The Path of She: A Lesson in Flying

A dreaming-awake transformative moment: I had three dreams in a row about flying. I don’t remember the details of the dreams, and I don’t need to. Three is the magic number and the Mysteries had my attention: they were gifting me with one of their life-changing lessons, this one about flying.

At this particular time, I was flying a lot, commuting by floatplane from my island home to my City client on a weekly basis. The morning after the third dream, I found myself in the cockpit beside my favorite pilot, a big-hearted man with a quirky sense of humor, flying over the islands as the lone passenger.

Out of nowhere, he slid the control wheel to my side of the cockpit and said casually, “here, fly the plane.” I was petrified, my hands white-knuckle gripped to the wheel and my body ramrod tense. Then he said to me, “Loosen your grip, listen from the seat of your pants, and don’t worry, I am here.”

And I got, in the flash of that terrifying moment, that this was a waking dream of the most powerful kind; the Mysteries were speaking to me directly, through my pilot friend, teaching me how to fly free in life.

Be free: Loosen your grip on life, let go of your clenching, deadening fear; soften your body, listen from your root, from your flesh, it knows how to be and dance with what is; and don’t worry, you are held by the love and presence of God, Goddess and the powers of life.

What a difficult lesson this is. Freedom is what we hunger for most and yet seems most elusive. We have been trained to associate freedom with having more than enough money and things, which only further feeds the rigid fear and control-based state of mind that is the antithesis of freedom.

There is more to my dreaming-awake story. Within a week of my flying lesson, I was again commuting home by floatplane, alone with another pilot, but this time in a winter storm of epic proportions. There was zero visibility and the plane was being tossed about in the wild winds like a child’s toy in the hands of rough-playing giants. Though my first response should have been oh-my-God-I’m-going-to-die fear, it wasn’t; I knew I was still dreaming awake with the Mysteries and that I was being put to the test on their lesson on flying.

So I emptied myself of all thoughts and reactions; I entered my body, deeply, fully, and let it move and rock, soft and open, with the violent turbulence of the plane. I knew, very clearly, that this was a death moment, and that my fear would gain me nothing. Death did not care if it took me rigid and terrified, or supple and present. But my soul did. My life did. And the Mysteries did.

I could choose, now, and in every moment for the rest of my life, whether to live from fear or from freedom. I chose freedom.

Then the pilot said to me, “Do you trust me?” And I said, “yes.” And he turned the plane around, taking us back and safely landing in our place of departure.

Believe it or not, I got in a floatplane the very next day and the EXACT same thing happened, and I made the EXACT same choices. Test and re-test taken. Test and re-test passed.

Life is going to give us what it is going to give us: flights through easy, sunlit skies and turbulent, rock-us-to-our core storms. I don’t need to tell this to you. You know this yourself — that life is a tricky, bumpy business jostling you between very, very good and very, very bad experiences. And yet freedom is there, in every experience, to choose who you are and how you react with whatever life throws your way.

And, in those times when a rocky moment has you in its grip, and fear suffocates your freedom, remember these words from God, Goddess, Spirit, Love, Self, or however you name the Mysteries that guide you: “Loosen your grip, listen from the seat of your pants, and don’t worry, I am here.”

The Path of She is published on alternate Saturdays; follow it via RSS or e-mail!  If you like Karen’s work, like her page on Facebook or maybe buy her book, Tale of the Lost Daughter, a fictional spiritual adventure into the life-changing world of magic and the sacred feminine.

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