Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 133: Temperamental Equilibrium

Episode Date: July 12, 2023

“The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.” ― Euripides https://shelleydhiers.com/

Greetings, friends, and welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today, we have our friend Shelley from Oklahoma City, OK. We're recording on the 4th of July, but you guys won't see this until next weekend. So I wonder if we'll hear like daytime fireworks in the background. And so, who knows, but they've been going on all around me since last night. The cats don't like it, of course. But thank you for being here. And we, so I didn't know this until I just started talking to Shelley, but there's a

She is a published author, and she has an interesting job, and we're going to get around to that stuff in just two seconds. Would you kindly like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers, viewers for the game streams. Apparently, according to Nick Rickeda, switching your tags between gaming and whatever else you do, entertainment, education, messes with the algorithm. So it's probably why nobody knows me. I'm going to, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. The algorithm just doesn't know what to do with me. I'm too unique and special. But anyway, 16 works of historical dream literature,

the most recent dreams in their meanings by Horace G. Hutchinson working on book 17. All this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com. And that's enough shilling from me. Don't you should links below, et cetera. So much for. No, Shelley, I've done enough talking. Hello. Thank you for being here.

Hi. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be on. So. Yeah. So you said, well, I can't, my brain with, the words, your job title, is it some chemistry, something? Yeah, yeah, so during the day, I'm actually a research scientist, so I'm, I specialize in

microbiology. That was the word of microbiology. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah, and you said it was something to do with teeth studying the mouth bio. Yeah, definitely. Microbiome is very complex, but we try to kind of symbolify it a little bit. But, yeah, I study the bacteria that are responsible for tooth decay and figure out how to kill

them. That is very cool. And immediately pops into my head the old crest commercials with the tooth monster. And then you have the brigade of the crest representing guys like an army going to fight the monster. Yeah. We're making more every day. Very true. Yeah.

I got to admit I don't. Brethren to eat as often as I should. Probably, you know, like before you go to bed, I forgot. You don't get out of bed and go do it. But it's an interesting thing, too. I talked to my, you know, Dennis once upon a time. And I'm like, if I, if I were a lazy person and I probably am, what would be more important flossing three times a day or brushing three times a day? And they actually said flossing, getting that gunk out of the between the teeth is a little more important than scouring the teeth with something abrasive.

So now, and I recommend it, I keep those little dental picks next to my bed. So I am in bed, getting drowsy, watching a show, been watching The Witcher. Most recent Witcher series, not great. I mean, I like it. Like Henry Cavill. I like the show. But anyway, I keep those flossers next to the bed. I would recommend that, everybody.

Definitely. They have a saying in the industry that you brush at night to keep your teeth and you brush in the morning to keep your friends. Yes. Yes, absolutely. One of the benefits of spending most of my time alone here in the wizard, little wizard cave is nobody tells me my breath stinks. They probably be better if they did. But anyway, I don't know if you have any, it's weird to say, like, interesting stories about

your work in terms of, have you learned anything? Are there new developments? Would be an interesting thing. I mean, yeah, we're kind of, you know, our group is very small, but we're kind of the pioneers in our field where we actually also specialize in dental materials, particularly the resins that are used when you have fillings. Yeah. So we need to go into the.

dentist and you have a cavity and they clean it out and then they give you a filling. That's actually a resin and we have a new technology that utilizes something called nanoparticles and they have antibacterial effects. So we're able to synthesize and make our own nanoparticles in the laboratory add it to those resins and so you get a much longer antibacterial you know efficacy when you know when you go in and you get a filling because you can get something called secondary carries, which is where that resin in your teeth actually shrink a little bit and bacteria can get down between the gap of that filling in your tooth and create another cavity. And so, yeah, so I just published a paper and it shows the efficacy of our dental materials having antibacterial effects for up to two years

after the initial, like if you get a filling. So it's still in very, yeah. So, yeah, it's good to contribute in that way because, you know, everybody has, typically almost everybody has some sort of restoration or some sort of cavity that needs to be filled. So it's good to contribute in that and just kind of make everybody's lives a little bit easier and a little bit better. Yeah, dental stuff is actually, I mean, I'm a, what am I trying to say?

I've just explosive trains of thought wrong. Oh, some of the things to say and I don't know where to start. But so I'm a bit fascinated with historical stuff. And I'm like, by no means an expert in a historian, so to speak. Like I know all the names and dates. Fuck me. I can't remember any of that shit. But I'm fascinated by the development of technologies and philosophy towards the sciences in general.

So we go to the teeth thing. It's like so many ideas come into my head. Like the idea that, yes, everyone has dental concerns. It's just you. ubiquitous to the human condition. And that goes to say the idea of dreams, uh, because that's how we get into the realm of, say, typical dreams. We look at common human experience that then is understood and symbolized commonly by multiple people, almost ubiquitously. So we get, say, the common dream of trying to speak and being unable to form words or specifically

teeth falling out is a very common dream. And it very often has to do with, yeah, the ideas of disease and decay, inability to communicate. We symbolize our mouth as something which speaks, which expresses our ideas to others, makes relationship connections with people. Okay, that's one whole tangent. The other one is that I remember,

so looking into the history of this kind of stuff, just on a whim one day and it happens to stick in my brain, there was an old saying before like, dentistry really became a thing back in back in the days of the um uh you know the best thing you could do was go to an apothecary or a surgeon to knock the teeth out because the the saying was um teeth are a curse the sooner gone the better and it was the idea that you know when you're a kid everything's fine tooth falls out no big deal and then you start getting cavities and then they start to ache and then you're like and then they rot and this is before but toothbrushes and and whatnot and so it used

to be people suffered horribly with with dental issues um and yeah it's really changed in the last you know i don't know what you'd say the time frame was you probably know the history of dentistry better than well um i don't know as much as i probably should you know but i will say no it's okay but i will say that um the the evolution of dentistry is so different from more of something that is defined more by the medical field. You know, in the beginning, dentistry was a trade where you would go to the blacksmith or you would go to, you know, your barber and, you know, get a tooth knocked out while you're getting a shave if you really wanted to.

And so the evolution of dentistry is and also being in conjunction with more scientific discovery, you know, and it's kind of funny because it's almost like our, see, I'm going on a tangent now. It's kind of funny. It's almost like our subconscious already knew that because, you know, you're saying with your dreams, how things that are affected teeth or the mouth can mean a whole host of other things. Well, a lot of discoveries that we're learning is that a lot of systemic problems in terms of our overall health and well-being also begins in the mouth as well. And so we have seen a fundamental shift over dentistry becoming more of a trade to becoming a pillar in the medical community. And that overall health care is just as important as, you know, overall health care and medicine. And so it's kind of interesting to see that shift probably within like the last probably since the 1950s and kind of seeing that shift as, and especially within the last 30 years. It's been really combining, you know, or good oral health means actually good overall body of health. Definitely.

Yeah, yeah. And that also, so part of the dream interpretation thing is getting a personal understanding of people's symbols. But those personal understandings are also nested in community or local experience of a thing, what's common in their area. Then what's also common to the human condition based on how we are. are materially composed in the world and how we interact with other physical substances, water, earth, you know, other people, et cetera. So you get these shifts in. So there's folks who would go, they're more inclined to believe in the, or lean into the dream

book, the dream dictionary type of thing, which is and isn't accurate in some ways. Is it, you know, a lot of it does speak to the kind of collective unconscious, ubiquitous or common human experience type of stuff that we have with objects on that level. But it also changes over time as well. So what was true about the common human experience of teeth and teeth tooth problems 2,000 years ago is not the same today. Now we have a more ubiquitous understanding or common human experience of, well, dentists are a thing. And you can get a cavity filled. You can get antibiotics for an impacted wisdom tooth that's that's, you know, infected and throbbing and whatnot. Whereas that would have been just a horrible experience that people just suffered with because, you know, maybe you're out on the frontier and there are no barbers.

