Dreams Cloud Educational Series by Dr. Robert Van de Castle - Session 9 House


If you are indoors, then what would the various sections of a house represent? The kitchen is where we prepare food. Frequently the family eats together there. So a kitchen setting suggests more domestic interactions, more nourishment. This is where we get fed. This is where we remain healthy, hopefully there is enough food there and your appetite can be fulfilled.
If we take basements, it can be a good symbol of the unconscious because it is down at the lowest level and the unconscious is down at a deeper level, out of sight. Then basements can be a good metaphor for the unconscious because it can dark and scary there. We don’t know what’s really down there and we’re fearful of going down there into the dark basement.

An attic can be a good symbol for stored memories. We take and we put things that we’re not regularly using up there. It could be old clothing or furniture. So the attic could be a place where we have memories stored, different feelings and links to the past because we put them up there and we’re not regularly seeing them or dealing with them in our every day activities.
We’ve mentioned before the idea of bathroom activities in that these are the ones that are fairly common for people. If we have scenes in the bathroom, is it a clean bathroom? Is it a dirty bathroom? Is the door always locked and you can’t get in there? What would be the problems there? So to try and link those together with what we were talking about before, how does the bathroom get represented in your particular dream of the house?

Living rooms would be another possible one. If you describe a dream in which you’re talking about the living room that could certainly be a play on words – about what is your style of living? Are you living comfortably? Are you living in a very cramped, compressed area or is it a very big and expansive one?
Do you have a recreation room in your house? Do you allow enough space for a pool table, ping pong table, a place for the family to gather and watch TV? Is there some kind of recreation room or is that completely lacking? That could give you some idea of if you are programming in enough emphasis on recreational activities for yourself.

Continuing on now with a tour of your personal house, let’s take a look at some other kinds of rooms you might have and what they might possibly mean for you. One of the fascinating ones is sometimes when you go to an upstairs part of the house and you discover new, secret rooms. Now sometimes these are difficult to get into, the lock is so caught that you can’t find any way of opening it up. Then when you get inside, again, it may be that you can’t see very clearly because there’s not any windows or the windows are all dirty. These often represent unrecognized parts of yourself that you’ve not yet encountered. You know that there’s a more valuable reservoir of tools and information for you, but you just haven’t yet been able to discover this new secret side of yourself.

Now the way the house appears inside could be relevant. If you have a lot of dust, it suggests that there could be parts of you that you have not really been taking care of and you need to be more mindful. Another thing that you might be curious about the house, is it infested with termites? That would certainly be a strong metaphor for the fact that it’s not a very firm foundation. That it’s very poorly grounded and needs some more work in order to feel that secure and grounded.
There’s different kinds of structures where you might find yourself living. Maybe if it’s in a hotel and that’s really not where your residence is, you might feel that you’re constantly shifting around and changing. There’s no enduring values. There’s no family values that you can count on at all. You’re just sort of a gypsy, traveling about.

The size of the place could be of interest. If it’s a big mansion, this would suggest something different than if it’s a small, little, tiny, itty-bitty cottage or if it’s some sort of ramshackle cabin. All of these would be quite different sorts of concepts for yourself and how good you feel about who you are as a person and where you are living in your mind. Where you are living in your spirit.

I find it interesting that because of my name, Van de Castle, that sometimes when I’m working with a client early on they’ll come in and report a dream about a castle and when I ask them, “Well, what do you make of that, what might cross your mind about the idea of you dreaming of a castle?” It takes them a while and then I ask them, “Well, what about my name?” and they’ll say, “Oh, Van de Castle, oh, Van de Castle!” So sometimes there can be some kinds of discoveries that way.
So we are always able to learn new things about ourselves. In terms of learning new things, anyone if their motivated can do it, so I’d like to put in a plug for my partner, Bobbie Ann Pimm. This is a wonderful book that she’s written. She’s self-published it and brought together some of her own poetry, some of her own artwork, some of it computer generated. And we talked earlier about tidal wave dreams and here’s a nice image of the way that she dealt with tidal wave image in there and how she handled that for herself. So she could be a wonderful example for you. If she can do it, you can do it. Then this is a book that I would strongly encourage you to get [holding up Notes From a Dreamer … on Dreaming: A Personal Journey in Dream Interpretation]. It’s very readable. She has a lot of additional references in it and has done just a great job of not having any formal training and being completely self-taught, but she’s done a wonderful job. And I found, having been involved with her now for the past three and a half years, that by using dreams it has definitely improved our relationship and made it a much, much more powerful relationship. The title of the book is, Notes From a Dreamer … on Dreaming, and coincidentally, here’s a wonderful image of some clouds here. It seems like it was destined before the contact with dreamscloud ever came up that Bobbie was over here dreaming and in the land of clouds and now we have dreamscloud, and both of us now actively involved with it. Myself as an advisor and Bobbie as somebody handling a lot of the material, sort of like an office manager, for dreamscloud.
I look forward to our next meeting and you have an empowering dream tonight.