Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 113: Resolution

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.” - William Shakespeare https://www.michaelbharris.com/book

Greetings friends. Welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have our friend Michael Harris. He is a business coach, lifelong entrepreneur, yoga teacher, co-founder of endless stages, and bestselling author of three books, including Falling Down, Getting Up, You can find him at Michael B. Harris.com, where you can also get a free copy of the book in a download version. We'll get right back to him in two seconds. For my part, would you kindly like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers and viewers for all of my content, of course. 15. Currently available works of historical dream literature, the most recent book 15, The World of Dreams by Havelock Ellis, circa 1911.

This is old school, great information, great comprehensive overview. You can find that and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, downloadable MP3 versions, link to the merch store, you know, get a T-shirt, support what I'm doing. and that's enough about me. Back to Michael, thank you for being here. I appreciate your time. It's great to be here, Benjamin, and knowing that you're just over the hill from me,

I shouldn't say hill over the mountains. You're on the west side. I'm on the east side of the cascade. So it's great to be here today. Yeah, you are that guy from Bend, Oregon. That's fantastic. And that guy from almost Gresham. Yeah, that guy from Gresham, almost Gresham.

Right, there you have it. And that is, you are probably the most, close person I've ever talked to. I think I talked to someone who was in Seattle or Northern California or something once, but I've never had, it was a nice surprise to find that someone so close, we got in contact somehow. And we're doing the thing. Yeah.

Yeah. That is very cool. So there's so many questions to ask you. I mean, definitely about your book, about what endless stages is. I think you said you were kind of a specialist in the pain management realm. So this is the portion of the show where we're just free wheel and we talk about anything when I'd like to learn more about you. Well, one of the things I'd love to talk about is stories. And, you know, the world, there's a lot of energy in our atmosphere right now bouncing around doing all sorts of different things.

And I heard in the last day or two that the scientists said that the core of the planet is now turning the other direction. now apparently it happens from time to time but I think of all the challenges that are just going on in the last couple of days and everything else that's happening is it's like whoa the planet's turning backwards is that like a country music song going backwards or something I don't know you know back your wife back your truck fixed and all all that stuff with some of that I don't know whether I'd want back but right yeah but we've been telling stories since the beginning of time. And stories can on one side be greatly manipulated for money and profit and politics and all sorts of things. Yet story can also be used for connection and connecting people together. You know, we used to sit around the campfire, talk about the dinosaur that we had just killed and, you know, how we fought it off and it tried to scratch me, but I got him, you know, I got him right in the breastbone and, you know, and he

fell over and that's what we're eating for dinner tonight. I like stories. You know, I've authored three different books. I've got some more books coming out. I help people create stories, whether it's podcast, stage, virtual, whatever it is. In stories that my friend, Les Brown, some of you may know who Les Brown is, a pretty famous motivational speaker, he says, never tell a story without a point and never tell a point without a story. So I help people recognize that and how to really use stories to connect.

You know, in so many ways there's some disconnection going on in the world, but what can we do to start to reconnect? And it doesn't matter what our beliefs are, what our politics are, whether we're right, left, up, down, back, forward, whatever. But how can we come together with, you know, a lot more love and a lot less? violence, I will say, a lot less anger. So it may be a little bit of a, and no pun intended, a little bit of dream of mind, but to do that, but I kind of feel like if, you know, what I say can even save just one life, then I've done my job, you know, through story.

And we all have great stories. You got stories, I got stories, everybody's got stories. a lot of them don't realize they have stories that can be impactful and helpful to others. But it's really something that I relish in right now is the idea of stories and storytelling. Oh, yeah. The power of stories, the very real tangible benefit of it in connection and in understanding, we seem as a species to kind of cycle through rediscovering that periodically. and we're definitely in a time like that now.

I mean, there was a time, I think it connects to like the era of Freud and Young and then Joseph Campbell as well with his hero's journey. He kind of crystallized it in a way saying that, you know, excuse me, we've used these stories to educate forever. And like you were saying, back to the campfire days, I mean, that was the original social media in a way. Like we are here together. It is the medium of stories.

storytelling to a social group. And we're doing it still today. And then, yeah, we evolved or discovered our capacity for deception in that as well. You can tell a fake story that isn't like there's true stories in a way like it never happened, but it's real. And it describes something real. And then there's fake stories that are this is completely false. And it is meant to leave you with the wrong understanding or, you know, meant to deceive. it's it's it's kind of in a way an amoral power like you know the laws of physics it just exists

and we definitely have to choose how to use it wisely absolutely um you know there's um you know the politician right now who people are uncertain who he really is because of the stories he's told and you know that that's a real deceptive practice of storytelling You know, and then on the other hand, storytelling helps us find what's real, because oftentimes, even on a personal level, our stories are based on somebody else's experiences. So, like, even like my brother and I will be talking and I'll mention something that happened 30, 40 years ago, and you go, that didn't happen to you. That was me. I did that. Yeah. So it's not an active deception, but it's really more. an act of our false memories.

Yeah, that is very true. Memory is notoriously unreliable. And yet it is only our memory of having existed yesterday that gives us a sense of self. Like I am as if I am a consistent thing that exists across time because I don't have you've heard of that there's an interesting theory out there or a thought experiment in a way. It's the idea. It's called Last Thursdayism. I don't have you ever come across that.

