Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 112: Making Progress

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” - Leo Tolstoy https://www.instagram.com/realjohnsacco/

Greetings friends. Welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have our friend John Sacco from the East Coast USA. He is a personal development coach. He can find him on Instagram at Real John Sacco. And that'll be links in the description, of course. Right back to our guest in two seconds. Would you kindly like, share, subscribe, tell your friends about my program, please. Always need more volunteer dreamers, viewers for my video game playing when I'm just hanging out in the evenings. You're welcome to join. 15.

Currently available works of historical dream literature. You'll find that at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com. The most recent offering. The World of Dreams by Have a Lock Ellis with a concurrent audio book also on this channel. As I said, you'll find all that and more at Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com, including downloadable MP3 episodes of all of these dreamscapes interpretation interviews. that's enough about me. John, thank you for being here.

I appreciate your time. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here. Good deal. So what is, I mean, I think everyone has a concept of what it is to engage in development, what a coach does. But what is your, I hesitate to say brand. Like, what is your brand? Because that carries meaning like branding, but what's your style, I suppose?

Or how does your, how does your, how does your, how does your, process go. So it's unique to every individual, of course, but the main thing will be your body and your mind work together. And I try to play with that synergistically. So we'll make sure that you're getting enough physical activity and eating right. And then we'll make sure that your belief systems, your standards are all at a level to move you forward in life and achieve your goals.

Very cool. Yeah. there's a tremendous amount of, oh, this, I say this all the time. There's so many places to go with that idea. There's a lot of great concepts involved. And one is that body mind connection. I mean, it's hard to be healthy physically if your brain is broken in a way, if you have unreasonable expectations of yourself, if you're miserable, if you've got psychological issues that are holding you back. Conversely, you know, it's hard to be psychologically healthy if your body's broken. If you're not taking care of yourself physically the way you need to, it's a great. It's a great. foundation to address those two. But I found there's a lot of psychology in the whole coaching genre, so to speak. You've got to really kind of work with people and definitely on that personal level. Yeah. I mean, I might have taken a couple of psychology classes in college, but I'm not like anything major

psychology. Yeah. No, and a lot of these principles are things that. it's interesting because I don't consider the fact that I have a degree to mean anything necessarily. I don't look at a piece of paper as significant. The knowledge is. And actually, the knowledge is available to anybody. And actually, a lot of that knowledge is just wisdom of the ancients.

And a lot of that is passed on in your family, amongst your friends. You get it from a variety of media sources. And certainly, in the age of YouTube, you can look up any subject. and there's going to be a video on it. Someone's going to have something to say. So, yeah, I, uh, I have tremendous respect for people based on their knowledge and abilities more than a degree, more than the idea of credentialism never, never appealed to me. Um, you know, there are a lot of PhD idiots out there.

And they are. You know, what did you learn in school? So anyway, so I would never look down on someone who's using just practical everyday wisdom and the knowledge they've acquired and and most of us most people i would say don't realize how much we are all autodidacts we teach ourselves all kinds of stuff most most everything we know we taught ourselves even if by listening to someone else um i said a lot sorry go ahead no you're good and i agree with all that real life experience and just being able to tell people what you've learned on your path always helps i mean i've done a lot of independent research

I've read so many books, like gone to YouTube for information. Plus, I have a little bit of college background in psychology. I just kind of bring it all together. And I'm also, I go to the gym all the time. I've done ultramarathons. So I got the physical part. I got the mental part. And it's mostly just what I've brought myself through.

And, you know, like I was talking before this, like even my dreams have changed as I've developed myself as a person. So I just want to help other people who are on this. journey and need somebody to guide them through it. And that's why I'm in this industry now. For sure. Yeah. And that's a very powerful thing, too, is that your dreams will change over time. You know, you're definitely not going to have the same dreams at 35 that you had at, you know, 13. Your life is different. Your circumstances are different. Your concept of the world changes. You've had more exposure to different types of experiences that crystallize themselves into, you know,

iconic imagery of how you understand something. I was just thinking about this last night, too, the idea of the movie, you know, the Matrix and how that concept of being stuck in the Matrix or, you know, speaking of YouTube, the broader concept of taking the red pill, the truth as such to, you know, wake up to the real world. These things are, you know, that didn't exist until that movie kind of came along crystallized it in those images. You know, you see Neo waking up in the, out of the goo.

And it's like, this is, this isn't anything I've ever experienced before. I mean, that point in the movie kind of broke me for a moment. I'm like, I was in that space of, I don't know what's happening anymore. This was, this appeared to be one kind of thing. And now it is something completely different that the filmmakers were so, I'm rambling, but two seconds. I'll wrap it up. were genius in that is that they wanted to put the movie goer in the position of feeling what Neo felt

as he woke up there. They structured the movie one way and then broke that expectation, shattered at paradigm shift. Whole new world. This is completely different. Just as he was experiencing at that moment, I thought that was genius. This was all related to something.

The idea of personal development growth, change over time. I don't know if you have any comments. I'm a terrible interviewer. I don't know. You're good. I agree with that. The Matrix was definitely a big thing for me, too.

I still reference the Matrix in so many situations that people are probably tired of me referencing it. So I appreciate the reference there. For sure. Yeah. And just definitely also the idea, I think I remembered kind of what I was trying to go with that is that, you know, it very often takes a kind of morphous. And that's interesting that, you know, it's also for the. Matrix, lots of fantastic dream references, but it takes someone else helping hold a mirror up to you. It's like we can't see the back of our own head for a haircut.

You know, we can, but we can with a mirror and people can be our mirror. They can say, here's what I see that you may not be aware of. Here's how I may be able to structure the understanding of this perspective in a way that makes sense to you and you can make it useful. So, I mean, the idea of having a second person to bounce ideas off of to get feedback from, it can be often indispensable. I mean, there's some changes we can't make without it. Good point. Just just validate the concept of, you know, why would someone want a coach or need a coach? Or why would they ask anybody for a second opinion ever?

It's that entire concept of making use of that. functionality that another person can offer that you just can't get on your own, I think. Yeah, a lot of times people don't even see the obstacles that are in their way. They don't realize they're getting in their own way. I know I had these problems for so long. Getting myself out of this helps me help other people get out of their situations. And it's just that concept like you were saying, like Morpheus showing Neo. Like, I don't want to say I'm a Morpheus because that kind of makes me play.

I have a big head about thing. But yeah. I mean, I'll talk to people and they're like, I didn't even realize that was a problem I had. I'm like, yeah. I just had to point it out to you. And now we can work on moving forward.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. No, I get that too. Like, believe me, you're talking to a guy who calls himself a wizard. Like, talking about having a big head. It's just big hair. It's not really a big head.

But you also have to be humble about that too. Like, I'm only human. There's a limit to my knowledge. I would say a very, very, very Socrates like you stay within what you know and you can be very confident about some things. There's different confidence levels. And I'd say as long as you're working in your expertise, you can make some pretty definitive judgments and recommendations and say, you know, I think based on this problem, this would be an effective solution. Let's work out how to implement it. That, just that

process of kind of describing what we're going through, seeing it clearly, and that deciding what, if anything, you want to change about it, and then mapping a path to get there step by step tremendously useful. I mean, that's almost in a way, just the art of psychology itself. Right. You got to have a plan and you got to know where the starting point is to get to the finish line. Otherwise, the map is useless if you don't know where you're starting from. Yeah. Yeah, if you have no goal, you got, it's hard to pick a direction. I see, you got to aim yourself at something. Yeah.

