Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 120: Trust & Intimacy

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

“It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.” — John Joseph Powell

Greetings friends. Welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have our friend Russ from the United Kingdom. He is a, oh man, I just wrote a biotechnician and, uh, soon to be published researcher. Uh, and just some random guy. You know, I talk to, uh, I talk to anybody. You got a dream. We can do the thing. Um, we'll get right back to Russ in just two seconds. Um, would you kindly like, like, share, subscribe, tell your friends.

Always need more volunteer dreamers. Uh, I'm not amazingly busy yet. Get in while you can. Um, also 16. currently available works of historical dream literature. I got the physical copies of the most recent book here. So I'm actually probably not going to pop it up on the screen like I usually do. You can see it's backwards.

Dreams and their meanings by Horace G. Hutchinson. It's a nice, thick, weighty tome. It's got lots of references, instances of common dreams and their explanation, all drawn from his correspondence with his readers as of 1901, right around the time Freud was publishing his interpretation of dreams book. That's enough about that. You can get all this and more at Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com. A complete listing of all 16 currently available works,

MP3 podcast, downloadable audio episodes to take with you to the gym and shopping and that kind of stuff. All this and more, etc. That's enough shilling for me. Back to our friend Russ. Thank you for being here. Appreciate your time. Yeah, happy to be here.

Good deal. Well, we're talking a minute off camera. What are we going to say? Usually someone, if they come on in their podcast, or they're shilling their own books, or they want more listeners for their show. But being just a regular guy, I'm like, what are we going to, what do you want to talk about? And you said you made a recent, two things, you made a recent trip to the U.S.

It's always fascinating to hear a de Tocqueville-esque outsider's perspective, but also that you have your own unique history with dreaming in general that I think corresponds to mine in some way. So I want to get to both those things. Did you want to start with the visit and then we'll use the Dream Talk to transition into doing your dream? Sure, that sounds great. Yeah, so I visited the USA for about a month. I'm not going to give exact time frames, but quite recently ago. And basically it made me, you know, like there's a weebu for Japanese people who are really obsessed with Japanese culture. It made me an American booth, basically.

America Boo! Yeah, it was really amazing. I went all the way down the East Coast, so I went starting from New York all the way down to Florida. But I also went a bit inroads, so I went to Georgia and Alabama. Tennessee, so I did go a bit further, you know, into the States. But yeah, it was an amazing experience. I love the food. I love the people. Everywhere except from New York was amazing. Right? Yeah. I wouldn't go there and I live here. That's, well, you've actually traveled on the East Coast more than I have. I've gone to, you know, I've been to California, Oregon, of course.

I'm in Portland, Oregon, so way over on the left coast, upper, upper Pacific Northwest area. I'm just paranoid about stopping my own recording with this mouse. Okay, I got it off the, off the thing. Never been to the East Coast. Yeah, I went to Colorado, but only to the mile high, you know, Denver Airport, basically. And went to Michigan once for a martial arts anniversary of the home dojo that spawned my local practice area practitioner. local dojo, I guess you say, you know, a subsidiary. So you say you started North, like in New York and worked your way down?

Yeah, yeah. Well, we went a bit into the country like Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, but it was basically with a tour company for a bunch of pension of Germans. So I was like the youngest person there about like 30 years. So that's its own unique perspective, isn't it? I mean, that kind of mirrors the American experience of saying, well, I'm going to go to Europe and I'm going to start in Italy and I'm going to go to France and Germany and end up in the UK and you kind of make that tour to get a sense of,

get a sense of things. Did anything stand out to you? And not to put you on the spot. This is always what was your favorite thing? But like, did you have any moments where like, wow, this is really different? This is so foreign to my experience, you know, because a lot of things are going to be the same where people live in people lives, you know, but did anything kind of stand out where you had a whoa moment?

Yeah, I mean, the food was like 10 times better. than anything I've ever tasted in the UK. A lot of the stores were really cool. We don't have many, like, vintage stores and stuff. Like, I went into just some stores, and you could, like, buy guns. You could buy these vintage cool knives. You could buy, like, bulletproof, like, vests and stuff in the UK. You know, it could be 10 years in jail if you have pepper spray, basically,

and, like, no tactical gale anywhere. And, yeah, I really love the kind of, like, more, like, proud culture. You see American flags everywhere, and I really wish the UK was more like that. the UK is kind of ashamed of itself. But you're going to say, you know, you see a flag at every corner store, every counter, everything like that. Definitely, yeah. I think we're also in the nature.

I was just going to say the nature, because, you know, I'm more into biology. There's basically no nature in the UK, but in the USA, I remember going to Alabama, and I just saw like praying mantises. I saw spiders this big, you know, like spinning like meter long webs. It was amazing. And really, really made me quite happy. I want to go back then, definitely.

Those are all, I think, very, those are all the same things that I would probably, what am I trying to say? It doesn't surprise me what you're saying. It makes perfect sense about when you find something that's so different. I think, unfortunately, you know, a lot of, we got a bit of a culture work going on in America, and this podcast isn't about that, it's about dreams, but just in general, comparing experiences, I worry that we're on a track, or there's at least cultural forces at work. that want America to be more British-like in the sense of being ashamed of itself.

And it's a tough thing to balance because you can't look at American history and say, we did nothing wrong. Yeah, we fucked up a lot of shit. And it's horrible. But should we be proud of what we are? Or should we be living in a constant state of perpetual shame where we can't hang out a flag and say, you know, all the mistakes we made still the best for. whatever reason or I'm still proud to be here. It's not an easy question. I'm not asking you

to give an answer, but I don't think it's good for a country or a people to be unreasonably self-critical. You know, reasonably self-critical, sure, but like to the point of destroying your ability to function. I mean, I look at it like if we were to consider the, a country as a person, And you want them to admit their mistakes. You don't want them to be so crushed by guilt or whatever that they can't fix them, that they can't do better next time. Or, you know, so there's that delicate balancing act of enough self-awareness to say, I didn't do this the best way I possibly could ever, or I made a horrible mistake.

And here's what I'm going to do to fix it. And I'm going to be okay. I'm still okay. And going to go forward being okay. It's kind of that balancing act between, you know, being prideful and being proud of effort, you know, things aren't easy. And you want to reward or have, have a reasonable amount of, you know, pride in your efforts where you had a choice and you could do it or don't. And you did and you did it well. And wow, that wasn't easy, you know, but in the other side of it saying, I'm not perfect

type of thing. So I don't know if you have any comments on that in terms of looking at the American issues and seeing how it's tracking onto what you've been through and, you know, I don't know, advice to how to avoid it or ideal outcomes. Anything. you do or you don't I don't I don't know yeah I mean I do see that's more of a shift but you guys are so far away from it I feel like this is kind of a bit of a doom of mentality when in reality you know you still have like

American flags at every counter you know even in like the blue states I know I visited and you know Washington D.C. New York everywhere I went to there were flags everywhere you know so I think you guys are quite quite far behind us in terms of going down this rabbit hole but I agree definitely you know you have to

be criticizing a country but you can't become demoralized you know that was the USSR's goal to demoralize America to make them so ashamed of themselves. I don't think there's a single good thing that they hate themselves. Yeah, that was from a KGB director, Yuri Besmanov. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, I'd actually think it's something to balancing act, but we need to kind of juggle. Yeah, for sure.

And the way I just thought, I've often compared the American citizenry's relationship to our government as an abusive relationship. Well, it's no secret. I'm a libertarian. I'd like to see 90% of the government at all levels eradicated with prejudice, salt the earth and ensure it never grows back. That said, the balancing act seems to be something like, or the analogy of the abusive length relationship is like the abuser telling the wife you deserve to be hit because you burned the eggs. And she can't deny she burned the eggs. That happened. But the consequence was not appropriate. It was not, it's not respect.

it's not warranted. It is just abuse. So we get a lot of those circumstances where it's like, yes, you can accept responsibility. I burn the eggs. How serious is that? What are the consequences of that? And should someone say, I deserve to be punched in the face for something like that? So there's a lot of things in my opinion are way out of balance like that. And it's very reassuring to hear, again, like Alexander de Tocqueville, we've got someone with an outsider's perspective, come in to say, let me tell you where it's, how it's different where I'm at and what I see from from this vantage point. Sometimes you've got to get outside the fish bowl to see the fish and everything.

You've got to see the bowl. It's good to hear that we're not as far gone. And hopefully we can represent, facilitate the UK coming back to in some ways to a little bit more. It's okay to be proud of your country and your heritage and your people. And, you know, you guys got thousands of years of history in Europe. I mean, I mean, human beings have lived there probably 10,000 years in one. form or another, various theories about how people spread around. So it's, you know, it's one day. I get into this too. Sometimes I can go all over the place. I can talk to anybody about anything.

I got a bunch of ideas. But the idea of tradition, not being good in and of itself as in what was must always be preserved, but tradition being, hopefully, ideally, wisdom passed down from previous generations that said, I've been there, I've done that. Let me tell you what I saw and what happened. And here's how I solved it. And then we get traditions. We get these kind of crystallized formations of here's what we think is best practice. Now, you can't cling to those unreasonably and say, we do not ever change because

what do we know? Maybe some things are done better in different ways. But you also can't just throw the baby out with bathwater and say, you know what, this element of one specific tradition isn't working the best we think it could. therefore tradition itself must be destroyed. There must be no tradition. That's the, as you were talking like, you know, Uri Besmond, that's like the kind of broadly communist or some people might say the queer way of looking at things is that, but specifically more in the political communist side of things is that all which has come before is necessarily wrong because wherever we're headed is something somewhere completely different. I don't think it is completely different. I think there's some elements of human nature that cannot be changed. Then you're going to argue with people. who think we are completely socially constructed tabula rasa, which I find unbelievable to hold as an opinion. But yet, some people do. I rambled a lot. I don't know if you have comments on that. I just got to stop every now and again, wait for someone else to

see. I just generally agree. I would have interrupted you probably. Fair enough. Please do. Yeah. Yeah, it's obviously important to learn from your ancestors. I think, yeah, I have read a bit of critical theory, that by Crimbilly Crencher on the others. Yeah, it's just the deconstruction. Because what we live in is evil, you just have to take it from, you know, deconstruct everything,

every single normal value that you have, so you can rebuild it in a better way. And I don't completely agree with that mentality. I think there's some useful things you can take from them. But, yeah, I kind of understand. That's a difficult thing, too, because it's not like there's no place for critique. I mean, that's part of the critical thinking process,

although critical theory is not critical thinking. That's a big difference. A lot of people should never conflate. So certain you aren't willing to take a second look. I think it is the responsibility of every new generation to look at what has gone before. And Jordan Peterson talks about this in terms of resurrecting your father from the underworld. Sometimes if it is a good father worthy of carrying on that tradition, you want to bring that back and saying, let's birth this in a new instantiation that. you know, a physical manifestation of carrying on these traditions by our practices.

Sometimes your dead father was a bastard, you leave him in the underworld, so fuck that guy. You know, fair enough. You take what works. I always look at these things as a matter of best practice. And that's a separate issue from like the libertarian hardline about a very small core element of morality that I think doesn't change in his objective. That's a whole different discussion. But at the very least, we can assess best practice.

practices. And we should, we have to. We almost don't have a choice because we're going to suffer some consequences from whatever we decide to do, change or no change. It kind of goes to my kind of yin-yang view of the world of like, we need enough stable order that things don't descend into unmitigated chaos in which we cannot function. In the broader order in chaos, so you can't have so much chaos that you cannot function. And you can't have so much order that you can't change when things go wrong or aren't or are not working. That's why we're going to talk about your dreams specifically related to the podcast, you know, Sitch and Adam.

So I love that because it is such a broad mix of people with different perspectives and we argue and that's fine. But their mantra of the enlightened centrist, the idea of both extremes are necessary because you've got to have the opposites, but there is a middle way, a golden mean, I think where you, and it's not the Hegelian synthesis, in my opinion. It's not just we absolutely blend 50-50 of polar opposites. I think that's usually a mistake and wrong and very often doesn't work in some ways like just a little bit of murder.

You know, you can't be mostly pregnant, those kind of things. I was going somewhere with that. Yeah, so if you blend this, you know, and so there's the broadly conservative and say progressive side of things where conservatives. need to resist change and pull back. Because they're trying to retain what works. Progressives need to pull against that, a tug of war, on the opposite side and say, there might still be some things that can be improved.

And they're probably right. They're probably both right. And I think they are both right. Determining when and how and to what degree is literally, I think, the entire debate. But you don't want to get into, I think there's some class of people where it's like they're so far gone into, say, conservatism that no change is. loud, period, ever, end of story. Not good. And you got people on the progressive side that says all change is necessarily for

the better. It's not. That's both extremes are equally insane. It allows everyone to argue good ideas emerge. That's what democracy to handle. The exchange of ideas. The verbal arguments instead of violence. I think that server is a very good place to do that specifically, definitely. For sure. Yeah, no, that's why I like about it, too. is like, again, to reference Peterson, you know, I put him in his proper context of the things he knows very well and some things he doesn't. But the idea of we allow our ideas to die so we don't have to. We think through problems and go, you know, if I drive at that cliff at 90 miles an hour and don't turn, I'm going over. I'm probably going to die. Maybe I don't put that idea into practice because that

seems like, well, given the goal that you prefer not to be dead. Now, if you're, you know, suicidal in that and you're thinking that through. And your goal is to die. Like that would be very effective. So a lot of things are goal dependent, which is not the same as consequentialism, et cetera. You know, but definitely, once we've established a goal, we can then put in, we can theorize process and we can test process

and we can compare the results to the ideal we had in mind. That's all valid and necessary. It's what we do. It's kind of the nature of human beings to be these little perpetual scientists, everything we do. What happens if I do this? Like, kids, kids especially, they're driven, driven to be, what happens? What's around this corner?

What happens if I put my finger in this light socket? Well, go ahead and find out if it doesn't kill you. But, okay, so that was one aspect of your visit to America is some of that stuff. You mentioned something else about, oh, just briefly, the idea of the flags everywhere, say even in blue states, there's a bit of a divide right now, like, should the flag be reverenced or burned? as, you know, and even people, libertarians would say both. You can reverence it by burning it.

That's actually a thing. But the blue states, I would say there is a unique thing about America. Is it like America is whatever your concept of it is? Now, I think there's better and worse concepts, but someone can say, you know, vote. You know, it's not just Republicans who are, you know, God and country types who think the flag has value. On the Democrat side, they would also say,

it's the best we've got and we're trying to do better and that's the spirit of America. It's kind of like a, it's a funny thing where, when a country is an idea primarily and not a genealogical lineage of, you know, uninterrupted inhabitants down through generations, that's its own kind of concept. That's my comment on that. It's very beautiful. I love America, definitely. I'm American, you know, American aboo or whatever you'd cool like.

Well, it's a great thing too because I actually, I'm kind of a weebu myself in terms of some things of Japanese culture. And I don't like it at all. What I don't want to do is I don't want it to change for my sake. I don't want them to listen to me and say, hey, Japan, you need to do these things differently because I see problems in your society. I definitely want the people live in there who understand it best to make up their own minds. But there's that problem of tradeoffs.

you have a amazing skills displayed by absolute masters with unbelievable dedication and they do things, you know, it's flower arranging masters, origami, master's, martial arts, masters. That is amazing. On the other side of it is work till you drop culture, always putting in 110% more than you did yesterday

and, you know, having this cultural pressure to perform at such high levels that results in unbelievable mastery at the expense of some people's mental health. You get people, you know, it's breaking down because they can't handle it. They can't be as good as they wish they were as other people seem to expect them to be. And that's, and then I'd say in America, we got somewhat of the opposite thing where it's like, eh, you find the way you are. Be useless.

They're like, not exactly. Yeah. You know, at least you have. Yeah. It's the term you. Well, at the very least, you got to pull your own weight or someone else has to pull it for you. You just got to hit that be as useless as you wish up to the point where you become a burden on someone else. And some people are born that way, quadriplegic, they need a hand. Fine. I mean,

literally need a hand. That's a bit of a different story from people who are like able-bodied and just kind of don't give a fuck and they're happy to sponge. And I'm like, that's, you know, yeah, I'm going to judge that. I'm going to say that's not good. I mean, you should try at the very least carry your own weight and nothing more. If that's, if that's not what you want, Everything else beyond that is gravy. Like, well, how much do you want to excel at anything? What do you actually care about? So it's less of a cultural pressure in that regard, almost too little in some ways.

Like, you do you ends where your fist hits someone else's nose. I mean, there's got to be some limits. So anyway, that's one regard. But so speaking to be an American weird, boo, in that sense of like, I have great respect for England and France and Germany and Russia. and India, you know, China even. I don't agree with their current political situation for a variety of reasons, but fantastic people, rich cultural history, you know, unbroken for millennia. And, I mean, I think it's good to be an appreciator of things that are different

or their differences in that way. Yeah. But also being in a culture. What's that? Because that's also a lot of people who really like Chinese or Indian history will also be like apologists for like really bad things they did. It's just good to be balanced, as you said. Oh, yeah, definitely. As long as you can have a rational balance.

For sure. I think it's very helpful to my other country's histories. Yeah. Well, from the East, Genghis Khan happened. It happened. From the West, Alexander the Great happened. It happened. I mean, it was the age of conquerors.

And they just kind of did what they did. I kind of look at history like, there's an interesting conundrum there, too, which is kind of how do we do, how do we apply judgment or by what metric do we judge the past in light of what we know today? And there's, I don't know if you have an answer to that off the top of your head in terms of like, have you thought about that before or if you want to hear my ramblings first, I should start leaving you more opportunities to talk. I think the best way to do it is just hold them to the standards that they were held to. So, you know, if in World War II some nations started behaving like Genghis Khan, that would actually be beyond below their standards of that day. And so we would be able to say, even back then, you know, they were acting horrendously.

But if they are acting like every other country during World War II, then they, you know, it's easy to condemn them now from the future when we don't have the same problems. But as long as they were keeping hold to those standards. And I think, yeah, you can for like certain countries, you know, China specifically. Or Japan was an easy one in World War II say that actually you guys, did perform kind of worse things than most other people during that era. Yeah. Or something like that.

For sure. Yeah. And that's the quandary, too, is there's definitely like, I guess what I was, where I was going with that is like there's a time before a certain idea was widely known. And that goes for every idea. There was a time before the invention of the wheel. Do we, if the wheel was a moral thing, could we say that people who had not built wheels yet were morally wrong for, because they simply didn't know?

