Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 110: Over the Edge

Episode Date: January 26, 2023

“There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose; the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.” ― Napoleon Hill https://www.amazon.com/Boys-Girls-Screaming-Kern-Carter/dp/1770866450

Greetings friends, welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have our friend Kern Carter, writer and author from Toronto, Canada, if I could not mumble my words. We're going to get right back to him in just two seconds. Would you kindly like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers. Also, 15, currently available works of historical dream literature. Most recent book, Book 15, The World of Dreams, originally penned by Have a Luck Ellis, I believe in 1911. and good, good stuff, put a lot of hard work into those highly footnoted, cross-referenced in the back and all that good stuff.

You can find all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, books list, audio versions of the podcast, and that's enough about me. Thank you for that. Back to our friend Kern. Thanks for being here. I appreciate your time. I'm excited. This is the most unique podcast I think I've ever been on, so I'm really glad to talk about this.

Right on. I've had a lot of people say that. And I, as I was saying, well, in the last episode, if anyone watched it, I did a little bit of market research before I jumped into this saying, are other people already doing this kind of thing? Really, nobody's doing exactly this. So I'm like, hopefully it's unique enough. It gets its own audience for people who are interested and not too niche that nobody cares. Yeah, no, I think everybody's dreams are hoping that you do really well with it. That's one thing I thought to him.

like, you know, and that suits me from the business angle of like, I'm going to get into something that's universal and evergreen type of content, but also that is a unifying factor across, you know, there's so many divisive podcasts are built around arguing and budding heads and making demands and pronouncements about their worldview. All I care about is we all share this common experience and it can be made useful to us personally in some meaningful way. Yeah, that's really, I can't hope strongly enough that this succeeds in the way I imagine it could. So we'll see. Yeah.

Well, I mean, you're a real 110 in. So, you know, you're getting there. Right. Episode 110, that is, that is amazing. That's about, you know, one a week for two years now. So hopefully, hopefully it won't take the full 10 years to become an overnight success. We'll find out. But that's, that's enough about me.

Let's talk about you. And so you have the book that might have been recently released. It is called Boys and Girls Screaming, available on Amazon, link in the description. What is that about and how did you come to write it? Yeah, good question. So boys and girls screaming just basically is about a group of teenagers, and they all suffered some kind of like trauma or some kind of traumatic event in their life. And they decide to form a group.

And the group is a healing group. There are no adults allowed in this group, no teachers, no parents, no adult period. and they named the group boys and girls are streaming. So that's really like what the basic summary of the book is about. You know when you bring kids together and they take out of them.

There's just chaos after that. That's really what happened. Okay. So this is not, say, a fiction book, but more of a biographical exploration of a real event? Oh, no, fiction. Totally fiction.

I made it up. Yeah, it totally made it up. I just kind of had that concept. I was thinking about this when I wrote it. After I started getting me, I kind of thought to have that breakfast club vibe. You know, where it's just a group of keys just having, like getting together, just kind of doing their own things. So it's just serious parts to it.

It's definitely, you know, a book that touches on mental health and stuff, but really there's stories about the people of friends that are just figuring themselves out. Very cool. And that's a great comparison to the breakfast club. I think every generation needs that kind of an exploration of what our, what are our current youth experiencing in a certain way at this at this specific time in culture because it does change as much as there are universal themes that always come back in adolescence and and growing and whatnot there's very often unique challenges I mean

we talked to a lot of people in recent episodes about the current modern challenge of social media something that never existed when I was a kid did not a thing and you know for a I don't know if that plays into it at all. No, it totally does. It totally does. The thing is, but what I wanted to do was that the kids actually meet in real life. So that was, that's the big thing because I didn't want, it's said in this time in this generation, but I wanted them to get off of social.

I want to not meet like, I don't know, like on Zoom or something or through TikTok or something like that. No, they come out and they actually meet in someone's basement and the person who made up the group, her name is ever. started the group, they meet in her basement, and it's just like seven of them or six or seven of them, and they talk it out. And why I did that was because the kind of, the story's really layered and this is like a deep layer of the story. But I really want to show that when you really have friends and work, you only need their validation. You don't need the validation of likes,

are they followers, you don't support you, and really understand you. But you're not speaking about that comparison of this person on TikTok podcast, this person on Instagram who just got a million and has this deal of blah, blah, blah. You're not doing any of that. You're just really on yourself,

being accountable to yourself and being accountable to those people. So I wanted to make a, again, this is a layer to the story. It's not like a surfer story, but I want to make a statement about that because in a time when I think people look at Gen Z and look

at young people and say, oh, they don't, they don't value connection. I actually think it's a total opposite. I think they need connection and value connection more than any other generation. Because of the accessibility of being able to talk to someone from anywhere in the world, like how we're communicating right now, I think that

there's something lost a little bit in I don't want to see in your soul. That sounds a little bit of esoteric, but there's something lost in that connection. And I think being able to meet in real life and not worry about the valid of 100.

Yeah. Oh, there's so many great things there. Just to almost work backwards from where you started, it's not wrong necessarily to say soul, even if you're not specifically religious. Like the ancient Greeks had a word which became psyche, but it was originally something more like suke in a way. It was meant to be the sound of breath because it was literally breath. And it was psyche, the breath of life, that what it means to be alive.

to be a living thing. And that became psychology, the study of the psyche. And really, it's, you know, from way back then, it's like this is what the breath of life is what they considered the soul. It's what left your body at the final moment. So not at all at all at odds to have that all all all allusion to a religious thing, a soul when really we're talking about, you know, the experience of being alive and experiencing, whatever that is that we are that, that has that element, the psyche, the soul.

I think it's all the same thing personally. It's kind of what a wizard does it in a way is make these connections of like, it's all the same thing. Whoa. We've all been talking about the same thing for all this time. But there's very important distinctions too. Like you were saying, so there's all working backwards. There's a great concern that say biologically, evolutionarily, are not programmed, designed, however you, you know, evolved to handle mass social media, that we are very much programmed for face-to-face, small group communication, a relatively limited bubble in a way of core relationships that keep us stable. And that without that, we can't handle the other stuff.

And the other stuff is no substitute. It's actually worse for us. So a lot of people are putting a lot of deep thought into that. And I think you absolutely hit on that with your book. Like these kids were, you know, they had enough to say this feels important. It feels like this is the right way to do it. This is how we need to do this. This is how we need to do this.

No, you're absolutely right in everything that you said. And I think you're also right to say that we're not conditioned for it because we never had to deal with it ever. So when would we have big conditions to deal with it? when would we have been conditioned to deal with having to sit down and say to 200,000 followers how you feel today? You know what I mean? Like that's a very odd experience.

