I am in the student center building of my undergraduate university. I
am signing up for a course in Hot Air Balloon Navigation. I am
grotesquely picking the brains of a wiser student in front of me. He
tells me that before I can sign up for the class, I must find a picture
of Big Foot, and study it, so that I will be able to recognize him as I
come down to land in the balloon. In the final scene, I see myself
coming down in the balloon. I am holding a picture of a big hairy
creature out in front of me, and I see down below a similar being
running rapidly across the terrain.
Interpretation:
Often within a dream, the process of 'taking a course in school' is symbolic of learning to live a better or improved way of life. The dream is indicating that my ego is inflated and potentially out of control, since I need to learn to safely navigate my hot-air balloon. It also simply invites the notion that I am 'full of hot air,' or rather 'full of myself.' However, someone wiser than myself, most likely my Higher Self, tells me that I must first become familiar with an image of Bigfoot. 'Foot' seems to suggest the spiritual path, and then 'Bigfoot' would represent the big, mysterious and elusive guy on the path, or God. So the dream is indicating that if I will become more familiar what God, then I will be able to safely come down from my ego-elevated position. There is also in the motif of 'finding God as I come down,' the apparent message that, God is not found in the airy heights, but rather, is more grounded or 'down to earth.' Additionally, there is the truth that, "what goes up, (sooner or later), must come down," and the dream seems to be indicating that in order to come down safely, I must be able to recognize God, and not only my ego. Otherwise, I might psychologically crash and burn. There is also an amazing similarity between this dream and the ancient Greek myth of Icarus, who flew too near the sun with wings of wax.
This dream well demonstrates Jung's teaching that the unconscious human psyche naturally generates dreams in an attempt to compensate for a conscious, waking one-sidedness, that ideally needs to be brought into psychic balance, before self-destruction occurs. Dreams therefore always come in the service of helping the dreamer. In this case, my inflation was most likely an inevitable consequence of the spiritual growth and healing from deeply harmful conditioning in childhood. Jung also spoke of the near impossibility of avoiding ego inflation in such cases, and it goes without saying that an inflated ego, almost by definition, does not see its own arrogance.