So there's definitely an ignorance factor that we can apply to that and say, well, even though by today's standards, we know they did wrong because we've been able to understand why it was wrong. If they didn't understand it was wrong or why it would even could be, they're both morally culpable and not. It's a, it's a, innocent by virtue of ignorance, technicality. Yeah. As much as, you know, ignorance of law is no excuse me. you kill someone on purpose, you kill someone on purpose, whether or not you knew it was illegal is kind of irrelevant. But it's a very, very complicated thing, too. I like to look at it in terms of like the world before, you know, I had a train of thought. It's gone. Yeah, it's gone.

That's okay. That's okay. Neverbite. It's probably stupid anyway. One thing that was interesting, too, is that you mentioned nature and the idea of, you know, giant insects and maybe lots of more open space than in, you know, the United Kingdom, for all that it is a big island and, you know, it would take probably several weeks to walk from one tip to the other.

It is relatively small, relatively, and dense. And you probably have a lot more urban and suburban settings and not as much natural areas in some ways. Even there are natural areas, just the climate's so close. We don't have much wildlife there either. Like there's national parks, which are pretty nice.

They have more biodiversity, like the new forest. It's kind of south of London. But even that's like nothing compared to any basically like U.S. state I've been to, including New York, you know, which you wouldn't expect any wildlife. But there was still more. That's very interesting. Yeah. It could be the cold climate. That's a good interesting thing.

That's also a thing when I mean, speaking of climate in general, like balancing mankind's, you can continued existence and thriving and right to exist as much as any other animal with maybe we don't eradicate every other species on the planet because we just can't stop expanding. That seems like it might be a bad idea. So I'm always trying to figure out like, well, how do we handle that? What are we doing? My, like you were saying earlier, the idea of talking to people, talking through our differences and trying to sort out good ideas from bad. And my, my, I want to say my chosen advocacy is to just be an advocate and say, yeah, maybe it's not a bad thing if we spread the idea that we voluntarily limit our growth and maybe even roll it back a little bit. And there's people who are like, oh my God, are you Malthusian? You think we're all going to die? You know, that guy was wrong. And I'm like, mine is more about like elbow room. Like you can maybe the planet can hold 70 billion humans. But do we want to live like that? I don't think we do. I mean, at that point, we are eating the bugs and living in the pods because there's.

there's no more room. It becomes, I don't know if you're Star Wars fan, but the planet of Coruscant or Coruscant, one giant city everywhere. I mean, there's no agriculture. There's no wildlife. There's not possible. It's so crowded and overdeveloped. So I go back and forth with that. I mean, I want people to be free, but I also want them to make good decisions that don't ruin it for everybody else. It's like, yeah, you should be free to go into a movie theater and laugh loudly and talk and no one can arrest you, but it's like, it's, maybe don't be a jerk. I'm trying to watch the movie. What are you doing? You're talking over the dialogue. It's hard to sort out. It's trying to try and have people be considerate and responsible in their

behavior in that regard. Well, we talked quite a bit about the whole perspective from the outside and American and whatnot. And I love hearing that as American. Oh, someone doesn't hate us around the world. That's fantastic. Yeah, I know. I well, last thought on that. I mean, someone tweeted yesterday. someone said, what would you do day one as president? I'm like, I would close every damn foreign military base and bring them all home. Done. We're not, that's got its pluses and minuses. But man, we are just throwing our weight around in the world, like telling other people what to do.

And I'm like, do you go to your neighbor's house and start knocking heads saying, listen, you're going to do what I say. They're just your neighbors. You got to kind of let them be. There's a difference between that. And, well, I saw my neighbor punching his wife. Yeah, I'm probably going to go and stop that and find out what's going on. So there's some responsibility. I think we're way, way too intrusive.

I'm going to give the world. Yeah. A lot of the allies would probably know that. The UK probably wouldn't like that. But, you know, it depends. It's the way you want to do. It's your military. We shouldn't be so relying on it.

We should have our own military assets to secure interests. I think so, too. Yeah. Well, that's a whole other kettle of fish, too. I think some of the broadly socialist policies of, like, government running, say, health care and a lot of other things, that can happen because the military budget is covered by the U.S. We're there acting as security or the strong arm of the army.

And if European countries had to kind of take on that load themselves, they might reassess where their priorities are. It's like, well, how valuable is it to have these social programs that are very nice and maybe work very well if we can't stop someone from invading and taking it all away from us anyway. So we're going to have to make some hard decisions, you know, and not mentioning any names of recent politicians, but there's, you know, a few of them that said, they brought attention to this problem of who's carrying the load and who's footing the bill, you know, that kind of thing. So, I don't know. I don't have, not a political.

You're talking about, but yeah. Yep. Definitely. Yep. So I did want to get on to, so it's a kind of a segue transition into doing the interpretation thing. You said you've had a, what in your estimation seems to be maybe a unique or different dream, dream experience or experience of dreaming as a concept. You were saying a little bit about, what was it, the idea of not remembering most of your dreams.

I am the same way. I don't remember any of them. It's very rare. I wake up in the morning with any awareness that I even had a dream, let alone any details. If there are any details, they are so vague, I can't. cannot tell a story about it. And so I'm in a very unique position of like the dream wizard, you know, the sleep expert guy. And I don't have the experience that I'm talking about.

I'm kind of understanding it mostly theoretically. So I don't know if that was kind of where you were going with your... In the past few years, I've had maybe one or two dreams I remember in the morning. And if I don't write it down, I'll forget it up in the evening anyways. So I try and write them down when I do have them. they've mostly been like goofy stuff like you know like in a sci-fi video game I've played recently

except from the one which we'll be talking about recently but when I was a kid I only ever had terrible dreams like things that scared me two sets of I would call them like night terrors I think you Americans refer to them where it's recurring very vivid very scary dreams and then apart from those two sets of very scary dreams I've never dreamed positively about anything

and yeah that's basically it and then after those you know night terrors I just started having very, very, very few dreams, maybe one of, once or two a year. And again, those were more of the goofy type. So yeah, definitely. Gotcha. Yeah. So that's what I want to say.

I don't want to say that it's not uncommon because every dreamers experience is unique. There are broad trends. And I have heard people describe what you're saying before. What is unique is very often the specific combination of broadly known common. elements. That's where it seems to be. It's almost like, I don't know if you ever played with, even just little wooden building blocks as a kid. You had those where it's like, and they're in different shapes, you know, Legos or Lincoln Logs we had in America or a bunch of other stuff. Yeah, it's like, so the bricks generally are the same. And you put them into so many different

shapes. You can make the Millennium Falcon or you can build a castle. It's one of those things where, So we get a lot of these commonly reported discrete elements and then the unique combination in each person is different. So to tease out a little bit of the definitional stuff, it is not uncommon for people to refer to nightmares as night terrors. There's a bit of a distinction there in that. Oh, and there's a long history of what is a nightmare and how do we characterize it. You might remember the famous painting that was on the cover of Freud's book that everyone's seen. And it's the woman and she's laying on the bed and she's got a little impish demon sitting on her chest. And there's a dark horse poking through the curtain in the back.

And it's just called the nightmare. People used to imagine it as, and this is the experience of a lot of people who suffer sleep paralysis. That the painting is specifically a artist's rendering of what sleep paralysis has been reported to be like. Some people feel the presence of an entity. some people see a literal shadowy figure. They definitely have the experience of a compressed chest in terms of inability to voluntarily draw breath. It has other explanations.

Okay. So they used to think that, only that experience, only the experience of sleep paralysis was a true nightmare. Our understanding evolved over time and it became any kind of strongly unpleasant dream, whether it was horrifying to the degree. that it shocked you awake and disturbed you for the rest of the day. That's also a nightmare. And it can just be, you know, I felt hopeless or helpless in this scenario. And it was an unpleasant experience.

It could be very mild and still a nightmare. And it's just basically was it a broadly positive or broadly negative dream experience. It's kind of the difference. Then we get to night terrors in America and in medical lingo necessary. Night terrors is actually kind of a somnomer. anambulist or sleepwalking experience in that that proper title for it. So what happens is that a person will appear to be awake and in tearful, distress, terror, incoherent verbalizations.

And usually if you engage with them in some manner, it can have an effect of calming them down. Or it takes its course. They are oblivious. They appear to be awake, but they're not aware. And then they settle back down and go back to sleep. And then you talked to the next day, they have no memory of it. There was no conscious awareness of this sleepwalking experience. So it actually kind of classes under that sleep disorder, broadly sleepwalking or somnambulism,

which is very interesting, too, because the somnambulist sleepwalking experience is the reverse of the sleep paralysis experience. So with the sleep paralysis, you're awake, but your body's still asleep. Your mind is consciously processing. But, and the reason, to my understanding, we get the something sitting on my chest, feeling of dread is our lungs are still in automatic breathing mode. We have not actually awakened enough to regain conscious control of our body that if we can't move our limbs, we can't take a voluntary breath.

So we're struggling to, I want to breathe. Your lungs are just breathing on their own. They're doing their thing. You're not in control. And then the reverse is sleepwalking where the body's awake and moving and your mind's asleep. So there's something going on there conceptually that we still don't understand very well. I mean, psychology in general was a lot of, what does that look like to you? Okay, what if we understand it this way?

Good enough? Let's see what happens. And then we'd start treating people. And, you know, it's gotten better and worse in recent years for a variety of reasons. But it's very different than, say, your liver's not producing enough enzymes. this is a problem. You have cancer. This is a problem. We can cut out the cancer. It's a physical object. Problems of the mind are not that way, despite occurring in a physical substance that is responding to electricity and chemicals and it's all happening on a physical framework of neurons.

Still, bottom line on that, we have no idea what the fuck we're doing. You know, we have things. Go ahead. Yeah. I used the wrong terms for Nights Harris. I actually spoke to the America recently because in England we don't really use that. I've never heard it, you know, in my whole life. And there are a lot of people. Fair enough. Due to, like, research backgrounds and stuff. And so they explained that night terrors, which is clearly wrong,

based on what you said, was basically very recurrent dreams that force you awake, as opposed to nightmares just in the country. But they're from like California. So maybe Californians are just a bit different. So I don't know. There are regional. Yeah. There are regional differences in perspective.

there are layman's perspectives that are, so they use the wrong word. They're expressing the right concept. And I don't mean to be nitpicky about that. Like, you will use the proper language on my show. But I think it's, if you've got different categories of experience, you got to give them different names or they get jumbled up. And so it's not unreasonable for someone to consider strong, negative, nightmarish dream experiences that force you awake by how disturbing they are as night terrors.

It's a terror that occurs in the night. Fair enough. I think it's just like in the technical jargon. It would be differentiated. I would say a nightmare of the fort. Go ahead. No, I'm just saying like, yeah, I was just clarifying what I actually meant when I said that because I didn't mean night terrors.

I've never sleepwalked as far as I can tell. Sure. Good deal. Yeah, no. And I took your meaning. Definitely. So what it would be is just a category of nightmare that was so disturbing that it interrupted sleep.

and that's not uncommon at all. The nightmares can easily be that disturbing. There's an interesting connection there with the possibility of the ability to force yourself awake from a nightmare may be related to what people experience with lucid dreaming, the ability to consciously direct dream experiences

as if you were writing your own play. There's something in there about that. I don't know. I woke me so I don't think I was the writing a dream in which I would die. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't do that. Which is a very strange thing too because our thoughts are our own. In a way, the dream experience is created, scripted, in a sense, by you, which is weird because it is and it isn't. We have no awareness of choosing the next adventure. You know, flip to page 39 if you want to turn left,

page 24 if you want to turn right. We don't, lucid dreamers do, but that's a, I think, a whole different category. Long story short. There is something, okay, broadly my conception of what dreams are. We, so I say, the lungs breathe, the heart beats, and the brain thinks. It really never stops until we are brain dead. There's always something going on in there. Why a particular train of thought, what causes.

a specific association and thus leads to a broader thought process as a part of a problem solving process. That is still a mystery. Who the I is who has an experience. Am I my brain? Am I a soul in a body? Am I the active experience of what is happening as I perceive it? We have no freaking clue what any of these things are. So there's a way in which dreams are completely involuntary and completely a result of what is natural to you, the process of thought and association you would have while awake. So what we're actually getting in my opinion with dreams is this unfiltered raw look at our natural associative thought process as it connects the dots along a certain train. And it just, it is what it is. And if we, it's almost something

that people experience with they're meditating as well. And there's, there's connections with meditation and trance and hypnotism, where there is an unfiltered, immediate, spontaneous connection of, you know, I think, let's give an example, I think McDonald's, I think golden arches, I think yellow, French fries. I like making homemade French fries. I used to make French fries. I worked at a place like that. That's when I lived in that city.

And I knew that friend there. Oh, and that friend had a dirt bike. You know, I should get a dirt bike. And it's like all these things just spontaneously connect. And we don't know why. and we don't appear to be directing it. It just happens. And then that seems to be kind of what the dream experience is,

is these raw, unfiltered, spontaneous connections. So in a sense, people are not responsible for their dreams. Like, I chose that. I wanted that experience. But it is your experience. It is the thoughts you had, which is why I differentiate you are not your thoughts. You can have thoughts about anything.

You can choose to think about something. It's not the same as doing it or wanting it, that kind of thing. I tell folks who, if you had a dream where you stabbed your dog and you woke up horrified, That was the response that was natural to you. You have no desire to hurt your dog. There's something about that that is rightly horrifying, and that that was the horror at the behavior is what you were meant to be examining.

It's more like it. Anyway, I think I just talked for like 10 fucking minutes. Sorry. You said it's kind of common for people to have nightmares, whether it's so bad that you wake up for, like, years at a time like me, or just recurrent, and recall the same one. You can't get out of it, you know, and then you're up every night, you know, at 2 a.m.

There's just to get back to bed. There's two ways to look at that. One is that it is a known phenomenon that is not unusual as such. How many people actually have that experience is probably not very many in specifically the way you describe. I think people have nightmares pretty regularly because disturbing things, distressing things, traumatic things happen to us on a daily basis. basis, the nature of living life. So nightmares in general are pretty common, but specifically to the

level you're talking about where it's strong, recurrent for a significant period of time. I'd say that's getting to excessive levels that most people don't experience. You know, and it's, I think, thoroughly explainable by the nature of our lived experience. You know, if you've, what do they say, some people came back from Vietnam with severe PTSD. And every night, they go to bed and they have nightmares about their friends who died. Understandable. That was horrible. That's why the worst thing that can ever happen to you is watching terrible things happen to people that you love. No wonder. No wonder it's going to occupy your waking thoughts and bleed into your dreams. What I do and what I hope my process can do to help other people is that by taking a look at these things, you can sort out

why it's an experience you need to keep revisiting. And once it is understood, it becomes unnecessary to dwell on it as strongly. You got to kind of make sense of it, integrated into who you are in your worldview. And then that allows you to carry on and move forward and not need to experience that trauma repeatedly to no purpose, because the purpose has been accomplished, hopefully. It's kind of what I'm trying to do. Well, you, speaking of that, I mean, you had one dream that you brought to discuss. It was very recent.

I'm like, yeah, let's do that one. But you also had a series of, you know, intense nightmares that woke you up, that has resolved. You don't feel the need to kind of examine that. That's kind of in your past. It's all good. They took,

both of them took multiple years of almost every night of being very unsy and happy with them, but they have, they've gone now, yeah. It was, I still remember them very verbally, though, because of just the frequency in which they occurred. It's not like it's something you can forget.

Yeah, for sure. Did you feel like they resolved spontaneously or you put some thought into it and you kind of figured out why they seemed to be happening and you put it to rest intentionally. How would you describe that experience? I'd say the first set of nightmares, I can just give a brief overview, was just me, like being old and like hooked up to like a, like a, I know what they call like the cardiac monitor and you hear the beep, beep, beep and then like fading away as I hold like my fictional children's hands. Wow.

And just being terrified of that moment. And what I did was I pretty. a lot and eventually a past kind of. I tried millions of things before. I tried to take sleeping tablets. I saw a psychologist. I did all the stuff that didn't really work. And, well, I wasn't a licensed psychologist, but was somebody who kind of, like, knew that this kind of thing.

And essentially, I just ended up praying and believing more in an afterlife, and then that kind of resulted in its own. The second one was very weird, and I don't know how it resolved. I think it's just randomly passed, where I was waking up in a very similar, house to my own house. But like things were off. The paintings were weird. The walls were a different shade. And then my parents were basically wearing skin suits. There was like somebody patrolling them and my family. Wow. And then it put me onto a roller coaster, which would go into like a mouth of

like this creature and then I'd die when I would get on it. Like half the dream was just being on the roller coaster trying to struggle out of it. They're having no control whatsoever. So yeah, that's quite terrible as well. And those were, I would imagine when you were a bit younger. I think you froze. Yeah, when I was like, I think like my first once were 10, 12 and then 14, 16. I said like around 10, 12, I think the first set and then the other ones is like 14 to like 16 maybe or something like that. Now, I don't have enough details to give a full analysis and tell you specifically why. But so my ideas occurred to me about, you know, I would have, as you were describing that, I would have assumed the first one definitely came first and was pretty young.

I was going to think around maybe 10, 11, 12-ish, and that the next one was probably during your teenage years. And you confirm that without me making the suggestion. The idea is we hit a time in our childhood where we realize I'm going to die. This is not just something that happens to other people. This is going to happen to me. Wow. And it blows our mind. We have a paradigm shift.

We confront our own mortality for the first time being entirely incapable. of actually understanding it. It's like that's the true experience of awe. We are all at the point where I can't even process this. I don't know what this is. I see it is, but I don't know what it is. I don't know how to deal with it or respond to it. So the idea of a very intense experience of like,

I'm going to be that old man in that bed saying goodbye to my family, and various elements such as that of like, well, you assume you've had a family. So probably in your estimation, something you want in the future. That's something you believe is just natural. It will happen. I'll have a family someday. Of course, everybody does. So some of those discrete elements like that, that's how they, that's how they factor in based on who you are, rather than dying alone. That could have been its own form of nightmare. And how you resolved it seems to be,

well, I need to come to an understanding of how do I live knowing I will die someday. We all have to. What is my belief system that allows me to accept that that is true and real and continue to function not in a state of, you know, nihilism or, actually nihilism and a lot of different faith systems are meant to resolve that death anxiety, basically. And that goes back to the Freudian stuff that, you know, the, uh, uh, thanatos drive, uh, there's, there's a death drive in people that's, that's complementary to the life drive in a way and, and intimately related and, and, and all yin yang style part of the same thing. Um, um, um, seeking death being more of a dysfunctional element to it.