It's an overwhelming experience. And that's why a lot of people, even the ones who are super successful, successful for media, still have to take time out to take breaks. They'll suffer from burnout. Still say that they, at some point, they eventually don't love what they do anymore because they feel like they have to keep up to follow. to keep up with the numbers to whatever end they have. And those ends might be amazing.

Like their goals and their intentions might be amazing. But the process of getting there is something that we have to question. And social media is only 10 years old, right? Like more or less, like Facebook's older than that. But popular, popular-wise, social media is about 10 or so years old, maybe 15 years old. I mean, it's super new. That's like, we're still dealing with it. We're still figuring out how to do with it.

But I think now we really need to start, I don't want to say putting rules at Facebook. we should start putting at least some kind of principle in place without kind of studies in place. It's been out long enough now that we could reinforce back into the way these algorithms run and the way the social media runs and then also do that but then teach kids as they're growing up how to deal with it, how to be on social media, how to not be on it all the time, how to back check things, how to interact better, how to know when or if someone says something, there is a way to just unfollow these people. Like, you know, like little, I know that

sounds very simple, but just like not locking things out because you kind of said it right when you started with that. You can't listen to everything on social. It's impossible. Yeah. Impossible. So, yeah. Yeah, for sure. No, I think that's a very important thing. So I tend to be, and I don't talk about politics on the show, but I tend to be libertarian in terms of like, I don't like the use of force. And I wouldn't recommend government policy. It's my perspective. Some people might do it. But I think having this conversation and getting it out there and getting people thinking,

what do we do about this? Like even if no one's going to force you, you have to make a choice. Here's some advice. Here's what I would do. Here's what I think is the best path forward. Maybe I recommend it. My idea was stupid. But someone says, okay, he got nine out of ten things wrong.

But that one thing he said, let's go with that. Let's see what else we can do. But I think it's great having this kind of a book, too, that speaks to kids and say, look, one of the best ways to stabilize yourself in your life is to have that core group of friends that you can bounce ideas off of and whose opinion really matters in a way that a follower can't on the internet because you're never going to meet that person. They're never going to come over and help you move. They're not going to be there when you're crying because you broke up.

You need someone who can hug you, who can actually reciprocate those direct, intimate relationships. There's no substitute for that. zero, zero, absolutely zero. And I'm also just to step back really quickly. I'm not implementing rules. That's like, I don't know if you want to implement. I'm not going to be political, but I'm with you on that.

Like I think it's more so on the like personal level, the local level, the conversation level, like, how do families deal with it? How are teachers talking about it? How are your friends talking about it? How do we get into those conversations? So that it's a mind shift. It's not like this like, I don't know, like you said, the word force. It's not anything that's forced on you. It's just really how you think and how you feel.

Because you have those around you and you've had those conversations, you can just understand things. Yeah. I'm totally down with that too. Like, yeah, I'm probably more on your side, too. I'm a little bit more. Yeah, for sure. And it's contentious because if something is dangerous,

sometimes there's, what am I trying to say? There's an argument to be made that, the one a lot of people go to is the idea of well you have a two-year-old and they're going to run into traffic do you just respect their autonomy and let them run into traffic or do you maybe grab them and stop them there's there's an argument to be made there of protecting people from themselves up to a certain point i think kids are different than adults once you're an adult you should hopefully know enough and we have to at least treat you as if you are someone who knows enough to make your own decisions and not be paternalistic and try to control other people's lives too much.

But a lot of people take that wrong in terms of saying, well, I usually let people do whatever. I'm like, yes, but I'm going to tell them what I think. I'm going to give them my best advice. I'm going to say, hey, maybe don't play in traffic. Even as an adult, that's probably a bad idea. And we're going to discourage that. And we're going to say all the reasons that it's a bad thing and really having that out there so that nobody can miss it.

It's not like, oh, what nobody told me. We all talked about it. We all made a big deal. Everyone needs to know this is, there's, you know, and even that, it's like, I would never want to undo the technological progress that we have. I don't think we can, but also I wouldn't recommend it if we could just because it's, I'd say it's like any tool. Someone made this, this comment the other day of like, what was it was talking about, fire, the invention of fire. And there was probably someone saying, oh, it's too dangerous. We shouldn't mess around with cooking things. Right.

It's going to happen I lost your audio for a second I'm sorry You can hear you now I can hear you now Yeah yeah go ahead Okay yeah I'm saying someone Probably did get burned

When they when they met the fire A lot of people probably got burned Can you imagine the world without fire You know what I'm saying like it's not even It's not even possible Literally not people And I think we're ahead of that The way social media is like it's connected

It's so many good And it's connected so many people in different ways ways. And it's really kind of gathered and built community in ways that would have been impossible without it. I don't think we want, we want to lose that. Like, and other advancements that have come because of that. I just think, like we've been saying, we just have to figure out a way to manage it and just get better at using it. Yeah. And have that conversation is one of the important things. And that's, yeah, great. I keep coming back to your book. You know, these are, these are the kind of things I think maybe kids should be reading in schools. I mean,

That's one place where an authority structure could properly use their ability to instruct to say, here's something to consider. Here's something that seems important in this day and age. And I was talking to it's like you read, and there's a great tradition of writing about, well, here's what today's youth are experiencing. It goes back to one of my dad's favorite movies was, oh, shoot, Harrison Ford was in the 1960s or set in the 60s. I can you remember that? Shit.

It's not coming to me. It's a little one. I was on the tip of my time. Which one? It's God, it's, I was on the tip of my time. It's, um, yeah.

Uh, no, I'm not getting it. Um, but then we have other movies. It's stand by me in the 80s. That was a great one about the kids of that. Bad by me.

Yeah. Looking back on that time. And then I even, I even compared that kind of stuff to, uh, then later, um, dazed and confused, uh,

movie talking about what these kids in the kind of 70s were. experiencing as cultural shifts were happening. And I think every generation has to have, maybe not the voice, but some swath of analysis looking, fishbowl style from the outside back in going, here's what people are experiencing. Here's how they're handling it. Here's what seems like it worked and didn't work. So if we were to get into that a little bit, I don't want to spoil the book, but are there some key relationships you think illustrate some important principles. Yeah, I would definitely say

Ever in the main character, she's about 16 or so in the book, I would say her relationship with her friend Candace, their best friend, they were the same age, they went to, they grew up together basically since they're five years

old, but their relationship is so special and, but based off of like their actual experiences together and their actual interactions in real life. You know what I mean? Like they're ever as like a protective person, so she's very protective of Candace,

even though they're the same age. But I think, I think building relationships, as if you're going to look at the way relationship should, because they argue and stuff like that, which is the point I'm going to get to, they argue and stuff, but because their relationship is so strong because they really depend on each other and they can't to depend on each other. The arguments that they have, and they have one big thing,

the argument that they have doesn't, that can break their relationship. It could, frask it a little bit, you know what I'm saying, and you have a little flintners, but it can't break the relationship.