And you don't have the medical knowledge to pull your own tooth or do what is it, the Tom Hanks thing on the island with this with the ice gate. Oh, I don't know. Honestly, that was horrifying. I don't know if I could have done that. And I'm not surprised you blacked out. You can black out from pain. You can't. Yeah.

Oh, that's awful. Oh, I got that in my head. No, make it go away. Yeah, so that's so, yeah, there are, long story short, our interpretation or understanding of an individual's dream is going to change because the cultural setting and the medical advancements and the world they live in. Yeah. I don't know if I, I don't know if there's anything for you to comment on in there.

No, no, no. You're absolutely right. I mean, I think that in terms of dreams. dreams are multifaceted and fragmented in terms of how you approach and view your own life. I mean, it really is kind of your subconsciousness kind of talking and speaking to you in a language all of its own. So, of course, you're going to, you know, that's going to be affected by your interpretation of what things are. And that's going to change based on your experience and the way that you've, view of the world, I guess. And so, yeah, I fully agree with that.

That's certainly what it seems like in my experience. And, you know, this brings me to another point is like, I don't want to put myself forward as like the ultimate incontrovertible authority. I think I have some ideas that are true. I think I've come to some intuitive understanding of things that seems functional. But I believe I am still learning myself and there's more to learn and that, you know, and certainly all I can offer is my, inspired thoughts, so to speak, you know, inspired by your circumstance and then the associations I make, and I try to cover the gamut or at least start with things that I think are most relevant or highlight maybe two different directions. We could go with things and see what feels

right to you. But, you know, if you take the same dream to somebody else and blind and they give you a slightly different understanding or completely different understanding, that might also be correct or I might be wrong and that might be correct. So, um, again, I've had that. Go ahead. I was going to say that, you know, for me, I'm always on a quest for knowledge. And just because I get, you know, one interpretation or something, then that doesn't mean that, you know, it might help me through even just a small part of it. And to me, there's something to be gained from that. It's kind of funny that, you know, you call yourself a wizard and everyone thinks that it's more like

for magic and things. But for me, I see a wizard as more of like a mentor. like a dispenser of knowledge or, you know, through their own experiences. So it's kind of like this nice cyclic type thing where I am learning from you, but then you're also learning from me. And through our experiences together, we can kind of get to a different place than our lives and maybe a better place in our lives. So I'm all for it. Like I love, I love perspective. I love being challenged. I love, you know, thinking about things that I experience. So yeah. We hit upon two important things there.

One is the, you know, what is, as much as I, it just gives me, it just tickles me to say I'm a wizard. I think it's funny. I laugh, I laugh inside every time I say that. I'm like, oh, you're, that's goofy. Yes, it is. And I think it's hilarious. But also, there is the archetype of the wise one or the old, wise old man, the wizard. That's where we get the term from.

And if you, and this is the thing, I think anybody can do this. If you understand the framework of an archetype, sometimes we do it accidentally, but Also, we can do it intentionally. You step into that archetype and embody it in the world. So a teacher is what a teacher does. If you are, you don't have to be hired paid by the government to do the job of teaching, to pass along knowledge to someone. You talk into your friend and say, hey, I read this thing the other day.

You just became a teacher. You stepped into the role of providing information to someone that didn't have it in a way they could understand. And now they learned something. And you also, as you were saying, you learned something about the process of communication, how to effectively organize information and communicated. So I'm always appreciative to my guest dreamers. You are training me. This is, you know, someday I will get to, I hope, crossing my fingers, a thousand interviews,

and then I'll be a real wizard. Then I will have done enough that I think I know what I'm doing. We're only on what is this going to be episode 133. I'm on the road. You know, it's- You guys are going. They say in the author community that you're not a true author unless you've written a million words. So I understand.

Yeah. I understand that completely. Thanks for bringing that up, too. It's a great transition into you are a published author too. You said you're writing a young adult fiction series. Yes, it's a young adult coming of age series. And so it's called Her Purpose. And can I show?

I think I have a book. Please do. If you need to step away and grab it, go for it. Yeah. Nope. I can reach. I'm good. So this is my novel.

Oh, there you go. There's a screenshot for the, for the, for the, for the, for the, thumbnail. Yeah, definitely. And so this is the name of this series is called the Starlight Trine Chronicles in its book. It's going to be a five book series and so hopefully I can come out with book two by the end of this year. And so yeah, it's young adult fantasy. It's kind of funny because going through being a young adult author, it's amazing how many

adults read young adult fantasy as well. I think most of the majority of my readers are actually, you know, probably between the ages of 25 and 40. So that's always, that was really interesting to find out. But yeah, it's a story about this little girl and it's tradition for her people to go on something called a wander to find her purpose in life. And so she leaves her village and she goes up over the hill and she comes across this black shaggy dog who actually ends up learning, who actually ends up speaking to her. And, yeah, that's like her version of her wizard, I guess. Yeah, yeah. So he tells her,

he's like, well, you could go and follow the traditions of your people and walk the path that they did before in order to find your purpose. Or you can go see a wise mystic in the mountains called Here the Mins. And surely he can help you. And so it's her going on this journey and, you know, learning more about herself along the way and new experiences and the friend that she makes and yeah there's just a lot of it's written kind of more of a fairy tale style and there's wonder and there's whimsy and and um it was really enjoyable to write so and i'm excited to see where the series goes would you say it falls more into the uh you know just fiction or into the maybe kind of fantasy magic-ish realm yeah it's probably fantasy magicish yeah for sure

Like, kind of in the same vein as like Princess Bride or Neverending Story or The Last Unicorn, kind of that, you know, where we grew up in the 80. Well, I grew up in the 80s. So if you're familiar with that type of genre, then that's going to be right up your alley. Oh, yeah. And shout out to The Last Unicorn. If anyone has never heard of that or never seen it or you've come across it and you're like, oh, that can't be any good. It is really good. It was adapted for the book as most of the best stuff is.

And it's a lot different than you think. You're going to see something very unique. It's got a little bit of that Ralph Bakshi style. Did actually, did Ralph Bakshi do that? I think he did. Yeah. He's not a very distinct style, but such a great story with deep philosophical themes. And it doesn't end like you think.

It's not a typical fairy tale. I'm not going to spoil anything. Lots of clever stuff, too. Very great adaptation. Absolutely. And Peter S. Beagle is one of my favorite authors who wrote The Last Unicorn, and it's because his endings are not necessarily. He's very good at ending stories and ways that you're not, you still take to heart, but they're not necessarily what you expect. And that's, I was blown away as a child, and I'm still blown away with whatever he writes now.

So, yeah, he's great. There's a, I think we've come to, in this modern time, at this at this moment in our age, whatever it is, the zeit geis, we have unfortunately entered a, what am I trying to say? We've,

we've had our stories sanitized too much. If, if I can put it that way, we've got kind of the age of the Disney happy ending. The Grimm's fairy tales told where, ah,

we don't want to, we don't want to be a downer. We don't want this to be a tragedy. So we'll just make, you're a win instead of losing. which was the point of that particular story. I think changing them loses the meaning. So there's something, you know,

there's nothing wrong with telling a comedy versus a tragedy. And you can't live in tragedy all the time. And sometimes you want inspirational tales that show you how to live and put you through struggles. But, you know, at the end, you're left with a positive feeling. But sometimes you need object lessons. Sometimes you need the hero didn't win this time. And here's why.

And here's how you avoid that tragedy in your own life. That was my first thought on that. Secondly, before I forget, I wanted to give folks your book website. I forgot to ask that in the pre-

It's just my name. It's Shelly, S-H-E-L-E-Y, the letter D, and then H-I-E-R-S Shelly-D-H-E-R-S-E-H-E-R-S. S-H-E-L-L-E-Y-Y-E-Y. D.

And then H-E-R-S. Yeah. Okay. Good. Then now I've got that written out properly. I'm going to underline that. And actually, if you're watching this right now, link in the description, go down there. Pause the video. Go ahead. Check it out or open a separate tab and browse while you listen. Another point I wanted to come back to, I'm getting, uh, getting, getting dry here. The idea of quote unquote, unquote, young adult fantasy appealing to people in the 25 to 40 range. Um, in that range is where my wife, um, read the Harry Potter series before we went and saw the movies.