I don't know if I've heard of that. Yeah. Well, it's the theory put forward, the thought experiment, that the entire universe, including us and our memories, was created last Thursday. And we have no way to falsify that. It's kind of in the realm of the brain and of that thing. What if I'm just a brain of that having these experiences programmed by wires stuck into my head, we can't falsify it.

But it's one of those little Zen Cohen kind of mind popping things where you go, if that were true, there's no way I would know the difference because I would be created not knowing that that's when I was created. So, who know? And certainly last Thursday, I have to actually think about what I did last Thursday. Yep. Because I don't know. I'd have to like look back of my calendar, go, okay, was I on a podcast?

I have no idea what I had for lunch, let alone dinner. Well, this raises another very interesting thing is that we have a record, I believe literally, and maybe not 110%, but a record of everything we've ever experienced in our brain. That is, these sensations come in. They have a response and they follow a path that new neuronal connections are made. So physically, literally, we have a document of everything we've ever experienced for the entire time our brain's been developing. We don't have ubiquitous or complete access to it. And so that's one way the subconscious and the consciousness have been described in the past is the subconscious. The subconscious,

is that complete record of everything. Consciousness is what we're doing immediately right now in front of us, including the ability to access some things and not others from our memory. And that's where, that's kind of where dreams bridge the gap in that a lot of ways. Our conscious attention fades away, disappears. We have no new input coming in. And all we've got is the wheels that keep spinning in the subconscious. And those things bubble up. And sometimes they're close enough to consciousness that we can remember having thought about that while we were unconscious. It's basically my explanation of dreams.

They're just unconscious thoughts during sleep. And sometimes we can bring that out. And we're accessing things that, what am I trying to say? We just can't in any other way. The world has been pulled over our eyes. We're too busy and engaged. We've got too many details and survival things to deal with. So when we can shut all that down, we can kind of look back and go, what else is?

going on here? What also might be useful that I just couldn't see? Yeah. And that's so true. And I went through a period of time with like dreams where I would, you know, before I went to sleep, I'd tell myself I'm going to remember my dreams when I wake up in the morning. And I'd have a notepad next to my desk and I'd write it down. And I did that for, I don't know, maybe five, six years pretty regularly. Because I wanted to know what was going on. And as I started doing that practice, of course, I was able to remember more of my dreams. And I had a couple of dream books.

I always kind of wondered whether the dream dictionaries, how accurate some of them are. So part of what I also discovered was that in my own dreams, I would go in and go, okay, what is true for me? I mean, is this really what a bear means in the dream dictionary? Or if I have this impression of a bear, what's that bear doing? Is it aggressive? Is it gentle? Can you pet it?

Is it chasing me? Am I chasing it? I mean, there's all sorts of different aspects to it. So I started tapping into my own intuition about my experience of the dream. if that makes sense. Absolutely. No, I think you could all be BS. I don't know.

There are some people who believe dreams are completely random. They have no meaning. They can't possibly mean anything. And therefore, everything I'm doing is just a big con. Fair enough. That's their perspective. I tend to think on, you know, for my own part, the dream dictionary stuff is necessarily a bad idea in the sense that the same image

cannot always mean the same thing to the same person based on the same circumstances. Exactly. You know, if you, a lot of the dream books were derived from, you know, in some ways, the last 2,000 years of people's experiences. They'll, they'll say, here's a famous dream that we all heard about from the Bible or whatever. And because that dream meant this, if you have the same imagery in your dream, it must

also mean the same thing. I get where they're coming from. There's a certain logic to that. But in my opinion, and, you know, from studying psychology and talking to enough people. it's all highly personal. And it's not always or even very rarely is literal. I use the example if you have the dream experience that you stabbed your dog with a knife. And you wake up from that dream horrified and disgusted and heart sick that you would even have that thought.

It's like you have no desire to harm your animal. You love your dog. That's not what it was about. There was some thought that connected in your mind going like, wait a minute. that's like if I stabbed my dog. And of course you're horrified because you're comparing the two ideas with the most extreme example that really tugged at your heartstrings and said, how would I feel if I did that?

It would be as bad as this. So there's not a, in my estimation, not a prophetic meaning to most dreams. If there is, I don't know what to do with those things. But definitely comparisons. Mostly it's comparisons of things. That's like this.

We think very often in imagery and analogy. And that's what's coming out. up in our dreams for the most part. I don't know if you experience the same thing. I would say similar. You know, I really look to you because, I mean, this is something that you're studying on a regular basis. And it's not something that I study on a regular basis.

I mean, I could tell you the inside out of yoga, and you could tell the inside out of dreams, but you probably may not be able to talk much about yoga. I may not be able to talk much about dreams, other than some of my experiences, right? Yeah, well, that is what I'm collecting, too. So when I throw it back to you, I don't say, hey, what's your expert opinion? But more like, what is your experience?

Because there is a wide range of experience. You have the experience of being capable of saying, I will remember my dreams and then you do. They're gone. They're just for me, I think I, I think so, I sleep so heavily in such deep sleep that the dream are there, they're just not close enough to my waking consciousness and what, what few images come through have no story attached to them. I use an example. I, uh, I have an image from a recent dream

within the last year. I was standing by an open rear passenger door of a car. I think it was a white car. No idea why I was standing there. I didn't do anything. I'm just standing there. I had the impression the door had just been recently opened. Maybe I was going to get in. Maybe I was going to let someone out. There's no talking to the power of stories. There's no story to latch on to. Um, you know, and even something can be made of that. Perhaps I'm viewing myself as a passenger being taken for a ride. Perhaps I've just gotten out of the car because I don't want to go wherever the car is going anymore or I've arrived at my destination. There's so many different ways to look at it. Sometimes without a story, without contextual clues, there's no way to know. Um, so I, I really actually envy people that have these vivid dream experiences where they're like,

here's a whole, here's a whole adventure I went on. And it felt like it took 10,000 years. and I went all over the place. And I'm like, please tell me. That's great. I don't get to remember those things. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you want to hear one of my dreams?

