Dreaming Lens: Were you in the hospital? Was someone else? Was there surgery involved? Illness? Was it an emergency that led you to the hospital? Were you being helped or hindered in the hospital? Was it an empty place?
Personal Focus: Hospitals tend to evoke powerful reactions. The discomfort that color associations tend to overshadow the benevolence connected to hospitals as places of healing. It is common for people to fear hospitals, adding a touch of irony to our relationship with the healing process. Healing is transformation and the first step to any major change is the breakdown that precedes the breakthrough.
Since the breakdown is the scary part, we avoid it, just as some people avoid hospitals in waking life. It is easy to forget that in order for surgeons to heal an illness they must first cut the body open, creating a wound. And since not everyone who checks into a hospital is fortunate enough to check out, they are indelibly connected to the fear of death and dying. However, remember that death is always followed by rebirth.
In this way, being in or near a hospital in a dream is always going to indicate that some healing is either underway or necessary. If you are the patient, then consider that your sense of self is undergoing a significant shift. If you are a visitor, then the healing transformation is connected to a Character Aspect or particular way of being as embodied by the person you are going to see. If you are playing the part of healer, the dream may be helping you step into that role in some area of life that is undergoing a transformation.
The fear or repulsion that is present in the dream will give you an idea of how much resistance you may be unconsciously engaged in. If you are experiencing a health issue in life, the image of a hospital may be literal, in which case your dream relationship to the hospital will inform you of underlying resistance to surrender to your body and its functioning (or lack thereof).