And young, and this is, this is a generalization, so like, I hope people from me, but in my experiences, I'll say, and through my observation,

I've seen a lot of, of young girls and young women have a daughter, by the least, I have a 20-year-old daughter. I see a lot of young girls and young women have these relationships where something will come in between them and that just, it just flinters the relationship and it's over. They're gone. The relationship is done. And I'm like, no, no, like, yes, you're going to have, this is bad or whatever that person did to you is bad or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But if that person meant something to you for so long, if that person is worth fighting for, That person really had a, was a source of support and you loved that person. They loved you. Then you have to try to get that. I have to try to find a way that to not ignore it, but to forgive that person and find a way to move on because the friendships are too important. And strong friendships and strong bonds are too important to just give up on so easily. I heard, I don't remember who I heard said it, say it in an interview,

but they're like, you know, you don't want to, and they're talking more about romantic and religious, so I'm talking about friendships, but they said you don't want to give up 10 years of greatness for two years of badness. You know what I'm saying? Like, three years of a rocky road, when 10 years of greatness is waiting beyond that,

they think it's worth it. They think that two years is worth it. Now, obviously they're exaggerating, but I think what they're trying to say is like, when it comes to like relationships, and I'm going to talk about friendships, because it's about friendships. When it comes to friendships, I think really underestimate the value of a really good friend.

Like really underestimate that value. It's something that you should not like a very, something you should actually fight for as you would for anything, anything that you're passionate about. You know what I mean? So that for me is principles that are better for friendship and its identity. And those values that are like we spoke about before our universe. Yeah. No, absolutely. I think that's true. And there's maybe a lack of appreciation of that in some of today's world because of the just staggering breadth of potential interactions you can have with people. That is kind of coming back to the social media. But even living in a really big, big city, you can be able to thousands of people in a day. You can't practically do that. But you could meet any one of those thousands of people in that day. And what do they mean to you? And are you having connections? But just reinforcing the idea that an intimate connection is something that seems to be necessary to humans in general.

However, you conceptualize that. And that it's also normal to have conflict within a friendship. You know, there may be some misunderstanding or misperception among some people that, well, if they were really your friend, they wouldn't have said something wrong or done something wrong. And before you must necessarily cut all ties immediately. There's, I mean, there's, and by that same token, there are certain acts of betrayal or sabotage or maliciousness where it's like, you weren't who I thought you were. This is beyond and you got to go. I'm not dealing with that.

Yes. This is not to say that, but not to give up yet so easily on something that really is important. Can it be repaired? Is it, it maybe it's worth trying to offer that olive branch and say, you know, I was really mad for a minute. I've calmed down. I still don't like it. If you could just, hey, let me know you wouldn't do that again. I'd appreciate it.

And we can just get on with our lives, given that opportunity for that time. You said that perfectly. Like that is exactly, especially when you said, if that person was your friend, they would have done that. That is like the trigger for people to be like, I'm cutting this person off. Or there's this thing now where people are super entrepreneurial or super ambitious. And they'll be like, my friend isn't all the same level as I. and they're not, I'm not hanging out with them anymore. Really?

Like, what? Are we going that far into capitalism now? Like, that goes out. Capitalism that divides our friendships now. Like, that is what you're telling me. You know what I'm saying? I'm all for making money. I'm telling me.

I'm down for it. You know what I'm saying? Like, I am up for it. But not, I'm not, I have friends that are not making half as much money as me. And I don't, like, that does not bother me one bit. They're my friends. You know what I mean? So for sure.

Oh, there's so many levels. to that too. I mean, and it's, here's, here's something to. Let's say you get to a level where you have accomplished great things. You have that status of accomplishment, but also money. There's a big problem with people who are rich and famous and accomplished. How do they know who's their real friends and who's just on their payroll? That's a big deal. And so if you can have a relationship with someone for 20 years and so what, he's a bricklayer. He's never read a book in his life. He's a he doesn't care when you had no money and he doesn't care that you got a bunch of money. He's like, Maybe I, maybe I get a car too, brother.

But, you know, keep probably be joking about that. You know, that's how you know someone really likes you for you because they like you when you had nothing. That also works for romantic relationships too. You get a, you know, man and a woman and they're both struggling. They get together and they rise together and build that together and gain that status together. That's a big, I was going somewhere with that out of my head. No, it's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing.

I agree with you. That's what we need to be. You know what I mean? Like, not this, not, not, let's not take the,

the ambition too far. Like, you know what I mean? Like, let's, let's keep those friendships and keep those bonds and keep those connections and, and make sure that we're living full lives,

you know, not just these one dimensional lives. Yeah. No, that too. Actually, that where I was kind of going with that was, well,

or a secondary thing. I listened to another podcast recently with, um, a gal by name of Temple Grandin, who some people might know the name. You can look her up, but she's like a high, So I got the tism and she's like, oh, way autistic, but like ingenious.

Like in that, in that idiot savant, what they used to call idiot savon, or Rayman level in some ways, but she's not as impaired. Long story short. She's more of a visual thinker. And then there's linguistic thinker. She was making a great point of the idea that we've, unfortunately, in elevating the idea of academic success and degrees and the ability to succeed in college, we left behind a lot of people who are truly masters with their hands. They don't do the intellectual stuff, but man,

they can make things. I couldn't even see in my head. I couldn't figure out how to build. And that has unfortunately become denigrated. And we've lost a respect for the shop class. And the home home economics type of thing where people are doing more, you know, sewing, crafting costume, garb, making, not just, not just costuming, but, but the idea of, you know, the fashion and design. You can do it yourself. And these are becoming lost skills working with our hands. Yeah, I don't.

So what, though. Like, sorry. It shouldn't, it shouldn't, though. Like, that's, I, I have a, I have a feeling, though. I have a feeling that those things are going to come back. I don't, it's not based on any research. It's not based on anything. It's just based on that feeling.

I just don't think that we will, we're going to go. Well, I think that my general sentiment about humanity is, that when we go too far in one direction, something closes back a little bit. You know what I'm saying? That's my thing. But I could be wrong. I'm going to be wrong on that. I think it's very true.

And I think the pendulum does swing. We go too far and we go, this is out of balance. We can feel it. I think we do very. I'm a big fan of the yin yang. I think it's always, always returns to balance. One thing is that we're going to get snapped back to balance when we start realizing

we don't have enough people who can maintain our plumbing and our electric grid. Because we have not given these things. the proper respect publicly and said, you're, you're going to become an electrician and age vac installer. That's freaking awesome. You don't have to write a book or get a degree or make a podcast. You know, maybe that's a talent other people have. You've got something else that is equally good and equally necessary. I think we're going to find out the hard way in a little while what we've.

