Castle

Feelings of security or insecurity; our defensive attitudes; the way we defend ourselves against ‘attack’. Our past attitudes which may have been necessary in childhood to defend ourselves while strengthening our identity or our way of defending against the remembering or experiencing of childhood pain. See: defence; defence mechanisms.

Castles often have memories or associations with fairy tales or myths, and so can point to important changes going on in you. The castle of the Sleeping Beauty for instance that is a wonder of information. If, in reading the story, you have no previously discovered the ideas relating to an unconscious, hidden part of you, with its promise of greater love, wisdom and beauty, then you have just heard the legend. But you have not heard the legend unless feelings have stirred in you telling you there is a ‘sleeping beauty’ to discover. The legend is the dim, subtle, difficult to prove feelings and hopes within us, that suggest a greater beauty sleeps and can be found. The legend is those hopes that tell us there is more in life if we would only search for it.

It is a legend because most people believe there is no truth in it; a story fit only for children. While the prince represents our conscious mind, our intellect and worldly experience, that feels incomplete, that knows a longing for this ‘other half’. He is more than just our ‘conscious mind’ however. He is a particular state of consciousness; for he dares to search for a Myth. His longing, his incompleteness makes him brave, ready to test the truth or falsity of the Legend. He is certainly not an indifferent consciousness, who stumbles accidentally on the Beloved. He has to cut his way through the terrible briars and thorns surrounding the hidden castle. In these brambles others have been lost and died, for they are all the confusion, pain and ignorance that surround and hide our own ‘Sleeping Beauty’. To reach her we have to face, to experience, to cut through this hedge of ignorance, fear and cynicism that has grown around our own happiness and completeness.

But the Prince breaks through, and stands in amazement at the sleeping court. Then, finding the Beloved of his quest, he kisses her awake, and the court wakes also. So, when we dare to face the attitudes of mind, the events, the pains and fears that have cut us off from wholeness, then we enter our innermost self and find how much of us has remained alive yet asleep; in us yet unconscious. Kissing with our consciousness that which slept and was unknown, it comes into our awareness and awakens in us. Then they marry and live happily ever after. For when consciousness unites with its source, it finds completeness and happiness, and eternal life. This interpretation may give a slightly false impression unless a further comment is added. Namely, it would appear that the princess has to go to sleep in us so that the critical intellect can develop. When this development has taken place, then the two aspects of self, the rational and irrational can marry.

Example: ‘I stood outside a castle. It was closed and guarded by soldiers in armour. Wondering how to get in I thought that if I dressed and acted as a soldier I would be allowed entrance. It worked and inside Christ met me and said he had important work for me to do.’ Sonia.

The closely guarded secret is Sonia’s own impulses to do some sort of socially creative work. She doesn’t want to own her impulse as her own. It is much easier if she can say ‘Christ told me to do this.’ In this way she avoids direct encounter with opposition and has a feeling that she has greater authority than her own. Joan of Arc might well be seen in this light.

Also we might be convinced, or possessed by, a set of beliefs, as for instance religious convictions. And I am talking here about convictions of any sort that make a person completely rigid, and unable to take in or listen to any new experience or idea.

Sometimes we use such convictions like castle walls, to defend ourselves against anxiety, against uncertainty, against actually meeting the vulnerable and perhaps young and lovely self we were before the castle walls went up.

Example: ‘I went to the top of the turret and saw all the men getting ready to defend the castle if attacked. They had arrows and a lot of men were standing on little ledges on the outside of the wall, with no protection and I knew they were very brave to face an attack as sooner or later they would have been hit.’ Anna R.

Here the wall is obviously to do with defending the dreamer against attack. Such a wall might be made out of our aggressive feelings, with religious dogma which might defend us against fears and uncertainty, or from tightly controlled behaviour and emotions. But it can also be made out of the courate and conviction or the dreamer.

Example: I saw a man walking toward what looked a bit like a castle, but was a monastery or spiritual centre. I was both the observer and the man walking to the gated huge wall. As I watched I saw that a man was walking to the gate from within the monastery. So the scene was of a man approaching the gate from outside, and a man approaching the gate from inside. As they got near the gate I realised that the man seeking entrance was the same as the one who would let him in. They were reflections of each other.

The man who approached the gate reached into his coat or cloak for a gift to give as a sign of his desire to be admitted. As he did this the man inside reached into his pocket for the key to open the gate. Their movements were reflections of each other. The giving and receiving, the request and the opening, were one and the same. So the man met who he already was, though he had sought it so long.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I aware olf any defensive attitudes or feelings in this dream?

Am I trying to get in or out of the castle?

Is there any feeling or mystery or spiritual in the dream?

What were you doing or feeling in the dream?

Try using Talking As – Processing Dreams – Avoid Being Victims