Yeah. Let's do it. Let's do the interpretation thing. So as per my usual process, I just shut up and listen. And our friend's going to tell us the story from beginning to end. And then we're going to go from there and see what we can make of it. So I'm ready when you are. Let me get a timestamp here.

Okay. 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 wisdom, 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. Go for it. Again, I have my own interpretation. yet I'm going to try not to say any of that as I go through the dream. So, and this dream was one of the most prominent dreams I've ever remembered. And it was actually a couple of nights of dreams. And the part that was the couple of nights is there were several nights in a row

where I dreamed, and it's interesting you talked about the stabbing me, because I dreamed of killing people, the stabbing them and being in a fight. And, you know, I was pretty horrified when I woke up. And, you know, oh my gosh, you know, I killed somebody in my dream last night. What's that about? Am I going off the rocks here or something? What's going on?

And then one night I had another dream where I had, killed somebody again. And I don't know why, but I always felt it was like South America, but I don't know if that has any relevance because the last part of it had nothing to do with South America. But I found myself, I had been arrested, and I was in a prison bus, and they were taking me to prison because of killing this person. And I was in handcuffs, and I had a pack of Marlboro Burles. And every time that the guard in the bus was looking another direction, I could get out of my handcuffs.

And every time he looked, I was back in my handcuffs. So we're going along in the road, and then when we get to the prison, for whatever reason, they're not taking me to the cell, but I find myself more in the office of the prison and walking through the prison or walking through the office and then going out the back door. And I'm walking down this road and I come across a building and the first floor, or actually it's the first floor of the building is a restaurant. and in the restaurant there's round tables and one of the tables the prison warden was sitting at the table

there was like eight or ten people at the table and i thought i hope he doesn't recognize me and then on the second floor of this place is a plastic surgeon and so I walk up the stairs to the plastic surgeon thinking that the plastic surgeon could do surgery on my face so I would look different and not be recognized and I was uncomfortable with that and so I left I walked down the stairs I made sure that the warden in the restaurant couldn't see me as I walked through and then I'm walking down and I come across a motel but actually right before I get to the motel I think okay maybe I could just drain all my bank accounts

and go down to Mexico and live in Mexico just the way I was without changing my face or having plastic surgery and I called up a friend of mine Gary and he's a real friend of mine I called up my friend Gary in the dream and I said, well, what do you think? Should I go there?

Should I drain all my money and go live in Mexico or stay here? What I got is a little bit of my interpretation, so I won't say that part of it. And then there was the motel and I went into

a motel room and I sat there thinking, I don't want to change who I am, like what my face looks like. So that was pretty much the dream. Again, I won't tell you my interpretation of it. Yeah. But it was a pretty impactful dream.

And at least what I intuitively came out of it was just as powerful. Okay. So there are many times when I ask people how they felt coming out of it. And certainly there's a feeling of significance that people often have, but also just general mood. I mean, sometimes dreams are uplifting, depressing. What would you say was your general mood? And I don't think that gives away your understanding of it. Just your experience after waking up.

Well, I mean, it started out pretty horrifying because I had killed somebody and I was going to end up in prison. right but by the end at the end i would say it was more uplifting based on the interpretation that i had of it okay gotcha go ahead that fear there was a fear part when i saw the warden you know like fear that they were going to nab me certainly and those are some of the things i was going to get to as well i'm trying to get better at well asking better questions and a lot of it is how did you feel during the dream and whatnot. So there were two separate nights and really the significant one you remembered and woke up from uplifted was the second night.

And that was this experience of you started to work for doing the thing. This is phase two. You started on the prison bus. And you knew that you were there because you had killed someone that this was a, this was a fact of the dream, so to speak. Yeah, it killed somebody with a knife. it was pretty bloody. We had got in a fight and I had somehow killed him with a knife.

I don't know where the knife came from, but it was an outside place where I had killed him. Gotcha. Do you remember what the fight was about, the reason for the altercation that ended in death? No, I never knew what that was. And that, so this is what I started, we're putting together a story. And you've got a story. There's the facts of the story. And then there's like the theme of the story.

Like what ideas were you exploring in this imagery? So right off the bat, we've got, imagine you were legitimately guilty of a crime in a sense. I mean, you know that it happened, that there's the idea of some kind of judgment has been applied to your actions. And now these are the consequences, if that makes sense. Yeah.

So naturally your brain could go, well, if I killed someone, I'd probably go to prison. So let's start the story on a prison bus. I'm on the way. There is an interesting thing going on with, well, let me not, let me not jump to that yet. Do you remember any specifics about the bus? Other prisoners? Were you alone or any sense of other people? It seemed like it was maybe a half-filled bus.

There was some of the cage stuff that, I mean, I've never been on prison bus. I don't know. I see in movies, yeah. You know, like what you see in movie. Some of the cage stuff was there. And at the same time, I was sitting in more of a seat that was like a school bus. You know, just a regular seat.