Long story short. So that makes perfect sense to me. I don't know if that kind of puts pin it in as far as your understanding of why that happened and how you solved it for yourself. Yeah, I think so. I think it makes sense logically as well because I do remember discovering that death is something that's going to happen to me as well and that really freaked me out, you know. Yeah.

So that's from the response to that, yeah. But, um, and that's where the unique result actually, you know, what can you do? Yeah. And that's where the uniqueness of this, the dream experience comes in contact with or stems from, flows from, interacts with the uniqueness of the person is some people have that moment. I don't remember mine exactly, but I was never surprised by it or afraid of it. I'm like, of course I'm going to die someday. Everything does.

it had never occurred to me before, but when it did, it was unsurprising and not anxiety provoking. That's just a temperament thing. Some people are more naturally, perhaps biologically inclined to have that sensitivity to the unknown. The unknown can be threatening. It can also be fantastic and fun. We enjoy novelty. We don't like unpleasant surprises. It's basically what that boils down to.

So because of my baseline temperament and the way it, was, you know, it was an issue for one person and not another. So, therefore, the dream thoughts dwelled on it in the same way. Um, but moving on to the, um, next one, uh, just briefly the idea of your house is not your house and your parents are not your parents, uh, two, two things there that I, this is why pegged it with the teenage years. And it could have been, you know, 14, 16, 18, but we go from, uh, there's a lot of, of developmental life stages. And once you get to that stage, there is a necessary and almost unavoidable process of individuation. You start looking at yourself as a truly separate entity

from your family, from your home in a way that also bleeds into a desire for self-expression that changes the way you see your. environment. You know, your home was a particular kind of thing until you started to feel like you wanted out. Now, home doesn't feel like home anymore. The paintings are wrong. It's not the home I remember. It's not the concept I held before. And the parents, too, you start seeing them as actual human beings. Like, these are not godlike figures that can do no wrong. I'm going to grow up and be a parent someday. I'm flawed. Oh, my God. My parents must be flawed too. They're just people. What is happening here? And that's a freak out of its own that a lot of kids have to go through.

And it's also comparing yourself and trying to determine what you want to the environment you grew up, grew up in and saying, do I recreate this? Would it feel like home if I made this for myself somewhere else? And maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't. Maybe you want to replicate some things and not others. I don't know enough details about the specific dream to say that is necessarily the cause of it. But those are the broad strokes. That's how my associative process works.

What was going on in your life? How does that influence what you would be problem solving unconsciously and try to get something of that nature? You said that one kind of went away on its own without necessarily an answer? At one point, I went through the roller coaster into the mouth of the monster, and I just survived. And then I don't remember what happened in the rest of the dream, but it was just like something silly, I think.

And then when I woke up, like I didn't even remember how the dream ended. I just remember that I survived that, crucial moment and then it didn't happen again. Nice. So there was probably some, I call it an understanding, a resolution. There's a moment where we go from confused to understanding is kind of what I'm trying to get at. And that is a magic moment. I think magic happens in the gap between confusion and understanding. There is definitely a state of being where we have no idea what's going on. We don't understand this concept at all. It does not make sense. And then it does. And what transforms it is some freaky alchemy that I can't even begin.

begin to hope to explain. That's where I, that's where I lean into the wizard thing. It's like, do I think I have magic powers? Not really. Do I think magic is everywhere? Yeah. It's everywhere. It's, it's so integral to the natural world and life itself that it's once I started seeing it. I'm like, oh my God,

that's how, that's how everything works. It's these very magical things. Go ahead. I'm just saying it's a very wholesome outlook. That's very nice. Well, thank you very much. Yeah. I, uh, uh, oh, okay. So as it relates to your circumstances, so there was some settled, it's like the idea of committing

to a decision. Ambivalence is horrifying because you know it's with most things in life. There is no, what has been seen cannot be unseen, the internet meme. That goes for like, what has been done cannot be undone. You can then move forward and apologize, try to correct the mistake, but the mistake can never be unmade. It happened. In a moment in time, it's done.

So we're always very, once we get to a. a certain age, we're always very aware, cognizant that choices have consequences. Good or bad, you know, I go to Baskin-Robbins and I order mint chocolate chip. The consequences, I enjoy a delicious mint chocolate chip ice cream. It's consequence. It doesn't have to be a bad thing. You know, I don't pay. I run away with the ice cream. The consequence, the cops come and arrest me for shoplifting. Also a consequence, not good. You know, all choice based. So something, something, and it may not be critical for you to know consciously what it is. Some of these, decisions are resolved unconsciously in a manner that is sufficient to put a pin in it and

let it be in the past. And it just informs how we broadly, vaguely view other similar circumstances going forward. Sometimes there's a tremendous amount that goes on subconsciously that we don't have any idea about that still informs our conscious decisions. That's its own kettle of fish, elephant writer style. It's not just emotions. It's also subconscious, which is its own discreet, unfiltered thought process. I don't subscribe to Freud's id ego and super ego, but he was describing things that I think are very real, whether that's it and exactly the way he described it. I don't know.

It's going somewhere with that. Oh, so you, just like with the death thing, you found a resolution of some kind that allowed you to say, yes, all of this is true. I have been able to process it to the degree that I can accept it as inevitable. this is my fate. But does that mean I have to be swallowed by it and destroyed by it? Or is this simply a process I need to go through? It's literally into the belly of this beast.

And that's it. And then I come out the other side because, of course I do. Everything continues. This, you know, nothing is, you know, there's even after a disaster, assuming you're not dead, you pick up the pieces and move on. There is an after for many, many things. So the specific nature of the conundrum, the specific resolution, we might never discover, unless we really examine those dreams. What you said is very insightful.

I've just actually kind of thought. I've been trying to think what happened to me about that age when I resolved it. I kind of quit my, you know, everyone goes to a rebellious phase. I kind of quit it at that point. I stopped wanting to, you know, find alcohol, go through my communist phase, be anti-religious. I had my own little edgy, you know, phase. And then I kind of just realized it was really stupid. just me fighting against my parents because I didn't like the way they did certain things.

And I just kind of rolled out and found my own way, which involved a lot of realizing I do want to follow the path that they had, like in majority. You know, there's obviously things that want to change. Right. Yeah. No, that's, I think that's very powerful too. Then there's a great thing there to. It's like, kids have to test limits. They have to explore. It's almost unavoidable. And we would not, that's kind of the biblical story of the prodigal son is like, why did this father welcome this profligate money waste or he went off and what he gambled it all the way and he came back penniless and broke he went out of the world and had experiences he broke away from the family to explore on his own because he has to because not to do so is just to stultify it's it's kind of the um no change at all

rigidly following what has come before without the ability to adapt if it were necessary because you just don't have enough experience there's there's definitely something that there And the thought occurred to me when you were explaining that is you may have come to the resolution and you may have been trying to tell yourself by this nightmare is that your current path, somewhere down deep, you knew your current path was like ultimately self-destructive. You're going to throw yourself on this. You're going to put yourself on a roller coaster. You can't control when it's going to kill you.

You're going to get swallowed by this thing in a destructive ways. There's a way to understand it like that. And so you came to that decision of maybe I don't want to do these things that now, I'm kind of admitting to myself are counterproductive. And, you know, it doesn't have to be major mystical, mind-blowing type. It can just be, well, that was kind of dumb. Yeah, I mean, that's not serving a useful purpose. I felt like I needed to do it.

But having done it, now I go, I don't want to do that anymore. I think we have, we all have that experience pretty regularly with, with a lot of things. Maybe not to that nightmarish level. There's, there's definitely got to be something going on with you as well about maybe not an anxiety disorder. that's the wrong way to put it, but a very high, maybe personality-wise, high conscientiousness. Have you ever taken one of those big five personality tests, even the online versions? I could maybe check. I think they're in DMs or someone, just a friend on Discord,

which you took them together, yeah. I'm not sure. I think my contrariousness is high, but not like extremely high. I think it's just like maybe like the 17th percentile or something. If it's not too much to ask, does that also combine with a little bit of high neuroticism or not so much? I'm not sure about what neuroticism. What's the name of the test again? I can just look it up in the way of the arms now. I think just the Big Five personality usually. And I'm not trying to peg you down too, but this would be my working theory is that, you know, so what is, so the Big Five maps onto political views as well.

So for libertarians, it tends to be low neuroticism. high openness, highly disagreeable. So we're the kind of people that are like, I'll talk to anyone about anything and I don't care if you agree and I'll challenge your perspectives, but I want to hear everything possible because I'm very curious and I'm actually fine

with people doing and saying, whatever, it doesn't bother me. It's this weird blend of all these things. And then it maps onto other things. So in your case, if you can find the results, that's fine. But I would say there might be something like a bit of a tendency, to be a worrier and the idea that you really care about doing things right.

If that sounds like you, maybe it is. If not, then I'm a way off base. I do like to do things right. In terms of conscientious, sorry, I'm looking now. I should be able to find it in like two or three minutes. Yeah, that's fine. Big five personality traits. Okay, so extraversion, 50%. So average, emotional stability, 66%. Agreeableness. 30% not very agreeable apparently. Which is really funny because you were talking and you even mentioned earlier. It's like, wow, you're really actually kind of a nice guy. And I know I come across a little strong in text.

I sound like it. If people read my text in an aggressive tone, it sounds aggressive. If they read it like I talk, they'll realize I'm just a nice guy. But I'm very disagreeable. I'm very open to that kind of stuff where it's like, I'm going to tell you exactly what I think. And I don't care who agrees. You know, I think that serves you very well. Oh, no, but what was it?

other one. It was agreeableness and then the next. It's 6% also and intellect and imagination is 95%. So there you go. Those are my. Yeah. Well, that's an interesting combination in terms of that stuff. So definitely the imagination. So there's some things that would happen in terms of if you're highly conscientious and

highly or at least a little over the line in terms of worrying, concern for the future, things that can go wrong and highly imaginative. you can imagine a lot of things that could possibly go wrong to worry about and you feel very motivated to respond properly to make sure it doesn't happen. And these are common traits across all people. I think we, you know, we all worry to a degree. We all imagine good and bad things to a degree. And we all have different degrees of conscientiousness about taking care of business.

But it's a very different experience of the world, someone who's very, almost live in that kind of like, whatever, man. be laissez-faire type of thing, which is its own kind of natural state of existence. They don't worry about nothing. They're not very imaginative. I can't think of too many things that might go wrong. And honestly, they don't care too much. It's like, you know, I'm doing my best, man. What do you want for me?

It's a very different personality expression in that sense. So I'm kind of with you in terms of like I got a bit of a not too high on the neuroticism, but very much the openness, disagreeable side of things. And also kind of the highly imaginative type of type of thing, too. is I'm driven by that to want to hear every possible perspective on every possible issue I could possibly consider in as much time as I've got on this planet. If I have not covered the basis, I am missing something and I cannot make a good assessment. So there's a bit of my conscientiousness on that side too.

And so we might share a lot of those similar traits. And they're very much being expressed in different ways, that kind of a thing. So, yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. This is all fascinating. I mean, it's, I never, I'm never bored talking to people about what's, what's inside their head. You know, how do you, how do you see the world? And it's always nice when it's collaborative versus confrontational. I mean, as much as disagreeable as I am, I'm not here to, I avoid disagreement as much as possible in this venue. I might say, well, okay, I see a different. Let's move on. Because that doesn't serve the dream interpretation process to put someone on edge, to get their backup against a wall and make them feel attacked. It doesn't work at all, so. Long story short on that. I don't know if you have, five or ten minutes for a break.

I want to take the dog out. 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.

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Okay, so now we get into the dream thing. We've had first breakfast. Now it's time for second breakfast. After talking about dreams already for a moment. So, as per my usual process, we just, I shut up and listen. You tell me the dream. And then we'll go through it again and see what we can figure out. and get a nice story arc or answer for you, as we've kind of done with the other stuff.

You got a little preview of kind of how I do things in those discussions. So, okay, I'm ready when you are. Okay, sure, I'm ready. So basically, just to give it a little context, I've had a nightmare in years now. So the fact that I had a nightmare in the first place that I actually woke up from was quite shocking to me. And this happened, I believe it was like last week sometime. I don't have the exact date.

but it concerns some podcasts podcasters that we both watch Adam and Sitch from the Adam and Sitch show I'm going to lay out the scenario of the nightmare and then talk about essentially the dream in its entirety and then I guess we can have a discussion about it so the start of the dream

obviously you can't exactly place an exact start but what I remember is that Adam and Sitch are announcing that they're doing like a world tour around the world and they happen to visit my country, my city and then they're like streaming like oh guys like our hotel cancelled on us last minute do we have any fans

in the city like if we could stay over with them like it would be such a big thing and so I don't know how I have the number but I call them up and I say well I have two spare bedrooms at my place the family member just moved out so yeah you could sleep in her room if you'd like and so they come over

we play like video games I say I'm 18 I'm sure you would know what that means before our other people watching this. It just means I prefer one of the podcasts as to the other. That's Adam Friended as opposed to PSA Sitch. And then, you know, as we are getting ready to go to sleep, you know, after playing video games for a bit, and basically they tell me that Adam has to leave at around like 4 a.m. or sometimes really early in the morning. And Sitch needs to leave at 7. So like a few

hours after. And then we go to bed and at this point, there's no fear in the nightmare. It's just like a fun thing. I think I actually fell asleep to their podcast. so that might have something to do with that. And then at 7 a.m., I wake up and remind PSA Sitch that it's time to him to leave soon. You know, he's still sleeping in the other guest bedroom. And I start heading downstairs to go down to Adam's guest bedroom, so I'd assume he'd have left by now since he was meant to leave several hours earlier. And I come in and I start cleaning it up.

And, you know, it's not like horribly dirty, but, you know, the bed's not done. And it looks like he left in the rush. And so there's, you know, just something. organization is like some cups there and stuff, and I started cleaning things, but then I realized something is wrong, and that's when the horror kind of begins to start. I realized that a lighter is missing, so we don't actually have this lighter in this bedroom, which I'm imagining, but in my dream, for some reason, I knew there would be like a lighter in a cupboard, where it doesn't actually exist in real life? And so I start thinking,

like, where's that lighter gone? And I look behind a table, and there's a ton of newspapers, and the lighter is on with a flame. It's one of the gas light as you can hold down for a long time. So there's like newspapers and toilet paper, clearly meant to be set alight, you know, so that the fire would start. And like, for me, I start panicking, like, oh, it's a miracle that the room hasn't even caught fire yet.

Like, oh, like everyone would have died, you know? Like this early in the morning, just being burnt alive, it's horrible. So I rushed to get water because I tried to pick up the lighter, but it's so hot because it's been running for a while. I'm pretty sure this isn't how lighters work, but again, this is true. logic. I try to

rush to get water, but I realize that the tap in that room, which works fine normally, is sabotaged. It doesn't work. And so it's really, really weird. So I try the shower tap, that also doesn't work either. And then I notice, as I'm leaving the room, that the fire

alarm, which is just like at the top of the room, is also being fucked with. So that's even like, now I'm like truly, truly terrified that somebody deliberately planned out multiple ways that I could have tried to prevent this fire or somebody who would have prevented this fire and they try and like fuck with this purposefully so i managed to get to like another room in my house downstairs um to get water to downs the lighter um and i do i manage to get like a bucket of water and pour over the lighter um

but at this point i'm i'm really terrified of what just happened because i've realized there was like an attempt on everyone in my house's you know lives and i have you know a younger sister living here, another sister who well, my dream, like, recently moved out and stuff, but it's still, you know, my whole family's here. So I tell this to PSA Sitch, which is one of the co-hosts, because he's still sleeping, you know, he's preparing to leave for his flight. He overslept a bit.

Who, by the way, is Asian in this dream, but he said he's not Asian in real life, so I don't know why I came to that conclusion. Asian Jew. When I was it in a morning. Sorry? I think he's Jewish and Asian Jew. That's an interesting possible. Yeah, I know.

One of my friends actually told me she thought he was Asian, and then I think that might have caught on from her. She mentioned it, and I'll call in the stream with him. And so I warn him, and he's with his dad. I don't remember where his dad came, but I guess he was always there or something in the morning. And so he and his dad are like, whoa, that's really crazy.

So they started to try and call Adam. And apparently they call his wife, and she says he's gone missing. He didn't check into the end. airport. And so, Cich is like, oh, that's crazy.

I'm removing Adamus co-host. We need to get, like, sort of, like, what's going on? Like, he didn't even turn up to the airport. Apparently, like, I don't remember who else he called, but apparently, like, he didn't get a cab out or anything, which is really weird,

because my house is very far away from the nearest airport. So he just disappeared in the morning. And so this is all happening, and PSA Citch leaves, so he just, you know, leads because he has his own flight. And I tell my, I wake up my whole family and say, and I made this horrible mistake letting these people in,

you know, I'm really sorry. And they call the police and hire a PI. And at that point, I'm kind of just like, you know, wondering what's going on. And I kind of just head outside of my house in the front porch. And it's kind of dark still because at 7 a.m. And, you know, sunset hasn't risen. And I see someone kind of there watching our family.

And I don't exactly remember who it is and how they look like. but I remember it being super scary because I woke up in a cold sweat and I couldn't sleep for the rest of the night. Like, I was like tremoring. And it sounds silly because it's like podcar hosts and, you know, they're not particularly scary or anything like that.

The more I thought about the dream, and I might have like gaslighted myself into remembering more details than I actually did, but it did seem like it was kind of like a similar scenario with like the skin suit with my parents, but more like their skin suit of Adam, the host. Just there looking at us.

like with this really weird grimace. Like he's like a puppet on strings, you know. And that's when I wake up and I post it in in the server that we're all in concerning this show to basically just highlight like, hey guys, I just had a crazy dream. And everyone says, oh, this must be a creepy past, this must be a creepy past.

And I thought, maybe I did think of a really creepy pastor and it's from there. And I did a bunch of searching. I couldn't find anything. So that's the story. I know. It sounds crazy. It's a very silly dream.