And another one. Oh, was the other one. Oh, the, um, the divergent or, uh, trilogy, uh, that one with, um, Sorsha, Ronan, I think or something like that. So, Swarsha, however she, she says it. Uh, I actually watched an interview with her to learn how to pronounce her name because, um, I was thinking Swarise or something. I don't know.

I don't know how to pronounce Gaelic, Irish stuff. And it was a little hunger game. And these have been massively popular, and it's not just teenagers going to these, like adults have outgrown it. Now, okay, there's all that. We're going to get into that, too. But I want to also relate it to the idea of the appealing to that kind of same age demographic, which I'm, you know, just barely out of them. You know, heading into my late 40s. The idea of the high school anime setup being very appealing to a broader age range than just 14.

year olds. And a lot of it is, this is, these are iconic, iconic mythological archetypal frameworks that we all understand because we were that age at one point. And we're always exploring, I would say, the broader themes of coming of age. How do we become who we are? And some of us in midlife, you know, some, some people might look and go, oh, this is classic. Ben quit, you know, working as a, in, inpatient psychiatric care. And now he's doing this. this wizard thing. Was he going to buy a Maserati next? If you have a briefcase with a million dollars, I'll take it.

But no, that would not be my, my, my, my, my path, my house. But it, but it's also, you know, the, the idea of the midlife crisis is, is, it's not, it can be a crisis if you have not been paying attention to yourself. If you've been blindly following someone else's path for you or, or blindly walking into the world is, it's kind of an unintentional. intentional, you can accidentally end up in a spot where you did not plan to be and need to re-evaluate and they can become a crisis. It can also just be a mid, I like to go on midlife reevaluation. I've hit 40. I've got half of my life finished. I've only got half left to go.

What do I want to do with the rest of it? It's very typical archetypal experience. And a lot of these, a lot of us in, you know, heading into that is as a human experience. We look at, look back at these, these stories and go, how does that relate to me, to my personal story. What did I do with those opportunities? Did I miss them? Was I unaware of it? So I would say just this whole genre of young adult fiction is meant to and should inspire us to examine our, socrates style, the unexamined life. Look at what we do and why? What is the path you've chosen? If you're on a path, someone else chose for you. If you're if you're not choosing a path and you're just floating along with a breeze, maybe give it a little more thought. So I've said a lot. I'll get you

No, I agree. I agree completely, especially with my own writing. And I've had people, I think also that as you get older, some of the things that you experience when you're a kid or a child, you don't appreciate as much as when you're older. And I've had people come to me after reading this book and they're like, it's like you gave my inner child a hug. or they say that because one of the goals that I had with writing this book is that I wanted it to be, I wanted to evolve with the reader. So if you read it when you're 10 or 11 or 12, you can take things very much at face value. But if you come back as an adult, maybe you're feeling nostalgic. Maybe you're like, hey, let's, oh, wow, I found this copy of this book that I read 15 years ago. Let's reread it. There's so much more meaning and so much more depth into what you're getting and processing in terms of information.

and it really helps you try to reevaluate, you know, where you've been and where you are now and where you're going. And so sometimes I feel like that those young adult fans, they kind of almost fulfill a need of what you wanted as a child, but you just may not have been able to understand it at the time. So you do get a little like that sense of, oh, yeah, okay, I get it. You know, I get it as an adult. And I think that's necessary too. So where am I going with this kind of thing? It's like we used to have, and we're talking 10, 25,000 years ago, we would have smaller tribes. We would have the storytellers.

We would have the people, the shamans and medicine men and all the different, you know, the lore keepers. And it was their job to pass along these traditional stories of the people, whoever they are, in order that the children could learn how to then become a functioning adult member of the tribe. And in some ways, we've lost that or we've outsourced it a bit too much. But that's a different issue. But still, I think a lot of that then has passed down to our tribe has expanded so much that we need. We don't get it like in our family or in our social group. We don't have in, in our immediate company like I would say most of us.

Because we've lost that, that small tribal thing, we don't have designated present lawyer keeper storytellers. Our parents a little bit, maybe, but that's not their specialty. They're like, you know, I just work a job and I put food on the table. What do you want? It's not their thing, you know. So we get it. We get it through authors. We get it through storytellers and, you know, the variable quality of the storytelling these

days being what it is. You never know. But it's good. But actually that brings me around too. I can't wait for you to finish your series and maybe shop it out and we'll see it on Netflix, Amazon. I think there's so, yeah, right? There's so many great stories that need to be told that should be told that are,

that make for better writing than what we've seen. seen lately, I would say. Just to put it nicely. Yeah. I mean, probably right now I can probably afford one lug nut on that Maserati, but you know, we'll keep going. We'll keep moving forward. You know, I'm, I'm stubborn, so I don't give up easily. But we'll see, we'll see how it goes.

And yeah. And we're certainly not going to judge your success or mine by, you know, I don't have a million viewers today. I just don't. And so be, I mean, never have a million viewers. That's fine. I'm doing the thing. This is the thing.

As long as I keep doing this, I really don't care. I, you know, this isn't just a get rich quick scheme. Certainly not a get rich quick. It's been three years. I'm not rich yet. But I would say, finished in the series, putting it out there, whoever it touches, it touches, whether or not you get an Amazon where I'm kind of manifesting that for you. Let's put that out in the universe. Oh, thank you.

You know, that idea like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But whether or not that happens, that's not the marker of success. You know, it's did you do the thing? Did you put something out there worthwhile? There's folks. but there's an interesting, I mean, this is a whole tangent too, but it just came to mind. Have you heard of Ingersoll Rand and the Adventures of Baron Trump? Does that sound familiar?

Right. I didn't realize the name, but yes, I have heard of it. And that is a weird connection. But who knew about that guy, like 100 years ago or 150 years ago when he was writing in the 1800s? How popular was that book series? Now people are referencing it. And they're buying, you know, new editions of.

it and it has sudden relevance and you know there's there's definitely a thing of authors or or artists that do not become famous in their day and they get rediscovered later and they're like okay this was actually important and sometimes things can be important on their own and no one knows and that's okay too that's yeah right that's yeah i'm definitely doing it for myself first and foremost but i do like the idea that um not to say that i'm i'm out there to create a legacy but there's something kind of neat to think that my words are going to somehow be in existence well after I'm gone, you know, it might be like a dusty paperback, like shoved in a box up in the attic, but it's still there. So it's, I always find that kind of interesting and kind

of think, wow, like that's, that's something that is going to be, you know, exist beyond me when I, you know, chuck this mortal coil and, you know, not seem to exist. But that's, it's always kind of interesting how words stay forever in a way. Definitely. Yeah. And that's one of the things that I'm not comforted by or proud of exactly, but it's a thing I think is important is that I started. Okay.

Why am I writing all these books? Because I'm reading them. So here's the thing. I'm not writing them all. What I've got so far is historical dream literature. This is other authors that I have pulled from the Annals of History to number for one, educate myself. What is, what has been written down throughout time about dreams?

How have they been conceptualized? How have they been understood? How is dream interpretation as an art or a science evolved over time? So, but then also, you know, by way of preserving that knowledge in a modern edition, um, procuring a, uh, hopefully an income. I, you know, I think the most I've ever sold is 10 books in a month. That's fine. That's fine.

I would like it. I would like it to be a thousand, but we're going to get there maybe someday. And knowing that it's going to persist, it's going to carry that forward. It's in, it's my, in a way, legacy, which, you know, and I'm not, I'm not really invested in being remembered all throughout time. I don't really care so much as securing a living right now, sharing the knowledge, edifying myself, all that, all that good stuff. But, but also that's not a bad thing.