I didn't have a seat belt on. Gotcha. Yeah, I think a lot of the prison transport buses are probably similar, at least what I've seen from media representation. A bench seat. And then very often they've got the manacles and, you know, chains attached to a loop. It's like, you're not going anywhere. but they're not required by a law to put you in a seatbelt either, that kind of thing,

which actually, I think the reason they do that with school buses is that it might be more dangerous. Like if there was a crash and say a fire, you have to, let's say the bus driver had to go down and let each kid off the bus one at a time by helping them get their seatbelt off. I think that's one of the reasons there are no seatbelts on buses. And people go,

oh, my God, that's dangerous. More dangerous if there's an accident and they can't get out. Anyway, way on a tangent there. but sometimes I just follow my tangents too maybe that's related to something I needed to say it I don't know there's always rabbit holes right for sure yeah there's rabbit holes you'll trip in and rabbit holes you got to jump down because that's where we're going um so I don't know if

it's relevant that you had a pack of Marlborough so I don't know if you're a smoker in real life or if this is a holdover from prison movies where cigarettes are currency yeah um well I mean When I was younger, I smoked. I don't smoke now. Okay. Yeah, when I was younger I did. Yeah. Sometimes we have those random experiences in dreams where the fact of putting ourselves

in an environment, it isn't the point that you were trying to make to yourself. Pact cigarettes were more a feature of the environment in a way. Well, what is common to? I would say that there was something to the cigarettes without, again, given away. my interpretation. Sure. Fair enough. But also, so that's part one. Yes. And you're absolutely right. Where I was going with that was, uh, sometimes things are just a feature of the environment. You think prison, prison movies, cigarettes is currency. That idea pops in your head and fades away. Then there's the other side of like, okay, you've, you're actually, and this is why it helps to get

to know people and ask them, well, what do you do and what's your interest? So you're very much, you've, um, you have a history of smoking when you were younger. You are now a pain management, yoga health focused person, it would be natural to leave that behind and then to have that come back is a representation of something from your past in that

it's both at the same time. It's an icon of the typical prison idea we have and something personal to you. Yeah. So yeah, I was going to get to that too in terms of, that's why I started with

do you smoke still? I mean, and you don't. So it's definitely something from your pack. Did you do anything with the pack? How did you know you had it? You felt it in your pocket. You were hiding it. How did you come?

I had a pack of cigarettes, but I was smoking at times too. Okay. Did you have to slip out of the handcuffs to smoke? Was that a part of it? I didn't have to slip out to smoke, but I prefer not being in the handcuffs. Yeah. obvious. I suppose both people would. I don't know. And there was no reaction from the guards regarding the smoking. You weren't trying to hide that from them either.

Oh. Okay. Once upon a time, that might have been actually what it was like when they did, yeah, allow smoking in prisons. Like, so be it. Yeah. And then those people light and toilet paper rolls on fire ruined it for everybody. Right? Where are we going here? I got this. Um, okay, so you were smoking. So that is interesting too in terms of there's been a resurrection of something from your past, something you gave up intentionally, something you know is not good for you. And, um, but you're showing yourself doing it. We might just, we might just put a little carrot there and go, not really sure what to make

of that yet. Maybe in the context, it'll become clear later on. Um, it is very interesting. This ability to slip the handcuffs when the guard was looking. And you have the memory or experience of doing it yourself. It was, was it just bloop? They just fell right off or you were able to pick them. Was there any specific process?

Oh, there wasn't any picking. They were just loose. So I could like slip my hands out of it. Gotcha. Gotcha. And then how did they get back on you when the guard looked? Did you put them back on to, so he would know? Or did I just.

I slipped them back in to make it look like they were all. Yeah. Gotcha. So we've got two things going on there. We've got a symbol of binding in a way. You've got the idea of being chained to the consequence in a very physical way and an authority figure that when there's no authority figure looking, you can, you can kind of divest yourself of that physical manifestation of guilt, of being convicted in a way of being trapped. You can escape the trap. But when he's looking, it's like you got to at least pretend the trap is real.

Is this going somewhere that makes sense to you? Definitely does. Does that also kind of comport with where you came out at the end of it, the idea of the knowledge of being able to escape consequences if you choose to? Was that part of your understanding of the dream? able to escape consequences. Yeah, kind of that broader theme of like... I would say a little bit different

and that would go to my interpretation. Okay. So I don't know if you want to say that right now. We can leave a vague for a moment and then eventually we'll get at the end of the dream. I won't have anything else to suggest. And then we can start talking about where our suggestions line up, which is... And this is also a little bit of a different experience. then say there's interpreting dreams that people don't understand at all and we discover the meaning together.

Then there's offering my view of the symbology in someone else's dream that they feel like they have a pretty good handle on. Like when they understand, the dream came with its own knowing in a way as a result of the dream, which is fair enough. Ideally, that should happen to everybody. That would be fantastic. You don't need me anymore. Buy my books, please. but still, hopefully, hopefully people, because I think these things are of real benefit. These are our thoughts while we're asleep.

These are the thought experiments we're running. So the whole point is to get some kind of benefit out of it. I'd love it if people didn't need me. And then there's always going to be the odd one where people do. And that's fine. So long story short on that, because this is not the typical process, I would say, normally I would say yes. And what were you thinking at that time?