Like, I don't know why I'm so scared. The more I think about it, the less scary it gets, you know? But at the time, I was absolutely terrified. I couldn't go back to sleep. Well, that's probably a good thing that it became, you know, less scary over time. But so broadly in my theory is, like, I think certain dreams self, well, I think all dreams we remember that leave this kind of emotional impact that carries into awakening. That is the dream or thought process, self-selecting for relevance, for importance. Like, you, it sounds obvious when you think of it, but it's like the things that matter the most to you will feel important and you will focus on them and remember them.

And the more important they are, the more intensely you have feelings about that subject. So there's something going on here that is, you know, in the, in the most clinical sense, triggering an emotional response to the importance of the thing and the potential consequences. consequences or that kind of a thing. There's something, something meaningful to the experience, something at risk perhaps, or an opportunity, something like that. There's a lot of different ways to understand what would motivate someone to think something was important versus not. So that is great. Not the, you know, not the shortest dream I've ever heard, definitely not the longest and lots of great detail. So my process is we just begin at the beginning and go back through it and try to tease out a little bit of what is happening here. So, you know, from talking to you

before, it seems like you have a history of nightmares relevant to important decisions. So there's, there is definitely that broad strokes thing. So there's something in here you really want to understand well or warn yourself against. You know, the idea that dreams carry a warning. A lot of people think of that as like, you know, God sends a message or the spirits are talking to you and they have some future knowledge. We speculate about all kinds of things and we give ourselves license to worry in a way, but speculatively predict what might happen if we follow a certain path by way of warning, by way of saying, hey, if you do this thing, here's what you think is going to happen.

And do you want that? Maybe you do. Maybe you're afraid something is unavoidable and necessary. And you're like, how am I going to deal with this? Or you have a choice to make where it's like, hey, if I stay on this path, bad things will happen, do I want to change? Can I change? So it's kind of, all the, all the thoughts that pop into my head right off right off the very beginning. Yeah. I mean, I did actually give myself some thought thinking, why did I have this stream? And I was like, it's such an adult, like the super

important part of my life. And I kind of said like, yes and no, like the stream itself isn't, but I made a lot of online friends there, but I don't see how the online friends go to anything, you know? And then I thought, am I disappointed in Adam? Did Adam? Did Adam do? something wrong. I'm like, no, I've loved his performance recently. Like, I don't know why I've imagined him as some sort of like husk serial killer or something. Yeah. No, I did.

I've tried to think about it. It's made no sense. Yeah, now that's possible, but the idea of, you know, that is actually what you really believe Adam is, but I think it's like stabbing the dog type of thing. It's not, I don't think that's the point of putting him in that role or more along the lines of, and

we're going to get to it. But something he represents that is it's a couple of different ways you know what i don't want to prejudice it by by thinking too far ahead we're going to that's the very last image of the dream the one that drove you awake in a way you know that finally said this experience has come to an end and here's the last thing here's the here's the here's the exclamation point on the sentence and i think we want to get i think you want to get there in in line with the thought process in general so um it oh but just broadly also why why this this particular

or show. It could have been anything, you know, but this is a something you are familiar with in a way. Like there's, you have feelings about it and thoughts about the people, the experience, the show, the community and how it relates to being a person in the world and having a community and having people you look up to or admire in a lot of different ways. So it's not unusual to take popular or well known. And it happens with, you know, why does your dad show up in a dream. Why would your dog show up in a dream? Why would an old car you owned as a teenager show up in a dream? All of these things had their moment in time and their relevance to you as a specific idea or representing an idea or a connecting link between two other ideas. Oh, it's like

that. And anyway, moving on. Okay, so you've got Adam and Sitch announcing a world tour and they're going physically places, which to my knowledge, they've never done that. They don't do meetups. I mean, they've met each other like once or twice. But, but they are very much, we broadcast from home. This is what we do. We don't do world tours. So,

so right now, right there, right off the bat, we're looking at imagine people who, people doing something that they don't ever do. This is way outside their normal behavior. I don't know if that sparks anything in terms of the concept of, what am I trying to say? taking embarking on a new

untested experience that's not expressing it right maybe like discord I've made some friends in Discord and I've trying to make them more like into RRL friends you know share more details you know begin to trust and accept them but I'm not sure if that

correlates to Sitch and Adam because I've never seen them on Discord I mean I know they do yeah I mean Adam's been around a lot more often talking to people and especially in his little, you know, make suggestions or economics channel. He's, you know, good for him. Whatever he's interested.

I like arguing moral, moral philosophy and, you know, objectivity and the nature of the real world. And he likes, he wants to talk about economics. So good, good for him. So I don't know that this has, I think that was a powerful connection, but we're tangential to it. The idea of you, so you are having an experience where you are connecting with people. You like them. You want to get to know them better.

And you want to transition from a long distance relationship to more of an in-person or at least more personal experience with these. You're not just a name. You're a guy. And here's who I really am. So that would be maybe analogous to Sitch and Adam going on a world tour. You're like, oh, they're going to meet people in real life. There's going to be more of a personal connection with these people. So there's a, in a sense, there's like a one removed.

Well, I'm not going to imagine I'm doing this. I'm not going to imagine these other people are doing it. in a way similar to what I'm considering doing. Does that make sense? Yeah, I'm writing the notes. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. Feel free to feel free. So, yeah, so in a sense, this dream isn't about such an atom at all in that way. They're being used as representations icons to explore these concepts. That's kind of where I'm getting with that. So I don't think any of this represents any behaviors you think they would do, anything you think they would say, or especially, get into the very end of it, like that the, the skin suit atom was the real atom all along.

I don't, I don't think that's anywhere near the conception you're coming from. What are you doing, Bubu? You're sleeping? You got to sleep. It's not playtime. Very cute. Yeah, there's my peanut butter. He is the inheritance from a deceased relative.

We got, I got a dog, a bathrobe, and a tall freezer. That's, that's it. We didn't really want anything else. It was fine. A strange range of items. Yes, I wear a dead man's robe, literally. And I think it's fantastic. You know, some people might think it's creepy. I think it's honoring his memory. Literally, that he was wearing that robe when he died and peanut butter was sleeping with him inside the robe as he does. And so now I have the robe and peanut butter can sleep with me. It just feels right. Yeah, just feels right. So not only are they going on a world tour. So it would be a different, experience to say they were going on a world tour, but they were not coming to my city. They were going to pass me by. This is an experience I'm not going to have. I'm not going to get closer to them physically as a metaphor for becoming more intimate personally in that sense.

But you did. You're like, okay, not only are they embarking on this journey representationally, they're coming close to me. So this is actually related to my experience of the, community of them in broad strokes. And if that, you can only stop me if you're like, no, that doesn't seem right. But sometimes I just, I just ran about it. I'm just the way. Yeah.

And I don't expect you to have anything to say, but please, number one, interrupt me anytime. Like, whoa, I just thought of something. I will stop talking. Usually I just rambled until you get inspired. That's kind of how, that's what the flashlight is looking around. But sometimes also I need to verbalize my process out loud and say, okay, here's what this looks like.

to me and then we try and go to the next okay how does that connect and um that's how i put together an answer for you so um it's kind of hard to for me analyze it because the more i over and analyze that like i'm a very logical person like i do have imagination but like i try to view things logically i'm like so they announced a world tour and then like the next five minutes in my dream they're already like in my city like wow that's a really quick world tour they announced you know they must already stuck by so many places. Well, that is, as you were saying, that's dream logic. I mean, it can feel like we live a lifetime of 70 or 7,000 years in a dream.

We can also wake up in our bed and walk out our front door, you know, from the UK and we're in Istanbul. And we are thoroughly unsurprised. Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be, you know, that kind of a thing. That's another unique thing that's like, it varies from person to person. People have the experience of surprise and dreams. But the bizarre impossibilities.

of flying or transcending space and time. I could teleportation. Not surprising at all. It fits because the connecting link makes sense. Not the idea that it would be physically possible to do so. So, they're coming to your city. And how did you come to know that the hotel canceled and that they were asking fans for lodging? What form did that communication?

I think they did a live stream. And then, like that they're announcing World Tour livestream. And they were just like streaming. I don't remember what I was doing, but I must have checked my phone or something. And they'd be like, oh, these guys are asking out for fans. Like, does anyone live here in the city?

Like, can anyone help us out? You know? Or something like that. Gotcha. And there's something interesting there, too. So I rattle a lot of doorknobs. They don't all come open. The method of communication could have been an interesting, relevant thing. you standardized it in a way of like, of course,

this is how I would know it. They're just saying it on the live stream. I'm listening. And did you have, or did they give any sense of why the hotel canceled or the circumstances that caused it? Did any intuition of that pop up? I'm trying to think.

I don't remember, I just remember them being like quite surprised and disappointed because it's like a last minute cancellation. It wasn't like, like that's all I can take from it. It wasn't like a long-term thing when they knew, like, oh, there's hotels on reliable or something. They seemed like shocked and like, hey, guys. Like, because when they were coming over, it's like, I remember it's like nighttime.

It's like 2 a.m., you know? Could you imagine if you've, like, come from 2 a.m. at an airplane, you know, it's completely dark out. And then, you know, like, your hotel cancels last minute as you're, like, walking into the front foyer or whatever. Like, you're kind of desperate and you don't really know, like, what to do at that situation. For sure. So there's very much an element of the, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, unexpected. They've been suddenly afflicted by something beyond their control. And you imagine yourself in a position to take them in. You know, so there's, you know, it was never, it was never the plan that

they stay with you from the beginning. They would not be staying with you had not the hotel canceled. We don't really know why the hotel canceled, but there's some need to present this a roadblock where it gives an opportunity for you to be the solution in a sense. Sometimes, those things are, uh, dream logic can also say, uh, so sit and Adam are coming to your house, wait a minute, why are they there? And you're, you rec on a little bit. And it's almost so simultaneous that you don't know which thought came first. And so the dream experience of it is, well, I knew the hotel had canceled. And that's why I stepped up to offer. And so that's how they got to my house. Sometimes we explain those things to ourselves and they aren't discreet elements of,

of individual meaning that are beyond a narrative connecting link. I may be wrong about that one, but this one seems like you would know the reason the hotel canceled if it was relevant, if that makes sense. Yeah. So maybe it's like one of the things where you think about your dream and you're like, oh, how do we get from point A to point B?

There must have been points. Oh, yeah, it kind of sounds like something I would think of. Or maybe, yeah, I did think of that, but it's not like super in your mind, you know. Yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, there's obviously points which are more hazy and points which are like clear. Like I saw when I saw the lighter like like like like I felt my heart in like the dream like everything slow down in time. You know like that was a super vivid moment for sure. Yeah.

Whereas the other like playing video games that just I'm done, you know. Yeah. Well, probably what you would imagine you would do with them if they came over to visit you're like, ah, well, I don't know what that's. I like video games. You want to play and they're like, yeah, we like them too. Okay. It's an experience to have. It's a bonding.

It's a time killer. Maybe some people wanted to, you know, sit on the back porch and have a cigar. If that was their thing. and they liked it. That's what you would be doing. So it's also interesting that you, well, it's all interesting, but I think this is where we start getting into the more relevant and specific stuff, the idea that, so beyond calling them and saying, how did you, how did you know their number? Two things. One might be dream logic. Of course, you had their number. Why wouldn't you? You have to get in touch with them somewhere.

you have to facilitate them getting to your house because that's the important part. So a lot of this can be simultaneous immediate reccon. Oh, I have an explanation. Here it is. This is why it makes sense to me. That said, there might be something relevant to the idea that you do have their number, that you are in some kind of a position to make that connection successfully in a manner that offers a solution that happens to be a win-win.

Like, not only do you, do they get a place to say, you get. you know, two people you really enjoy, you know, celebrities ish, coming to your house. I mean, you get to be the guy that puts them up. That's its own unique thing. But I think the element that stands out to me if it works, if it works for you and you got to feel it. You know, you'll get it, zing, you know, those little ping, light bulb turns on, but something about the success, the ability to successfully make a connection. Yeah, I'm trying to think, yeah. Take a moment. I do.

Yeah, sorry, just this is another number, I remember being able to contact them, but I don't think I thought about how I could. I assume I would have their number, but I just remember, like, it wasn't like a problem. It wasn't like a back and forth, like, I contact them on a live stream and I say, here, I have this. This is my Discord profile. DM me privately and we can get like my phone number or something that I just, I just knew how to contact them privately somehow. But I can't think of specifically like if it was a phone number or something. I just had access somehow. Sure. Yeah, yeah. And the method, the method, the method, my 90, but you could have sent a text. You could have sent a telegram. You could have sent a carrier pigeon. I think the, I think the, I think

So if we go with the recent experience of broadening, not broadening, you know, trying to make online friends and in real life friends. We're not putting the whole dream into that context, but there is something contextual relevant, contextually relevant, I think, which is the idea of you had the means to connect with them, to reach out, to reach them by phone or however you did. it's it's the nature of the success of the connection that that a connection is possible to be made that's kind of where I'm going with that idea um you don't have to have an answer you don't have have to have an epiphany uh but but just the idea of um and assumed like when we do a thought

experiment we assume certain elements we go okay well what if this this and this and we don't necessarily go well let's argue over this what if because i don't think it's realistic or you got to get now that happens sometimes in arguing against a specific hypothetical from a philosophical perspective but sometimes you but you can construct a thought experiment that has any elements you want and then you say okay if that is the case what do i think would happen uh what if uh you know wolverine was the hulk with those what if marvel magazines what if you know dark phoenix hadn't yada yada um uh so that's that's where i'm going with this is the idea of of you've given this thought process, the context of what if I can successfully connect

as a portion of this thought? Because the opposite side of it would be, darn, I wish I could offer them a place to stay, but I don't have their number. I am incapable, unable to establish a connection I would like to make. That's a different kind of experience. But this one has to presume, okay, if you could, and it happened this way, what would that look like. So it's kind of where I'm going with that. I mean, I'm thinking about it now. I mean, I don't know if the stream is about my like trying to like make more and it's not just

this good, like more online friends, more IRL like, you know, but like I have like, you know, gotten closer. I've, you know, gotten people's like I have friends from Instagram, which I now have their WhatsApp and whatnot. And so we can contact each other even more easily. That's now a thing. That's become easier in my life. But I'm not, I don't know if this is what the dream's about, you know. So, like, it's very hard for me to, like, say, oh, yeah, I definitely know this is the thing you've just caught up to it because I don't know, you know. No, no, that's okay. I already given it. It's kind of hard.

Yeah, yeah. And it's okay to be uncertain. Like, I'm throwing out thought experiments too. What if this was the possible perspective through which that made sense? That's kind of what I'm doing as well. So, and for me, sometimes I think I've hit on something that actually does make a lot of sense to me. And I think it's probably relevant. The dreamer goes, that doesn't feel right.

like, okay. So I made a logical connection based on maybe a faulty premise. I got a bad conclusion. So be it. And sometimes we both go, I don't know, what do you think about this idea? And we're not sure. And then later on in the dream, we go, oh, my God, it's like you said before. Now that makes sense. I don't know why I say things. I don't, I have, I have, I understand. I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fair enough. So that's, that's what we're doing. And we're not, we're not anywhere near the end. So it's not, we're not expected to have an answer. It's okay as part of the process. You called them,

we made the connection, you offered them the room of a relative that had recently moved out. One of them and the other one of the spare bedroom. Yeah, it's like a guest bedroom, basically. So who had which room? Who had the spare bedroom?

The guest room, which normally is just used for guests, that was used by Adam, who, you know, that was the one which all the shenanigans in happened later. And the one which it was my sister who moved out in it that was used by Sitch, essentially. Okay. I think this is going to have

some relevance. If they had both shared a room, that would mean something. If they had both occupied separate guest rooms and you're like, but we only have one in real life. So why would I imagine two? They're both guests. You put them in guest rooms.

That's what you do. You invented a second one because because you needed it. But you put Adam in the guest room and sit in your sister's room. And this is basically a sister in real life or was this a sister that only exists in the dream? No, no, she's in real life. Yeah. I mean, she, you know, she's often not in home because she travels and stuff like union work. So it's not like, oh, it's a very common occurrence for her to just not be in her room, you know, for like a couple weeks of time. Okay. So there's a very natural thing of like, Well, of course, it's unoccupied. Where would I put him in the unoccupied room?

But I think there is also, you know, he could have, he could have been posted up on the couch. He could have chosen himself. He said he wanted to sleep in the attic. Why would you do that? Who knows? It didn't happen. But all of these things could have happened a lot of different ways.

So looking at why you would, why it would feel right to put Sitch in this room is, I think maybe, I get the impression something's tickling me that says it's not just well her room was empty but you very well could have put Adam in that room instead. There's something about a connection between your sister and Sitch that

he reminded. Maybe Adam and the other room because I can give you a bit of context of the bedroom. It does have it so little bit of law. The spare bedroom was like a very, very, very, very distant relatives bedroom once and they were not a very good person.

And they were, like, I would say, like, malicious and cruel, like, would be like a, like, I would never call any other of my relatives. And I have, like, 25, you know, Eastern European, very large extended families and all that. Yeah. But, like, out of everyone I know, it was, like, the only person who was, like, a really not nice person. And then, obviously, they moved away. And then that room is now the guest room, essentially. Gotcha. Because I haven't lived up, like, 10 years old, however long it might have mean.

And you basically have a pretty good relationship with your sister. I mean, she's older sister, younger. Yeah, well, it's a bit more distant, but we were way close to when we were kids. But yeah, she's younger than me by a year. We're close, we're really close. We shared a lot, especially when we were like trauma bonding, not bonding, but like, you know, we gave each other our trauma, like all of our, like, the hard things when we were growing up. Yeah. We talked, like, I'm actually more than like my youngest sister who's, except two sisters, but the youngest one, we never get along ever.

Even if our lives depend on it, you know, if we both had to, like, pull on a rope to save our lives, I'm pretty sure. or one of us would just not do it out of spite or something and just fall into the ocean like that. Little prisoner's dilemma there. I'm not cutting the rope unless you cut the rope. Well, I'm not cutting it at all. Screw you. I got to die. You're coming with me.