If hopefully someday from now, my. edition of these books a hundred years from now are rediscovered by someone and say hey this guy took the time to really do this work and these are good these are so what what i do with this with my books particularly so i'm editing older works i'm updating middle english to readable modern english translating latin putting in footnotes with with historical person so they're like late 1800s they would say we all know who bobby is and bobby was a was a very iconic sports hero in london at a particular time when a guy wrote a book that's the fake example but But, well, I'm going to go, okay, who's this sports guy named Bobby at this particular?

Oh, and I look it up and I find the guy and I put the footnote in there. And now people don't have to go, what's this guy talking about? It's not that confusing. They get the references, you know, translating archaic terms. Like, this is what we used to call, you know, hallucinations. They had it by this title back in the day, especially psychology terms. Anyway, I'm rambling again, too, about my book. What I think about a thing on that process.

Absolutely. And honestly, what you're doing is fundamentally important. important because, you know, like you said, just like dreams back in the day may have different contexts in terms of their meaning, you still need to be a conduit in order to, you know, how people understand things and because so much has changed in terms of, you know, reaching into more of a modern time period. And so it's good that we have people like you out there to to kind of bridge that gap between what was and what is. And so, and I'm sure it's fascinating for you for for sure when we and you didn't learn lots of things especially if you're

more of a history buff and and all that you're like oh okay so yeah that's that's great i need to i need to put this down so so i find that fascinating i think that's a really really neat undertaking for sure yeah i i am very fascinated by the um how things came to be what they are in a lot of ways that's kind of my angle on history it's not i'm just not memorizing names and dates because reasons but the idea of I get into a particular one of the some of my favorite stories to tell are like the origins of certain words so there's the uh the expression balls to the wall we're going balls to the wall and and you think of it as accelerating or going full going all out uh full force and people are like what does it have to do with testicles or something like no actually nothing that's not

you could be forgiven for that but it doesn't have to do with like a stick shift kind of thing so where does that term come from uh once upon a time back in uh early airplane days and even today you would have, say, the instrument panel in front of his, got all your bells and whistles and dials. Well, that was called the wall. That was the internal panel in an airplane. And the throttle had a knob, a round knob on it, a ball.

So you would go balls to the wall, full throttle, literally where that term came from. That's what I'm getting into with this kind of stuff. I love those because then when you put an epiphany a long time ago, words are made up of other words that are made up of other discrete terms. that people used to use. So we get into the idea of Greek and Latin modifiers. What's calling you modify a word?

Ah, fuck. Suffixes and prefixes on. So you've got a, so, like to use the word understandable or non-understandable. And then then, see, or theist and a theist. A meant against or the opposite of, that kind of thing. Or without, A is without. technically. And then all our words, and that, um, that kind of understanding of how words are

composed, then you start thinking about how people conceive of them. And that all reads into, to the dream thing, too, of like just, okay, well, what is your understanding of this particular thing? It's not exactly parallel because the way people think of words is not always, as I do, based on their roots and how the, how the concept is composed of, say, maybe three or four discrete ideas that are all jammed together and, and people think of it as one word as a unit. And it is and it isn't. But then you can kind of pick apart people's symbols like that too and say, okay, this is actually an amalgamation of multiple different ideas in one. And that's also something that I've seen mentioned in these books, the idea of dream images being a conjunction of things.

So it isn't just, say, a 90 foot tall monster that looks like your mom. That's one unit of type of thing. But it's your mom. It's 90 feet tall. It's a monster. And it performs a particular action and a particular place for a particular reason. Now you pick all that apart and you can start saying, I can relate it to these different things in my life as a relationship with your mother. Why is a monster attacking you right now?

Why is it so big? Yeah. Anyway, rambling on that. No, I understand. It was kind of funny when you were talking about your just prefects and suffixes. and it was, I was actually kind of getting into that a little bit because I think that a lot of things that we kind of get used to certain words, but then we don't really understand how they can change if you drop or add one.

And so one of my favorite ones that I just learned recently was disgruntled. And then I was like, well, what happens if I want, you know, drop the dis? And it's actually a word. It's gruntled. and it means, you know, to be pleased with something. And I'm like, that's kind of adorable. So I love the fact that you can be gruntled about something. But no one ever says that anymore.

And so. And it sounds weird because you've never heard that before. A waiter comes and asks you, sir, how do you find your meal? My good man, I am perfectly gruntled. Exactly. I mean, so, yeah. So there's, you know, there's something. So I really like playing with words in that and kind of finding those words that have kind of

been lost to us because number one, it helps me understand the roots of words and helps me with my writing and it helps me with, you know, kind of honoring the things that we may have forgotten. And so that's kind of, that's one of those things that I just find kind of interesting. Yeah. Very definitely. Cool. Well, we could probably ramble for days and we have all kinds of time, but still, I wanted to offer you the opportunity to jump into the dream thing. You feel ready to start? Okay. Let me get a drink and we're ready to go. Yep, we're going to wipe off the cat hair and we got 38.50-ish on the time. I'm getting better at writing these down.

Say that every time. I'm getting repetitive saying I'm getting better at writing these down. Well, you're getting better at saying that you're getting better at writing things down. Exactly. Now we're going to get better on the meta. Benjamin the Dream Wizard wants to help you, pierce the veil of night and shine the light of understanding upon the mystery of dreams. Every episode of his dreamscapes program features real dreamers, gifted with rare insight into their

nocturnal visions. New Dreamscape's episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks, highlighting the psychological principles which inform our dream experience and much, much more. To join the Wizard of as a guest, reach out across more than a dozen social media platforms, and through the contact page at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, where you will also find the wizard's growing catalog of historical dream literature, available on Amazon, featuring the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past 2,000 years. That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube, and at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com. Okay, so usual process, I shut up and listen. Our friend,

Shelly's going to tell us her dream beginning to end like a story. This is what I saw. This is what happened. Then we'll go through it again and see if we can make sense of it. So I'm ready when you are. Yeah. Unfortunately, I'm going to, if it's okay, I'm going to kind of put it on its head a little bit. My dreams are actually more of a series of dreams that have more thematic elements that are the same.

For the past, so for the past about year or so, I have dreamed of a series of dreams of, about interacting with a particular bear. And I've had more than 20 dreams involving this bear, and it's actually prompted me to actually do a dream journal. And so if it's okay, instead of just one dream, they're simple more, but I would like to kind of go into some multiple ones that I think are a little bit more relevant or interesting, maybe. and so in the beginning

I did dream of a bear but he was more of like a bystander or he would be in a dream and but I didn't really he didn't interact with me and I didn't really think he was out of place even though it might have been like I was walking down the street in New York City and there was like a bear at the crosswalk

you know my dream self wasn't exactly like oh my gosh, there was a bear there. It was more like, he was just kind of watching me, and I was just kind of going about my day. And it started it about a year ago when I actually started interacting with this particular bear. And the first dream that I had was that I was actually in the forest, and there was a pool, kind of like a spring,

and I was swimming in it. And I was really enjoying myself. I do like to go swimming. So I was really having a nice time. And so this bear comes out of the woods. And he's a black bear, and he has like a white splotch on his chest. And he comes out of the woods, and he goes over to the bank, and he kind of lays down. And I don't pay him much mine, because in my dream self, I've seen the bear before, and I don't think anything of it.

So I'm swimming, I'm enjoying myself, I'm ready to get out of the pool, and as I'm getting out, the bear actually stands up, and he goes over to me, and he blocks my path. And I'm, you know, at first time, polite, I'm like, hey, Mr. Bear, do you mind moving over a bit? Because I'm trying to get out. And he doesn't move, and so I kind of go over a couple more feet trying to get out of the pool, and he blocks my path again. So I'm like, okay. So I'm like, fine. I'll swim to the other side. So I go and swim to the other side and the bear follows me and he blocks my path.

And so I'm starting to get a little annoyed and I'm like, fine. I'm just going to get out anyway and you can just move. So I crawl up onto the rocks to get out and he takes his paw and he puts on my shoulder and he shoves me back into the water. and not like under the water, but, you know, just back into the water. And I'm like, hmm, okay. So there's a time, kind of like a montage of me trying to get out of the pool over and over again, and the bear, you know, stops me, prevents me from doing it, whatever. And there was one time I'm fine, I'm going to go all in.