What comes to mind right now? We're holding that back a little bit on. purpose and that's that's perfectly fine yeah um the reason i went with that understanding of the kind of slipping slipping out or away from being able to escape consequences in a way was that when you got to the prison you went to the offices you were in in the administrative areas that kind of reinforced the idea you weren't you weren't put in a cell you actually even even going to prison you were you were not a prisoner in that sense.

There, you may have been literally labeled a prisoner because convicted. You're on the bus, et cetera. But the experience of it was different. You're in, you're in the administrative areas. You're in an office. You're not trapped in a cell that you escape from. It's a very different, different understanding. You've got the run of the place.

You can go anywhere you want. And indeed, you do. You go right out the back door because you don't want to be there. You're like, well, this is. So there is speaking to me, the idea of these, this flow of, if you, felt you were guilty of something, you probably would have imagined yourself in a way voluntarily accepting punishment. This is just.

This is fair. I'm going to go into the cell because that's where I belong. I did something wrong. This kind of, to me, speaks to the idea of you've been, you're like technically guilty. Yes, someone died and that's not good. But it's something in you was saying, this is not a just consequence for this. I'm not going to consign myself to it or accept this fate. I'm actually going to fight it.

I'm going to fight against what I deem to be unjust. There's something in there that speaks to me. That's the suggestion that comes to my mind anyway. It may be related or not. And eventually, yeah, you just decide to leave. You walk out the back door. You're like, I'm not staying here. I don't have to.

This is not right. This is not good. It's not where I belong. You go down a road. any um before we go too far any features of the office is it the warden's office the the front desk secretary area any anything stand out about that not particularly other than it was kind of an office it's like go and i did have the thought is why isn't anybody stopping me yeah definitely i think i think i think the reason

no one stopping you is because in your mind, this is, you're examining a concept where either you hold yourself accountable or you don't. And so really, you can slip out, you might wear the handcuffs for the sake of the guard because he's looking because an authority figure is there who might interfere if he caught on that you really could do whatever you want. And then at the end of the day, it's like, you know, if I choose not to hold myself accountable. I can walk away from this. And well, where would I go? What's, what's the next step? That's, that kind of seems to be, well, you go to a, go to a restaurant. And in my mind, you know, not one size fits all, but immediately the idea jumped out of like,

well, what is it to live life? Well, you got to live. You got to eat a restaurant. You know, we all need food. Well, I take care of my basic needs. I would continue living. So you end up at this restaurant. But the restaurant is, um, it's, on the first floor of two. We're going to get to that. But you, you discover in the restaurant that there is the warden, the, in a way, the judgment follows you, whatever it is. And, and even walking away from it, it's going to be in your mind, maybe the doubt, should I have suffered more for this choice or not, but also the idea that maybe if it was discovered, if someone else learned about it, that judgment would appear in your future.

The risk of being judged based on whatever you did still exists. And it also might have been a bit of a second guessing of yourself. Like maybe I should put the word in there because I'm not really certain I should get away. Maybe I should be at risk. Maybe that's the more appropriate thing. Maybe this is something serious enough that I shouldn't be in prison, but I should never forget either. I should carry this with me and make sure that maybe if I do it again, that constantly, is always there. Something bad is going to happen if I don't learn something from this.

And then maybe following the heels of that idea, you realize what is on the second floor is the ability to hide the truth in a way. Hide your culpability. Ensure that no one ever knows you could change the idea of plastic surgery. And I think the way you described it too and and the conclusion you came to ultimately, people would not recognize me anymore if I changed my outward display to that degree. But that means, in essence, changing myself. I would have to change to the degree that I would no longer be who I am now if I go through with this.

And it's symbolized by the plastic surgery. You can change your face. No one will ever know. you will become a different person. And there's a little bit of a, and maybe you can help me tease that out here too. It's because this may be tangential to the meaning, but which,

which makes more sense to you. I had it. I had it just a moment ago. The idea of changing, so there's changing the, like I was just saying, changing the outward appearance to give a display of change

that does not change the core of you. Or the idea of the plastic surgery being symbolic of an actual change of personality in a way to becoming a different person. Which one speaks to you more of those two ideas? Maybe the second a little bit more. Okay. More along the lines of you could become a different person. Was that the second one?

Yeah. Versus a superficial exterior change for the appearance sake. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. That actually was my go-to. kind of um the first thing that occurred to me when you were when you're saying saying about it is like yeah if you do this this it stands in as a symbol for literally changing yourself inside and

out becoming a different person in that sense um and you choose not to you're like no i don't want to i don't want to be a different person but also i don't want to avoid accountability in that way um that this is not some kind of appropriate response to the situation you're dealing with um which then reminded you oh yeah the warden still there the potential for consequences so i got to just be careful and skirt around again another authority figure in a way uh but but the kind of the symbol of the guy that is in charge of managing the punishment in in a way um so but you do you get away you're successfully hidden and a problem uh bypassed for for the moment but then you're like okay but but now what i still don't know now what i mean just attending

to physical needs, just living is not enough, changing myself top the bottom, becoming someone else, that's not going to work. I've still got to deal with this situation, whatever it is, whatever I'm not, whatever I feel guilty of and like I need to address so that I don't suffer unjust consequences. And you think I could relocate. I could drain my bank account, escape to Mexico, changing your location, your circumstance. is another way. So if you don't change yourself, maybe you might have to go somewhere else where yourself is more,