For sure. That basic idea. I don't know if you've got any particular examples of how you've helped people put together solutions to problems that come to mind in terms of demonstrating any unique principles. I don't prepare for any of these. We just talk to people. So I'm making this stuff up off the top of my head. And some of these questions are very vague.

And I don't even know what I'm asking. But if that makes sense to you. I think so So if somebody's coming and let's say they're trying to Almost basic thing would be they're trying to lose weight They're trying to be more confident So that they can excel at work And maybe they're shooting for a promotion

Maybe they have their own business And they just want to be better in sales calls Whatever it is I'll walk them through the process of getting their self into like a workout routine and eating right. And if they want to drop fat, we'll drop the fat. Then as you go through this process, you not only end up looking better to yourself and you feel more confident, but you build a discipline. And the discipline of sticking to a routine, sticking to a diet also makes you more disciplined outside of that realm and goes into the rest of your life.

So then you're more organized and disciplined with your work stuff. And then at work, you kind of stand out more. You're more confident. You get that promotion. And it all just stacks and the winds just stack and stack and stack. And along the way, you might fall off and I help you get back on the path. And it's just a little back and forth thing until you get where you're trying to go. And the sky is just the limit.

For sure. Yeah. I'd say that very well encapsulates the concept of the journey of a thousand. miles, you know, that it begins with a single step and then you got to kind of keep walking. But you do, you make progress. Right. For sure. I guess I'm a little off this morning.

Like I said earlier, I got up way too early today. So my interview brain is not kicking in in terms of like interesting questions to ask you. I don't know if you have more things to say about kind of your business and how it works. unique success stories, things of that nature. I don't know. Hmm. Right, that's a vague one. I know.

I'm all going to know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like everyone is unique. No, I know. That's very true. Whatever, whatever things people are going through. I guess I'm kind of fishing around for more conversation topics in terms of Right, right.

Highlighting additional principles in psychology or philosophy, that's kind of where I go with a lot of this stuff. You know, we've talked about the idea of a paradigm shift of, you know, coming out of a matrix of a kind. You know, a lot of times we get trapped in ways of thinking that we don't realize aren't entirely accurate. That's a lot of it. Like, disempowering beliefs. If you think that you can't do things. things, you know, just like yourself talk, what you say you can or can't do. That's another way it all works.

Like, even like I bring it back to the gym always because, I mean, it can be going for a run, whatever, but physical motion, physical activity, when you're like, oh, I woke up this morning and I got through this whole thing that was hard. And then later on in your day, when something feels hard, you're like, you know what, I could probably get through this because I've gotten through something hard already. Like I wake up at four in the morning and go straight to the gym. So by the time the sun's coming up, I've already gotten through a hard workout. So like today it was rainy.

I didn't really feel like even going, but I still went. I still did what I had to do. And now the rest of my day has just been moving along pretty smoothly. I've been productive. And whatever I have to do, I get done without thinking like, oh, maybe I can't do this today. I don't really have those thoughts anymore because I'm so used to having positive self-time. talk now. I used to have a lot of negative self-talk. I used to be the most negative person ever. So it's a big deal for me. And a lot of people who are in the same situations, when you change

that inner conversation with yourself, you become a whole different person and you're so much more capable after you start giving yourself the positive reinforcement you need on the inside of this dome right here. Yeah, definitely. I think there's two very powerful concepts. They're the, uh, definitely the idea of self-perception and self-talk and, uh, being trapped in perhaps negative thinking, but also that building of the, the, the discipline in a way. The first thing came to mind when you were talking about that was, uh, a lot of people do things because they feel like it. And that's, that's a very, what am I trying to say?

It's an unreliable measure in a way. It's like, don't, if I had to phrase this kind of a, aphorism or a, some, sum it up. It's like, don't do something because you feel like it, but because it needs to be done. Or it's the right thing to be. Exactly. Exactly. That's the discipline where, you know, your motivation, people are always looking for motivation. And motivation comes and goes.

Like I was saying today, I didn't have any motivation in the morning. I woke up. My alarm went off. I was like, fuck. I don't feel like getting up. I know. But I got up. I put my phone on the other side of the room.

So like when the alarm goes off, I get up, but I can't hit snooze. I don't even have the snooze option on. You can turn that off on your phone. I make sure. I set myself up as much as possible to get going. But, you know, I don't, I wake up. I'm like, what day of the week is it? Oh, it's a gym day.

I'm going to the gym. So it's not like I say I feel like it or not. It's like, this is what I have to do and I'm going to do it. And then again, that everything else in life, it's like when I say I'm going to do something, I do it because I keep promises to myself. I have integrity. And that's something you build. It's not something that happens overnight.

And it's not like just motivation. It's that inner discipline where you have just. just kept those promises so many times. You've stacked all those wins. And now you just believe in yourself. And you know when something needs to be done, you go do it. Oh, for sure. And I mentioned earlier the idea of ancient wisdom.

And there's a lot of what you're saying, you know, comport say with stoicism in a way. And a lot of people get that confused. They think it's to be unemotional. It is rather to be not controlled by emotion. Exactly. In a sense. I was going somewhere with that. No,

no, I'm losing it. The idea of, um, setting yourself up for success. Oh, you know, the,

they say, you know, uh, to become a virtuous person, you have to practice virtuous habits. And then the habits become, exactly, what you are,

uh, in a sense, I mean, I've said it a lot of different ways. A recent formulation was, you know, what we do is what we worship in a way. It's what we do is what we believe.

Um, and so that one way to do it, you can also do it. You can also do it backwards. You can come to believe or embody something based on what you do. It's setting yourself up for success, the idea of putting your alarm, your phone and the alarm across the room. A lot of people would benefit, I think, from taking that approach to life in general, of setting yourself up for success. It comes down to the idea of procrastination of stuff, too.

It's like, if you find yourself thinking, well, that's a problem for tomorrow's me. You are setting yourself up that person you will be tomorrow to reap the consequences of what you didn't do today. Just as you will be. And then you will become that person. You're going to wake up tomorrow, barring accident, injury, etc. So thinking of yourself as that person who will exist in the future. And some other folks, you know, psychology professionals have said, you know, treat yourself like you are someone you are responsible. for helping.

Imagine what I would say or do on behalf of another person, what would you tell them was best for them? Tell yourself, do it. Do that thing that you want for someone else because you know it's beneficial for them. Yeah. And something as simple is if you got to get out of bed and you want to stick to that schedule that's important to you and you know why, put the phone across the room. Set yourself up the night before.

So tomorrow morning's you has to fly. fulfill the promise and make themselves better in a way that you know is going to benefit you. So I'm rambling again. I love all those. You're good. But yeah, as many systems that you can put into place for your success because there's always going to be excuses.