And so I try to swim to the other side as fast as I possibly can. And I hear a splash behind me. And I know that the bear is in the water and he's coming after. me. And so I swim as hard as I can and I get to the bank and I can remember feeling me, you know, grab onto the rocks and I feel something around my waist and I look down and there's, the bear has actually put his arm around me and is pulling me back. And so I start fighting because I'm like, I don't want to be in the water anymore. I want to get out. And so I start struggling and I feel this pain in my shoulder. And I'm,

I look down and the bear has actually like embedded its teeth into my shoulder and he's holding me and kind of pinning me so that I'm not like moving around. And it hurts and so I start yelling. And I'm struggling and the bear is holding me by the waist. He has his teeth in my shoulder and he's using his free arm to kind of backstroke so that he gets deeper into the water and he's pulling me with him. After some yelling and struggling still, I hear this crash out of the forest. And I look up, and there

is an elephant, I mean, out of the forest. And it's a black elephant, but it has an interesting pattern on its hind end. Kind of like an Appaloosa horse, you know, how they have that blanket of spots. Except

he has a white blanket with like little black spots. It's kind of, but he's mostly black. So it comes out of the forest and it crouches down on its knees and it wraps its trunk around my middle. And I don't know how the physics worked, but in the dream it made sense. But basically there was like a tug of war between the elephant and the bear. An elephant actually gets me free, wrenches me from the bear and puts me down on the ground. and it immediately starts pushing me towards the forest.

And I'm kind of like, wait a second here. You know, I'm not going to be pushed around by this bear, and I'm certainly not going to be pushed around by you. And so I, you know, I'm cold, I'm wet, I'm bleeding, I don't feel well. And so I'm just like, what are you doing? And I didn't have a lot of time to kind of think about that because I look over the bears coming out of the forest, coming out of the water and is actually engaging the elephant.

And so the elephant starts stamping and starts crumping and the bear starts roaring and swiping. And they don't really come to blows. It was more like a intimidation posturing type thing. And then all of a sudden, the elephant just kind of shakes its head and just walks off into the forest. And I'm leaving, I'm standing there face-to-face with the bear and I'm like, well, now what? And as soon as I say that, I wake up. And that has

precipitated many dreams that are slightly different where the bear, I'll be doing something in the forest and the bear comes out of the forest and he wants me to go down a path, not like an actual physical path, like there's not like a path in the forest, but a path that he kind of wants me to go. And he'll either get in my bubble or he'll herd me or he'll, he will try to push me a certain way. But then when I take a step, I don't know where he wants me to go because he's a bear. He doesn't talk to me. He doesn't really give me any indication. The only indication is when I choose wrong. He rules very much by a stick than a carrot. So if I take a step forward and he doesn't do anything, then I know that I have quote unquote chosen correctly. But like, let's say that I want

to go left and he wants me to go a different way, then he will growl at me or he'll swipe me or at me with his claws or he'll kind of body check me in such a way that I fall to the floor or I get bruised by him or, you know, it's not a comfortable situation. And I have several dreams where I'm trying to understand what the heck is going on. And I get to a place where he, I feel like I'm in the right place, but then nothing happens. And an example of that is another dream where he kind of does his hurting method, where I come into a clearing and there is a church, a white church. It's more like a chapel.

Like it's not like a huge church, but like it's like chapel in the woods. And it's white and it's very pristine, but I also know that it's old somehow in my dream. But there's no indication that it is, you know, there's no like rotting wood or there's no like moss growing up the sides or vines or anything. I just get the impression. And it has stained glass windows. And I looked out on my bare friend and I'm like, well, do you want me to go? inside and of course he doesn't give me any indication. And so I go up the steps and I go inside and at the front of the altar, you know, at the front of the church by the altar, there's like a lot of

hustle and bustle. And I look up there and I'm like, what are they doing? And so there's people there and it looks like that they're setting up for like a concert, like almost like a rock concert. You know, they have like a drum set and they have like the lights and someone's testing a smoke machine and there's like a roadie type guy and he's up the front and I go up there and he notices me and he's like, what are you doing here? And I looked on at the bear because I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing here. The bear probably. And he goes, are you here for the show? And I'm like, sure, I'm here for the show. Why not?

And so he's like, well, you're early. I'm like, oh, well, can I just wait? He goes, yeah, that's okay. And so I go and I sit at the pew, at the pew at the front of the church, and I'm kind of watching things, watching people get set up, and I'm starting to get kind of drowsy. And I remember closing my eyes and I feel this weight on my lap. And I looked down and the bear as actually, he was sitting beside me.

I'm sorry, he followed me to the beach. pew and he sat in the aisle. And the bear had actually put his head in my lap. And he started dozing off too. And I remember thinking, I'm like, gosh, you're such a jerk, but

like, you know, you look kind of cute when you're sleeping. You have time of a thing. And so I start like petting his head. And we both kind of start getting drowsy together. And as I'm falling asleep, I wake up. And it's one of these things where

we kind of have like this love-hate relationship in a way, not love-hate, but, you know, I get frustrated with him and everything, and there was a time, there was one dream where I was in the forest and I was looking for, I was Morel Mushroom Hunting. If you don't, if you've never gone Morel Mushroom Hunting, I highly recommend it. I was there and I was, I had a pain. in my kind of midsection where it was like below my ribs but above my belly button. And I'm like, man, I must have some indigestion or something. Let me finish up and then I'll get going. And I keep having this pain and it keeps getting worse and worse and worse. And pretty soon I'm doubled over and I'm on the floor of the forest.

And I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm going to. And it was the first time where I'm like, I'm going to die here because I'm in so much pain. I can move, I can't get out, I can't do anything. And so I remember looking up and on the branch there was this raven. But the raven was, now that I'm saying this, I realize that all my animals are black and white for some reason. The raven was black, but then he had white wings. And I remember me reaching up for help, like doing something towards the raven. and the raven kind of looks down at me and even though I'm dreaming I get the impression of him just saying well what the hell do you want me to do I'm a raven you know and so he flies off and I'm like okay I'm going to die here this is great and so out of the forest comes the bear and the bear comes over to me and I'm not fully comfortable with him being in my bubble because he's not exactly

the friendliest of things. And he comes up and he starts sniffing me all over. And I'm like, okay, this is making me uncomfortable. I really don't like this. And he starts sniffing underneath my shirt. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, is he going to eat me? And then I'm sitting here and I'm like, oh, my gosh, I'm going to be eaten by this bear. And then I start thinking, like, do bears go for the stomach or the liver first?

Like, you know, I'm just processing. Like, how? he's going to be eating me. And he ends up sniffing so much that he kind of rucks up my shirt. And I look down and there is this black tail like thing poking from my

midsection. And I'm like what the heck is that? And he grabs the tail and he starts pulling. And out of my midsection comes this black

goose string. stuff. It's fibrous, and it's just creepy. It's gross. And he's like, keeps pulling like some macabre scarf trick or something, and it keeps coming and coming and coming out of me. And he has it so much, he's pulling so much and pulling so much out that he starts turning in a circle to kind of take up that slack. And the black stuff kind of starts kind of encircling him as he's turning and he keeps turning and turning and turning and at the very end I feel this knot like this huge

like something like just being stuck there and he gives this great wrench with this head and body and it, you know, I can actually feel it like popping out of me and I look over to the bear and the bear is totally wrapped up in this black gooey stuff

and he falls to the floor and he can't move and so I get up and I'm like oh my gosh what if I do and so I grab a huge stick I remember back in my Latin days when I was taking Latin my wonderful teacher

used to call it a baculum you know it's a big stick and so I get the stick and I wedge it in between the bear and those black strands and I pull with both ends and I'm breaking the strands off this bear and I keep going I keep going and I keep going and I keep going

until I finally get him free. And he's exhausted and I'm exhausted. And so I just lay down next to him. And I look at him and I'm like, and I just say, I'm sorry. You know, I'm so sorry. And he kind of gives this huff like, what the heck am I going to do with you? Like it's, you know, like when a mom's exasperated with you

and they're just like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do with you? and in the end he just kind of puts his forehead on mine and and just kind of you know we kind of just kind of have this moment and I wake up and so my final dream is a happen last week or a week and a half ago and I have this baby I wake up I'm in the forest again I have this baby bird in my hands and I'm trying to find its home. I'm trying to find its nest. And the bear is coming out of the woods again. And I'm like, so I'm just like, okay, I start pleading with the bear. I'm like, look, I know you want me to go somewhere, but can I just find this baby bird and, you know, it's home?