where it fits better. But it's also the idea of escape. Like I could just run completely away from this problem altogether. If you had to look at those two possibilities, and maybe there's a third, I'm not thinking of please, please stop me any time. But the idea of changing your setting to one that fits you,

better because you've decided not to change maybe or simply just escape from consequences by relocation like if i just run away problem solved um well i i think in the in the dream the second one was like if i just run away um this place where nobody knows me then i'll you know be okay yeah there's okay got you yeah so there's a very um realistic solution in that for a lot of problems. You know, if you've got a past, you want to escape. If you've got problems in one place, you go somewhere where nobody knows you get to set. It's a reset, hitting the reset button. So that might be very appealing as a solution. At least we would consider it to be an option in a lot of circumstances. That's what I was doing. It was an option.

Yeah. And a lot of these ideas and dreams, we hold them very loosely. We go, well, this is a possibility. And then we think of the next possibility. And it's not that because it appeared in the dream, that's necessarily what we want. But we were very often considering what ifs. Sometimes the dream is just one big what if with many little ones inside. I'm doing a lot of talking. You can stop me any time. Well, I'm just, I don't know when you want me to tell my interpretation of it.

That's true. Yeah. So I'm kind of holding back a little. Fair enough. Fair enough. Good. As long as we know that, you know, I'm not just rambling and you're not welcome to talk, but you're holding back for a reason.

And I'm getting there. I'm trying to go actually very quickly to keep it in the time limit and give us time to talk about it afterwards. So you call your friend. So I was going to stop you and say, well, what did he say? Let's throw that in there. But your thought was this specific response gave you in a way the answer. and that would be given away the game,

so you didn't want to tell me, fair enough. I don't want to hear it just yet, but I think it is significant. And very often, just into the broader phenomenon, dreams will often do that. I mean, you will arrive at some conclusion, maybe put it in the mouth of a wise advisor, someone you know and trust,

someone whose opinion you respect, and they care about you and they want good results for you. So you're like, you know, And you go through the motion in your mind of saying, well, if I ask someone who cares about me that wants the best for me and that I believe is being honest, here's what they would tell me. It's kind of you telling yourself that this, I believe this is probably the truth. We get that a lot. So I, so I'm glad I didn't ask. And we're going to kind of jump over that. But it is that that is, in my estimation is what was going on with phone a friend to get to get the, to get the, to get a true reflection of the situation and yourself in it. um isn't phone a friend one of those TV game show things you can oh the the millionaire one yeah yeah yeah phone a friend

offline you can like phone a friend yeah and they call them life lines and they really are it's like how do we yeah how do we survive life how do we how do we what what line do we take there's so many metaphors in that that as well um that tangent um so you went to a motel room um I did want to ask, was this nighttime coming in the dream? And you ended up, you know, you need a place to stay at night or no, no concept of the time.

Sometimes that's not important. It was still light out, but I think it was coming towards evening. Gotcha. And so naturally we'd say, well, it's been a busy day. And there's also a lot of symbolic things in like the end of the day. It's when we're heading towards a reset for the next day. It's where the light fades and things become more obscure. It's like we head into darkness.

the unknown, but also just very... I didn't say was that I was near the ocean. Okay. I wasn't on a beach, but I was near the ocean. And this was the point in the dream where you became aware that you were in an ocean area, or did you always know? Well, I knew from when I went to the prison, to getting to the restaurant and leaving the restaurant, I realized that I was near the shore.

Okay. Very different than your real-life experience. I mean, you live in a bend as notoriously landlocked, foresty type area. Yeah, but I mean, I've spent a lot of time on the Oregon coast growing up, too. Do you have any strong associations with that when you think of the ocean in terms of specific childhood memories or a feeling with what the ocean? represents to you broadly? What would it mean to set the story next to the...

Well, water to me, I mean, I don't know if I... I mean, it's probably there at some level, but water to me is more like life. You know, provider of life, giver of life. And it's like it's everything, everywhere because without it, we wouldn't be alive.

Absolutely. know of it in our current state of being. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah. And the, and you've chosen to place the story of your dream in relation to the largest icon of water on the entire planet, the ocean, the most vast, endless appearing source of water, where we crawled out of evolutionarily in a way. I'm certain there is a connection. I'm not certain exactly what it is. is maybe since this all is about, I'm kind of getting to the conclusion there, you decided not to change who I am is kind of how you, you know, you finally reach that conclusion and

then awoke uplifted. So we've kind of gotten to the end and then setting it all near the ocean and knowing that it has this, this, the essence of the source of life itself, trying to put it together. Something about it being within reach, you just walk down there. You could, you're not in the middle of the Tibetan mountains where the ocean is far, far away. You're right there. It is within reach, this source of life, something.

