Hi, Spidey.
Exploring a particularly bothersome dream is like exploring a surrealist play. It's a theatre where the narrative traffics in symbolism and affect and ambiguity--not cause-and-effect as we usually experience them. What at first feels disorienting has its own artistic logic. There are no final answers, but a good exploration begins with two questions. You ask what the symbols mean for that particular playwrite and you ask what the symbols mean generally in human experience.
The dreamer is the playwrite. Only the dreamer knows all the autobiographical details that might affect the content of a dream. So it's always a good first step for the dreamer to ask what these details are. For example: if you or a loved one have recently spent some time in the hospital, or if you read a SF novel that impressed you, that would suggest quite a bit for the second set of dreams you describe. The rest of us have no way of knowing what biographical details like this enter the picture for you.
It's also a good idea to look at wordplay. The unconscious is a genius at this and often gives visual form to puns.
I can help a bit with general symbolism.
A common motif in both dreams is loss of competence--the loss of the dreamer's ability to control or affect the environment. Another common motif in both sets of dreams is awareness of tension in the relationship between celestial and earthly life.
Flying has long been associated in the human experience with the realm of ideas, ambition. One navigates the heavens, the realm of the spirit (air). Your account suggests that as a child you enjoyed a natural freedom of movement in this realm. Everything the skies have to offer was available to you. Lately you are encountering more difficulty. Matters that were once simple are now revealing previously unsuspected complexities. Issues of gravity and weight are making the presence known.
A prominent feature in the second set of dreams is 'white featureless eyes.' At first this suggests blindness. It would be--to the world we normally see with our eyes. But it also suggests that the eyes are turned inward. They would thus see a world we do not normally see: the interior world, the inside of the creature. The inner life is one we often overlook in our preoccupation with external reality, but it is also one that can absorb us if the balance goes too far the other way. The figures seem to be calling on you to do as they do: to turn your gaze inward.
Aliens and angels, BTW, are essentially the same image. In each case you have a celestial being--a creature that makes its home in the skies--that is not really human (though it may appear so) and that possesses otherworldly knowledge.
You have shared a detailed and symbolically rich narrative. I don't pretend that these comments exhaust the possibilities. But I hope these general observations are helpful.
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Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.
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