There's always going to be obstacles. Every day is not perfect. And people who are successful just set themselves up with systems so that they can just run through that and they know what they have to do. And you can't get stuck when something goes slightly out of order. then you just pivot and go back into the system. Absolutely, yeah. So there's two things that I think are critical.

Number one, we cannot actually, as human beings, function without routine. We actually do need that. We need the world to be at least a little bit predictable, probably more than most people realize. Sun up, sun down every day. Every day, yeah, the cycle of you got to eat, you got to poop, you got to sleep, you got to, you know, move your body a little bit every day. I think a lot of people, and maybe I'm, I don't know, the numbers, I can't say it's 67%, but there seems to be a tremendous resistance among some people to the idea of structure and the need for it.

And I think most people maybe take a lot of the structure we have around us and that we impose on ourselves for granted. And then there's that little wiggle room on the end where they say, well, I don't really like structure. I like to be freewheeling and do whatever. it's like if you didn't know where your next meal was coming from, you'd have a problem with that. We need that kind of reliability in life, that kind of routine, a little bit of dependability in the future to kind of say, okay, I can be okay now because that problem has been solved. I don't have to.

And then we get a lot of folks ending up with anxiety problems and they can't identify what it is. And maybe in a lot of cases, it's a lack of self-imposed structure that brings an order and stability to your. life that makes it safe through predictability. And then there's folks who go the other way and they want way too much rigid structure and they're not adaptable. So, I mean, we need that balance. I would just advocate more for the idea of being aware of the necessary structure that we all exist in and impose upon ourselves to really help people appreciate it more.

Yeah, I agree. And as someone who suffered with... debilitating anxiety for most of my life. I used to have panic attacks and everything. And I used to just self-medicate to try and deal with it. But, you know, I would like drink a bunch of alcohol and then that would make it worse. But since, yeah, since I've had a more structured life, since I've been more disciplined and have more routines, I'm hardly ever anxious about things.

I mean, I still have my moments and I'm still working through it. It's like forever. I'll never stop working on myself. But definitely having structure has. just action alleviates anxiety, like doing things, making sure you don't just sit there and worry about it. Like you have a plan, you go for it,

and you know what to do when things go south. And then that just fixes things, just every day knowing what to expect and the little things. Like even, yeah, just to wake up. Like I know I'm going to wake up at this time. I'm going to make sure I get up and go do it. And then I won't have anxiety that I woke up too late. Now I'm behind on everything.

And then the whole day is a mess. Oh, yeah. Oh, speaking of anxiety, I just had a moment. I had moved my cursor off the record button, and I thought none of this was captured. We're fine. I just had a panic. A little mini panic attack. And I felt it's saying two things about what you said there of like action alleviates anxiety.

I love alliteration. And I also love aphorism. You get that a brilliant concept in one tiny nugget that you can put on a poster. You can remember it very easily, very mnemonic device for. anyway, there's two ways I think that is true just to kind of go dive a little deeper on those things. You know, number one is that if you're anxious about something, do something about it. I mean, our anxiety, fear, pain, these are all evolutionary tools. This is not suffering inflicted on us for no reason. This is warning signs about the danger of nature.

and it's all designed to keep us alive so we can reproduce, you know, that baseline thing. But if you're anxious about something, there's a chance that's dangerous to you in some way. And there's a chance, a good chance, maybe better than good, that you can do something to be proactive about that, to address it. You know, if you're, let's say a great, great analogy might be, you're driving your car down the freeway. You take your hands off the wheel at 65 miles an hour. the longer your hands are off that wheel, the more anxiety builds because anything could happen.

You drift into another car. You hit a bump and go flipping into a ditch. There's something you can do to alleviate that anxiety. You put your hands back on the wheel. You reassert control of the vehicle. So people would look at that and say, well, that's obvious. Like, yes, it should be obvious. Why? But that's a great analogy because we don't maybe recognize as many opportunities in our life to do that. is like you're feeling anxiety. There's something maybe that is out of control that you could take steps to address and that action will alleviate the anxiety. You're going to address the cause.

The need, the reason for the existence of the anxiety itself goes away. You can just feel better by doing something. That was part one and part two for me was also, let's say you're having free-floating anxiety and you can't put your finger on what it is. Sometimes just doing something helps to dissipate that. You're restless and anxious and you don't know what to do with yourself. You know, as a, what was a Jordan Peterson would say, clean your room. You got nothing better to do.

You're not doing anything. Do something. Anything productive will necessarily dissipate some of that energy. And probably during that process, something will start, you know, you free your mind to wander by doing some kind of conscious focused activity. A lot of people use mazes or puzzles. We do a lot of things where our conscious that we work with their hands to do little manipulative tasks, put together literally a puzzle.

And then your brain can kind of free float. It's often that lack of attention, just letting it there. Like, I have a problem. I don't know what it is. Not going to focus on it. It's going to let it be. An answer will come to us while we're doing something else. So all of that rant, just to.

got to build on what you say. I think it's a genius thing. Action alleviates anxiety. It sure as hell does. I think it's a powerful idea. Yeah, like you were saying, like, whenever you're anxious, just move to something. Like, I'll personally go take a walk. Yeah. Like get outside, get some sunlight, some fresh air, just move, get the blood flowing. And then while I'm walking, I'll reflect on things. And if I don't come up with a solution, then I'll at least walk back home. And then the whole scenery is changed and I get back in or wherever I am, maybe home, maybe I got to move. But if you're at work, it works for that. Like if you take a 15-minute break, go right, real quick, come back. And you might have come up with a solution for your problem or at the very least. You changed the

scenery for a minute and got out of that situation physically. And then you can come back in and try the problem solve there. So yeah, I totally agree. That is certainly the idea. And there's something very psychologically powerful about the tangibly, tangibly physically changing your scenery. Certainly if you're sitting on the couch and you're having that free-floating anxiety or you can't put your finger on it. You're worried about the future or you're worried about something. You can't, you know,

you can often break out of a mindset by changing your physical setting. That's also very powerful too. And, you know, the concept of taking a walk is as powerful as some of these, I don't know if you've seen or heard, there are labyrinths in tile on the floor in a lot of, say, old churches in Europe. And the purpose was you would just walk these things. And it was designed to kind of fold back on itself so that, you know, by the time you were done, he came back to where you started. It's pointless outside of walking a path that was. laid out for you to do something physically so that your mind was free to wander in meditation on your problems, spiritual matters, certainly in a church. But that was the purpose of those things. And you can do that in your neighborhood. You're just walking a cement labyrinth around the block,

up and around the corner. You're going anywhere. You're going home. You walk away from your door and your destinations to get back to your door. But it's not, it doesn't end up being pointless. It didn't, it accomplished some things. It didn't change the world. It changed you, changed your mindset and it breaks you. For the same reason, some people say if you're, you know, having, what do they do? They say to some folks who have severe emotional dysregulation issues, if you're freaking out, jump in a cold shower, it will shock your body out of that intense physical emotion.

It doesn't work for everybody, but it's a very powerful intervention for some folks, literally changing your physical state to. to interrupt a negative mental process, which I think is what, you know, go to the gym and developing discipline, getting stronger too. You change your physical being and that elevate your psychological being as well.