So, broad strokes, what would I say if I were just to go on nothing but my own associations, there appears to be some kind of self-reflection going on here, trying to to, you've got a, we might say like a moral intuition in a way, just a vague notion that you, you think you might have done something you shouldn't have done. And it might be as permanent as killing someone, not as bad as, but it cannot be, it can't be corrected. It can't be forgiven or it can be forgiven. It can't be undone. You know, death is permanent. That's like the symbology I see there. And you're trying to assess, okay, how I'm guilty. I did it. How guilty should I feel? What should I do about it? And you're showing yourself these, you know, as I was saying

earlier, the idea of, well, there's no consequence going to be applied to me that I don't accept. no one else is in control of this but me. I have complete power to judge myself guilty or innocent to escape however guilty I might be. You know, it's technically in your dream. Like, well, let's imagine I did it. What would that be like? Let's imagine I was guilty. And so in a way you're like, you know, you get to the end of it and you're like,

not the end of it, but you get to the end of the bus ride. You get to the prison and you're like, prison is too much. That's not really how guilty I am. That's too much. let's leave here. That's not the right understanding of how it doesn't feel just. That consequence is too much. You know, like, yeah, but I still got to live with myself and figure out how to live the rest of my life in a way.

Understanding that I don't like what happened and I don't want it to happen again. I'd really rather not have this feeling. I'd rather avoid this problem, whatever it is. So you started thinking about, yeah, icons of life and the potential that, you'd rather that, you know, I could screw up in the same way again. I could be held accountable. You know, there may be this, my internal prison guard might come back to say, you know, get in a cell. Now you've done it. And then you start looking through all the different options for, you know, I can change myself physically, literally become a different person. I could simply

walk away from the problem altogether and stop thinking about it. I don't want to deal with this. but you got to the point where you phoned a friend and that was kind of your conclusion you're offering yourself and now might be the right time to say what that is because I think without that piece I can't I can't give you anything more yeah well that that's really pretty great there there's a lot of what I heard you say that was um pretty close to the the way that I viewed it. But let me add a few things. Sure.

I'm 64 years old now, and I've been sober for 34 years. Right. So this dream was about 15 years ago or so. And the part, well, maybe I'll come back to the killing part the last. What I felt in the dream, and kind of my conclusion as well, was that first of all, all those people are me, you know, our aspects of me. The person that was killed, the warden, the prison guard, my friend, all those people, the classic surgeon. And so at the time, oh, I was 17, 18 years sober, right?

And so I started having these dreams of killing people. and I never thought I mean I never mean I had my own troubles but I never killed anybody or did anything like that when I was drinking desire to yeah I didn't see any of that yeah yeah I was just drunk right you know up until when I got I got sober in 88 so um but the way that I interpreted it was that it was before I wrote my falling down book falling down getting up book was that I was living my life in a way that I wasn't being truly who I was, that I was hiding myself to other people

that might ask, so to speak, that when other people were looking at me, I didn't want them to know who I really was. Because if they did, they wouldn't like me. But who I really am is really pretty cool, but I'm not going to let anybody see that

part of me. Right? Gotcha. And so I was coming to a point in the dream and towards the end of the dream that I was either making a decision to either just be who I am, you know, taking the mask away and just be who I am without worrying about what other people think of me. Right? And it's like, you know, even like in right.

the book where I wrote things in the book that were personal that I would not normally want to write about or tell or have somebody know about. Like getting arrested for drunk driving in 1983 and all that around there and not wanting to tell anybody because I would afraid that they would judge me. But what I was really doing was judging myself because why am I. caring about what other people think of me, the only person that counts is what I think of myself. Right. So what you think of me or the listeners or anybody else for that matter, it doesn't matter what they think. If I love myself and I like myself, then I'm okay with all of that. All of those things ended up, like say in the book, all those things that I wrote about in the book,

ended up becoming superpowers, so to speak. So even, you know, this idea of drunk driving and then ended up getting sober and helping other people get sober and all that other kind of stuff, because I went through that experience, I then could help people. So coming back to the killing,

and because there were several nights in a row where I had killed people, and it was pretty bloody, The interpretation that I had out of it was that I was killing a part of myself that I no longer needed. And I was getting rid of those emotions in that way of thinking that was keeping me from being me. Right? Just like, let's kill it. Let's get rid of it.

I don't want that in there anymore. I don't want that in my head anymore. So it was a bloody mess because there was a lot to kill, right? Yeah. You know, I had to stab it several times because that part of me is pretty powerful. Right? Now today, I mean, I will tell anybody just about anything. I don't care.

But it's because I'm much more comfortable with who I am. Where 15 years ago when I had that dream, I wasn't as comfortable with who I am. yeah but today so i mean there there was a lot of that behind it in this whole idea of going to the plastic surgeon well i could change my face and embed this mask on me right but inside you know i would still be hiding as well so externally internally internally like running down to Mexico, taking all my money, you know, going down there and living there on a beach, you know, hiding. So like doing this geographic to go hide.

Right? I didn't want to live like that, but it was more that internal process. And it's like, so like even in writing the book, although I didn't associate it at the time with the book, I think it influenced me. It's like even my publisher when I wrote the book, he said, just tell everything. He says, because emotionally the reader will connect with what you said. Right?

And he says, if you're not willing to say who you are, this is my publisher. He says, your readers won't be as captivated with your story. Right? He says, so just let yourself go. Because it was, you know, I had a little bit of fear there, even, you know, a couple years after that dream and talking to the publisher, a little bit of fear still of putting some of the stuff in the book that I put in the book.

But it's just like once I did that, once I put it in the book, now anybody that reads a book knows, I care less, right? Yep. So it was at killing that part of myself that I no longer need it so I could do it. who I really am. I mean, that's the final interpretation, right? Definitely. Killing that part of myself so I could be who I really am.

Yeah. What, just out of curiosity, do you remember what your friend said to you on the phone? You know, you call your friend and he said, here's my advice. What was it? Do you remember his phrasing or? It's your choice. It's your choice. Yeah.