And sometimes we have completely no rational reason to dislike someone. Maybe they're not a bad person. Maybe they've never done anything wrong in their life. They've never done anything to us. They just irritate this. Just the way you're, God, God, I just hate your voice. Jesus. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

that kind of thing. It's like an interesting. I try to obviously make things better for her because I don't try to be irrational. But like for some reason, whether she says a fact, which I know she's writing or vice versa. Like we have this compulsion to challenge it. And I think I don't know what comes from. But it's like, as soon as she's like, what is what? I'm like, is it now? Or if I say, you know, dinosaurs existed, you know, 65 million years ago, she's like, well, did you actually know that that's not true? Even though we both know that what we're saying is correct, you know? Gotcha. And that's an interesting dynamic. It's an interesting dynamic too. I've probably got a couple of people in the same chat that no matter what I say, they're going to go, well, actually, and it's just me. It's me and them. It's our personalities and the way they clash. And it's nothing. It's just like two stripes and plaids and polka dots. You don't wear all three at the same time. It's God awful. And there's nothing, nothing you can do about that. Plaid is plaid, polka dots, polka dot. So it's one of those aesthetic things. Nobody's really. wrong. It's, you know, it just doesn't taste good to you. Um, so that is interesting too. There's a, well, not like I said, it's all interesting. This is interesting. That's interesting. I say that too much. Um, so you had a good, this is in your mind, it felt right for some reason, or it made sense for some reason that Sitch would go into the room that was typically occupied by a younger sister that you had a good relationship with and that you went through a lot of stuff with and you're like, this, this girl's really family. You know, some people you just related to, you,

You don't really know them. But she's really family, but you're distant. And again, there's the intimacy of a relationship where it's like you did not push apart. You grew apart in that way. She has other interests. Your path diverged. Nobody's fault. There wasn't a breakup, so to speak, in terms of, you know, I don't like you anymore.

Get away from me. And there's a bit of a tragedy in that of like, you know, this person was really close to. It's sad. I can't see them as much as I might like. So I don't know if you think of your sister. personality or any experiences she might have had or what she means to you and then what you've what your experience is of Sitch in terms of his personality and how he approaches things how explains things I always thought Adam to be like he's kind of like the elephant which I like

I like the rampage but I've always seen such as more trustworthy and like really going to read like 16 books just to like see every single political point he makes or whatever okay and my sister she's not great with politics. It's not her talent, but, you know, she is somebody I've trusted, and you really can rely on. She'll be there for, like, to, she would literally, like, you know, like, even though we're more distance,

I know she would sacrifice, like, both her kidneys and all her money just to help me out in some situation, and I'd be happy to do the same. Yeah, yeah, gotcha. So it's interesting. I keep saying that. That's great stuff that just kind of spontaneously came up. You're trying to describe her personality

and both a little bit how you see, Sitch. So, and honestly, I think there's a, did you read the, was it the chat GPT thing that Adam posted about the story of Sitch and Adam invented by the robot? Scary, like, scary. Yeah, I've done stories about server members of chat GBT. People, people find it crazy. Yeah. And what the funny thing is that the story that was told is like, that is an accurate description of what their relationship appears to be like and why it works. I mean, I don't know that I could have done a better psychological assessment of why their partnership is successful and why they complement each other rather than conflicting. And that even the conflict is complementary because it serves to highlight two distinct perspectives that are both necessary.

It's that yin yang balance of opposites. Yeah, definitely. And this goes back to another argument I was having with someone the other day is like, yes, we all have an elephant. But we also have a writer. And there's nothing wrong with the elephant or the writer. useful for different things. We have pathos and ethos and logos. And if you think of the, I had this analogy the other day. The writer is pathos. It just happens. The, the, no, so the elephant is pathos. The writer is logos. And the ethos is what dictates who should be driving. And sometimes

you got to let the elephant go because he knows where he's going. And sometimes you need to be the and pull the elephant up short and say, I need to choose, choose a different direction rather than flowing naturally. You can't exist without both. The elephant is useless without the writer, and the writer is stranded without the elephant, whatever. Or the elephant rampages without a writer vice. It's a whole bunch of analogies there. So I think it's good, I think it's good that you would probably agree that Adam a little more personifies the elephant, even in his wisdom of following his intuition that he can't explain. I've said that about him many times, the idea that Adam is intuitively correct. He's just not explaining it well. And I'm like,

that's me. That's me. I know exactly what that feels like. I'm like, I got something I'm trying to say here. I'm using all the wrong words. I'm not getting any help from my interlocutor. And I failed. I failed. Fine. But I wasn't wrong. I was not wrong. I just could not explain it at the time. And then I find out why later when I can explain it. I'm like, that's what I was trying to say. I think we've all had that experience too. So that's Adam. Sitch is more on that rational, analytical, writer side of things and it's good to have that perspective it's necessary he's very diplomatic and a lot of a adam's diplomatic in his own ways also a little more provocative but you know trust where this it's not like you can't trust your emotions although you can't in a sense

emotions are always real they're not always right because i just thought about it like i i i do feel like i'm more a bit like i'd like to be more like like the writer is what i like i would aspire to have very little elephant, very, very much rider. And I've worked, you know, throughout my whole life to kind of help me with that. But I still feel like sometimes I just go elephant, you know. Like my little sister, for example, the rider should say, yes, water is wet. Don't argue about this. It's going to be stupid.

You're going to start hating each other for no reason. And my elephant's like, this person, you said that in this tone, I have to fight, you know? And so it is more like, I feel like I'm more like Adam probably, and I'm more aspirational to be more like Sitch, just in terms of like the elephant rider dynamic and my own kind of thoughts on the matter. For sure. Yeah. And then it's a funny thing because then you break that down even further and you've got, even if Sitch is the writer, broadly speaking, as, you know, we've got to pick, pick who's who in the dichotomy. The writer has his own elephant a writer. It nested inside him. And the elephant has its own elephant and rider nested inside of him. And so there's a great thing there. So what we've got here is,

So what I appreciate you about is that very often Adam will say, here's my intuitive sense, and he'll start explaining it poorly wrong words. And Sitchell go, oh, oh, I see what you're saying. Let me find those words for you. And then you can back it up with a rational argument, research and data, all the analytical side of the logos side of things. And you need them both. You know, it's a you cannot live a life of pure logic because the passions are what make

life worth living. You cannot live a life of worth pure passions because logos is what makes life functional. You got to do necessary shit and understand how to tell the difference. And that's where the, like I said, the ethos is the, the negotiator. How do you, how do you know when to give rain to the elephant or rain it in as the writer? And I don't think there's anything wrong with either approach, except in absolute excess, you know, in that regard. So there's, and all of this just coming from your, so this is your understanding of why, who these people are broadly. And then that's going to inform where you place them in the dream, what they're doing, and the nature of the interaction.

It's like why, why these people are not a different podcaster I was listening to. There's something about this dynamic you're trying to explore in relation, I think, too, yeah, the current experience of the broader concept of establishing new connections or deeper connections with people, which is positive and negative. It comes with risks and benefits. You let someone get to know you. They can hurt you. You don't let anyone get to know you.

You have no meaningful relationships and you suffer alone. Neither of these states is ultimately acceptable in the extreme. But we're dealing with a lot of balance of dichotomies here or balance of opposites. So in the nature of the sister, yeah, you said this makes a little more sense that and it's not that Adam isn't trustworthy. I think he's an honest, genuine, good faith. person. He's not lying to your face and trying to manipulate. That's not the trustworth. But you know if well, yeah, yeah. So what, but what you would say is Sitch is the guy who's going to come with receipts.

Adam's just going to tell you, well, that's how I feel. Fuck it. It would take it or leave it. I'm a little more like that myself too. Sometimes he doesn't, in a lot of ways, need to justify it. He just knows what he knows and feels it strongly and that's the way it is. Sitch is a little more like questioning, analytical. So in terms of trustworthiness, that the Sitch says there's 91% of this kind of thing. You know, he's looked at the paper and he can circle it and say, look, right here. 91. 91%. I looked. I checked. I got the receipts. So that's a kind of unique trustworthiness that you would expect from maybe your sister as well. It's like someone who is, it's not saying sitch is like my sister, but he is like someone who is as

trustworthy as my sister would be. I could just take his word for it that he did the due diligence, which is fair enough because someone who is more emotional, a little less likely to bother to cross the, cross the eyes and dot the T's in that way, to that level, you know, horseshoes and hand grenades, close enough, you know. Okay, so we dwell on that probably long enough. And then, do you remember any details of their arrival, them getting out of the cabin, walking to the door? I remember, I actually think it was like, you know, like in a movie scene transition where I

remember them wanting to get. to my place and like I call them whatever and I talk to them like hey I do have these spare bedrooms and like scene transition we're in my room playing video games okay I should clarify it's in my room yet yeah yeah that was gonna be my next question too where did that happen very very common your brain just goes scene change yeah exactly exactly like that like a movie fade to black next or maybe there was something else I just don't remember you know I did write it down as soon as I had the nightmare because of how surreal and how scared I was for some reason for sure

some podcast posts, yeah. So I think I would probably remember unless I forgot during the course of a nightmare, which also might be possible. I don't know. Yeah. And there's a good chance that, and that's why I tell people don't stress, you can't do this wrong. If you really can't remember something or something I say doesn't make sense or I make a suggestion, it's like way off, nothing you're doing wrong. You know, it's either there or it's not. You saw it or you didn't, you feel it or you don't. You can't do this wrong. The dream experience is what it is. And I think the elements that that stay with you are going to be the most important parts. So, eh, very often in our dreams, yeah, scene change because driving from the airport is boring.

Who wants a 30, 45 minute scene of driving in the car with no dialogue? Horrible movie. We don't, we just skip over that part. And next, you know, so you're in your room, in your room playing video games. So you have, you have not just invited them. They have, they have come to your city. They have brought themselves within proximity. You have not just offered them a place to stay. You didn't offer to buy them a hotel room somewhere else. You brought them into your home. There's these successive levels of closer and closer and closer and closer. And now at this point, they are in the place within your home. So home is its own kind of place. Then there is a subset of place inside your home that is your room. There's very few places you could get closer to you

than jumping in the shower with someone naked. That's closer than just being in your room and represents a different kind of thing. But you've brought them as close to you and the core of you, almost as as intimate as you can get with, like I said, without jumping into bed with them, which even if you did wouldn't necessarily mean sexual desire. Just that, again, additional level of intimacy. There was no sexual tension in the street whatsoever.

Right? Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm just saying, just saying, you are going to drive me crazy. I'm just saying, we brought up Asian sitch in a dream. there might have been some sexual undertones, but definitely not for my, not for my dream. For my dream,

it would be a female Asian sitch, and we would very much, very much be friendly, right? So do you remember the game you're playing? Yeah, I think we were playing, like Monster Hunter, or just like, I think it was just,

I think it was like almost like a scene transition of just like my favorite games, Halo Reach, Monster Hunter, world and stuff like that, stuff which I would like play with like, you know, close friends, you know, it requires a bit of skill, but it's just my go-toes for, like, comfort games, basically. Games, which I've had, like, you know, 200-plus hours,

and I don't normally play games that long. Gotcha. Because, you know, I have research to publish and work to try and get and stuff like that done. Oh, yeah, and I'm very much, like, what is it? I think the main storyline for Witcher 3, when I played it online was something like 50-something hours. I think I got 70 hours into it,

because I ran around and did some side quests. But there was something like 360 hours of game content, never going to play all of it. At some point, I'm just done with the world. I like typically like playing the main storyline and just getting it over with and moving on to the next game. I'm not rushing through them, but also I'm not dragging my feet. Like every, I'm not a completionist in that regard. There's too many things to do. I don't need all 7,000 badges.

I'm just never going to do it. And then I have like this OCD compulsion to have 100% achievement, 100% everything. You know, if I fall in love with your game, I'm going to complete every single pathway, you know. Fair enough. And dedicate the next one's doing it. Yeah, if you really enjoy existing in that world and you look forward to returning to it and chasing a stupid badge that is pointless is just an excuse to be there again and have some fun.

Nothing wrong with that either. I've got literally, I think, yeah, probably close to seven, I don't have $7,000 is right. That's probably impossible. But an unreasonably high number of hours in Left for Dead to the co-op zombie shooter. Oh, so good. And what if I've played almost every damn expansion map that had come up to a, you know, whether they created on the games workshop on Steam. And that game's been around, you know, I bought the first one 2006, second one came out,

like I think 2009. And I still, I played it last week. I just jumped in for a quick match to do some audio video testing. I played the whole match, you know, the game threw through to the end because, I'm here, let's finish it, you know, got to get to the boss, boss fight at the end and escape. that is so long story short I understand that experience of the comfort game and different stuff

did you have the experience they were playing it with you or they were watching you play or you were just showing I think they were playing with me I think I remember because I have a very customized over expensive controller and I think Cich was the one using it and I was using like the standard controller with Adam

and we were just playing the game I actually remember I didn't think of it until recently but yeah I have these three controllers basically to play my friends and we're playing the games. And that is a different kind of experience than you watching Sitchplay or

all three of you taking turns or they're just present while you show them things. So this was very much a not a common, not communal necessarily, but a interactive, fully participatory interaction where all people were included.

No one was left out. You're doing all, you're doing this. together. Did you have a sense of their entertainment level, their investment in the experience? I expected them to have to be tired because it's like 2 a.m. and very inconvenienced by the fact that

their flights are not flights, but they're checking as cancel and stuff. No, we were just having a lot of fun until we got quite late and then we realized that we had to, like, they both told me like, oh, we're leaving at different times this morning to, you know, wherever. I don't even remember. of where they were going. I think the airport.

But yeah, and then that's when it kind of ended. So I want to, I want to get to how that was communicated to you, but you also said you told them both that you are 18 in the dream. Yes, I remember. During. That's why I, yeah. Was that during before, after the video game playing? When the video games ended and they started like, well, things started winding down.

And they were like, yeah, you know, we have to go tomorrow and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, yeah, you know, 18 for life or whatever I said. And, you know, Adam reacted like, yeah, I knew it. And, you know, they did the thing they do on the show where it's just like, you know, so whatever noise he makes of his mouth and like celebrates it. I think just like one of those arguments. I think that's great, too, that they both have fun with it.

I mean, each of us is going to have someone we lean towards a little more than the other. I'm a little, I'm kind of evenly divided. I think I've got my both. Both feet on separate sides of the line on so many things. I think they're, I wouldn't, I couldn't choose in that way. And that's perfectly fine. I mean, I respect them for different reasons. I would say there's a complimentary balance where one is better than the other and then vice versa.

The other is better than the one in a different way. And that's why it works. So who do I choose? I can't. I can't do it. Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that too. So you, this is great about the show too, is that it's playful.

Neither one of them really cares. B 18, BBS class, whatever. But I'm going to, but I'm going to brag about it. Yes, yes. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that's the fun part. It's, it's a, this also goes with a typical, I'd say, like male bonding relationships is we know we have a good, stable bond with someone.

When we can give them shit, they know it's not intended to be malicious or derogatory or hurtful, it is a demonstration of the connection is what it is. It's like, we are such good friends. I can call you an asshole and you're just going to go, yeah, fuck you too. And neither one of us feels genuinely offended because we can do that. We can enact what would otherwise be something that is only can be seen as hurtful and aggressive, you know, that kind of thing. So that's very, very interesting that you would throw that in there and say, well, can't

here's how well we're getting along. I was able to join their, what is it called? Like there's an inside joke. I was able to join the fun of the inside joke and say it to their face and they're both like, ah, they did. And it wasn't hurtful. They understood it in the spirit. It was intended.

And it was a demonstration of, of the success of this meeting and getting to know them type of thing. And of all this is kind of at least making sense, if not like opening epiphanies. I agree. Yeah, that's how I'm kind of looking at like, why, why did that need to happen? Like, why tell them at all? Well, we kind of had its part in the social, social milieu. And then they, I wanted to ask about how they were describing the need to leave.

Like, was one or the other talking more? Did they take turns in terms of, you know? They just spoke. I don't exactly remember who spoke first, but I remember, like, you know, it's kind of late. Like, everyone's getting tired. Adam is like, hey, guys, like, you know, I have to leave at, like, 4 a.m. Is that okay with you? Like, how's that going to... And then Citrus is also, like, well, I think you'd leave at 7. And then by the end of a conversation, C transition, I'm sleeping, and then I wake up, you know, and then it's the morning, basically. Like, I don't remember, like, my dreams are within the dream, or how they went down to their rooms or whether I escorted them or anything like that, you know, it's just one of those other sleep transitions that we had before once already.

But, yeah, they just both talked... I don't remember, like, who specifically talked. first or whatever, though. If I think about really hard, I might be able to. But then again, I might be gaslighting myself about the memory. Yeah. If I don't remember that one. Well, there's always the risk. And I think Freud pointed this out, the idea of secondary elaboration, which is,

we have the dream as remembered immediately upon waking. And then if you think about it too much for too long, we kind of might add some elements. And it's a very, it's a tough thing to tease out because are you just remembering more? are you inventing more? There's really no way to tell. So honestly, the best possible thing is... I recognize that for me. What's that?

That's why I wrote it down the first thing as I woke up. Yeah. I did it in my mind. I'm still got a strong emotional attachment to the stream. So I might as well write down everything I could remember. Yeah. And then if I find other things which I remember, I actually highlight them in a different color.

It's the word document I have. Oh, that's pretty cool. That's way more obsessive than even I am, and I'm a freak. That's fantastic. I love it. The thing about this is that we aren't sure whether secondary elaboration is just remembering more details because now you've bent your mind towards it. And part of why I do the process the way I do it and hear the story, just write it down

and use that as our framework. We're going to stick to that pretty closely. But we're also going to tease it apart a little bit. We're going to stretch things and see if they take on a different shape. We're going to see if we can look underneath the rock and other bugs, you know, whatever. So I tend to think that where a strong association comes to you, it's going to feel right. And this is a weird thing. I mean, elephant, can we explain it?

Who knows? But it does. And that seems to be the experience of it. So if I ask a question, I don't know about that. And if I ask another question, you go, that just made me think of something. That's where we're on the right track. And I don't know that that's secondary elaboration as much as discovering the meaning that was already packed in there. So I think it's a different feeling than accidental fabrication, if that makes sense.