Exactly. There's nothing like, you know, mastering some physical task and going, hey, I did that. Look at me. Right,

right. That's exactly what it is. Mm. And I get so, get so dry. Cotton mouth. I'm not even high. Right.

Well, we've been, you know, just chatting for about half an hour. I don't know if you want to jump into the dream stuff. We'll see if we can change your internal mindset with shedding some light in the darkness. 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 dreamscapes program features real dreamers gifted with rare insight. into their nocturnal visions. New DreamScape's 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 Dream Wizard.com. Oh, yeah.

So, yeah, I guess we'll dive right into it. Sure, yeah. I'm going to go back to maybe, I think it was like 10 years ago now. out, but it's this one dream that's stuck with me forever and a lot of weird things happened with it. Do you want me to just hurt telling it? Yeah. So I usually use this moment. I forgot to say the speech. So the basic process, I shut up and listen. You tell the dream as a story. Beginning to end, whatever you remember, as much as you remember, don't worry about it. Then we're going to go through it again. See if I can see it through your eyes and start to get a better

perspective from, you know, I got to kind of be in it to say, okay, what do I see here? What do these pieces mean? And then eventually we kind of work together and get an understanding and kind of tells a story about that experience. So, yeah, it all starts with just,

what do you remember? Anything is sufficient. Cool. So the stream, I don't remember, like, where it started, but it ended up, I'm at some big, like, towering. skyscraper kind of place and there's some organization in there and they've kidnapped some little girl

and I don't know who this little girl is I don't know what she had to do with anything but I had tasked myself with I'm going to save her so I go into this building and I'm like searching through it and I keep getting to these points where there's

one of the employees or whoever is in there they would come with some kind of weird like mechanism that they would shock me with and I would just like vibrate and then I would physically wake up in real life in my bed and then I would just go like that whole night this happened and I would go back to sleep and I'd go right back into that same dream and that same like building that I was in and I'd be still searching for this girl and they would repeatedly like find me the closer I got

and just zap me with whatever it was and I would physically wake up and eventually I think I got to the girl and I saved her somehow. I don't really remember how it all ended. I do remember I got up, went downstairs after I finally like got through that whole story and like I was telling my brother about it and everything because he was still up downstairs on the computer. I was like,

this has been the craziest night of my life. I've literally gotten ripped out of my sleep by my dreams. So it kind of felt like I was in another universe at the same time. It was like, you know, like two sci-fi for real life kind of feeling. It was really weird. And I've just never forgotten that dream. Very cool. Very cool. This, so broad strokes, you might be pleased to know. There, it is an established, recognized, observed phenomenon that people, some people, we don't know why. I'd love to be able to give that kind of an answer to folks. Some people,

excuse me have the experience i was going to say ability but it doesn't seem to be volitional but have the experience of waking up multiple times during the night and going back into the same dream that is seems to be more unique or rare relative to the broad swath of of dreaming experiences um but it is not unheard of and it is not well understood like what causes that to happen why um Why can some people go back into the same dream and some people cannot? There's a lot of different theories about where dreams come from in terms of, broadly speaking, two classes, your direct real life experiences, you continue thinking about them as you sleep. Then there's also the more conceptual inner life we have while we're awake, which is considering possibilities, theories, abstract stuff. And that can also form dream imagery, exploring concepts in that kind of visual experience form.

It puts you in the action in a way, like a main character in a video game, but you're controlling the choices, sort of. Right. That's kind of what it felt like. Yeah. Yeah, fair enough. And so there's a lot of different elements kind of coming together here. Part of it is almost a semi, I don't know, sometimes I conflate these things because I'm not sure how they're connected. but there are some people who can guarantee they do dream about something by thinking about it as they go to sleep.

There are some people who can guarantee they don't dream about something specific by thinking about it as they're falling asleep. Very weird dichotomy there, but it's happened. There are people who are lucid dreamers. They can program their dream. I'm going to have a flying dream. I'm going to be in Tokyo. And they do. And that's what it is.

And in the dream, they're kind of aware of, I am dreaming. And I'm flying. And now I'm going to go over here. And they have that experience of choosing their own adventure in their dreams. More commonly, it's involuntary. But that's not exactly true either because the involuntary nature seems to be that we're not directing it. But we don't have the sense of control. But it is our own thoughts.

And there is in some ways an involuntary nature to the idea of associative experiences. if I say a word and you instantly think of something, you didn't really choose to think of it. It's almost like telling someone, don't think of a pink elephant. Now you see the image of a pink elephant in your head. You can't, yeah, you can't help it. So we do that to ourselves.

We, you know, if I say truck, Tonka, kids toys, playground. I got tons of those in the other room. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then these are playground. Mary go round, teeter totter, teeter totter, balance, leverage, science, physics. Bam, these things just flow in a connection.

and that sometimes ends up how our dreams are. It's like it's not that these things make no sense, although sometimes they don't. We can't figure out why, but that the spontaneous connections do happen involuntarily, even if it's a subject we have intentionally chosen to concentrate on. We get to pick the topic. We don't really get to pick our understanding of it after having thought it through,

which is kind of, that's fun in a way. If we knew what we were going to believe or think or understand before we ever started considering something, well, we don't actually consider those things. We just take them for granted. I've already made up mind. So, okay, all of that to be said about your dream specifically. So there is this, okay, there's also another element.

I'm giving you all this background for a reason because I think all these things are at play and there's a lot of, a lot of it. There's also the physical experience you've described of feeling shock to kind of electrical, vibrate anyone who's been you know ever worked on electrical or i remember when i was younger i mean i've worked on electrical too and i've zapped myself i forgot to turn off the breaker but i was using some electric hedge trimmers and i cut the cord and it went right up the uh right up the right up the hedge clippers and zap me and i'm like whoa that was unpleasant it's that vibration we we all know that experience have you had a real life experience of mild electrocution

uh my like in my hands but never like the whole body but That's kind of what it felt like. Like my whole body had that like, until I would wake up. And I would fight it too in the dream. I'd be like, no, I'm not going to wake up this time.

You can't do it. And then I would just like, and then all this, I'm out of it. Like, what? I would be so bummed every time I woke up because I was like, I almost had it.

I don't want to see how this ends. Don't, don't it's like, right, right. Like I pulled out of a movie in the middle of it. Like someone just inject your seat to your chair. What?

Come on. We were ready. Yeah. So there's, And this is to speak to the broader phenomenon of there are physical sensations we can have as, you know, our body is lying in bed, which can feed into that. So you would say the example of a person who's laying on their arm and it goes asleep, in their dream, they have the experience translated into that dream imagery of, well, suddenly, you know, my legs don't work. Well, it's not your arm and it's not just the arm being asleep. It's not always that literal.

It's like some part of my body has become dysfunctional. and here's how I'm representing it. There's people who have unique experiences. One guy described dreaming he was climbing like Mount Everest. It wasn't that exactly. But the idea of being knee deep in snow and just freezing. Turns out he kicked off the covers when he rolled over. And so he woke up from that experience like, oh, I'm cold.

