Tiamat, what an interesting dream, thank you for sharing it. I was struck by the "transition" images. If this were my dream, here's what I'd think:

I start with Myra, my grandmother and being in her decrepit manor (the family I was born into) and move through it with my "sister"/twin/guide/best friend Laura into a room of books I enjoy and am trying to explore only to have the Mother/Jackie/Myra (did you notice the order you put them in?) tell me not to touch. I almost got out of the problems with my birth family and away from my sick mother when I moved in with Jackie (I assume Laura's mother?) but that was not to be. I am sent home where the knowledge in the books are not/can't be found but then, "within a secret chamber" (that would be one's self) I find a pedestal device rising up with a white light.

I am reminded of being "put on a pedestal", as one site says, being made a "paragon of the ideal, but not the real" (http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_b...ages/1065.html) but then you say you reached out to the white light (rather than the pedestal). White light means "healing" to me. That the dog, (I like medkev's "primitive" part of you interpretation) was taken by the light and you resisted being "put on the pedestal" also seems good to me.

If it were my dream, I'd feel I was free of Myra and my mother's influence and of any residual disappointment or hurt from Jackie. I would feel healed of some of my past which I would feel had been holding me back. I might be grateful though, that my mother/Jackie/Myra figure had kept me from further exploring the books; books are "dead" and not as good as the white light; if I had been allowed to stay with the books, I might not have discovered the secret chamber?