I don't even know if it makes sense to me. But that's what I'm trying to say. So there is an order of operations to who's leaving first. It could have been they were leaving together, but it wasn't. It could have been Citrus leaving first, but it wasn't. Something about this interaction, you either imagined, well, of course, Adam, would leave first that he would he would he would irish goodbye at a party he would just be there and then one minute he wouldn't because he got better things to do or or you know no no offense to you he's just

he's going to go home he's tired he's not going to make a big deal about it he dips that may be more consistent with his personality maybe that's one way of looking at it and purely pulled that out of my ass um it also may be leaning in towards like maybe he's um you imagine he's busier he's got more things to do i mean he's a sitch does a lot of research and maybe editing and different stuff, but Adam's always cranking out this comic thing. He seems like his days are full. He's very busy. So getting up early might be a thing you'd imagine he's doing.

He's got more responsibilities in some ways, or not more different that might demand more of his time. Long story short, when you think of it that way, can you, what comes to mind when you think about the order of their departure? Does anything come to mind in terms of associations or anything? I don't know. I think, well, I don't know how far ahead we plan the dream, but like, obviously, if Citch was the first to leave, I would check out his room first. And then that would be the, but his room is my sister's room, which I maybe wouldn't have associated the bad thing happening in, as opposed to the room, which I don't really like as much.

Sure. But I'm thinking, why did Adam lean first? I don't know. He just seemed like, yeah, probably he had more responsibilities. He seems like, you know, he's got a wife, you know, he's got a bunch of, he worked. he works as an artist, you know, he has like a full-time job and some other stuff. He just made more sense. I don't know.

Like, I'm trying to think of why I think that, but it's, it's, yeah. No. Sometimes he, if nothing comes to mind, that's fine. It also can be, and this is another thing that just occurred to me, sometimes I've got to say all the wrong things first or suggestions that might make sense, might not. There's also something to do with, as you said, how planning ahead in the dream. The idea is that you're looking at is more related to, Adam. Not that Sitch isn't important or a part of the package deal in that way, but there's something

about Adam himself, his perspective, his presentation on the show, his manner of interaction with other people. There's something you're looking at in terms of assessing it as relevant to you. Almost in a role model kind of way. Like everybody's a role model. I, you know, I watch someone cross the street. They are modeling the role of a street crosswalker. It doesn't have to be significant to be a role model. We think of it as someone to look up to, to aspire to be, but we look at people behaving. We observe the effects of their behavior. And we imagine, should I do that? Would it work out well for me if I did? Does that comport with my personality? Do I think it's effective in a given circumstance. So this may have been, long story short, as he often says, he needed to go because

the dream was going to be about him. It was going to be about him being missing and bad things happening in his absence. And possibly the bad thing being caused by not him, but some aspect of his personality that you're analyzing and wondering if I adopt that and enact it, how was not going to work out for me if I were more like that. And you actually had just said, this just occurred to me too. You'd actually just said that you kind of want to minimize the elephant thing. You almost think the elephant is dangerous in a way that it shouldn't be given free reign. Yeah, I don't feel like I'm doing this good when I'm allowing my elephant to take control of more situations. I feel like it just causes like long-term issues for me. Yeah. So if we imagine

accurate or not, fair or not, irrelevant. If we imagine Adam represents the elephant, then you're looking at the elephant itself, not Adam at all, as the representation of something potentially dangerous that needs to be properly controlled to the degree that it needs to be controlled, not abused, but contained, directed, et cetera. That's where I'm going with this.

I don't think it's really about Adam per se, because I don't think anyone would say Adam's elephant is rampaging out of control. It gets the better of him occasionally, more often maybe than Sitch does. Yeah, I don't think so either. Yeah, but... Or like that he's... Obviously not. No, no. I like Adam.

I'm 18. There's a reason why I said that in the dream. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So that's why I say these things are like, if you stab your dog in the dream, you do not desire to stab your dog. That's almost never going to be the interpretation, especially if it didn't make you happy. It made you horrified.

So you're... So, again, this is not about Adam, but he's... the human icon of the elephant and therefore the the go-to representation maybe of how the elephant in action can go wrong in certain ways and maybe also you know times when it needs to be given free reign because what am I saying there's nothing wrong with righteous anger if you have suffered an injustice at the hands of some asshole be fucking pissed because that's the right way to feel. That is appropriate to the circumstances. If you're, uh, you know, six-year-old sweet as a button, uh, you know, cousin comes and brings you a cupcake and says,

here, I made this for you. And you are angry at them and you want to hit them. Okay, that's wrong. Something seriously wrong. I mean, that's the wrong reaction to the wrong situation. Uh, anyway. So righteous. Nothing wrong with being angry in the right way, for the right reason. Um, long story short about the of the elephant thing. We need emotions. We're not human without them. Of course. Okay. So we've figured that out a little bit.

So they announced their relative departure times and you guys agree to go to bed or whatever that's never spoken. But the next thing, you get another scene change and you're waking up in bed? Yeah. I'm waking up in bed and heading downstairs because I look at the alarm clock. It's like, I don't have an alarm clock.

the dream I do. It's 7am, so Sitch should be leaving sometime soon, and Adam should already be gone. So I'm obviously going to check out Adam's room to see, you know, like, is he still there? Like, did he oversleep? Like, is he in trouble? Good looking out. But when I get there. Yeah.

Good looking out as a friend would, certainly. So do you remember that process of getting out of bed and walking down the hall? Or looking down the stair, and then the room is really? right off the stairs. So it's a tree just you turn on the stairs and you go into the room. Okay. And I didn't ask, I mean, and this may not be relevant. Like when you guys were playing video games, I didn't ask how you were situated in the room, like physically positioned, all three in a row on a couch. I'm in the middle. One on the side on the other side is how I imagined. I can't, I can't

specifically remember left or right side, but I was in the middle. And this, this is almost like just for my curiosity, but whenever I need to get better at asking good questions and tightening up the experience. And I go back and I listen to these and I'm like, half a dozen things I never even thought to ask. I haven't asked you if you have smelled anything or seen any color. It may not be relevant. Sometimes I just let people volunteer. But I didn't even think to ask until right now, two and a half hours in. I think color, color, color, I see color in dreams. I don't remember smelling anything in this dream. No.

I mean, I may I've seen dreams before, but I don't remember. It's very common. So if you are a fully able person, so to speak, you have all the senses that humans can be born with, you will almost certainly more often hear, more often see things. Next most common, almost as common, is hearing. And then way down is touch, taste, smell, any of the, any of the, those things are, it's not very common that we have strong tactile or olfactory or gustatory sensations in dreams at all.

They just, they do occur sometimes, but very rarely. It's a, but then if you were born blind, you will never have any visuals in your dream at all. You have no concept of what a visual is, but they will, they will describe hearing things, primarily and touching things. Those become the two most common things reported. Tangent there, a little heap, dream, dream theory. trial experience in the stream, but only for like a second.

And we'll go over that. That's with a lighter when I try to touch it to turn that off. That's right. And that is good. We're getting that, we're getting that too. And I'll try to speed it up a little bit for a bit. We've been going for bed.

I don't want to keep you forever. But I also want to give you a good thorough, thorough experience. That's why I'm in these things for the marathon. I'm like, how long does it last? I have no idea. Just four and a half hours, whatever you want. That's okay. What's that, sorry?

I'm just saying I'm free to light either way so that's fine good deal I did have like canceled so yeah I'm not I'm not planning to keep you for another two hours but if we did I'm not whatever

you know I don't care um uh so you go down to the room and you what am I trying to say you see that it is minimally disorganized

you know it looks like someone has been there. It's not trashed. Is that kind of how you're describing it? Like somebody left in the hurry and, you know, they didn't clean up after themselves properly. Like, you know, the glasses are like still like disorganized.

The bed's not done. You know, like a table's been shifted a little bit or something, but it's like, it's not like crazy bad or anything like that. No. Yeah. If the room's completely trashed, I'd be quite shocked. Like, what happened here, you know? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Or something. Yeah. And that may be not representative how you see Adam, but again, the elephant. The elephant did not leave the room untidy on purpose as a malicious act. But it is kind of, in my estimation, the element of the, what am I trying to say, inherent to the elephant that it is untidy. Emotions are messy things. But it's a messiness that looks lived in. It's like in a comfortable, like when I woke up, I didn't make the bed until right before we got together here. There's all kinds of mess you can't see on the stream because fuck it, it's not on the stream. I don't care.

So there's indications of things like that. I think that's the idea of, because it very well could have been immaculate. He could have been like the perfect house guest. He washed his own dishes. He made the bed and, you know, noticed that the table was askew and had put. put it back himself. And you could have known all these things instantly. Oh, he, he cleaned up.

I know how he used the room. And he put it back together. What a nice guy. But I think it's more along the idea. It's not really about Adam. You don't imagine he would be a messy house guest or inconsiderate. But the nature of the elephant is, is to be messy by nature. So I think that's, I think that's, if that makes sense to you, that's kind of where you're leaning towards it.

It lived in, lived in disorganization. Fine. Somebody was here. There's evidence of it. But. underneath the surface level expected disarray of a lived-in space, you had a feeling something was wrong that spurred you to go look further or you noticed something that was off that made you. Yeah, what did you notice? So this actually, so this is a week, in my dream, I'm 99% of,

sure there's like an antique like very nice lighter in one of the cupboards of the room which does exist this cupboard does exist and then when I open that well after I've done the bed you know after I've started cleaning up I was that it's gone and this is this is like a nice lighter you know which doesn't actually

exist in real life but in the dream it's felt like you know like I would definitely like notice this thing and it's gone so I immediately start looking for it like oh well that seems like it's weird that's no longer in place and that's when I find it behind the table and that's when fear kicks into the dream, you know. Beforehand, it's not a scary dream. It's just like a pretty nice dream. Yeah, none of this seems, and you haven't mentioned any negative emotions. The other thing

I haven't asked anything about that I just realized now, two and a half hours in, whether you had any emotional experience. You did mention the idea of having fun with them, which is its own kind of, you know, generally the socialization was positive. If it was not, it would feel different. It would be, it was negative and you would describe that. But otherwise, not a lot of emotional content so forth. It's all, a more distant rational conceptualization. It's just being, you know, average to good so far in terms of how I'm feeling. Yeah. Yeah.

And no worries. There is a turning point and it hits. It hits when you start looking beneath the surface of emotionality. And you've already a little bit said you're not, you don't trust it enough to rely in it. You think it needs to be tamed, ruled for your own sake. So here you've got the. representation of the elephant writ large, so to speak, as a, um, house guest. And that's interesting because house can often, and often does represent,

um, our physical body in a sense, the concept of our body. Like, we think of emotions as existing in us where we can't find they don't, they don't, they're not a nodule on the liver. Oh, there's my anger. It's not like that. But, but, But we have this concept of there is inside of me and outside of me. And the emotions I experience are a part of my inside. So as a way of like, it would occupy a room in a house. So you've got this representation of,

of a house that is a, an interior space that is an analogous to bodies. And you've got the emotional elephant side of things occupying a room in the house. And now it's departed. I don't like as well. What's that? A room I don't like. That's associated with a bad person in real life as well.

Yeah. I completely forgot about that too. Yeah. So you've kind of doubled up on this idea of let's make sure. And again, this has nothing to do with Adam actually. Just the. No, I know. I know.

No, no. And I'm not just reassuring you, but also myself for the audience in terms of drawing the connection is like, if in the sitch and Adam dichotomy, such as the writer, Adam is the elephant, and then they both have their benefits. Neither one is, it's not like Sitch needs to ride at them to keep them out of trouble. No, sometimes the elephant needs to be trusted. It knows where it's going. But the downside is when someone is so rational, they can't see the forest for the trees, whatever,

or so emotional they can't make good decision. So there's a downside of, you're looking at the downside of, you've got a person who represents an idea. You're looking at the downside of that idea. You're putting that context in the room, someone who's never good person to you in the first place. So it's like not only is this, so this is all taking place in this environment of,

um, a very intimate interior space, something from the inside coming out as emotions do. Maybe emotions existing in a, coming from a space of cruelty in a way. I don't know if that's making sense. This is some idea there that I think I'm not expressing well. Yeah.

I'd rather hear you. I didn't immediately, but like imagine the gas bedroom. Like I don't, have good thoughts associated with it. I was never like abused there or anything, but I know the person within it was very mean to many people who I care generally about, you know. To put it very lightly, very, very lightly. And so we've got all these connecting iconic representations coming together to say, be careful, strong emotions out of control can hurt people. Does that make sense? I mean, I kind of just... that that person actually who owned that room wasn't like an evil person who's methodical they just lashed out on their emotions they're very prideful you know emotional person who uh well i don't know how this relates actually to the lighter we'll get to that there but that seemed like planned but yes uh the person who the room i associate with is like i wouldn't say like they're vindictive on purpose they just they get these feelings and they need to take it out on people and it doesn't really matter who they take it out on and whether it's fair or whether it's earned It just happens.

Yeah. And I'd say that is precisely the downside of emotions. Like, if you give them, if they take too much control, they will cause damage in their expression. The difference between, say, righteous anger and wrath. The funny thing about the seven deadly sins, and where did this come from? Well, because it's all the ways that our innate emotions we cannot live without can go wrong. I was mentioning this earlier, the idea of being proud of our effort. we put in the work to do something and damn it, you should feel good about that. And then there's

being prideful. And pride goeth before a fall. You get too big for your bridges. You put yourself on a pedestal and you fall off. Of course, of course you do. So it's like we can't live a life without any pride. We can't live a life without with too much pride. So you've got this thing of like, how do we, again, it's the balance of emotional state. So you're looking at the way that these emotional, this emotional elephant can go wrong in a way that lashes out uncontrollably and hurts people when, you know, a little bit more rider would, he would have had a better life. The people around wouldn't have been hurt. Yeah.

And so actually in the absence of this icon of out of control elephant maybe, the writer remains, the, the sitch representation. He's still in the house. so he's an available asset perhaps. In a sense, we're dealing with the aftermath of the elephant's rampage, if that makes sense. Maybe, yes. Although I feel like when I first discovered the light, I was like, he must be being framed or something. Like, come on, we love Adam, you know?

Yeah. Could it be that bad? And then when I notice the tap and then the fire alarm, then I start to get really scared. because, like, you know, one coincidence of, like, somebody causing harm is one thing, but to sabotage all the means of, like, alleviating that harm, that's, that you can't, hopefully, like, oh, oopsie, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Somebody just stumbled in the thing.

They just stumbled into the fire alarm. I don't think so. Nope, nope, definitely not. No, no, there's, so there is actually also, and there's a dawning sense of discovering just how bad it is. And I think that's very common with a lot of experiences. Sometimes it hits us all at once and we go, oh shit. And sometimes it's like, that's not good. That's really not good.

Oh, my God, this is a disaster. And it builds on us as we discover more through being willing to observe. So there may be a bit of that process going like here. It's like seeing how far the rabbit hole goes. It's like first you've got to decide to look. Then you got to decide to go in. And then you got to decide to keep going. There's all these choices that build on one another.

So in this dream, it seems like you very much said, okay, if I confront this possibility, what does it look like? How far does the rabbit hole go? What is it going to look like if it's fully expressed in all of its disasterness? Okay, so I wanted to ask about how you came to look in the cupboard. Was it just a routine part of cleaning? And you open the cupboard and like, oh, shit. Yeah, and it's like in my imagination, only my dream, this slider is like this prominent aspect of the room.

So it's something that should be there. It's something that, like, I would never be able to miss if I open the cupboard, knife, so it wasn't there. It'd kind of be like, you know, like a TV in your room. Like, of course, like, if the TV's gone in the morning, you're 100% are just going to know that it's not there, like, no matter what. Even though this doesn't actually exist in real life. Yeah, you know, for sure.

Well, that's interesting, too. Yeah, so you've, um, lighters are tools, and they are tools that have a creative and destructive capacity. If you're camping, you want a lighter to get a fire going, so you can cook some fish. you get dinner. Or you can use it to start a house fire and kill people. It is a completely neutral object that must be put to use by intent by someone. And the results that are going to obtain is going to be based on that intent and therefore the method implemented. I want to say,

hear you say a little bit maybe about the nature of such an object. Like when you think of an antique lighter of that kind, does it come from a particular? era in British history? Would it belong to a particular kind of upper crust, twit, noble person type? Or more maybe, maybe in a reasonably posh and very, very

gentlemanly fellow. Because I remember a lot about this lighter. It's like a fronzish, like very like nice, metaly lighter. And I actually remember almost buying one in a vintage shop, but I never got to buy it like several years ago. Like a similar design, but not the same one. This one was like bigger, you know,

And it's, yeah, it's like very, like, you know, bronze, old, like, has some grit on it, but it's like, you know, you'd imagine silver upper class buying this probably. Sure. So. Yeah, very old, very antique. And when you say very old, I mean, would you put it in 1800, 1700s? I don't know if you have a time frame. Maybe like 1800s, like 17, like 50 or something like that. Gotcha.

Okay. And it is, are you, you're familiar with a Zippo? Is it basically like a Zippo metal lighter? But larger. But like this one, you could hold down and like leave hold on and the fire will keep going, I guess. Because that's when I saw it, that's how it's going. Yeah. Well, with a lot of the Zippos, it's just basically like lighting a lamp wick, you spark it once.

And if you leave it open, it just keeps burning. You don't have to hold anything. It just draws on whatever oil or lighter fluid is in there. I had one of those once upon time. Very poorly made leaked. Not a great, but I enjoyed keeping it with me. It was fun. Yeah.

I bought it cheap at a bed of head. shop, you know, back when I was experimenting, so to speak. So there's something about this room containing a potentially destructive object. So there's, there's, and I think that's related to, you know, in order for, say, emotions to have negative consequences, they have to have access to, in a way like, like solving a murder means, motive and opportunity. the means the means have to be close enough in order to act upon the motive to take advantage of an opportunity so there's I think there's some connecting link

there with the idea of a dangerous object in the room that is unguarded in a way that that is is available to be used in a in an improper manner there's something something along those lines of the means motive and opportunity like you're trying to put together a picture of how something could go wrong. You got to figure out where all the pieces fit. You were making a note. I don't know if something came to your mind. Um, no, I just remember something at towards the end of the dream. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm thinking of it. I actually, so the last image, the very last image, I'm thinking about it and I looked up some, like, like a horror podcast and like, it looks like almost one to one

to what I saw and I realized I drew from that. So I actually, I'm downloading the photo for that right now and I'll in chat later. I'm sorry, they just popped in my head. Like, the way that I remember this thing moving kind of reminds me

of something that was like brainstorming while I was talking to multitasking and I was like, wait, from this horror potter off, and then I looked at it up, I'm like, this is it, 100%. So yeah, sorry.