We need to stand up and share for those people. You're right. We need to stand up and chair for them the same way we stand up a chair for doctors, go through 13 years of school. We need to stand up and share for the exchange fact people, the electricians, the painters, the bricklayers, construction workers. These people are like essential, essential to how we function. And we're just, again, we're downgrading up since I was, I'm 39 now, since I was in high school.

We started that conversation of that. Like, oh, they're almost us, you know what I'm saying? Like, we even had different grade levels and a lot of the people who worked with their hands were at a, we're at a different level and you made them feel a certain kind of way. And that's horrible. That's not where we're supposed to get at. Like these, they're important. Like you said, and I think hopefully again, I have a single stress to come back, but we'll see. I think you're right. I have the same kind of intuition, too, that whether, whether we're going to come to our senses and realize it before it becomes a problem or whether we wait and it becomes a problem, we're going to learn one way or another.

Yeah, yeah. We're going to learn one way or another. Yeah, yeah. right on. Oh, you know what? While we were talking a minute ago, the name of the movie came to me, but he'll be like, come on, Ben. American graffiti was the name of the movie.

I think it was in the... Oh, I don't know that one. Yeah, it was actually, I think, directed by George Lucas or Steven Spielberg. Oh, wow. George Lucas directed that before he directed Star Wars. He did American graffiti. That was, I think, his first movie.

I may be getting this entirely wrong. But anyways, that was the little slice of life, cultural look at what are teenagers in the 60s experiencing? What was there, you know, night out, cruising, cruising with the friends on the strip. What were their relationships? What social and cultural interactions did they have with their friends because of the nature of the times? American graffiti, yeah, it was a good, good movie. I appreciate that, too.

I might check that out tonight. Well, I got some meetings after this, but after that, I think I'll check that one out. Why not? I don't know where to find it. It's old enough. It might be on, like, YouTube. Oh, cute, somewhere. Or something like that.

We'll see. I'm not sure. I'm probably giving people the wrong information. I've done zero research. I just barely remember the name of the movie. Well, I was going to say, if there's more you wanted to say about the book, if there were other important themes you wanted to get into to, you know, just because you have the mic,

or we can transition into the dream thing. We'll try and solve a mystery together. Oh, let's go to the dreams. Let's go to the dreams. I mean, yeah. Good deal. And so as per usual, I never want to know what it is before we start. I will overthink it if I have two, if I have advanced knowledge.

So I never ask. I just listen. And then we, so I'm going to shut up and listen. I'm just going to write it down. You're going to tell it like a story. The most recent, and you did mention it is a recurring dream. So the best way to approach these is the most recent example you can remember. We go through that one in as much detail as you remember.

Then once we get a little bit of a grip on what's happening, we start relating it to the other ones and see where the common themes are, if that works for you? Gotcha. So you mean the most recent? The most recent instance of this type of recurring dream, and it could be, you know, 10 years. Oh, oh, the most, the most recent. Yeah, yeah. And tell that one as a narrative, because some people start telling me, well, here's what the

recurring dreams are about. Here's the common themes. Like, I want to get there, but that's usually like part of the second step. Oh, no, no. I'll tell you exactly what happens. Good deal. Okay. I'm ready when you know it.

I'll just shut up and listen and we'll get this going. Benjamin the Dream Wizard wants to help you pierce the veil of night and shine the light of understanding upon the mystery of dreams. Every episode of his DREAMscape's program features real dreamers gifted with rare insight into their nocturnal visions. New DREAMs episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks, highlighting the psychological principles which inform our dream experience and much, much more. To join the Wizard as a guest, reach out across more than a dozen social media platforms and through the contact page at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, where you will also find the

wizard's growing catalog of historical dream literature available on Amazon, featuring the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past 2,000 years. That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube and at Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com. So it's always, always, always some kind, first of all, I'm young. Maybe a teenager, but I feel like I'm even younger in the group. And I am, there are tall blades of grass. And I'm on my hands and knees, but on my stomach, actually. And I'm crawling through these blades of grass.

and there are I never see them ever I've never seen them in the dream but they're it's like gunshots and violence and there's there's um I guess that's why I'm ducking and I'm just crawling and I'm crawling and I'm crawling and I'm crawling and the thing that always stands out in my team

is that I could literally like feel scared which is totally weird but I swear I feel scared in the like in the dream before I wake up and I'm crawling and I'm crawling and I'm crawling and I hear people, always hear people, nothing I can make out, but I always hear people. And then I crawl to the, there's like a cliff,

and I could even through the blades. I feel like I'm acting this out. It's good, get back into it, yeah. I'm crawling through the blades and I see the cliff. I'm like, for some reason, I feel like that's where I need to go. And so I crawl to the cliff and I'm off. times I don't want to get to the cliff. And then I, this part's always confusing to me.

I don't know if I jump off the cliff, fall off the cliff, or like, I don't know, or someone pushes, I don't know, no one pushes me off. But I go over the cliff, like purposely though, like I, on purpose, go over the cliff and then wake up right before I fall. Even though the cliff is where I feel like it was supposed to be my safety, it's like That's where I go and then it's over and I wake up. I've had this dream. Oh my gosh.

I can't even tell you how many times. I literally can't. Like, I can't. I have no idea how many times. That is always goes the same way. Yeah, that is a good. Let me write this down here. That is a good place to start is the idea of when,

how old are you when the first dream came to you of this type and how recent was the last one? The first time I had this dream, I was in my early 20s. So that would be like close to 20 years ago. That's the last, that's the first time these dreams started. Last time I actually had this dream was about a year ago.

Okay. Okay. So this is, okay, broad strokes on the idea of recurring dreams. We tend to have a concept of an experience or the crystallized imagery of a type of idea that will come back to us. Every time we experience something similar to whatever made the first dream happen. So it's almost like, what am I trying to say?

If you were sorting blocks, this is, I think I'm always through an analogy. You're sorting blocks. Every time you see a square hole, you know, oh, square block, you pop it in. So in a way, this is the square block that you pop into the square hole every time you see the square hole. I'm going to work on that analogy. It just came to me. It's kind of the idea, but it's what fits. It's what's relevant to a specific type of experience in waking life generally.

And the reason it comes back is, tends to be that we haven't quite figured out what it is, you know, what is this square block and why does it fit there? and what makes the whole appear that needs to be filled with this image to express the way I'm thinking or feeling. So what we're going to try to do is get a look at these images and this experience of the dream and find out what it's trying to say to you. And then maybe we can look back and say, you know, what experiences were you having at different times in your life that might have made it necessary to reexamine this idea or experience? Oh, broad strokes on that. So how do we do that? The process is we start with, you are, you are always a teenager in the dream? Always.

