Tower

Something you have built or created in your life. As such it can be an outer achievement or erection of inner attitudes such as defensiveness, isolation, insularity, or an attempt to reach the heights of awareness or recognition. It can also suggest male sexuality and drive which may not be expressed satisfactorily, and thus be the source of aggression toward females and society. This also has the elements of insularity and defence. Occasionally it shows heightened awareness, as in the lighthouse dream of Priestley in the entry Religion and dreams.

Example: ‘The devil was trying to force me to make love to a girl. I wanted to leap off the tower and fly away, but it was high, and I was frightened I would fall.’ C.C. 

C.C. is fifteen and facing his emerging drive of love and sex. The woman in the tower is his idealised relationship with the opposite sex. Actual intimacy is threatening, and he wants to ‘fly’ from it but feels this would be failure. The Devil is his own life pushing to grow but felt as threatening.

I was exploring a dream about a derelict tower block I had lived in.

I realised on Sunday that I could not pull tower block down and that I was left frustrated because until it came down, I could not build anything new. I realised that I was this damaged tower block, yet while I stood there, I was keeping my head up like I have always done. I was in fact my wife’s convenience. I took her abuse with my “I’m above it all” stand. When the building crashed, I cried and cried and I felt it was the death of my adulthood. I had hated my Mother and Father and how I always kill myself as I couldn’t kill them. Hampden Rd. was where I lived before I was put into the orphanage by my parents. Even Jesus never came to get me out. There has been no ability to believe in anyone since that time. Yet this growing up has come about because of all the misery I have seen in my relationships. I then felt a deep fear that I must turn to God as I am now in old age, so I need to know the Divine Principle as much as possible before I die. The tower is down now and there is a strong feeling that I should turn inwards and focus on rebuilding my inner character. With a sense of self-worth and not just an acceptance of my lot as given by parents and society. I felt I had a gentle love still within me, leaving me with a wider feeling of gentleness that has encompassed me since.

Example: That was a tall, gothic tower which I knew to be my library with a “wizard’s study” at the top where I could find the quiet and solitude needed for contemplation. The last piece of this may be the most revealing to me as I was not only feeling joyous about the tower but was very excitedly showing it off to members of my extended family. I believe I have a good idea of what this all means to me, but I would value any objective insights. Thank you for creating this website as a guide for folks like me.

From you dream I see you have a very balanced life , with your children and wife all there, the modern and the ancient together. But here is the wonder of it, the Wizards Study! This is, I believe the Centre of your life showing you have achieved a great deal in your life – perhaps enlightenment. This is where your strength arises from, the ability to transform yourself, and perhaps those around you. I salute you. I say this because I do not think such dreams come lightly.

J. B. Priestly wrote that he and his wife had recently visited the lighthouse here at St. Catherine’s, Ventnor, Isle of Wight, to do some bird ringing. I dreamt I was standing at the top of a very high tower, alone, looking down upon myriads of birds all flying in one direction; every kind of bird was there, all the birds in the world. It was a noble sight, this vast aerial river of birds. But now in some mysterious fashion the gear was changed, and time speeded up, so that I saw generations of birds, watched them break their shells, flutter into life, mate, weaken, falter and die. Wings grew only to crumble; bodies were sleek, and then, in a flash bled and shrivelled; and death struck everywhere at every second. What was the use of all this blind struggle towards life, this eager trying of wings, this hurried mating, this flight and surge, all this gigantic meaningless effort?

In this dream the tower represented the ability to experience a much greater area of awareness than usual, enabling him to receive a greater insight into the meaning of life. He sums it up, “Birds, men and creatures not yet shaped and coloured, all were of no account except so far as this flame of life travelled through them. It left nothing to mourn over behind it; what I had thought was tragedy was mere emptiness or a shadow show; for now, all real feeling was caught and purified and danced on ecstatically with the white flame of life. I had never before felt such deep happiness as I knew at the end of my dream of the tower and the birds.” The dreamt left a great impression on my mind than any experience I had ever known before, awake or in dreams, and said more to me about this life than any book I have ever read.