And he goes back to sleep, different dream or no dream at all. So there's real physical, all of that to say. Were you able to identify any sensations like a pinched nerve? a numb hand that might have led to this interpretation of shock? No, that's what it confused me about the most. Because I've had dreams like you were saying where my woke up asleep and ended in the dream. I'm like, like, biting my arm or something.

I'm like, ah, and then I wake up. And I'm like, oh, my farm's asleep. Okay, fair enough. Well, so part of being a dream wizard is kind of knowing these broad strokes things and ruling out certain experiences. Like if you'd say, yeah, every time I woke up, my arm was asleep, I go, well, that might be the shock thing. And it's translating in there. Now, that doesn't mean we understand why it appeared in the dream in that form.

But now we're able to say, okay, we rule out the physical. This doesn't seem like it's coming from that element. There's something else about being shocked into awakeness that is more relevant there, that each time these shockings happened, it drove you out of the dream. And there's there's associative things we, ways we understand the idea of shock. And sometimes the literal, what is it? Literally to be shocked by electricity stands in for the metaphorical, a shocking revelation that accomplishes a paradigm shift.

So there's that possible, we haven't gotten there yet. We haven't even started. This is all like preamble of. I didn't even ask you about your time. Are you, you got a heart out or, I know, we're good.

I have at least another hour. Okay, good. Hopefully I won't, you know, keep you entirely that long, but I also don't want anyone to feel rushed. I've got an interview's done real quick,

but one, just one time I had a four and a half hour chat. That was fine. It was a long dream, many elements and the, you know, I just keep talking as long as the dreamer wants, once,

has more questions. So I'm in for the marathon. So that's more what I do. I mean, you run marathons. I have more new, Marathons of the mind. I'll just keep focusing. This is a, which one way the autism helps me too.

Like, I can do this all day, literally. Oh, yeah. So, okay, towering skyscraper. We begin with that. Do you, do you have an image of being on the ground looking up? Were you in the lobby? Yeah. Just knew it was the skyscraper.

What was your, you know, experience? I know I was on the outside of it before I was in it. And I would, like, look up. I think it was like nighttime, too, when it was all lit up. okay when you think of that kind of building do you have any immediate connections that come to mind like we just kind of associate like I did earlier

words connecting to each other like a city somewhere like New York City but yeah I grew up in New York so sure that might have to do with why there was that imagery that was a connection that I thought as well definitely this is a physical representation of something

at least very similar that you have seen in real life. But we want to kind of, I mean, eventually, we're not going to, I'm not putting you on the spot to come up with an answer right now. But what I'm, what I'm angling towards is why a skyscraper? Why not only a three-story brick building? Why not a cottage in the woods? What, what is it about this type of building? So there's going to be something there. I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind in that connection is it's a iconic representation of like business in a way, like big business, like a sky.

massive corporation. I don't if that resonates with you at all in terms of the nature of this. I mean, there were certainly employees working there that were an impediment to you. They were actively resisting your efforts. You mentioned some kind of organization. Did you have an idea of what kind of organization it was? I mean, an evil herb, hydra type. Right. Yeah. That's basically it. They were just like the bad guys and they kidnapped this little girl. And I had to go save her. That's like about all I know about what their role was. And no impression at that time of why or what they hope to accomplish, what their purpose was, what their broader purpose is in the world, I mean, world domination or... No idea.

No idea. Like maybe she had magic powers. I don't know. But I have no idea why they wanted her. I just, I remember I, I guess I saw them kidnap her and bring her up there. Because I don't know how else I would have.

known any of that was going on, but I just like tasked myself with I have to save her. Yeah. And it's not, um, the dreams, dreams are funny this way. It's like, um, it, we're doing a, um, a thought experiment in our sleep, basically, basically a lot of times, not always, but in this case, I think so, um, seeing the girl get kidnapped image wise as a dream experience is indistinguishable from simply standing outside the building and knowing she's in there because she has been. kidnapped. So in terms of, you know, coming up with an explanation for, well, how do I know she was

kidnapped? You just do sometimes. Or that's the, as I said, thought experiment style, say, imagine you're on a desert island. With that when we don't go, well, how did I get there? Is that realistic? How would I live? No, wait, desert island. Just go with it. And that's what we're doing our sleep a lot of times. I would ask those questions. Like, how would I end up on this desert? Sure. Yeah. And that's, maybe, maybe it could be relevant relevant to the question or proving a point later on, but a lot of times in our sleep, we do exactly that. We go scenario, for reasons, go with it. And we show ourselves why that's, why that's important to us. What are we actually trying to consider in that thing? So, you're outside the building. It's

at night. Interesting. Interesting. Why? I don't know. But it is an element that presented itself to you. So everything we show ourselves, and sometimes the things we don't show ourselves, are connected to something. So there's something about this being after the world has gone to sleep. This is not the business of the day. This is the business of the night. There's something about considering this scenario that it maybe only could happen at night or it is most appropriate that it did.

It's most relevant to the setting itself that this is the kind of thing that would happen at night or only at night or related to the nighttime, the cover of darkness, perhaps. We get all those kind of things happening. Yeah, and very much being not the business of the day, not something that is, you know, there's things associated with daylight like sunlight being the best disinfectant. You see more clearly in the day. It's where things are revealed for what they are,

where they cast shadows that, you know, it's the light of understanding or shining a light in the darkness. All these associative things come to our mind and we just, does this happen in the day or in the night? And it's definitely night. cover of darkness type of thing happens. So a lot of this stuff I just, in a way, I'm putting ideas in your head, but making suggestions, you can go, yeah, if I think about it like that, what does that mean? You don't have to have an answer. You let it percolate and it kind of comes back to us later as we

start putting the story together. And interrupt me anytime. Like, oh, I just had an idea. Shut me down. I usually just ramble until someone else has something to say. I know, I'm just listening right now. That all makes sense. And don't feel responsible to spontaneously come up with something. But when you do, please stop me. So you enter, do you have distinct impression of walking through the front doors and in the lobby and you've got a bunch of people you've got to kind of fight your way through? Or did you sneak in through another entrance?

How did you get into the building? I don't remember that. I remember like being on floors. I mean, a lot of it may be too as I played video games. It kind of felt like, remember Golden Eye back at the day. day where you're just like walking through the levels trying to find where you got to go kind of felt like that like I'm just walking through this building going moving up floor by floor until somebody found me and stopped me okay so and it isn't necessary that you invent connections that may not be

there you can have a very strong impression of standing outside the building recognizing that it's night knowing there's a kidnap girl and you're on a mission to saver scene change you're moving through hallways. Because sometimes we take things for granted in dreams in terms of like the connective tissue. It doesn't matter. We know in practical terms, I would need to open the front door. And we don't break that down either into, well, I would need to walk three steps to the front door.

Then I would need to position my body so that I would not be overbalanced when I grab the handle and pull. I am now standing erect. And now I pull the door. I use exactly 37 pounds of pressure. We don't get that detailed in our dream. So a lot of times we skip out. You know what you're here for.

now you're in the hallways. If you had to say the first next impression of being in the hallways, was it a particular imagery, particular kind of, how would you describe the hallways if you're like, I remember this image of being in the hallway and here's what happened? I mean, mainly like an office kind of building environment, like just not like a lot of visual stimulation. What am I trying to say?