I want to find its nest. Can I just do that? And so the bear just kind of sits down. And I'm like, okay. So I look around and I finally find it. find its nest in a tree. And so I climbed the tree and I put the baby bird back in the nest. And I remember there's four

eggs and they were um, they were Robin's eggs. They were blue. I remember that and the baby bird was the only one that had hatched. So I climbed back down and I'm like, okay. And the bear stands up and this

type of hurting wasn't as painful because I kind of was like, okay, you know, you did me a solid so I'm not going to fight you every single path, you know, every single turn. And we get to this clearing and there are no there's no trees in the middle of the clearing, but the trees are so compact on the edges that it forms a ring. And I look at the bear, I'm like, do you want me to go in the middle of this ring and in this clearing? And of course, he doesn't say anything. And so I'm like, okay. And so I take a step

towards the middle of this clearing. And on one foot, I look down and like all of these vines and mushrooms and flowers kind of bloom around where my foot is. And I'm like, wow, that's kind of cool. And I get kind of excited because I'm like, oh, wow, something's happening. Because, you know, typically when I get to where I need to go, I look at them like, okay, now what? And then I just wake up. And so I'm kind of like, oh, okay, cool, something's happening.

and then I take another step and with my other foot and it's just everything is scorched, everything is black. It's like there's a burn mark of my footprint where it is. And so I have, you know, take a couple more experimental steps and one foot, you know, makes everything green and lush and beautiful. And the other foot, you know, kind of destroys everything. And so I'm like, well, I don't want to do that. You know, this is a beautiful forest. So I start hopping on one foot that only brings forth like the green and everything. And I keep hopping and hopping, trying to figure out what this bear wants because I keep going deeper into the clearing.

And I end up my end up ripping on a rock. Like a rock catches my foot. And I totally wipes me out. And so I fall and I'm like bright eagle flat on my back. And when I hit the ground, I hear a crack like a thunderstruck. I mean, it almost rattles your teeth. It's so loud. And I look up and the forest, the clearing has changed,

where one, half the clearing is full of, like, trees and flowers and vines and, you know, flora and fauna and all this stuff. And the other half is just totally destroyed. And the line of demarcation is lined up completely with my body, where, like, one side is, you know, green. and the other side is burned. And so that's when the bear makes his way towards me. And as he's coming towards me,

he kind of ambles in between the two sides. And as he's doing that, he changes depending on what side he's on. So if he's on the green side, he becomes bigger and, you know, his coat becomes lustrous and looks like an oil slick. And he kind of glows with like this silver type aura, like this light.

And then if he wanders into the burns, side, then he becomes smaller and amaciated and like hunks of fur are missing and he's burned and he just, you know, he just looks awful. And so he keeps coming up towards me so much that I'm still flat on my back and he's actually like standing over me. And when I look up at him, he is actually split into like the surrounding areas where one side is like this glowing bear side and the other side is this, you know, a maceated bird and bear side. And he looks down at me and I kind of wish I was an artist because this is just the final thing that just kind of leaves the...

It's fantastic, yeah. Yeah, it would be so cool if I could just like do some sort of art. But as I'm looking up, I see this bearhead and like half of it is, you know, glowing and beautiful. And the other half is burned. But it's existing in the opposite area. of the forest. So the burned half is in the green side and the glowing side is in the burn side. And he looks down and our noses like just about touch and then that's when I wake up.

And so another thing about that particular dream is that I remember that everything is very round. Like I remember how round my hands are when I'm cupping that baby bird or I remember how round the nest is when I put it in, or I remember how round the bare head is looking, you know, when I look up or the clearing. So I just remember that there's just a lot of like circles, roundness. I don't know. It's kind of weird that I remember the head bit. For sure. Anyway, I know that I've spoken a lot.

I know that that was this probably going to take some time. But I feel like I need to kind of, I don't know what my subconscious is trying to tell me. and that there are some themes and the overarching, I keep interacting with the overarching, like, thematic elements, but they're still very different dreams. And so I didn't really know how to convey all of that and with you. So I figured, you know, we can pick and choose if you want, but those are like some of the examples of the ones that stick out to me the most.

Yeah. But I think we can glean some information from. Well, I didn't want to interrupt you by doing this, but I'm going to try and reset my camera a little bit. Oh, okay. by bringing the white closer and like my my screen got all dark for some reason I think because I started pulling out the white paper it's darkening doing an auto adjust you know it is what it is that's fine no one's looking at my no one's looking at me anyway they're just listening to that is fantastic

so multiple things right off the bat I took six pages of notes and we're going on seven sorry no nothing wrong with that I'm uh this is how some discussions or at least one of the past has gone to four and a half hours. So I'm always in for the marathon. I'm not going to keep you that long if you don't want to. And we may not need that much time, you know. But, and I didn't want to stop you either because that's, okay. So what am I going to say?

Each experience with each dreamer is completely unique. So I have tried in the past to constrain people a bit to, okay, tell me one experience. And then we'll get into, we'll work our way backwards from. from that to look at common elements and other dreams. And so in the past, I might have tried to direct the process a little too much. And at least I'm looking at it like I'm undecided about it. I'm like, should I do that or not? And this time I decided, you know, you've already done a lot of analysis on this yourself.

You've kept the dream journal. You've got a highlight of the phenomenon itself where it's where it's similar. So you've done actually a lot of that work for me if I just listen. And so there's it. So as I said, each dreamer is training me. So I try and look forward. You know,

what am I getting out of this? What lessons should I learn about how to do this better? So definitely I like all of it. There's nothing wrong with that. And that's why I kept saying, okay, this is good. Oh, that's good. That's good.

So I'm going to refer to my notes. Anyway, I always say the dreamer can't do this wrong. This is your, you know, all the pressures on me to make, make sense out of this stuff. Um, so if we start writing down, we've already done it, but I want to kind of dial it into. So you've definitely got this bear. And this bear is, I mean, we can conceptualize it as some kind of a spirit animal for you,

uh, in, in, in the true, truest of senses, uh, you know, it is the embodiment of a concept, an idea, a piece of yourself that gives you guidance. You know, it doesn't appear to be an enemy. It might hurt you, but it doesn't appear to be trying to destroy you. It's not a monster come to really kill you. Even if it feels like that, even if, you know, it was sniffing around under your shirt and like, is he going to eat my liver? Is this the time on this?