Okay. Always. Yeah. This is definitely. Always young. Yeah. Now, sometimes in dreams, people have no concept of themselves. That was just me, me today, me now, I guess.

I don't know. There's no, I can't see myself in the dream or I don't have any reference to how old they was. It's just me. So I'm like, okay, this is, but this is telling you, remember maybe some experience you had as a teenager. or something relevant to the idea of being in the teenage years in general. Something about that time period personally or categorically that is relevant to,

because otherwise it wouldn't appear, did you have a thought? I had my daughter when I was 80. I had my daughter at 80. Okay. Do you feel like the level of teenager you were in the dream, kind of corresponds with being close to 18, 17, 18? Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it looks like that.

It looks like that age. It looks like he has a, as a, as a younger version of what I was, like I started having in my early 20. So I felt like, yeah, I always thought for some reason to June, I thought I was like 16. But yeah, I have my daughter when I was 18. Wow. Okay, yeah. Well, then this is exactly how the process worked.

I start rambling about stuff. I start saying, what does it mean? to have this visual, this experience in the dream. And just my discussing it, my kind of unfolding the origami in a way, very often the guest I'm talking to says, wait a minute, an idea just popped into my mind. This made me think of my daughter. You don't even have to know why.

You just say it, bam, that's when I have my daughter. Okay, so we got, I think we got something there. And it feels, you're like, you feel it. You feel it. You're like, this is relevant somehow. We don't say why. We don't know yet. But, so there's something.

about there. Now, if we look at that a little bit without moving on, we could say, um, there's definitely a theme of, uh, well, violence fear, a protective process that you're going through to safeguard yourself. You're heading towards, uh, you know, what is a cliff. It's a, it's definitely an ending point. It's the end of the grass. It's the end, but it's also an escape from the violence in a way. So there's all these different things we start looking at. Why does thinking about being a teenager anticipating the, birth of your daughter, perhaps, bring this, bring this to mind. Well, we haven't gotten there yet, but that's where I, that's where I go with it. I'm like, okay, how does that all relate? So that's,

bam, and we should get more of those zing feelings of like, oh, wait, I just thought of something else. Stop me anytime. Interrupt. Go, baby, man, wait, wait, stop. You're talking too much. I had an idea. Please interrupt. So there's these tall blades of grass and they're tall enough to conceal you like you're when you're, so it isn't just like you're still visible. You are. definitely. Oh, tall. I'm looking up with them and they're like three feet or something. Like they're tall.

Okay. And that's good too. So this is the experience of you are camouflaged in a way. And I use that term because it's the one that came to mind. But it's you weren't behind a solid barrier. You weren't in actual cover. You still could have been hurt by a stray bullet. I mean, you were.

So this is the idea of like if you were behind a solid rock wall, you wouldn't be afraid the bullets were going to pay. penetrate. But in this one, you're, you're conceiving of it as you are in a vulnerable position, but you do have the benefit of being hidden in your, in your journey. It's like, yeah, definitely laying low is the idea. Yeah. Yeah, so that, that opens up to two other themes of, of the, what are we saying in broad strokes? The idea of the benefit of concealment in some ways. If you, if you stay off the radar of harmful forces, you can survive or be successful. There's something in there. And hold on. Sorry. Sorry. I'm just thinking this too now.

I had, when I had my daughter, I actually had a really good support system. So my mom, my younger brother, my and my uncle, my grandmother, my cousin, like, it was not, that's obviously her mother, but it was not just weird. Her mother was young, her mother was 17, we were really young. But we had, like, I had support system. So now when you, when you just said that, it camouflaged.

I was like, that feels like, like, I was still vulnerable because it was still my responsibility. But I had almost like shields, you know what I'm saying? Like they were just, they were able to support. They were the blaze. Even though, like, it felt chaotic. It felt like violence. Like, it was chaos.

It was rough. Being 18 and a pair is not. But I definitely, at the same time, I'll be lying if I didn't say. If I said I did not feel supportive, that'll be a lot. Yeah. No, for sure. And that's great. Just be rambling.

And that's okay. Well, what I say is I'm happy to be wrong. So I was focusing on the different, something else. But it's great that you brought that up. So there is, um, Exactly as you say, there's a benefit of cover that isn't as solid as something else. Like you were exactly like you said, like the responsibility was still there, the danger that you could make a mistake and fail was still there. But you had at least the support and the idea of blades of grass you could hide in that would shield you visually from being seen and targeted by danger.

and that they're the recognizing that the humans in your life are also fallible and there is maybe as thin as a blade of grass in terms of the protection they provide you know their their protection is only going to provide a certain amount of protection

yeah yeah there's definitely definitely strong imagery there and there's also the idea of you know these tall blades of grass that the idea of nobility came to my mind because it was something noble in a tall

something that's tall something that stands tall and strong, even if it's just a blade of grass, that combination of vulnerability and nobility. I don't know if that brings about with you or anything. I never thought about nobility before. That's such an interesting, even word, nobility. Wow. No, I, yeah, I can't think of anything that brings up.

Fair enough. But when you said it, it felt right, but I just can't place it. Yeah, yeah. I don't think I'm using the right words either too. It's like, and it isn't noble as in better than you, but like worthy of respect in a way. Yeah. Yeah, even even even the tall blades of grass. You know, there's a, there's a mighty oak that maybe gets blown over in a storm because it's rigid and unyielding, but blades of grass. There's a very, it's like an ancient martial arts tradition of bending like a reed in the wind and being flexible and responsive. And even to the point of having multiple uses, a cow could eat it. You can hide in it away from danger. Yeah, I'll probably score it off on tangents here. So all of this was just the concept of hiding, crawling on your belly in grass. Do you remember the ground being anything in particular texture or it's dusty? It's dry.

It's muddy. Oh, yeah. Just dirt. Firm. Mostly dark, dark dirt. No rocks or anything like that. It's like I don't feel anything on my stomach, you know? Like, I don't feel pain on my stomach or anything.

It's just dirt. Okay. That might be its own kind of significant. ideas you you you mentioned it as kind of a dark earth and we think of that as fertile fertile soil you know what dry dusty good green tall grass doesn't grow there so um you're definitely closer to this earth and and it's providing it's the idea of being closer to this fertility of the soil protected by by the by the obscuring uh vision obscuring grass that protects you from danger um and also not throwing in, you know, you're not crawling over broken glass and feeling your skin ripped.

Yeah. It's very, it's very comforting, soothing, and successful endeavor to get you to the edge of this cliff. You're not giving yourself messages of failure in that way. Yeah. And I almost feel like it's like, because I, you're right, I actually never thought of it as dark earth until I just, like, really thought about what it looks like. And your dark earth is supposed to be the one that's more, like, what's the word

I think I said fertile or the idea of Fertile, that's the word. It's supposed to be more fertile. Yes, fertile. Fertile. That's what it's supposed to be. And, you know, like, it's almost like I was so young having the child, having a baby.