Stumbling all my words here. Yeah. But it's like just empty walls and doors and kind of like white wall. It's just basic, minimal. Sure. And that's okay. That's so kind of imagery. You definitely say in this, yeah, this is a place of business and office building that I'm moving through.

There's something about. And the broader theme, too, is like, again, connecting this to the idea of a massive skyscraper that's kind of, what do? there. They work. This is a workplace. That's the purpose of it. That's how the skyscraper, you know, pays property tax. They run out space to businesses that do their thing. And so there may be a broader theme of this dream of business success for yourself. And phrased as a gamer in that, in that terms of we got to rescue the princess. I'm throwing this out there. Don't latch onto it, you know, unless it really makes sense. Like, all that's exactly it. But with the broad idea, that might, you know, it might all, all those things are parts of my life, you know, like maybe I was just thinking,

I got to get Princess Zelda or something. Again, we're very often, you know, so in this sense, the idea that you are a gamer, it would be very natural to have a dream that is couched in the language of a game. Games are very analogous to life. We have goals, we have obstacles, we have strategies we need to employ to overcome them. but also just the general iconography, if it's something familiar from, you know,

like you said, golden eye, like this very well could have been a golden eye mission, in a sense, wasn't maybe directly, but, but that idea of it was like, it was this kind of experience.

Right, right. Yeah. So you do have kind of these, these vaguish impressions of, of what it's like in there. It's very nondescript, you know, a lot of these buildings are,

they don't have a lot of works of art. They don't have a lot of interior decor. They are very plain. functional. So it's no surprise you would have that, that experience of it. Can you kind of remember the first time you got challenged by an employee and how that scenario played out,

how the combat worked or anything like that? Did they sneak up behind? I'll, that kind of thing. It's so vague, but like, I can't even remember, like, what day actually looked like.

It's just like maybe it was more of a concept of a person, but it would just catch, off guard. Like I got caught. And then they would start like zapping me with this thing and I'd resist because I don't remember if they, I don't know how I knew.

I knew it was going to like take me out of the building. Like it was like that's what the purpose of it was was to remove me from the building so I wouldn't get to the end. And I would just fight it until I woke up in real life. And that just repeated over and over. And it was

basically the same thing. I'd be like I'd make it to some room that was a little farther in and then I get ripped out and then I don't know where I would like respawn or whatever like I would just show up back in the building when I would sleep

and I guess it was further along on the path or at least where I stopped but I just like steadily kept progressing but it just kept repeating like that maybe three or four times that night just woke up went right back in okay those are

those are all great, great descriptions and ideas. So we're getting kind of meta on it, looking at it, which is, of course, what we're doing. But it's also not just purely describing the experience in a way. It's also that, what am I trying to say? It's that describing the description is a wrong way to put it. I don't know the words. Never mind. Not going to focus on that.

The reason this is great is that you had several things. So there's the concept of being found, discovered, that this is maybe in a way, a stealth mission in a sense. Like the ideal would be you are not faced with unnecessary impediments because you have successfully avoided them. There's that. You're caught off guard. It's an unexpected attack. It is something that, you know, it's not like you saw the boss at the end of the hallway and you ran towards, you know, the mini boss to to engage in combat. Something found you in this process. And part of the process you were trying to go through was to avoid. these things. And, bam, when an obstacle finds us, um, very, sometimes if we're not anticipating it,

we're caught off guard, jump scare style. And that the purpose, these people were purposely there to remove you from the building, that they were intended, you know, solidifying the idea that these are intended to be impediments to keep you from making progress. And yet, you have the experience of going back. And each time you go back on purpose, you choose to go back, you do make progress. You're a little closer towards your goal and that this happens, maybe, you know, to your estimation three to four times. Could have been five.

Could have been 15,000. But the idea of each time you come back, you know, you weren't back at the beginning. You weren't showing yourself, I'm outside looking up at the skyscraper again. I hate those games, the most ones that punish you for a little bit of thing. And they don't allow the quick save. They're like, you know, this is the checkpoint. Good luck. Fuck, I hate that games.

Right, exactly. So you're actually showing yourself that persistence in a way is making a difference. You are gaining ground. I want to stop there. Do you have any thoughts or responses to that? All those concepts I just threw back at you? These are, they're interesting to think about in this light because it's kind of, of like how my life has progressed

since then, but at that time it's like I was not in this sphere I'm in now, like mentally or anything. I was in a pretty dark place in my life, I guess. But yeah, it's interesting, the overcoming adversity and all that, that I'm now, it's so much

of my life, that that dream would make sense to me now in these parameters, but back then I was just, I don't know, more of a, like a defeatist. It was strange to me that I was pushing so hard through it to get to that end of that goal and all that. And that might have been like the part that made it stick with me the most is that like,

oh, I was kind of confident and in control to the expense I could be. And I did keep trying. And I didn't just give up because at that point of my life, I was just giving up on everything. And I don't know if that has to do anything with it. It might. Yeah. I mean, so relative to that, I was going to ask how. What's the temporal, temporal relationship?

How do they connect in time is not the right way? But at what point did you say have this dream? And then at what point did you kind of start changing your approach and making progress in this manner? Was it weeks apart? That's hard to pinpoint. I mean, it's been like over a decade of me doing like self-development on myself. So that was more I don't even know if I had started

down that path at that point I would say no So it was at least like A year A couple years before that I don't remember I figured it would be a gap So it kind of feels to me like

Sometimes we Well very often we consider what ifs possibilities We explore ways Like it was saying thought experiments ways of looking at the world. This, this, and what I was right now while you were talking is this may have been the early inklings, just a, just a sprinkling of fairy dust.

It's not even there, but it is. An early inkling of the challenging of that defeatist mindset. Do I have to really believe these things? What if I put in more effort? What if I, what if I had a worthy mission? What if I had something I was trying to accomplish? how would I what would I do and some people wake up from a dream and they have a sudden immediate change sometimes we consider an idea seriously but lightly long before we actually implemented

or we're we don't believe it or we're not ready for it but that idea the seed of it was always somewhere in us uh so this this is seeming like it's connected to that idea of and and specifically because you did go on to make a change that's kind of reflected by this persistence towards a goal, the idea of showing yourself, you know, if I, if I try, I do make progress. That's a real thing. That's completely separate from, is it worth it? Do I have a worthy goal? Would I just rather be lazy and accept the consequences? Fuck it. Sometimes we decide that. So there's a lot of different ways this could have gone, but at least the seed of the idea of what you became now seems to

be showing up in this dream in the formula. You've presented yourself. um what what did i want to get to um so we have the um we're kind of eliding or or grouping together all these multiple to your knowledge there wasn't any notable distinctions that really stand out between the different instances of being shocked it was just progress setback progress set back and it took that specific yeah right it was kind of almost like rhythmic by the end of it like I would get in and they knew I was in there. I knew they were coming for me. And then like I think by the end of it,

I was kind of like moving faster. But yeah, it just was so repetitive. Like, obstacle. Keep going. Obstacle. Keep going.