So it's a force that you feel compelled by. Right. something inside of you that that that is is sort of a compulsive and we all we all have experiences like that i love referencing the greek gods you know it's aphrodite goddess lovesends her son arrows shoots us with an arrow and now we are on involuntarily attracted to someone that is kind of the the common experience we have of our drives or innate drives for you know seeking companionship or meaning or all kinds of different things we feel a compulsion and then how we express it is whether it's socially acceptable or or whatnot but and

sometimes we don't know whether to trust our own internal drives, um, or, or they feel so strong that they are conceptualized in our mind as some kind of a powerful embodied as a powerful animal. So this is, so there's very much, um,

relation to the, to this, this creature being, I mean, maybe we could start with the idea of what, what are, what, if we did just some,

a random free association, this is getting at the young, and 40 inside of things. bear you think of the word bear what pops into your head what is one of the qualities of a bear what does a bear do what is was the essence of bareness yeah that kind of thing um for me a bear is strength um independence you know usually a bear kind of does its own thing um a sense of being untamed um a sense of let me think about, I mean, I would say a little bit of, in terms of danger,

I mean, bear after all, I mean, it is one of the apex predators in a forest or something. So it also just kind of embody, since it's wild, it's more of instinct in a way. Like, it's more of animalistic, I don't want to say animalistic urges, but it's, you know, you don't you can't really tame a bear you can't I mean I guess you there's bears in like circuses and things but it's it's not I don't really view that as actually being tameable and so yeah those are kind of the things that I would probably associate with a bear yeah that's kind of where I was going with this uh and those are great things so this in in some ways I think we might um if we layer all that conceptual consistent

that brought a concept onto the imagery, this would be the part of yourself, the urge towards being strong and independent, untamed, unconstrained, master of your forest surroundings. There's not many things that hunt a bear in the forest. Wolves, maybe a large pack of wolves could take on a bear, but it would take all of them.

So being very at home in that natural environment, like this is where I belong, it's the right fit for that kind of, kind of a thing. So if we look at it that way, I don't know if any thoughts come to mind about the meaning of the bear and why it needs to come to you and why it's serving as a guide, either yes or no, but if anything's going to you. I mean, I think that there's a lot of times where I do struggle with maybe imposter syndrome might be one of those things, especially with my career, especially with going out and doing

things, you know, I do have, you know, I am a writer, so, you know, getting yourself out in that world. And, you know, my career is always one of those things where you do have to always kind of fight for your work. And, you know, if you want to write it, become peer reviewed, or if you want to, you know, do a grant or something, you're always trying to overcome other people's perceptions of your work and other people's, um, kind of, um, um, kind of, um, how they judge you in a way. And so it is kind of, sometimes you do kind of think, like, am I as good as I should be?

Or, you know, should I be more strong? Or should I be more freedom? And I don't care what other people think. And I really try to embody that. But sometimes it's hard, especially when I'm an environment where a lot of my success does depend on other people's feedback. And if I'm applying for a grant, other scientists in the fields or something, I mean, I'm kind of in their hands in terms of determining whether or not I get that grant or, you know, so.

Kind of a beggar on the street, please, sir. May I have some tuppence? Yeah. I mean, yeah. That's research in a nutshell. So if we go back to that, to the first dream, you're swimming in a spring. So you're in a very idyllic setting for maybe what, so I would assume. The way you phrased it is you enjoy nature and the forest. You enjoy the idea of swimming in a in a pure spring water, very relaxing. So this is a completely enjoyable recreational activity. And the bear doesn't want you to get out of the water.

Now, did you have a sense you were going, you needed to go somewhere or why it was time to get out of the water, anything like that? You just done, you know, after a while, your skin gets pruning. You just, you know, it's like, I'm done. So you did feel done. You weren't running from anything. You were just finished. You had taken in as much recreation as you cared to. And did you have a sense you were inclined to seek something else to do?

What was the point of getting out of the water beyond leaving the water? I don't know if there was one, but... I don't think that there was one. Typically, I mean, I do... It's no surprise. It would not be surprised that, you know, I would go out and... my dreams would occur in forests and nature because that's just kind of my thing, is what I love doing.

Typically, when I do that, I don't really have plans. It's just to go out and just be one with nature and, you know, walk barefoot in the woods. Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, that's just something that you do to, that's what I do to revive myself. So I don't really have a lot of plans unless there's like a specific task. Yeah. Yeah. I was more trying to identify, was there or wasn't there something? Because if there was, if there was something specific, that would mean its own kind of thing. And the fact that it wasn't, it would rule that out in a way. Differential diagnosis, house style. Well, it's not this. It's never lupus. Yes. So there's an interesting thing there. So you've got your maybe iconic representation of that driving force to be independent, strong, stand on your own. self-sufficient, all of these type of things.

The idea of, what did I write down? A bit on the dangerous side, but that's not even, we'll get around to that idea too because I think that's very, very relevant. But so if we describe it as what's happening, you're trying to, for whatever reason you feel being done with a recreational time, but that strong independent side of you is pushing you back in saying stay in recreational activity mode or something. There was something about the dream happening.

that time that, and I don't know if you remember when that was happening, what was going on in your life. Did you feel of my work by work at that time? I mean, I'm one of those people that kind of work hard and play hard, and sometimes I forget to play hard. And so, I mean, I, you know, research is tough in terms of the hours that you might have to log or keep in order to, you know, bacteria don't really care what time of the day it is or what time, day of the week it is and so there are times where they're doing their own thing. Yeah, they're doing

their own thing. And so yeah, I do work long hours sometimes. Sometimes I work weeks without a day off sometimes, you know, and then I have my writing. And even though it is recreational and pleasurable to me, it is a business. And then, you know, I also have another business. And so I do do a lot of things that, that, you don't want, how I says, I don't watch a lot of TV, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't have like binge watching on the couch days a lot. So when I do do that, you know, I make sure that it counts, but I just, I don't have a lot of it. So. Gotcha. And these, see, these are other drives too. It's like, no one looks at the, well, we do in some ways. Like, we, we, we have a concept of the per, of the workaholic. We have a concept of the person who drives themselves too

hard to the point of exhaustion, pushes past useful creativity into frustration and anger and just, you know, the scientist smashing his lab because he's, oh, the 17 million failure. You're working too hard. Take a break. So this may have been your, you know, your image of inner strength, your image of how to be your best self in some ways, this strong drive to take care of yourself, to do what is best for you, pushing you back into the water. and it's frustrating, no, I want to work.

And your other drives inside are going, you're going to take a break whether you want to or not. And I'm going to make it happen. Just get back in there. This is for your own good. I feel like the bear is that, in a sense, that side of yourself that's saying, you know, take care of yourself.

This is for your own good. This is something you need. So if we put that kind of framework on the water dream, I mean, that kind of makes a little bit of sense. And then there's a whole, There's a whole evolution of the, of, and this happens with recurring dreams, too, is that sometimes they are exactly the same because we have no clue what's going on. And we, we keep hammering the precise images in a specific sequence over and over again, exact same dream

until we get it. You seem to be pulling something out of these dreams that is meaningful, whether it's conscious or not, allowing them to evolve in a series where some of the icons change, but then the behaviors change. So you went from, it's not letting me out of the water. Okay, now next dream, I'm back in the water and now there's an elephant

fighting with the bear to pull me out. And so now we kind of look at, let's do the same thing with the elephant. What are some immediate, loose associations that just come to mind when you, I shouldn't whistle under the microphone. No, you're fine. Wow.

Okay. I think I see where this is going. Okay. What's happening? I love it. We got a moment. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Intelligence, for sure. I, and the two things that jump out at me are intelligence and family. Because, you know, family, you know, elephants are in strength. You know, of course they're very strong. But, yeah, those are like the three things that kind of scream in my head. You know, the family. elephants have almost, wow, okay, almost matriarchal in a way,

because they do have strong family groups, but they're usually by the matriarchs. And, yeah, yeah. Okay. So this may have been, the bear says, take care of yourself, stay in recreation mode, you need this, or at least that part of you. And very often our minds are in conflict between, I think these things are both important.

How do I balance them? And later dreams with the circle and the half and half and the destruction of the greenery, the generativity and the corruption or whatever, fantastic archetypal. Young would be like, we have at least 60, 70 sessions to go through for this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All great, great stuff. I'm hanging you up on the couch in my office and I'll be back. I'll be writing another book.

Yes. So now you've got this fight between this urge to care for yourself, this urge to be to go into the forest. Like the elephant's kind of pulling you on. Let's go this direction. Another drive within yourself that isn't you. It is. But our drives are not us in that way. It's like we feel them. And again, with the Greek Greek God conception, they used to say things like, I have anger. They don't say I am angry. that again, right into that root root of things. There used to be a concept that, well, I am not my feelings. I'm not my thoughts. And we've gotten away from that. Now we identify as what we think and feel, which is not the case. You can take, you can have a thought and hold it out in front of you and go, I just had that interesting thought.