It's like I still had so much growing to do. You know what I mean? And I had the opportunity to grow because of the, and the examples, not just the opportunity, but I had the examples of people who have done well girl. My brother went to Stanford University, went to the NFL. My mom was a nurse for

four years, actually. She just retired a few years ago, and she was like the most amazing mom ever. I think just the opportunity to grow and to like, I feel like the blaze were almost also like examples, you know, not just protecting me yet, but just like examples I

can look at and be like, oh, or they're on the ground, or the ground was just giving me the just that that opportunity is just the word that keeps coming back to my head but just giving me just nurturing me it was nurturing that's what that's all I was think try to absolutely I think all of these are very powerful ideas and and there is a protective quality to receiving good advice is good advice from from from my um um an effective role model that is not a kind of physical protection it's not a brick wall it's it's uh it's more of um an abstract um

intellectual protection of like, here's how to succeed in specific ways. Here's how to best grow and flourish. So, yeah, that's a great concept of the idea of something as thin as a blade of grass, still being a protective quality while all at the same time showing, you were nurtured by this same soil that is going to give you the chance to grow, grow as tall as us. Yeah. Yeah, and you don't have to be, you know, running through the, you know, standing tall yourself.

You can be like, I need to lay low. I need to be very careful. There's a, there's a protective, self-protective caution to the experience I'm feeling. And that's very often the way we need to approach big decisions, big problems. And as much as having a child is a wonderful, beautiful, blessed event and you look forward to it. You are scared as hell. You're going to fuck it up and do it wrong. Yeah.

And I'd be as successful as the people who came before me, even with their great examples. So it's something we anticipate eagerly and we are terrified at the same time of screwing it up. And I think that might be, oh, go ahead. No, no, no. You're absolutely right. I just started to break just one second because somebody is supposed to have a meeting. I just want to talk about it. Oh, yeah, yeah, no problem.

I'm going to take a drink of water and I can vamp for a second too because we also haven't quite gotten to, you know, exploring a little bit more of the nature of the gunshots and the violence all around and the voices that you heard people speaking. So we're going to get to those. Those are their own kind of unique experiences. Yeah, I'm good to go ahead. Sorry.

Sorry about that. No problem. It gives me a chance to review my own notes. If we get to try to read my own handwriting here. Right. So fast, it's all chicken scratch. So you did have the experience of the crawling happening over a period of time. It wasn't instantaneous. It wasn't brief. If you had to say it felt like a minute, five minutes, it felt like an hour. I would say closer to like the half an hour mark. Like, yeah, around that. Yeah.

It felt like a while. felt like 30 seconds and that and it could have like it felt like forever but really I knew it was only 30 seconds that's its own type of experience but you actually had like this is going to be you're going to have to crawl you're going to have to maintain this defensive stance it so to speak on your belly for a period of time you you you imagine this is as if it took a and a half an hour is an interesting thing so it's not a full hour but it's not a minute it's not a day it's it's a more shorter contained period of time, there's something in there too, with it being not precise, but more specific. It could have been, I have no idea how long it took. It was indeterminate, but something about

the cliff being that close, the end of the experience, the, what am I trying to say, cliff, I don't want to say too much about it because we're going to get there, but it's definitely an ending point. It's, it's, yeah, I should probably leave that, leave that alone for me. minute and we'll get there. How did you experience the gunshots or violence? And you mentioned it both of those things being different. So there was shooting going on. Did you feel like it was definitely aimed at you or it was just all around you indiscriminate?

I think it was around me. I don't feel like anyone was targeting me. Like I never felt directly targeted. What I was scared of is sticking my head up and getting hit. I always like, that's what I was most nervous about. So I always just wanted to stay below, like, lower than the graph, you know, lower than the policy later graph. So, yeah, I've never felt like someone was attacking me personally. It was just like, this chaos is happening and I'm, I don't know, crawling, whatever.

And you also mentioned that there was other violence. You said it was gunshots and general violence. Yeah, but that part, I can't explain that part. I know for a fact there was other violence, like other than gunshots. But it's not like I was hearing people scream. I heard voices, but the voices were more like talking. But I never heard anyone scream. I just, I don't know.

It's one of those dream things. I was just like, I just know like there's stuff happening, other stuff happening, but I can't. Like I can't articulate. Could pinpoint any other specific instances of specific types of violence that were happening. Just the knowledge. Okay. Good deal. That's actually confirms what I was initially kind of conceiving is that this field

to me and you can always check with yourself too about but just a general recognition that the world is a dangerous place, that there is danger all around and that sticking your neck out in a way, putting yourself failing to keep yourself in a properly defensive position will expose you, literally in this, it's idea of camouflaged by gas, expose you to random violence. And it's good that you didn't feel like it was targeted at you, which it's a blessing on a curse too. It's like if it was coming for you, you might be able to say, okay, I can identify, look, there it is. Now I can deal with that. This is like random violence.

This is like all the bad things that could possibly happen to me, to my forthcoming child. First, I need to survive. Then I can be a good father, that kind of a thing. So I don't know if that resonates with you, that idea that this represents general, dangerous nature of the world. Yeah, that's 100%. That's what I felt. It wasn't me.

It was just like this, this world, this dream world that I'm in, you'll find it. Like I, I, I, yeah, that's, that's kind of how I took, how I interpreted it anyway. For sure. And, um, I, I would guess, and maybe I'm wrong, you can tell me, but coming from Toronto, you probably didn't grow up in any areas that were heavily, you know, you're walking to school. You're like, you're like, you did. No, no, no, you're not.

No, I mean, I grew up in community areas, but not, not like, you're going to die. No, we never had this. No, I don't think there's, there's, there's. hardly any place in Toronto like that. Yeah, I didn't think so, yeah. But that is interesting that it, the dream kind of crystallized it as, well, this is specifically a threat from guns in a way. Yeah.

I don't know if you grew up in a hunting family at all or had much exposure to it or if that's kind of a... Oh, but there are guns in my area. Like, there's, there's some, like, I've seen guns and stuff like that and I've seen gunfire and I've seen like stuff like that. It's just not, it just wasn't like a huge part of my upbringing, but like my area because it was a community housing area. There were, there were those things around, but I wasn't prevalent. So in your younger days, you may have seen actually some examples of people being

harmed by gun. So you'd say, oh, this is a real potential threat, not an abstract. Oh, I heard someone got shot somewhere. I'm like, I knew that guy. I knew his brother. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. Well, that's a really good reason why that specific type of threat, you'd say, um, abstractly, what are you doing in your mind? You're saying, it's, it's, as if I need to be aware that this type of violence can happen again because I've already seen it before. I know this is a realistic threat versus a fantastical threat. And even sometimes fantastical things, you know, planes fall out of the sky. May not want to worry about that, but it has happened, you know.

