A Vivid Dream of a Deceased Sister, Possibly With Deep Metaphysical Symbolism

This morning I had a vivid dream of my late sister, the first born of my siblings. When I had last seen her in this world many years ago, she had a big lump of cancerous cells sticking out of her body. But in the dream she looked smiling and beautiful, about 30. She was wearing a white dress with lots of little ruffles. In the dream she said something about having some psychic ability she never displayed in this world. 

"I thought you were dead," I said in the dream, surprised to be seeing her. 

"No, I live in Astoria," she said in the dream. 

Now, Astoria is a neighborhood of New York City that I once lived in for years. The reply "I live in Astoria" may symbolize a deep metaphysical idea. 

There is a theory I have discussed, one I call the theory of the non-earthly preexistence of the soul. This is the idea that your soul did not start to exist here on Earth, but started to exist somewhere else long before you were born. According to such an idea:

(1) You once existed in some non-earthly realm, which may have been some kind of heaven or paradise;

(2) for some reason you then came to live here on Earth as a flesh-and-blood human;

(3) after you die you will then return to that place where you dwelled before being born here on our planet.

There is some evidence to support this idea. It comes in the form of dreams suggesting such an idea, and also near-death experiences suggesting such an idea. In near-death experiences people will often encounter some mystical realm, and report having a strong feeling that such a place is their "true home."  That is the kind of thing someone might experience if he was returning to some place he had been before. 

Now, in dreams there often seems to be symbolism, which serves as a kind of shorthand way of expressing ideas. Imagine you were some spirit trying to telepathically give an answer of "No, I live in a heavenly place that you once lived in."  That might be too long a sentence to successfully transmit in a dream. So you might use instead some shorter expression symbolically expressing such an idea, such as referring instead to some place where I had lived before (Astoria).  That might be a kind of shorthand symbolism expressing the idea of some heavenly realm where I  and all of us once existed before coming to this planet. 

In my post here I discuss quite a few dreams I have had suggesting the idea of the non-earthly preexistence of the soul, and I also discuss how near-death experiences may support the idea. 

If the dream had depicted my late sister (who died  about  11 years ago) as a child,  about 10 years old, you might interpret the dream as referring to earthly reincarnation, with the idea of a reincarnated sister literally living as a child in Astoria, a neighborhood of New York City. But in the dream my late sister was a full-grown woman, looking about 30.