My dream-based journey was both exhilarating and tense. It was like the Flow experience described by Mihali Csikszentmihalyi (1990). Influences by the anthropological analyses of Victor Turner regarding initiation rituals and threshold experiences, Csikszentmihalyi studied and wrote about the “threshold” experience that comes with facing a challenging situation that holds the promise of being successfully addressed. Located in the space between anxiety (too much challenge) and boredom (too little challenge), the Flow experience is highly motivating and leads one to a state of great time-less pleasure. It is such an experience of Flow that leads many people to climb mountains (or ride bikes up steep roads, play chess, or author complex books). We might find that Flow is experienced in an imagined manner during our dreams – just as we can fancifully or indirectly fulfill our sexual needs in a dream.
While flying (as a young man) was an easy way to demonstrate competence and readily demonstrate achievement, mountain climbing is a more “anchored” form of moving upward. For me in my dreams, the experience of climbing to the top of a peak was very difficult. There was good reason to celebrate having arrived at the top of the mountain. In my dream, I was out of breath (this being a high-altitude peak) and I was exhausted given the difficult climb. However, there was another emotion that was a bit harder from me to understand. I would always feel anxious. While I was on sound footing at the top of the mountain, I always feared in my dream that I would somehow fall from the peak. It was no longer a Flow experience for me. My balance had tipped from feeling of competence and achievement to a sense of vulnerability and profound fear of falling. As a middle-aged adult, it seems that my dreams were teaching me that competency is ultimately founded on hard work. Furthermore, achievement will always be not only hard-won but also a bit precarious.
I Dream I Am Being Me: Exploring Aspects of Myself
My dreams now often are based in reminiscence–as is my waking life as an old man. In my dreams I often squish together and modify existing experiences from previous times in my life. The narratives I generate in my present-day dreams often contain a bit of my failures as well as my successes. The obstacles I face in these dreams often concern psychological states of mind—such as moments when I am being arrogant or times when I am being self-serving or too competitive. Everything is mixed together—the good and bad, the appropriate and inappropriate, the generous and selfish.
It seems that my dreams are becoming more like my waking life—though they offer me a bit more insight than I often gain when awake and preoccupied with the ongoing activities and adjustments of thoughts and feelings in my life. It seems that my dreams are now more likely to be instructive and even a bit provocative rather than being drive-fulfilling or aspirational. I have arrived at a point in my life when I wish to look inward (and backwards in time) to find out more about myself—particularly the meaning and purpose in my life. This is more of a spiritual journey than a journey in which I am seeking to fill some fundamental biological need or to fill some higher-order aspirational need. My dreams are serving as a teacher rather than acting as a source of (disguised) gratification or (mature) motivation.