That's why I was thinking it. It's actually, actually the idea of having spontaneous connections while someone else is talking is actually a sign you're paying attention. Otherwise,

that wouldn't be possible. You'd be just like passively, your ear drum would be vibrating, but nothing would be going on in between, you know. No, and that's good. And like, interrupt me, stop me anytime. This is not, look at Ben Ramble. This is like, what can I do to get you to a place where something makes sense? And if you could do that on your own, I would just sit here and fascinate it as you explain what your dream means to me, honestly. But people have a hard time with that.

They need a mirror to reflect things as a, uh, uh, a conversational partner to provide suggestions and just not coming up with on their own. It helps I have a little experience and kind of a knack for this. I don't think I'm the only one. I think people can do this for themselves and they can talk it over with relatives, friends.

Talk your dreams out with people and see if you can come to some understanding together. It may not be perfect. It may not be right. But if it makes sense to you, that's kind of what matters in terms of right. Does it fit? Is it useful?

So it's almost infinite ways to go with dreams. but I think something makes sense more than others, but that's my, it's like my opinion, man. So why an antique lighter is where I was getting to next is like, why couch the dangerous object in this manner? What is it about that? Go ahead. I really like them compared to normal lighters, but I might just be my brain like, oh, this thing must be valuable. you didn't notice it, you noticed it missing immediately. Yeah.

Oh, it must be something that you like. Like, it's a style that you like or whatever. Very much so. But it's good to know how you feel about that type of object because it might explain why it's in the room. It's like, even though it is potentially dangerous, you're drawn to it anyway. There's something you like about it.

It's something you would allow close to you, regardless of the danger. And again, this is, we haven't talked about this in a while, but getting back to the broader context of initiating new in real life relationships. You are exposing yourself to danger, as we mentioned before. And you're kind of bringing some of the tools of your own destruction into that with you. You're giving them the ammo that someone malicious could use to hurt you.

You're trusting they won't and you hope it works out. And that's kind of the nature of relationships. I have no idea what you're going to do. I'm going to do what I do. And I hope I can guess accurately what you're going to do. But people lie. People put manipulate and put on false impressions. And you never know until it's too.

sometimes you can get warning signs and that that can be its own thing but but yeah yeah definitely like like oh yeah i'd really like to like meet up i rl like tomorrow i'd be that would be like a warning flag or like moving too quickly you know to a point in which i'm uncomfortable even myself very very well can be well and then there's and then there's different comfort zones where nobody's wrong where it's like i'm sorry we've only known for three months i'm not comfortable meeting you and someone says, we've been talking for a week. I think I know you well enough. And that's, neither one is necessarily wrong. But, uh, but, but, but you're going to get those, those different and they're both motivated by the same thing and for the right for the same reason.

Um, I think, I feel we've known each other long enough because X or Y or Z. Um, so that may be, that may be enough about the lighter in terms of like why it's there. And then also why it, it was the object that got put to use. Something about an, a risk introduced in a place that you knew a previously dangerous person was with a representation of the potential for emotions to go out of control. And I mean, almost from the first, this was an idea I had. And I've been waiting until now to get around to it is like what happens if emotions get out of control and vulnerabilities are exploited? Everything can go up in flames. It's like a house fire. It's like it has a very destructive quality to the,

the disaster of an exploding relationship, the desire for a healthy and positive connection, just disintegrating, just torched. I don't know if that really speaks to it. Yeah, I mean, I do obviously have that fear, but for me, what's weird is that there was no fire. You know, I prevented it, even though it was tempering. Like, I, like, I think, like, if I came into the room

and I noticed, like, just as it's falling onto the thing, that would be more of a, like, an easy parallel, like, oh, this is going to go terribly, like, you know, like maybe this relates to, like, you know, me, like, below my Instagram or WhatsApp friends, you know, meeting in real life. That's going to be terrible, but it didn't happen, you know. It's just kind of this precarious thing, which I do manage to. Yeah. Eventually, uh, Sandel. Well, well, that's good. I'm glad that idea actually does kind of resonate with you because then what I'm thinking is that's the thought process that brought you to that point of

a disaster is about to happen. I call. caught it in time, how do I deal with this? And what is that resolution look like? And what you did was, so you found that the lighter had fallen off a table or was sitting on a table? No, I've deliberately placed over newspapers and, like, towels, like flammable objects, right? And left running. So at any point, it could tip over or, you know, combust. and that's where like the dread obviously like comes in because it's like it's like a little pile of like the most like combustible things of like this room you know like like the perfect like a thing to start a fire

so the exact thing is I try to pick it up first but it's really hot because it's been running for a while I assume so I can't touch it with my hands the next thing I do is I try to you know go to the sink and get some water and take it out but the water has like the sink just the work, the shower doesn't work. It looks like the water's been sabotaged somehow in this room. And then as I'm like, you know, walking up the room, running out the room, I noticed the fire alarm has also been screwed with purposefully. And it's when I go downstairs, grab like a bucket full of water and only head back up to that room again. Then I can like douse the, douse the lighter. Yeah. So there's an, there's an interesting order of operations here. The first thing came into my head was too hot to handle. Like, and then that, that is metaphorical, but it's also

literal in the sense of like a literal lighter, but also there's a blacksmithing type type of reference to it where the steel is too hot to shape. There's something there in the idea of, you know, and seriously, you can't grab it with your hand. It is too hot to handle it and go for food as well.

But there's, and this may not be what you're thinking about, but there's the general idea of something being the wrong fit for what it needs to do or the the circumstances being off. So you lucked out in a way that the circumstances did not align that a blaze was fully engulfing the room the moment you walked in because it had started long ago. You missed it.

You very much caught the beginning of a problem. You noticed it. And then you tried to interact with it. And the directly physically grabbing it doesn't work. It can't work. It's that is too, that's going to damage you. It's too hot to touch to pick up. So that's not going to solve the problem.

And why it needs to be represented to you in that way, I'm not sure. It's like what in some sense, there's the metaphysical idea of it's, you know, emotional problems are intangible. Sometimes you can solve them by walking away. There's distance. You can give it time. You can solve them physically by causing the person you're arguing with to be on a life. that is a solution. Some people have chosen in the past. No more argument, person on a life. It's not saying you wonder that, but there's a variety of physical means you can use to solve a

problem. And there's something about the lighter being too hot that shows a particular kind of, say, physical solution or metaphysical approach is not going to work. So you default to another. And it was, the order of operations actually was you went to a nearby room first. You actually left this room entirely or did you just go to the bathroom that is attached to this room? Well, it's technically a separate room, but you know, there's like a door that's like a little like bathroom.

You know, I run like by this point of panicking. I'm not thinking rationally, I don't think. Like I see lighter, lighter about a lightroom of fire. First thing, you know, monkey brain, grab it, close it. Can't grab it too hot. monkey brain and water run to the little you know the closest sink uh so the closest so the closest sink so the closest sink first so the closest sink was in a bathroom attached to this room yeah it wasn't it wasn't out the hallway no and this is the this is the

this is the home actually looks like in real life you know so i'm probably burping on the bathroom how it looks like for one to one and that's a nice guest room with its own private bath how about that dig it dig it um so yeah and you go in there and you realize, wait a minute, the water doesn't work. Wait a minute. The shower doesn't work. And it's dawning on you at that point, or not until you see the smoke alarm. Because first it's panic that something bad is going to happen.

But the sabotage, yeah, it becomes like utter dread that somebody has purposefully tried to make sure that, like, my whole family dies, you know? Yeah. And when I'm running out the room to, like, go try another room to order. And I see the lighter is, not the lighter, the fire alarm is, like, you know, broken or whatever. but like that's even more confirmation. Like that's irrefutable proof at that point. Yeah. And that's when it really hits you that this was not an accident.

I mean, someone could have left lighter running, maybe. Someone could have accidentally, maybe the city's working on the water. Who knows? But someone broke that fire alarm. Okay,

one plus two plus three, it all adds up at this point. And there's very often, there's very often a process, again, if we're going to assume this is still, in the context of you broadly considering the nature of progressing intimate relationships,

getting to know people better, becoming more vulnerable yourself by opening to them so that you can get that reciprocal openness and have a deeper connection. There is often a process of discovering a problem, trying to remedy it, and finding out this problem was caused by the person and they meant it. And this is, this is not to mean... It says this is reminiscent of a scenario, actually, of somebody I did try to get closer with IRL, but I don't want to leak the specific details

because they might watch us podcasts in the future. Fair enough. Era and stuff. But yeah, it wasn't making me think of somebody who purposefully like distance themselves. And then when you got to the root of the problems, like they caused, like, you know, like I thought like, oh, you know, things didn't work out.

But no, they wanted things to be, more distin, you know, and they just couldn't admit it. Yeah, and just as you can sabotage the physical means to extinguish a physical fire, you can sabotage the emotional connections such that it cannot be repaired. It can't be put back together. The damage of dissolution, the destruction of the relationship can't be fixed because the other person doesn't want it to. For whatever reason, any reason or no reason at all. But rather, I mean, we don't look at that as an ethical or not something a good person would do.

A good person might say, I like you, but I'm just not having fun hanging out. I know this is hard. But then some people can't be that blunt. Some people would rather sneakily make you decide to leave them. And then they can, they don't have to look you in the eyes and say, it's not me, it's you. You know, that kind of a thing. So I think you're exploring that. And we don't have to get into the details of that, but it's good that once we started putting together a description of what's happening,

the memory of that relationship came to mind. I think those are the moments where it's like, that might be actually the experience that I was referencing to create this scenario. It was like when I think about what it's like for relationships to go wrong, that one pops up into my head. Of course it does. So again, not a one-to-one correlation, every element the same, but the idea of a fire that was kind of intentionally set and the means of repairing the connection or maintaining it was also sabotaged, the means to put out the fire that was intended to destroy the relationship. ship. And it finally dawns on you that there's enough external clues. The lighter didn't get left open on accident. The water didn't get shut up on accident. That smoke alarm sure as fuck didn't get broken on accident. This is a pattern. And the fact that a lighter was in a perfectly

combustible place, you know, with all tissues and newspapers, like who reads newspapers nowadays, you know? Right. I've never seen a newspaper and I guess through my life. Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, and there's a, there's a discovery process that goes on with that, too, where you don't, you don't have a reason to suspect anything. You assume it's not happening. And then you start seeing clues and that the red flags warning signs. And eventually they add up enough where you're like, okay, this is, that's what it is. I can't, I can't rationalize it away. I can't benefit of the doubt this anymore. It is what it is. I finally see it for what it is. So, where are we at with that? Eventually, you do, you have to leave this room entirely. You have to leave this room entirely to find the means to put out the fire. And we've talked about what this room represents to you in terms of the person that occupied it in the past. And the most recent occupant representing the broadly out of control elephant potential, the answer was not found in this room. Like this room could not solve the problem for you. The perspective of this room, the energy of the room, the people who had occupied.

or what they represent. The answer is not in this room. You had to leave, where did you go to find the bucket? Downstairs. So I left the floor entirely. So this room is, we have like a basement level. And I went to the basement to get some water, essentially. So it's interesting.

On this ground floor, so to speak, is there another bathroom and another kitchen? There is another bathroom. But I don't know. I hadn't think of that at the time. Maybe I was just panic. That's why. That's why I'm asking is like, it might have made more sense to go to the kitchen and get anything, you know, a bowl. And, you know, but you didn't.

There's something about the basement, perhaps. That's where you needed to go. That's where the answer was found. That's where you finally found the means to extinguish the fire. We didn't talk really much about that. We kind of glossed over it in terms of the description. Well, I ran to another thing and I got some water. What's in the basement?

What is the basement to you? Any, any connection? There is a, uh, true. the basement. I mean, a lot of good times had that. We have a kind of retrofitted jacuzzi there. I used to watch movies in that. Oh, yeah.

When I was a young kid. That was fun. Yeah, my friends had a lot of fun. It's like a place where I chill with my friends, if it's not my room. And there's a single bath room on that bottom, like basement level where that's where I actually went to get the bucket and the water and to fill it up and then rush back upstairs, basically. Gotcha. So it would have been a very different experience if you had always been terrified at the basement. And you never went in there.

And it was dark and dirty and cobwebs. And you know, you know, that's that's a very, but actually what this basement represents is I had a lot of good times here. I had friends over. I made successful connections. There's something you learned in that experience or a hope for the potential for good connections was restored by remembering that experience. something about that place provided the ammunition to defeat the other problem in that sense. So that might be something going to. It was a very short portion of the dream.

But I don't know if there's more you want to say about it or if there's other elements to that because basically you just grab the water and got the hell out because you needed to extinguish it. With the roots where it's like, you know, this is like this dream is like a metaphysical, manifestation of like my closeness to people and you know like the problems there like at the basement like that's where like the good memories were had like you know like me and the boys you know just chilling downstairs like we would share secrets we'd like get close like personal but like it wasn't like weird like it was all wholesome times down there like maybe you kind of have to lean into that to try and help the problem although you know if we are assuming that the relationship was sabotaged

and that's the lighter and I'm not sure that leading into like even the most positive developments of relationship can save one, which is being purposefully sabotaged. Like if a person really doesn't want your help, they won't get your help no matter what, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's absolutely true. But kind of that lead a horse to water type of thing is like it's, they got to want to drink.

I think that's very true. So it wasn't, it wasn't necessarily lessons learned or some specific ammunition. I think I said that wrong, but like, you know, there's like a silver bullet kills the werewolf. You got a werewolf. You need a silver bullet. But this is more, I think it's more the, if we characterize it this way, the fear that leaving yourself vulnerable and the potential for something to go catastrophically wrong, that fear itself could be extinguished by remembering the good times. Like, you don't have to dwell on this or let it destroy you at your entire house, like your, your self in a sense. You can extinguish those fears with remembering it is possible

to have good connections with people. You've done it before, and you're absolutely certain it will happen again. And that, just reference to that place where good things happened and good relationships were born and sustained.

Was itself the ammunition to extend, the water, the necessary water to quench the fire of destruction? Something like that. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Like, it's hard for me 100% no, but that's kind of where I'm going.

My mind is going to, you know, like good experience. there's like, or maybe like, you know, just drawing on like the positive, so even though you do have bad experience, they overpower the negative ones. Absolutely. And that

brings finally, we're on page two here. And it was, once it was extinguished that you had the and a new level of fear or horror dawned upon you, which is if I hadn't gotten this under control, this have destroyed my entire family.

Yeah, like, you know, I'm very close, obviously, to tell me to my parents. And although my, you know, the sister I'm closer to wasn't there at the time, it's still my younger sister, me, Sitch, and my parents at my house. And, you know, that would be horrifying, you know, especially like if you survive, you know, and everyone else is dead. That's, like, I can't think of anything worse. Absolutely. Something occurred to me in just thinking about conceptualizing that broader idea of like, why would it bother you for your family to be hurt? Well, you care about them. What is it about the nature of this kind of fire that might put them at risk? So had the fire raged out of control, had you not been able to tame that beast, so to speak, bring the potential destructive emotional catastrophe under control. In a very real practical sense, your. self-destruction would impact your family. They would see you suffer. You might lash out at them.

You might become the monster from the room that treats everyone poorly and because their emotions are out of control. He's like, he's got my headphones. Oh, that's funny. No, so there is a, go ahead. When I do get, like, quite emotionally, like, wounded, I do normally just kind of go cult-up in the family. Like, I try and, like, you know, find a place to rent for a little bit. stay away from them and I know they really, really don't like that. Like, that's really deeply

hurtful for them. Oh. Even though, like, I'm not lashing out at them. I'm not screaming at them. I'm not being disrespectful anyway. I just kind of go away and they don't like that at all. Is it a quite close family? It's weird for them to have me just completely go cold turkey.

See, I've got, and this, there is no wrong answer. I've got a very different relationship, say, with my family is like, we might, okay, so what is it recently? We might see each other, other once a year and talk twice a year and, you know, text three times a year. I mean, that kind of a thing. We're like, we're just not, we're not close people. Even when we live together, we were not, we all like to do our own things. We're all very solitary, distant. I've said this before.

I live in my garage. This is my wizard cave. If I never had to leave this room, I would be ecstatic. I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to do anything. I don't want to talk to people. I don't want to deal with traffic and shopping and all that stuff. So, And that goes for my family, too. I do not dislike them. They are not bad people. We just don't like being around people, any of us. So there's a very interesting thing going on with you, which is just different in different family dynamics, nothing wrong with that.

It seems like your family would rather you hang around in a bad mood than be calmly absent. They value your presence more. It's like, we'll put up with you being a jerk. Just don't run away from us. Well, they don't like me being a jerk, but they just don't like me running away either. they don't like me running away more and like I don't think I am much of a even when I'm in a bad mood against my family

just because I know the consequences are quite dire and you're just going to get me in trouble later and I can normally like hold it in you know like okay I'm in a bad mood I'm just gonna shut shut up you know if I'm like sharing a room with them I'm trying to excrete myself as soon as I can and just head back to my room and like lock it or whatever

for sure yeah no and that's a good good healthy thing too so you're looking at different strategies for maintaining healthy relationships which may be to deny someone temporarily the connection they would prefer in the moment because long term that's going to be much healthier. It's better for you. It's better for them. Let's just knock this off and start over later. Sleep on it. That kind of a thing. So yeah, that's this potential for a, you know, the raging fire of out of control emotion to have, you know, very destructive

elements on your relationship effects on the relationship with your family. And that's just, what am I trying to say? When we kind of look at it like that, It's like, duh, but not from a sense of like you should have known that. But now that it makes sense, it's like, well, obviously, yeah, if you don't take the time you need to get away from people, if you don't quench certain fires before they get out of control, then they're going to do some major damage. And it may not be, you're looking at like the catastrophic circumstance, which is imagine the fire of a raging elephant has done so much damage that it has destroyed my relationship. with my family. There's no coming back. There's no family anymore. Even if they're not dead, they're dead to me. Or I'm dead to them. Worse, you know, that's, yeah, that, that's its own kind of, there's the death of a relationship that doesn't have to, you know, necessitate the actual

death of the person. Something, something like that going on there. And after all this drama, Sitch awakens. And he is, I wrote down something, he's something. Oh, he calls us, go ahead she calls adam and his wife but adam's completely gone he now checked into the airport wife doesn't know what he is she's worried about him uh he says it's just crazy that he's removing adam as co-posts until things get cleared up gotcha yeah um again you say and so for some reason and Sitch was there with his dad, which I don't think we've ever heard anything about his dad on the show, or he's never talked about his dad to me. No, I don't know anything about that. But that's about it, right? Yeah. I didn't even remember his dad arriving. I just know when he's leaving, he has a dad going with him. And I'm just like, oh, you might have showed up to give him the report.

