Medulla - To have a dream like this one I feel you are not new to your inner life. See -
http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/inner-world/#MakesInner The new house shows that you have, or will soon, achieve(ed) the whole amazing spectrum or levels that you have as latent in you. You give a wonderful description of this in a symbolic form; multiple levels spanning from low level forest with towering trees to floors with heights in the clouds. It represents your awareness stretching from the earthiness of your body life and the wonderful life of nature around you, up to the sensing of almost intangible things in the clouds of higher awareness.
When we approach our core awareness, which is what you are doing, it is like undressing. We lose body awareness if we do it while asleep. We pass through the realm of thought governed by language – so we lose thoughts. We lose all the things consciousness ‘clothes’ itself in while awake – yet we still exist. It is a very different form of existence, beyond the limitations of the body, and even time and space, but we still exist as an incredible creature alive in a world with almost no boundaries. We are godlike. In fact it seems to many when they experience this, that they are meeting God – in fact they are God.
This Core experience is often described as enlightenment. It can also be described as naked awareness. This is because what we usually know of self has become “undressed”. What that means is that what we usually call self has dropped away.
This dropping away of self is what had been called ‘enlightenment’. However, there is enormous confusion about this, as what some people who have touched it say is that you are left with no self. They say this sometimes almost like a threat – “Go there and you will lose everything. You will no longer exist.”
The old woman is a strange one, and you feel concerned about her abilities. I guess that you were anxious that she would be a 'wild card' - (An unpredictable or unforeseeable factor). But from what I can judge from your dream she is the old wise woman -
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/archetype-of-wise-old-woman-wise-old-man/Her influence in your life is to lead you up through the levels of your being to the highest and beyond. See
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/levels-of-awareness-in-waking-and-dreaming/This enables you to extend your awareness so you can see miles and miles, and in the end the whole world. This means you have reached, or are about to experience enlightenment. This is because a dream is something that comes from a deep part of you; it is something that is working upwards toward being conscious. As such it often, like a seed, takes time to break through to the surface, and then it has to grow. So often dreams are not recognised for their full meaning until later – sometimes months or even longer. The dream images are attempts to communicate something that has probably never been thought about or even been consciously thought about, so has never been put into common conscious thinking before. It is a communication from the depths, from beyond thought, and so any interpretations that are given by thinking may completely miss the point. See
http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/a-look-at-enlightenment/ Your surrender and acceptance was what took you beyond your previous experience - the end - of you as you were, and of course a new period of your life will begin.
I salute you.
Tony