It just made me think of Donnie Darko. Oh, it's one of my favorite movies. You've never seen that too. Great, great bizarre kind of, I don't want to say too much that Donnie Darko is What's it called? Donnie Darko. It was actually one of Jake. Jake Gyllenhauls, first movies when he was younger. Donnie Darko, yeah, that's one of the movies that you don't want to know anything going into it. Like, if you've never heard of the Matrix before, you've never seen The Matrix, do not look up anything. Do not look at the memes on the internet. Watch that movie blind. Watch Donnie Darko blind and just go, what? What is this?

It's blowing my mind. It's a great, great movie. Anyway, I don't know why that jumped into my head. I get all kinds of random associations. So you also heard voices, but you couldn't make out what they were saying. Not at all. Just chatter. Chatter. It sounded like the, did it sound like the people doing the violence talking to each other

or just random people that were also out in the grass with you? It sounded like what would I imagine military people talking like. That's kind of what I assume. That's what I assume. Again, that's an assumption. That's an assumption. But it was just like, it just, whatever, I don't know, movie I watch or something like that, like I could assume military people speak like, that's kind of what it's not. That's interesting too. So, yeah, that's what I was trying to get to of like it could have been, and it wasn't, but it could have been, oh, I heard the snippet of a conversation of these people that sounded like they were just sitting down to have a tea party. That's its own kind of experience. Or I heard, you know, an employee asking for a race. that's its own kind of, it's all kinds of reasons people communicate to each other. So you're, the idea that even thinking back on it now, the association popped up of, it's, it felt like what you would imagine military chatter would be back and forth to either, you know, commanders issuing orders or soldiers yelling, you know, you know, fire on the hole,

things like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So very much that adds to the AIS. all that to say, um, that you're in, in a sense, in the middle of a war zone.

That in some ways, life itself is like, um, trying to survive getting through, uh, this, this ongoing battle that's happening all around you at all times. Um,

that resonates at all. That is, uh, totally, totally, totally. And you know what? I just,

as you're speaking, I literally just thought of something else too. Um, I have, had, yes, I had my daughter when I was 18. When I first started writing my first book around my early 20s. So I was like 22 or 23 or something like that. I first started writing my first book. And because I don't know exactly when the dream started. I don't want to correlate those two things. Sure. But that did happen. I did start writing my book in my early 20s as well. And then,

um, I don't want to fast forward too much. But that, like my, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, someone who always wanted to write. So just to give you context, I'm like I wrote my first book at eight years old. I'm a lifetime wanting to be writer, right? So this is a lifetime dream for me. And I got my first traditional publishing deal last year, like a year ago, like 2020, the beginning of 2021, I got my first publishing deal. And it's been about just over a year since I've had this dream. And I don't know, I just, I don't know if I'm making like making stuff up,

but I know. This might clarify for you. There is something like giving birth to a novel. Once you created it and published it, that, that act of publishing is the gestation of writing it and the birth of publishing it. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Does that, that's, do you feel like that there? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Because it was such a, I know, it was, but, and I bring it because when you're talking about, like, the world and the randomness and the chaos and the military stuff, it's been such a long struggle. Like, I mean, like, I had to self-publish two books and I had to do this, and I got my first agent, lost my first agent. I thought I'd ever, like, could be a full-time writer. Like, it was a struggle, and pair that with the fact that I was young.

I didn't even have a job yet when I had my daughter. So I had to, like, pair that with the. chaos of being like 18, 19, 20, like the first 10 years, basically, in my daughter's life and being, like, totally lost, not knowing what to do, even though I went to university, still being totally lost. Like, it was just, it felt like, it felt like,

I don't like to compare it to her, but it felt like a war zone. At least that's what it felt like. It felt like that, you know? So it's just, wow, I just never, I never sat down to think about those things. It really, it was a lot going up, and it did feel like, like, any wrong move could be murder in a way. Like,

It could be fatal. You know what I mean? Because there was so much at stake. It was my daughter's life at stake. It was my learning to be a man while raising a kid. Like I said, I never had a job before I had my daughter. So like raised, learn to be a man. Taking care of somebody else.

Learning to make money. Oh my gosh. Learning to make money was such a struggle. Oh, I didn't start really making money until I was 30 years old. Like sustainable money until I was like 30 years old. That could really, because Toronto's very expensive. So that could sustain a fast. family, you know? So it was, it was a fight, man. It was a fight. There's a long tradition of comparing

the struggle to survive to make it in the world to a battle, to the idea of a military conflict. I mean, a lot of us might conceive, you know, nuclear families and extended families as battalions that are working together, that teamwork style to conquer and confront the challenges that present us all whether we're struggling against, you know, a competitive job. market against other people or just the struggle to survive in nature. We got a, we got to have a roof overhead food in our bellies and, you know, some heat when it's cold, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So, and I understand that too. It's like, I've never been in war and I don't want to pretend I have but that analogy is valid because we know what war is. We know what it's like, the idea of this,

this struggle in a competition and, and it's life and death in a lot of ways. I mean, if you can't pay the bills, you're out in the cold. I mean, it's more, it's more deadly and dangerous. and dramatic than a lot of people think that that has decreased in modern times to some degree we have so much ubiquity of of not just luxuries but but you know like say you go back um 50 60 70 years not everybody had a refrigerator certainly not everybody had a television um yeah you know and air conditioning and all these other things that the um how how effective and efficient we've been able to come in manufacturing of different things and some shortcuts we've taken with outsourcing jobs that may or may not be sustainable in the long run.

But, but anyway, so all of this to say, I don't want you to feel, you know, any worse than I would of saying, you know, my imagination compared the struggle to survive to being in a war zone. Fair enough. I think it really is for a lot of us. Appreciate that. Yeah. Long story short.

And then we're finally, we're finally to the cliff. And we, yeah. This is the part I want to know. Right. Yeah. And so my first conception of that was it's a terminal point. And not just terminal like death, although death is the termination of life. So we say, you know, terminal injuries and terminal illness.

But it's also a transition point between there's ground. There's no ground. There's, you know, support for your belly to rest upon and the grass. And now you're in the open air. You're launched on something where there's nothing to grab onto. There's no stability. There's that. It's also the act of, of,

specifically related to the birth of a child, there is the cliff of that baby is now born. She's here. You know, that's a cliff of a kind. And we are metaphorically thrown off a cliff in a way, thrown out of the nest in terms of like, you better learn to fly.

