The Lights in the Castle

Last night I had a stunning dream.
 
Against a night sky stood a large castle, shaped like an arc. It seemed timeless. Its form was ancient, but it stood in perfect condition, fresh, smooth ivory stone.
 
It was maybe twenty stories high, and all across the façade were open archways, each opening to a different room. Inside each archway were two bright lights — two small, gorgeous flickers of light against the blackness, one above the other. In the dream, I understood that inside each archway was a person, made invisible by the darkness. The two lights were the only parts of each person that one could see.
 
In the dream, I knew that one of the two lights was inherited. It came with them and comes with all of us in our birth, and burns consistently throughout our lifetime. It is the spark of life that hovers within our chests.
 
The second light, which appeared above the spark, was different. It rested at the top of column, symbolized by a carved wooden candlestick that resided within each person in the castle. This column expressed their inner stillness and strength, which had not been inherited but built, hard-won by each person through their own journey.
 
The second light was a kind of anointment received at some time in one’s journey. I was there because I had completed building my second light.
 
Being with the second light was beautiful. I longed to concentrated deeply, to go into a kind of meditation to feel the inner sillness and its second light. I did so again and again in the dream, sinking into a place of deep peace, a kind of sleep of thought.
 
In the dream, I loved to look up across the arc of the building and see the hundreds of other double twinkling lights, and did so again and again. I was moved by their beauty and comforted by the presence of these hidden individuals. They seemed to be watchmen, keepers of the balance somehow.
 
I understood that each person in the castle was out living life in the the world, but was always simultaneously right here: in a divine and timeless castle, perfectly still, self-hood invisible, living as witness and spiritual force through the burning of those two lights.