Like, in case of something, like, you know, but obviously I'm terrified at this moment. So I'm not actually thinking about his dad. I'm just noticing that. And it is interested. If we look at it. the economy of a dichotomy of elephant and rider the elephant has had a little bit of a rampage that was worse than it looked but you got it under control uh worse that it looked initially you found it how bad it was and then you panicked and did something to fix it and the only thing that was left after the solving the problem of the elephant that wasn't even there anymore is now the rider the icon of the writer pops up the pure maybe pure logic logo side of things uh representationally is what remains. In a way, it almost feels like, um, exactly like you said before, of the idea of

I'm trying to actually suppress my emotions a little more and put my rational mind in control. So you're in a way showing yourself this representational scene of look how bad it can be when my emotions get out of control. Look at what's at risk. Look at what I have to do to fix it. And what still remains, what, what is then in control is the writer is, is that that's, that's what's still present after you've suppressed this other side of things. Is that kind of connection? Is that kind of connecting? Yeah, but then, but then what he's got to do is in his dad's there. And so you very well could have not had a dad there. He could have had a wife in the dream. He could have had a jetpack and

flown to Mars. I mean, anything is possible. But there's a reason you imagine that his dad was present. And he was, he was talking to his dad about, whoa, that's crazy. Someone said, well, yeah, like, oh, like my son, you could have died. Like what the fuck is going on, you know? So I shouldn't have sworn. But, um, no, that's, like, obviously, like, obviously, like, I, like, I, like, obviously like he's a concerned dad you know, his son was almost dead. He's watching his son try and figure out what happened, you know.

Like the son making the right close to the right people, seeing like, can he put this together? And stuff like that. Yeah. No, that's definitely a thing. There's the, we have again another icon of family in that sense. Like you were worried about your family. We show

Sitch's dad is worried about him. So there's that too. But it's also I mean, it wasn't his mother. If it's just family, it would be his mother. So it's got to be family and specifically male family, possibly, or that fatherly energy. There's something, if we look at it broadly stereotypically, women, specialists in the emotional content, men, specialists in rational content, broadly speaking. So maybe it's natural that the father figure or literally the father in the sense would be there as another.

layer of say maybe an additionally older wiser level of the writer to that's there to set it to represent what i'm not sure but but it is important that it's sites dad and it such is the writer in that sense uh i don't know i think it's more he maybe it's like obviously concerned for a son but also like kind of proud that his son is taking charge he's taking action like maybe like like the way my family like if i could actually control my right like to control the elephant to find out why things went wrong and like they'll be watching me and be like hey like you're actually taking charge of like yeah you were angry yeah you did do this thing yeah like i'm proud that you're you know trying to figure out what happened and how we can

well maybe not prevent it but like you know figure out why that happened and uh you know have consequences for it yeah and there's also um i just thought of another layer and it's so there's so many layers it's personal layers and and metaphysical layers and cultural layers there's there's a different interaction we have with mom and dad in a lot of ways mom is unconditional love and you don't have to earn it and she can't help that it's just the nature of mothers i made up human being i will love them forever there's nothing you can do wrong i'll support him no matter what that's a very kind of unique that has its positives and negatives you can get you know anyway relationship with the dad is something different we don't want to earn his love as much as his

You know, we want mom to think we're a good person. She always does, and that's a source of strength. It's like that that's our stable emotional rock on that side. The other side is now can I also earn respect? Maybe I'm worthy of love, but am I worthy of respect of someone who's a valid judge in a way of respect? You know, your father is a model of the judge. Go ahead. For me, it's just because my dad, he's like not like a normal.

like he is like almost transhuman level of logic over emotion like I could have like like the house and he would have said logically layout why did you do this and he like makes very logical punishments like he like I don't think he's like even like properly capable of having like emotional conversations but he is like he is like the writer 100% like he can like you know work you through anything like he knows everything about everything like even like you know like when you're old you find out your parents don't know everything I can ask my father like every Byzantine Empire, emperor, because he's read like thousands, one thousand books. He's basically dedicated his life to, like, reading fiction and nonfiction.

He would probably still know. So he's still like a very, very, like, grand figure in my life. Like, he knows everything about everything. Fair enough. That is got to be simultaneously comforting that, like, such a person is your father and cares about you and wants the best for you and will offer you advice. And at the same time, terrifying. I will never live up to that shit.

That's not going to happen. And you don't really get emotional conversations either because he's just like logically like go like every like subpoint and you're like, I understand that you try to help. But it's not really helpful. This is just an idea. And I don't know how relevant it is, but it's possible you're, you let you let it be Sitch's dad as the representative of ultra logic. Because in that context for that moment, you weren't comfortable having to be your dad show up and look at what was going on in the house while you were gone or while he was gone. That kind of a thing. Instead, you're like, well, Sitch has a dad.

So there's still a dad here that represents dad energy. And but it's Sitch his dad. And he was worried about Sitch, and that's okay. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Throwing it out there. It either like you go, whoa, or it's like, maybe.

Hey. Well, it is something that I noticed is that. I didn't feel as guilty when there was Sitch and his dad, like, talking and trying to figure out. But when my family turns up, I feel like the most guilty person in the world. Like, I feel so responsible. Like, I've just let them down. That was the final kind of the final element

Yeah And there's also There's also more extended Discussion of family In the sense of like You're calling Adam's wife And She says he's missing

In terms of like Almost as if Almost as if he never showed up It was never him that showed up Was it the first inkling That this wasn't Adam at all Like I don't know Like when I

When I remember being the dream I just thought like Oh she's like so worried too like maybe like I only think who even clarified when he showed up like maybe he didn't show up for the airport like once he left or maybe he didn't show up like to the city in the first place. I don't know. I just remember her being like super distressed. Like what do you mean?

Like why are you asking me like I'm like on a lookout for him myself, you know? Okay. Like this is terrible. Yeah, I was trying to suss out a little bit of like how long has he been missing? How panicked is she? She knew he was missing the previous night. Would that would, would she not have called? So it looks like this was a more recent development.

And it's like suddenly he's gone missing. So there's something in there about, I don't know, I might be getting, I might be getting brain dead on some of the stuff at the very, this is a reason you, there's a reason, Sitch would follow logical angles to try and track him down. Call the venue. Is he there? Call his wife.

Is she heard from him? And then kind of brought it around to, you know, because he has gone and because some crazy shit happened and Sitch doesn't know, doesn't know why. He has not been able to directly speak with Adam to get his story. He's like, well, we're just going to set him aside. He's no longer part of the show. I got to do my thing.

We're going to deal with that when it's possible. But what we're not going to do is incorporate something that's absent, literally, but also not as a part of the show as like contributing or directing or influencing the direction, if that makes sense. There's something about this that has to be completely separated. I told me figure out why this happens. Yeah, pending, pending investigation, so to speak. And he leaves to catch the flight,

and that's when the rest of your family who was in the house starts getting up. I wake them up. You wake them up. Very guilty. So you already felt guilty. Now you thought of, oh, shit, my family's here. Oh, shit, I feel responsible for the danger they were in.

And that makes a tremendous amount of sense as well. We feel a lot of responsibility, more or less, given on the person. But if you are prone to feeling responsible for your choices, it is, there are things that are within our control and that are not. And sometimes risky behavior is what's within our control, even if we aren't able to control what happens next. Closing your eyes, taking your hands off the steering wheel. You might not crash.

The longer you do it, the more likely the chance. And there's a choice to do that. That's not there. Say, if you have a diabetic emergency and suddenly pass out behind the wheel. Ah, it happens. That's, that's, you know, people have died and crashed and killed people in crashes that way. And they're, you know, but this is about assigning self-assessment, assigning responsibility in a way of, you know, I invited these people into my home. Therefore, I am responsible for the consequences of that choice.

And this is. where we get back to the metaphysical thing a little bit more of the idea of the house representing you you invite other people in if a disaster happens it will have an effect on the entire household the house as a whole no matter what even if you narrowly avoid a disaster you still took the chance that made the disaster possible so there's there's yeah i feel about it yeah and then and then even when it's just us even when no one's going to suffer but us, we are responsible for that suffering in a way that we would say it's like I put my family at risk.

And so sometimes these are not, they're multi-layered. It's like it's true at this level and true at that level, even if they're not the same thing at all, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, it does, does. Gotcha. And then it was kind of sunrise. Yes. The sun had not risen during this whole thing, but like sunrise was just starting at that point.

Yes, basically. It's now as much as one symbol doesn't mean one thing to all people. Nighttime, darkness, and daylight, sunshine, are so ingrained in us, like collective unconscious style that they, they have a lot of very common understandings. One of them is, you know, night is for hidden things, obscured shadows. You can't see clearly. You can't see it all in the dark. It's very strongly attached to, can I perceive what's around me or not.

And in the daylight, the very opposite, the sunshine very often is revelatory. It can mean a new day at which, you know, the beginning of a new thing, the change cycle completing and beginning again. It can also be that, as I say, that's what the sense I got in this is revelatory. It's the dawning, the sunlight coming out that finally allows you to see someone's watching us. That looks like Adam, but it's not. That's like a freaky monster at him. Yeah. When I phrase it all that way.

Just to be clear, like when the sunlight, it's like still very, very dark. It's just like you start to see like just over the horizon, you know, like the sky starts to like redden, like the tiniest bit. Like it's not like the sun that's coming down, you know. Like you can see the big sun like on the sunset. No, it's just the beginning. Yeah, I'm actually going to post this in the green room chat text. Oh, sure. Let me see.

thing I saw, I look like that. I don't know if I can. It's from a, like a one-minute breakdown of the story, if you look at it. It's a story from a horror series. Sorry, do you have it up or I can post it another chat if you are? It's unfortunately the way I've got this setup is it's not going to work. I'm not going to be able to bring it up here. What I can do, though, is save it and add it to the video at the end when I finally cut it together.

Yeah. Yeah. But basically it's a story from a horror podcast called The Magnus Archives where there's like a skin suit of a human, which has these little strings attached to it. And it keeps repeating the phrase, can I have a cigarette? And somebody comes up to it and then it grabs them and then, you know, it becomes in your skin suit. That's kind of the idea. It's like this unnatural, like swaying motion, kind of like literal skin suit.

Whatever's underneath is horrible. It's being held up by these strings. And that's kind of like, I don't remember like 100% of what the person was like. I remember like the sway motion, like the twitching. Gotcha. It like reminded me of the car podcast I saw, like almost identically. Yeah. And this, I would say this makes sense from multiple angles.

What you come to find out is that the, you've separated Adam from this representation in your dream in a final way of like he really wasn't. This isn't anything about Adam. This is a skin suit that looks like Adam because it is literally empty except for the meaning you put into it in his form because it's relevant to the dichotomy of the elephant and the rider. And then what happens when the downside of emotions getting out of control and causing problems? And you find out when it was at the very end malicious actor. I don't think you as a fan of A-Team in the show and not thinking of Adam that way at all are comfortable. seeing seeing him as a whole person simply smirking at you going it was me all along i know exactly what i did no it was a skin suit horror version of not adam at all they just looked like adam because this is

not adam it's very much not him at all dreams i remember like the faint strings like you know like it's like a horrifying thing and yeah i'm just absolutely like that's such terror that i wake up like in a cold sweat at that point i can't go back to sleep well this is a powerful metaphor a multiple levels. So not only is it separating dream Adam from real Adam, of course, you don't feel that way in real life. And that's not what the dream was meant to be. But also, this wasn't even dream Adam. This was a horror representation. And the way you told that story, that's fascinating, too, because what is the next danger to your emotional stability going to be? It's going to be a completely different skin suit. It's going to be someone you can't expect because it, because the nature

of the thing never changes. But what it looks like on the outside, it wears many masks, many, any skin suits. So this is a very cyclical nature of the risk of emotional vulnerability and connection is that you never know the next time you're going to try something that doesn't work with the same person or try something new with a different person that doesn't work for reasons that we didn't know who they, you didn't know what was inside their skin suit. We all wear a skin suit and hopefully we're in here somewhere and what we are is not malicious. But it could be any of us. And it's so, that's where a lot of our, I'd say, what is it, xenophobic evolutionary tendencies come from is like the things that look like us are probably like us and less dangerous because they're like us and I'm not dangerous. The things that look different are probably dangerous because they're not like us.

If you're not like me, then you're not safe like me, that kind of a thing. It goes pretty good. It doesn't mean we trust it always. but but it is a very interesting thing. It was like it, we should have a healthy concern, awareness of the potential for risk. And we also should not let it, let it keep us so anxious that we're unable to leave,

leave the house and go hunt, you know, unable to leave the cave and go hunt and gather. That's not healthy either. So it's, man, we struggle so much to balance these things out. And,

um, yeah, I was just going to mention, recapping that love, like, you know, I've told you, like this dream kind of seems silly to me.

me like the more you think about it but like just re-reminding like exactly how i saw that last image before i woke up i'm getting goosebumps again you know like it just come back like a tiny bit of fear or like maybe not fear but like anxiety that's caused so like that's interesting because like it became like the more times i thought about it the funnier like and silly it became like you know what's going on here but now it's it's kind of like when i'm really thinking about that final image like there's something like primal that just doesn't like it it doesn't like it at all yeah because that thing represents something very real, very dangerous and very unpredictable. And it's almost like you get those things together. You know, if it's not, if it's dangerous and unpredictable, but it's not real,

fuck it. You know, if it's real and it's dangerous, but it's predictable, you can handle that. If it's real and predictable, but it's not dangerous, you don't got to worry about anyway. You get all three of those together and you get that a very unique experience of this is, this is a threat. This could hurt me badly. And I don't. want that to happen. So it's, it's very good to have these strong emotions in dreams when they identify things that are meaningful to you. Like, this is exactly what I'm hoping to prevent is a situation like this. And that's the purpose I would say of analyzing it in this form to say, what is this thing? How does it work? Therefore, what can I do to make sure it doesn't happen?

Or deal with the aftermath successfully if I'm overextend myself? I don't know. We're about, you know, three and a half hours in. Who knew? Do you have more questions? Did I miss something? Do you feel like we need to spend a little more time looking at something? You got it right. I'm just not 100% sure what last thing is supposed to mean.

Because if I was my elephant, he's not just a friend, you know, that you're trying to, like, a friend. Like, what does a insert of an elephant mean? Like, I don't even know, like, what I could possibly mean. Maybe it is just a friend, and I'm just mixing my things together. But I don't know. It just felt weird. like I'm not 100% sure what it means.

Fair enough. And sometimes we get a lot of, we get a lot of the dream worked out and some few elements are just still puzzling. And then I hear back from people in a week or two going, I had another dream. Nothing to do with that dream. Like it wasn't about that dream at all,

except it was and I got an answer from it. Whoa. Because anything unresolved that's going to process based on how important it is to you. I would say just on that last little bit is like, I think the idea is that it is an empty suit and that it's not Adam at all, or even a particular friend, nor even necessarily the concept of friendship, but the hidden threat nature of something that changes its shape.

So it's harder to identify. I don't know if that's making sense a little bit. Like something about that skin, so it wasn't Michael Myers in a mask. It wasn't Freddie Krueger in a mask. It wasn't a dinosaur coming out from behind a truck. It was very specifically this kind of a thing that has these qualities to it. So I think there's something in there. If I haven't provided you something where you go, that's it.

I get it. It's solved. At least look in that direction, maybe. Look, yeah, I'm just thinking. Sure. Maybe I'm thinking of, like, yeah, maybe just people hiding their intentions on, like, the suit, like, you thought you knew someone and then it's not what you thought. Like, you know, like how they, you know, it always goes on the raw, pro felicity, right?

We have an online profile and we're different people in real life. Maybe, you know, he suffered from his own, like, like metaphorically like you know he has like this profile which we'll like and like in the dream like his like host self is like different it's like weird but i don't know yeah that's just like there's also there's also the opposite experience where you uh you may have observed certain interactions in another context and then you come here and meet me in person like he's not like that at all which is like you completely different guy you know you're way nicer that's that's very cool well i like hearing that. I mean, I'd like to hear also, you're exactly as nice as I thought you be, but,

but nicer than I thought you would be is also very nice. So, um, well, if you feel like we've explored everything we possibly can and you've got at least enough to continue to think about, you know, enough we've, um, put together enough pieces of the puzzle that you can start to see, oh, that's a wall. That's a garden. That's a tree, you know, um, sometimes there's nothing you can do, but say, okay, that's as good as we can get and it will continue. And you, you'll give it more thought, guarantee. Because it seems like it's something that matters to you. It's something you want to figure out for reasons of emotional, safety, but also practical resolution.

Like, how do I handle this? What do I do about this? A lot of our anxieties are wrapped up in that feeling helpless, feeling a victim of circumstance, and that any moment the rug is going to be pulled out from under you. That's a horrible way to live. I'd be anxious, too. You know, it's kind of the nature of anxiety disorders. But you feel pretty good about it all said?

yeah I feel good thank you for your time absolutely good deal all right well then I'll just do like the little wrap up thing here uh once again for you folks out there this has been our friend Russ from the United Kingdom uh he is a I can't remind handwriting uh you know a biotechnician as such and soon to be published researcher uh once again for my part I uh would ask you to like share subscribe I'm terrible at wrapping these things up at the end I've blown all my mental energy on the interpretation uh like share subscribe tell you friends 16 works of historical dream literature, the most recent meaning of dreams by Horace G. Hutchinson.

Yes, it's backwards, but there it is. I usually put it in the middle over here. Great stuff, concurrent free audiobook on this same channel. Also, all this and more at Benjamin thedreamwizard.com. All 16 available books, and that's enough shilling for me. You know what this is. And I'll just say, Russ, it was good talk to you. I appreciate your time.

I'll see you too. Very pleasant. Good deal. And everybody out there? Thanks for listening.