This is happening. Yeah. Those were my initial impressions. I don't know if you wanted to say a bit more or if inspired anything. That, after talking, I feel like that makes like perfect sense because it's literally like, are you going to fly or are you going to just like let yourself crash to the ground? You know what I'm saying? And I all, for the longest time, like longest time literally until this conversation, I always thought the cliff as peril.

Like I thought it was just something like, like I'm falling off something. I'm going to die. But I actually think that, again, this conversation kind of sparked and I actually think it's not peril at all. black almost like freedom you know or almost like like you're ready you know what I'm saying like

you're ready like you think you're not ready but you're ready like just jump you know you know you know how people tell you like it's go crawl until you're ready eventually at the week like I feel like it's just like just leap because I never again I never made it to the ground I was and the thing

that I what I think makes you right is because I was headed towards the cliff. It's not like I was like scared of it. Like I was scared of everything happening around me, but I was headed for that cliff. I was like, I didn't get there to get safe, you know?

And so why would I head there if it was, if it was, if it was, like I'm going to die. I don't think so now. I actually think it's, it was up. It was like, let's go, Kern. Let's go. Definitely one of those representations of an, like an unavoidable,

experience, something is coming. It's going to happen. And you're, you're moving yourself towards it willingly. You're not, you weren't looking for a way to get around. No, if you're like, this is, even if it is going to be scary, if I'm going to lose my, my, my, my, my, my connection with the earth, my support of the grass and, um, uh, nurturing soil and whatnot. I'm good. This is something that, uh, you get an acceptance like it has to be done. That, that it's, it's going to happen whether you want it or not. And it's a good thing. And it's going to to be scary all the same time, which is what some of the best experiences are. Yeah. It's true. It is so. Wow. Yeah. Just enjoy the moment. I don't need to rush you through it.

That's, I love these feelings too. I watch you have it and I'm like, I want to cry. That's, I love this. People go, I see it. I see it clearly now. You just kind of held it up, shine some light on it. You turned it at this angle. I see it. That's the square. That's the hole. Oh, my God. That's why I do this. It felt very, like I was, I was intimidated by the super cold. You know what I mean? Like, I was just like, I don't want to have it.

You don't have to help me. Yeah. Well, you report having very real, the experience of fear during the dream. Yeah. It's very common that we have unpleasant experiences in our dreams. And we're like, can I just not have that when I'm supposed to be resting? Like, can I go? my dreams and not have the same worry I have in the daytime. Come on, please.

Exactly. Right? That'd be nice. But I like this though because this conversation actually makes me see this in a totally different way now. You know what I mean? Like I feel like I've overcome something now. You know, like I did pretty good. Yeah. No, I think so too. And it's great that you know, okay, so what? We've got all kinds of places to go here. This has been a recurring dream. So as I said in the very beginning, it keeps coming back. the square every time the hole comes up. So probably in broad strokes and use different language, please, if I'm not saying it quite right or if it inspires you, but the idea that you see certain challenges of birthing a new project like a book where the outcome is uncertain. You don't

know if you're going to fly or fall off this cliff, but you're going to approach it willingly. You're going to pass through the necessary danger to get there. You're going to do it smart. you're going to take all the necessary self-protective measures and rely on your or the the nurturance you've got through life it's so in a lot of ways it's like every time you're approaching a new a new uncertainty in the future that may result in a benefit or a disaster this dream maybe comes back to say you know you've had this experience before you've worried that if everything was going to be okay and so sometimes the dream comes back to say hey you're having this feeling again. Sometimes it comes back to, or it comes back to say, you've been through

this before. Remember, you've got this, you were worried and it turned out fine. It's going to be fine this time too. I don't know which one feels more than the, I bet you because the dreams came in like clusters. It would happen recurring for like days in a row and then not for like a while again, then recurring for days in a row. I guarantee you if I went back and recorded when it was every time I was in like super writing mode for my book. Every time. I guarantee that would be it. It would be like when I was the most time because I remember I remember one instance like definitely when it was during that time.

But I bet if I went back in all those instances, it would be like when I first started writing my book because I was like, I had no idea when I was blah, blah, blah, blah. When right when at the near the end of self-publishing my first book when I was like, oh my gosh, no one's going to buy this book, blah, blah, blah, blah. and I had that. But I could almost guarantee it. I bet you. That's what it is. You're so right. We forget bail bitch.

Wow. That is amazing. And okay, so now the real proof in the pudding, and it would, okay, two things, it would be fascinating.

And I would love to do this, and I have no idea how I'm not a research psychologist, but trying to track people's recurring dreams and see if we can really nail it down and prove my theory. Because I think my theory is good, but it's a theory.

I've had feedback that it's true. and people say that feels right, but I would love to have the data. That would be, like, here's hard evidence. Here's a study that tracked people. That would be number one. So I don't know if you're out there doing stuff, to take that one on me,

but make it happen. I'd love to read your work. The other side of it is, if we've nailed this down, it may, two things might happen, broadly speaking. The dream may stop entirely. You got it.

You finally processed it through enough to know why it needed to come back. Now you can actually let it go and you may start having, different dreams of a different themes like you solve one problem your brain moves on to the next probably start having a different kind of recurring dream it's almost guaranteed uh or this dream will come back but the nature of it will change the process of going through the grass will change the grass itself will change the earth will change the voices will become more or less distinct the violence will increase decrease altogether uh maybe you'll stand up and look around and be like what was i worried about you'll get to the cliff and there will be a water slide you will transform into a bird. Any of these things are possible.

And I mean, I just put all of them in your head. But broadly speaking, the nature of the dream may, it may come back, but it may change. And I've seen that happen before too, where once you process the core message, now you're ready to think, okay, well, what's next? What do I do now? What do I do now that I kind of get the idea? So I always tell folks I'd love to hear from them. If the dream changes, let me know if it never comes back.

I mean, I'm still waiting to hear back from some people. maybe it means I'll totally let you know. I will totally let you know for sure. This is amazing. I have to jump off the call, but I wish I did it. This is so good. Yeah, I'm glad you got you good answer in the time frame you had. That's it's not always easy for me to do that.

This is way better than I thought. Like, seriously, this has been amazing. Thank you so much. Seriously, thank you. I'm not going to go back and listen to a bunch here. Oh, right on. Good. Always, always happy to have another fan.

Well, let me do the, we do the housekeeping. me wrap we'll wrap it up and get you out of here this has been our friend kern carter from toronto canada uh writer and and author of the book boys and girls screaming available on amazon i'm drop a link in the description below check that out right now for my part if you would uh please like share subscribe tell your friends get one of my uh 15 currently available works of historical dream literature also on amazon and you can find that at benjamin the dream wizard dot com books link uh audio podcasts and uh and much much more as the kids say and just uh Once again, Kern, thank you for being here.

I appreciate it. Thank you. This is amazing. All right on everybody out there. Thanks for listening.