I mean, that fits, that fits really well. Yeah. Just, just, just the, it's sometimes people don't tell us what to do, but they, they frame the situation. They're like, here's what's going on. This is what you're confronting. You have to make a choice.

You don't get to not make a choice. That I love, I love all of that understanding too. In a way, it was the early inklings of the freedom you needed to accomplish by getting rid of this, a lot of this baggage and guilt

you were hanging on to an embarrassment. The shame, there's a tremendous freedom and hanging it all out there and saying, look, no one can hold this over my head as blackmail anymore. No one can threaten to release it.

I don't have to fear it being out there. I've done doxed myself. Here's me, all of me and all my warts and all, you know, that good stuff. And there's like, nothing worse can happen.

You know everything. There's a tremendous freedom in there. You know, there's only some secrets where it's like, if I share this, I am going to prison. So we're just not going to tell anybody because I'd rather not live that life.

That's a different story, you know. I like the interpret. Yeah, I wasn't sure who you were killing so and I didn't well I think I did ask you didn't know that it was anyone specific or what the fight was about um I did not see the idea that maybe it would be a part of yourself

that you had to your can say okay if I kill off that part what's the rest of my life going to be like if I you know am I going to plastic surgeon and become a different person is this just escaping maybe I want to escape instead maybe I want to run away from my problems my the truth about myself um So what I was saying is this is probably, go ahead. Can I add a couple of things?

Yeah, please. Even the thing about being on the bus and smoking the cigarettes was like a smokescreen. Ah, that's a good one. The guard looking at me and turning away was like, okay, he's going to look at me. I'm going to have the smoke screen. And it's going to appear that I'm in these handcuffs. but when no one's looking, I'm going to just like,

let my guard down because nobody's looking because who cares? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. That's also very true. It's like, and also the concept of Escape to Mexico, I was just thinking as you're describing, that's why there's always a collaborative process,

but the concept of wherever you go there, you are, you know? So escaping to Mexico is, you can escape the judgment of other people. You can't escape your judgment of your judgment of yourself. That goes with you. So you got to deal with it in some way. You got to make a choice in some way or another. That's great. One, glad I got some of the themes correct. And this is actually a great example of my process and how it needs to be collaborative is like I start mentioning themes like

judgment and the perception of others and the idea that you're in control of this and you have to make a decision. And then had you not had your own understanding, we would have filled in a lot of these gaps as you were going along based on the broad themes that I kind of seem to make sense from the way the story put together in your own mind. But it's always fun to me to play, you know, play Stump the Wizard and say, okay, let me see if I can get close to what this person decided on their own because they know themselves better than I do. And I think you did that. I think you got pretty close. I really appreciate that. That is as fun. And I think, you know, demonstrative or

proof in the pudding as the idea of giving someone a whole cloth answer that we put together ourselves. But the idea that something that made sense to you that you're pretty sure is spot on. And I get that hand grenade pretty damn close to the horseshoe post, you know? I love that. I love that. That's a nice little validation for me, too. Like, this is, there's something to this.

I'm not just, I'm not just fooling myself. Well, the dream is interesting for that. period in having multiple dreams of killing people. I haven't had a dream of killing anybody since that I know of. Yeah. That's also a very powerful indicator that you hit on the correct meaning. The imagery didn't need to come back. You got the message.

That's another thing that kind of validates this for me is that if someone gives me a recurring dream and we work it out together and they feel like we've got a decent answer, that dream will stop. It will never recur again. or if it does, the nature of it changes. They were able to move past that blockage. Now they're in a new element of the dream because, okay, you got the point. Let's go on to what it's connected to. This is where we were going with it. And we continue the story on our own head.

So we're coming against the clock. I know you've got to get out of here. We've got short time. I'm glad we got it all in in the time we had. This is. Yeah, that was great. Yeah, I enjoyed that. I'm glad you did.

That's the whole point. I do something beneficial. The process was fun. People get to enjoy watching. and I mean, it's just so many win-win-win-wins all the way around. Let me do this. I will say, in conclusion, this has been our friend Michael Harris from Bend, Oregon. He is a business coach, lifelong entrepreneur, yoga teacher, co-founder of endless stages.

We never talked about that. We'll put some links below. Also, author of three books, including the number one bestselling falling down, getting up. You heard him talk about that today. You can actually get a free copy of the book in a downloadable form at Michael B. Harris.com link in the description Michael B. Harris.com slash book. I'm going to put that on there.

Slash book, yeah. Slash book. Yes, forward slash book. And for my part, I will say, please like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, 15 works of historical dream literature most recent, the World of Dreams by Have a Lock Ellis. Very soon, I'll be able to say book 16 is out still working on that one. All this and more at Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com. Also, benjaminthreadwizard.locals.com.

I forgot that got a locals community. And if you want to throw me, you know, a dollar a month because you like what I do, I'll take it. I'll take anything. Buy me whiskey for gaming, get a T-shirt coffee mug. That's enough about me. Michael, thank you for being here. I know it took us a while to connect, but I'm glad we were both persistent. Yeah, thank you, Benjamin, for having me here.

It was really great. And it kind of comes back to what we started out. What's our story? How do we live? Yeah. You know, how do we choose to live our life? So, thank you. That's nice.

We were able to book in it that way. the full picture. Good deal. And I'll just say to everybody out there. Thanks for watching.