a lucid dream is, when you’re falling asleep, to repeat to yourself, “I will have a lucid dream tonight.” This is more likely to work if you wake up in the middle of the night, walk around, and go back to bed thinking that. I’ve never tried that because I would rather just sleep through the night, but go for it if you want.

After research and several weeks of performing reality checks during the day, finally I was in a dream where my mom was driving me down the street and I checked the clock and the time didn’t make any sense. I remember thinking to myself, “I’m in a dream and I really hope I don’t wake up yet”. In my dream I brought myself to my backyard, stood in a pile of leaves, and jumped off the ground and flew into the air. I was flying and it was amazing.

So if you want to fly, you might try doing that because it was pretty cool.