Yeah. That's powerful too. The idea that you would say it is rhythmic. There's something powerful in rhythm too. It's like we, the waves in, you know, in the ocean.

The vibration of a string on a get, the repetition of a chorus in music, rhythm, rhythm is very powerful. It's everywhere. And it also shows us that something is natural in some ways. Not that a guitar string is natural, but the idea of rhythms in nature. And going back to that idea,

we're talking about earlier too, of routine that it almost seems like the easy acceptance of the idea that it was rhythmic, that it had a flow to it, that it was going to repeat, is like saying, this is normal, this is par for the course, this is just how it works. There wasn't this struggle against the pattern itself as much as repeating it as many times as it took to get it done. There's something in there, too. I don't know if that speaks to you in any specific way or it does or doesn't.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's life, isn't it? no for sure every day every day you got something to overcome yeah and I would say there are some or not yeah go ahead

sorry I don't know I was saying whether you choose to overcome it or not is your choice but like every day you got even if it's just feeding yourself it's like there's an obstacle

you have to overcome every day and maybe that was just like that represented in the dream or maybe it was like my higher self talking to me being like you gotta put in a little more effort

in life. Let's go. Sure. What came to me was the idea that some people look at resistance, pushback, struggles, obstacles as a sign that something's going wrong, that if they were doing what they were supposed to or the right way, they wouldn't encounter obstacles. And this seems to be reassuring yourself or reinforcing the idea in your own mind that, no, obstacles will exist. That itself is normal. That's not a sign I should quit or give up. It's going to happen. There is no avoiding it, you know, but it's the persistence. It's the, you know, each time you get a little closer, closer and closer despite the obstacles. So you were saying you had that defeatist mindset. And people say, what is it? Comedians. They do open mic nights and they bomb. Maybe one joke gets

a laugh in five minutes of material. They worked their hard out on before, having the courage to step on stage for the first time. If they took that as the final answer, well, I guess people don't like me. They would never go back. They would never try again. They would never say, okay, why did that one joke work? Let me, you know, so accepting periodic setbacks and failures as a normal part of the experience changes, as we were saying, changes your mindset about what to expect in terms of receiving feedback or danger signals from the world. Um, we all look for reasons to believe we're on the right, right path that we are making progress. So if we, um, so you're showing yourself this cycle of, yeah, there's going to be setbacks.

These, these, um, opposing forces are going to make it difficult to get where I'm going, but you, you, you still chose to see yourself making progress with each step forward. Uh, that's, I'd say that's a powerful imagery to have. to have in general to say, you know, it's like, I don't have to believe everything's hopeless. I don't have to believe I'll never amount to anything. I'll never get better that I can have no, that I have no ability to change. I think all of that's built into that. That's great stuff.

If you have, again, that, go ahead. Yeah, yeah. At that time, like, that concept was so foreign to me. It was like you were just saying, like, if I was sickle came on my way while I was trying to do anything. Like, I've attempted and failed. at so many things in life, I think more than people have, like, whatever the saying would be, like, I've failed more things than you've tried or something like that. But it's like, anytime I face some form of adversity, I'd be like, oh, I guess this isn't for me. I'm just going to, like, give up and start all over again on something else for some reason.

Like, that made sense. So that dream at that time was just like a foreign concept. That's why I'm almost like, was that like a message being like transmitted from some higher, form of, I don't even know, it just felt like that powerful of a thing now that I look back at it, but at the time it made no sense to me, like why I was having that kind of dream and looking at my life. Now, it's like, I seek adversity now to overcome it because it just makes me stronger in my mind and it helps me achieve goals. And if I run from adversity, then I end up just miserable and back in bad habits, et cetera.

But, yeah, that makes a lot of sense now. For sure. Thinking about it. Well, and just that, you said, you know, is that a message from a higher power? I believe, so I'm a very rational, skeptical, scientific. I call myself a credulous skeptic. I'm willing to believe anything. Weird wild world out there.

I don't know what's in there. I'm similar. Very high bar for proof. If I'm going to tell you, I know something is. true, it is proven in my estimation. A lot of things I can't prove. So, um, but I do believe the metaphorical concept of a high power communicating to you is legitimate in, in the sense that, um, we don't actually know where ideas come from. I mean, why would we suddenly experience the inspiration to try something different than we had tried before? Now, sometimes we do that intentionally.

we analyze the situation. We look at all the things we've tried. We make our life a scientific experiment. But sometimes there's these moments where suddenly something occurs to us that's never occurred to us before. And it changes, again, that paradigm shifting changes the way we or at least gives us reason to question what we've always believed to be true. Where does that come from?

If you consider that psychologically, there is something in our subconsciously. conscious that is always seeking to problem solve. And if we hadn't considered something, we would want to force that into consciousness to try and again, evolutionarily keep ourselves alive. Like, maybe don't keep banging your head against the tree. Maybe use a stick with a rock on it and that'll chop it down. I mean, that's the evolution of invention in a way, like a problem solving. But it is entirely legitimate in my mind to say, that force, that power, that energy, that sudden unexpected inspiration that gives you something useful that you then implement and go, wow, my life's better. It's entirely legitimate to consider

that a higher power, a God. I mean, in a way, it's like I would say, if it wasn't God speaking to you saying, lo, I am your Lord, do this, but more like that inner voice of God in a sense, the inner voice of the creative potential of the universe giving us messages. I think that's entirely legit. And that's why I go with the wizard thing, too, is like, I'm as much mystified by all this magical world we live in in a way. And I don't know how I do what I do. Where do my associative suggestions come from to even tell you, here's what I think I see?

I don't, I have no idea. Maybe God's talking to me. Hey, if you want to believe that, that's cool with me. Oh, yeah, yeah. But certainly, I mean, if we... Gotta be more. Go ahead. No, there's got to be more to it than just chemical reactions.

And even if it's just chemical reactions, that's pretty amazing. I think, too, the proof is in the pudding, as they say, I mean, the results speak for themselves, which was actually going back to some of the books I've worked on. A lot of previous theorists on how to know if God is sending you a prophetic dream or giving you a warning in your dream, they would say, well, you judge by the results. If it leads you, you know, if it comports with the Bible, these were a lot of Christians, it would say then it is a message from God. It's telling you to do what, emulate Jesus better, or be more kind to your fellow man, all these, all these good Christian values.

The problem with that is, if you have something that feels important in your dream, is it necessarily a message from God? You would have to be. to implement it to see how the results came out. And if it's a bad idea and your life ends up a disaster, well, I guess you got the answer, but you can't advise people do that. So this is why I don't go into that spiritual side of things. Like, I can't tell the difference between what would be a message from God and what would be a vain human self-serving seven deadly sins type of, well, this is my desire, but should I follow through on it? I don't know. Is this God or the devil talking to me? It's like, I don't know. Right, right. I'm not really. I'm not really.

the expert in that. But I think we can see it in this sense, now that we do have evidence, we can look back and say this, this seems like that small, still voice in the dark, literally at night night, speaking to you saying,

here's something maybe, here's a perspective on the world, on yourself in the world, in relation to your ability to accomplish things. Consider the defeatism is not absolute, that you have not come to the end

of your understanding of what is possible. consider it. That seems to be what the dream is saying, because it didn't, didn't change your life the next day. You didn't wake up the next day going, I got to hit the gym. Yeah,

it wasn't that. I wish right now. If only we'd, we'd all made different choices a lot sooner, right? Well, that gets us through most of the dream. In terms of a lot of the broad thing, we may have solved it in, in this regard.

