Saturday, December 13, 2014

How many floors in your dream house?



"In the Norse heaven of our forefathers, Thor's house had five hundred and forty floors; and man's house has five hundred and forty floors."  The voice is that of Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay "Conduct of Life".
    We begin to see the truth of it in dreams in which we discover that our home has an extra level, or many of them. I have yet to meet a dreamer who claims to have discovered all five hundred and forty floors. Yet when  we discover even a single room we had not opened before, we discover that we are more than we know.

     To spin from Norse gods to the Bible, in the dream house, there are many mansions - extra stories and hidden rooms and basements, wings of possibility.
     The state of a dream house may reflect the state of the body. If the dream house is in need of repairs, or there's a problem with the plumbing or the furnace, you may want to consider whether there is a health advisory concerning a corresponding part of the body..
     Different rooms in the dream house may represent different functions, of body or soul. The kitchen may represent the digestive system, or the state of the family, or of our creativity (since the kitchen is the place where we cook things up and often the hub of family life).
     
When I'm living in an apartment in my dreams (which I have not done in waking life for 30 years) I ask myself "what am I a part of, or apart from?" 
    I love the sense of expanding life possibility that comes when I am in a dream house that has levels or rooms beyond any physical house I know.
    I'm intrigued by how life memories help design my dream houses, which are sometimes composites of several past places where I have lived. 
     When I find myself moving to a new place in my dreams, I'll ask myself whether this could be preview of a literal house move (maybe one I haven't yet considered in ordinary life). I'll also ask: what changes in my life situation are in store for me in a larger sense?
     In dreams, we often find ourselves back in the old place, a childhood home or a home we shared with a former partner. Being back in the old place could be a journey back across time, or into a parallel reality in which a parallel self never left the old situation - and/or an invitation to reclaim vital soul energy and identity we left behind when we made a major life change. 
     There are dream houses that are not of this world, places of learning and adventure and initiation in the Imaginal Realm. These may be places of encounter with a second self, an aspect of our multidimensional Self. Over many years, I have found myself traveling in dreams to an old house on a canal in Europe, the home of an eccentric scholar who is something of a magus, with an extraordinary library and collection of working tools of magic. It took me a couple of visits before I recognized that this dream house belongs to me,
     Jung's dream of a "many-storied house" led him for the first time to the concept of the "collective unconscious" (and also to his rift with Freud, who refused to accept the depth of this dream). Jung found in his multi-level dream house a "structural diagram of the human psyche." In the dream, he became aware that there was a story below the respectable middle-class environment in which he was living. When he went downstairs, he found successive stories below his previous consciousness: a darkened floor with medieval furnishings, and below that a beautifully vaulted Roman cellar, and down below that - when he lifted a stone slab by a ring - a primal cave with scattered bones and pottery and the two skulls.

Image: The so-called "Wooden Gagster" house in Archangel, Russia, built without permit or architect, demolished in 2008. Photo credit: Wikipedia, Mr 850


2 comments:

riverpopes said...

I have a hearing Tuesday to determine MediCal's claim on my brother's house. He died without medical insurance from Cancer. I lived with him here while my husband died here, and then while my brother died here, both last year. My brother's wishes were that I would never have to worry about a place to live, but the state may have priority over his trust. Last night I dreamed on what this is all trying to show me. Is this about my future security or is this about me claiming my freedom in a new way? Thanks Robert Moss. Yes, the roof has been leaking (and so have my eyes!) But sometimes after the tears flow there is clearer vision!

Valerie said...

Sorry to hear about your troubles. I hope the dream leads you in the right direction. I always trust my dreams to do so and they have not led me astray!
My dog had to go out, this is not normal so I am up far earlier than usual and I awoke with a dream snippet of a house, one I have not been in (yet). I was upstairs with a small child , the bannister up top was missing and as the child walked to the edge I grabbed him and pulled him back. When I did I looked down and there were many stories added , more than when I walked upstairs. I wondered if the house was growing as I lived in it?