Cloister
A covered walk around an inner courtyard — a sheltered path for walking thought in a religious house.
A cloister in a dream is the dream's image of a covered path where the body walks slowly so the mind can do its real work. The cloister is not for getting anywhere; the loop returns. The dream brings the cloister when something in your life — a problem worth turning, a grief that needs to be walked, a decision that needs slow rehearsal — is asking for that kind of enclosed, repetitive movement rather than for a destination. A cloister walked alone in the morning is the dream affirming that the interior work is being given its proper architecture. A cloister where the columns have fallen, the loop broken open to weather, is the dream noting that the structure you used to walk your thinking inside no longer holds, and the same thought is now being done out in the open without shelter.