Right. They're still saving the girl. Do you have any distinct impression of that experience? meeting her the circumstances she was being held under you had to break a door down you had to defeat a boss

I don't remember a lot of that I remember I think just I got into the room she was in at the top of the building whatever

like Rapunzel and it's in her go I guess I don't know probably all these childhood things from like video games and books and movies

in the back of my subconscious but I just remember like I picked her up and I was like we're getting out of here and we got out of there and then I woke up and I was like okay the story is complete and that's when I went downstairs and saw my brother downstairs I told them like the whole story yeah um

any visual impressions you can give me of the experience of getting into the room uh it was it was a locked prison door heavy metal it was you know a wooden door it was uh just a no different than the office space she was just in a in an office room was she in a board room yeah it was it was just in like a random office room like with the door. It wasn't anything crazy. It was just me, I guess, being persistent enough to get to that room. And then once I got there, it was like just go in and help her out. Yeah.

Was she tied up in anyway, you know, strapped to a chair with duct tape or just because sitting there waiting to be rescued? Just sitting there waiting to be rescued. Any features of the person you can remember? They were a particular. I don't remember. Just the young. dress like maybe maybe between like six and ten years old like that kind of age range

yeah it's hard to tell but once we get to a certain age i can't tell the difference either right like i guess mostly just like helpless and yeah i was going to be the one to help because i think i if it was like a grown person like a grown woman or whatever or like even a grown man like if it was a grown man i probably wouldn't even have taken the adventure like buddy like figure out maybe yeah And these are all very personal things. There is something very, I would say, universally iconic to the human experience. We all understand the inherent incapacity and vulnerability of children.

They just can't do a lot of things that adults can do, obviously, size differential and knowledge differential. So there's that incapacity and therefore the vulnerability, that helplessness of like, if this problem is going to be solved, that cannot be solved by this person. They need to be helped. So there's, and I don't think it's actually, um, there are some dream images where this was related specifically to children. That's why a child appeared in the dream because it is related to the concept of children.

But I think here children or a child is a stand in for those concepts, as, as you've said. Right. That, that if, uh, so what I'm trying to connect that to is conceptually, the concept of a problem that's going to solve itself in a way. Does that make sense? Does that feel right? Or is there right of saying it? Uh, no, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that so if something's, it, and again, I think going with the theme of the dream is that if this problem is going to get it's, get solved, because it cannot solve itself, it's going to have to be solved by someone else. You have chosen, you've explored the concept in this dream of what would it be like to

choose to solve a problem that's not going to go away. You know, you never entered the building. The girl never gets saved. The problem remains. What would that experience be like? And what would happen? How would I feel about it and how would it play out? And even then, I think you'd said, you know, I've had experiences in my life where persistence has paid off, where it was unpleasant. It was difficult. It was all those things that suffered. I had setbacks. But I got it. done. I know I can do that. I mean, it's getting out of bed of the morning, wake, waking up with the alarm. I've done it. So it's not outside of my experience. And maybe at this time in your life, considering what if I leaned into that a little bit more? Would my life

change? Would I, would I accomplish something important that simply wouldn't happen without me to make it happen? I don't know. I've said a lot of time. Does that, yeah, does that feel kind of right for this experience is that it's that does that feels that feels like it's crazy though how it kind of aligned with my life like maybe that was the catalyst that set me on this trajectory to get where I am now and where I'm headed because yeah now it's all about like I'm trying to find people to solve their problem it's like I want to you're looking for more kids to rescue right right I want to help people So yeah And it's through

Like me overcoming my own obstacles Is how I got here So like as the dream Kind of Not stated But you know yeah It was like I was overcoming all these obstacles And then I could help the other person

And that's kind of It's crazy like I've never thought of it in this level But yeah It's like my whole life has followed that path Since I had that dream then Weird It was it was the blue print. Yeah, it very much was. You know, at least the earliest conscious memory you have in this sense of seriously considering that idea.

Because a lot of times we dismiss ideas. Like, no, if I try harder, then nothing's going to happen. I'm just going to suck more. But sometimes we really see, is that, is that true? Is that really true? Do I really believe that? Do I think that's real? Is it as real as it seems to me? And I love how this whole idea connects to the broader themes that we get in storytelling in general. Definitely, you know, cinema, media of all kinds, but broadly your mythology, the idea of what makes a hero versus a villain. I mean, a villain is the guy that kid naps the innocent kid and sticks him in a building. The hero is the person who at the very least wants to save the kid, wants to do good in some way. And then they, we have a lot of different stories of how that plays out. He's tremendously competent and he succeeds.

He tries his hardest and he fails. Tragedy, you know, that kind of thing. But that is great. I think it's definitely, if we were to link it up with Jungian archetypes in a way and the kind of Joseph Campbell hero's story type of thing. This is kind of you telling yourself you are capable of more. If you want to try, do you want to try? That's powerful. Yeah.

All it does. I mean, that's, we talk about where does the motivation come from. Sometimes it comes from that. I can be more than I am. I really can. Whoa, wait a minute. That's possible.

And we get, we get our mind blown just a little bit there. That's a fact. Yeah. Oh, that's great. I love this.

Oh, you know, as usual for like 90% of this, I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to say. And then it just falls out of my head. That's, if someone wants to believe I'm being inspired by God,

I'll take it. I'm not, I'm not pretending to speak for any higher power. But if I hope if it gets good results, then that's, that's exactly what it was. Yeah. Where were you whenever this happened 15 years ago?

This is, yeah, this is good. I'm glad we did it. Yeah, no, and I'd be happy to have you back, you know, at the time, maybe not immediately, but the idea to look at maybe some of your recurring dreams and see how they might have also contributed to that. You know, I'm always welcome to, I always make people feel welcome to come back for another episode. Oh, yeah, for sure. We should do it again.

Yeah, I just try to get folks, well, viewers, a variety, you know, not the same person every week. So, um, for sure. But yeah, if you feel like we've achieved enough of an answer to give you something to think about and a real feeling of significance, I, I'm sad. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think so. Good deal.

Um, okay. Well, then I'll just say to everybody out there listening. This has been our friend John Sacco from the East Coast USA personal development coach Instagram at real John Sacco. It's with two C's as a CCO. Um, links in the description. description. And for my part, I'll say, would you kindly like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers, viewers for the video games. You can acquire at

Benjamin thedreamwizard.com. Hey, it's my name. Same as the YouTube channel. That is where you'll find mb3 episodes of all of these interviews and encyclopedia of dream related people in terms. A complete listing of the entire catalog of historical dream literature I've got out there most recent release book 15 the world of dreams by have a lock atlas working on book 16 and that's uh that's my own housekeeping thanks for that and i'll just say uh john thanks for being here i've enjoyed talking to you yeah thanks for having me saying it was a good talk good deal and everybody out there thanks for listening