I don't know where it came from. I don't know why. But I don't have to agree or disagree with it. I can just look at it and see what it is. That's harder for some people to do. We've kind of lost that conception of how to deal with our experience. which hopefully is something we can bring back with the whole thing. I mean,

that's something I'm looking towards accomplishing with some later books is maybe encouraging more of that perspective. Yeah. So there is you. There's the experiencing you that is watching yourself have experiences, which is, I mean, that always happens.

We stop. Right? Well, and that's also a thing where there's, there's two types of people, broadly speaking, and this gets into the idea of why are the animals black and white as well. A lot of things are dichotomies.

There are people that just typically experience and don't reflect on themselves as they are having an experience. And there's some of us that live entirely in third person mode and watch ourselves over our own shoulder. That's me. I am always painfully hyper aware of myself in circumstances. I don't always know what to do, but it's hard for me to just be present and experience, to be the experiencing thing without analyzing the experience. So in our dream, sometimes this happens. And I think that's what you're doing. You're like, you're, you are yourself, whatever the self is.

You've got these conflicting urges. And now this one pulling you towards, I, it's, yes, the bear isn't wrong that I need recreation. But the elephant wins ultimately. It has a stronger case. It's a stronger animal in this sense. I need to get out of the water. I do. Thank you, bear.

You're looking out for me. You're not wrong, but this is not the right time. I've been in here long enough. and the elephant ultimately wins. And I don't remember where you went that. You did go into the forest then? Well, the elephant started pushing me towards the forest. And of course, and so I'm like, wait a second, hang on.

Like, you know, the bear was pushy. Now you're pushing. And I'll stop this. You know, it's, I need to decide where I need to go. Like, so I start getting a little bit annoyed with the whole situation. And I remember I'm like, I don't have time to process this. you are just telling me where to go. And that's why I was starting getting kind of frustrated because it's like,

hang on, let me think about this for a bit. It's not your decision. It's my decision. Yeah. And so that's when I started doing that. And that's a very reasonable frustration to have is like I feel so driven by urges,

even urges to do good things, maybe to help people or spend more time with my family. But the experience of a strong motivator, it also is the experience of not having time to reflect and choose. You feel so driven. And that can be like if there's nothing wrong with, say, spending time with family, but if you're doing it out of, say, guilt, this is the wrong motivator. You don't want to be driven to do something you'd rather not do because you feel bad.

You want to be driven. You want to be pulled towards something you want to do because it makes you feel good in that sense. but sometimes we do do things that are out of guilt or out of a sense of obligation and that that pressure to perform we can recognize it as unpleasant and then still perform and then still say you know sometimes you got to show up and do the thing because it's better than the alternative. I mean, what is it? Maybe you wake up one morning and your kid's birthday and God, you just don't feel like being

around anyone, but you're not going to cancel the birthday because you do it for the kid, you know, that kind of thing. So what was the, I don't remember, you can just refresh my memory. The ending of that was the elephant stopped pushing. So let you have a moment to think. The elephant, the bear got out of the water and started going and engaged the elephant. And so they had kind of like this, like I said, they didn't actually fight, but it was almost like a show of strength between the two of them. And again, this has happening external to you.

So I forgot that. That's fantastic too. So the bear, oh, and I forgot the whole thing. of like, um, the elephant showed up because the bear was so insisted. The bear bit, yeah. And I started yelling into the water. Yeah. And I was like, no, got this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I need some. Uh, I will not be controlled by this either. Um, and so the elephant pulled you out at least got you on the bank and then, then a confrontation begins. So this is again, we hold out two conflicting ideas in front of us. And we let them fight it out. We, we let the, um, we hold those ideas in tension against,

to one another and we try to decide which one we want to win, which one we are going to choose. And it's interesting that you didn't represent it as, you know, they didn't tear each other apart. They didn't destroy each other. There was just a, you know, it's a very image or symbolic representation of that conflict of opposing drives. I can only do one of these things immediately and which one is it going to be. And there was never a resolution or they ended up walking away from each other or. elephant was the one that just kind of shook its head and then it started walking away towards the forest and left me with the bear and that's when I turned to the bear and I'm like well now what

and that's when I woke up from that dream. Yeah and the bear doesn't the bear just kind of is. It doesn't say a lot of things. So this is very much I'd say a part of you that does not communicate in words, communicates in feelings and actions. Okay. Yeah, yeah, that kind of a thing that's not really a. rational side of you in that sense. Okay.

And that would make sense because the bear is very much an animal, like in my head. Like, it's not personified. It's not going to, you know, start stealing picket nick baskets. Right, right. It's not cuddly. It is very much like a wild animal that I respect. I kind of always get this feeling of respect, but at the same. time I kind of, I'm still very, I'm not comfortable with it. I'm a little bit like,

can this thing turn on me at any moment, you know, type of a thing. And so it's, it's not like a cute cuddly teddy bear at all. Yeah. So then you mentioned before just to kind of bring it back and tie it in, the idea of, you know, sometimes you feel like you struggle with the imposter syndrome type of thing. And, um, um, um, valuing your own accomplishments properly. the idea of self-doubt and balance is what I wrote down. I don't know if those were your words of mine, but I think we all do that to some degree. And for you, maybe it's a stronger concern.

It's like you seem like someone who is very, very much interested in doing the right thing. And I think, what is it? There's an old saying that, you know, evil people don't ask whether they're doing the right thing. So it's, it's an anxiety that only good people have. which is a blessing and a curse and the curse is we get we get a lot of self-doubt that i handled that as well as i could have uh what might i have done better a lot of self-reflection

and stuff like that so i think definitely the um i was going somewhere with that maybe maybe it was to just kind of segue us down onto the idea of the um animals all being in in in black and white colors but with spots of other cause of the bear has like on his chest a white spot yeah he has a white spot and then the elephant had like dapples on its kind And it. Interesting. It wasn't the trunk. It wasn't on his chest. It wasn't one ear and the other. It was on the hind. Which is very interesting. Yeah. It was like a, like I said, like an Appalusah horse that has like the, you know, the blanket of spots on its rump. Yeah. And then the Raven had white wings, but the rest of it was black. So. Yeah. That is interesting too. So why the black and white? And the first thing comes to mind is yin yang in my head, which is also another circular thing. And the, um, the, um, The idea that each, you know, teardrop contains a spot of the other color. So we've got these are all the black, dark representations of things with, with a splotch of the white.

And it seems to be, rather than the other way around, it wasn't a white animal with a black splotch. It was black animal with white splotch. So there's something about how you conceptualize that black or darker or chaos side for chaos and order. I don't know if the idea of the color black represents anything specific to you or pops in the heads. Not really. I don't necessarily think black means evil or anything or darkness means anything bad. I'm one of those people that I think that good and bad are relative, depending on their situation. like, you know, even people, you know, no one thinks themselves as the villain of their own story.

You know, they're always the hero, even though, you know, subjectively, they may not be on the right path or doing something that, you know, society thinks is a good thing. So, in a weird sort of way, I kind of, you know, I kind of prefer nighttime sometimes because I think that it's more like quiet and solace. and it gives me kind of the world kind of slows down and kind of lets me to my thoughts. And so black kind of maybe, I'm kind of reaching here, but, and I'm saying kind of a lot. That's okay. These are vague concepts and you can be uncertain about them. Yeah. We're talking it out.

We haven't latched on to anything. Exactly. And so it might represent something like that, maybe stillness or more. moments of reflection or quiet just because it's a void. There's nothing there. There's nothing stimulating. There's nothing loud or anything. So maybe that might be darkness for me as if I'm going to interpret it that way. It's it's nothing evil or foreboding for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And I definitely didn't think so. And the idea of, what am I trying to say? Chaos isn't a bad thing. If we were to broadly conceptualize it as that, you know, too much chaos is absolutely a bad thing,

chaos is just the essence of change itself, which, let's say, let's go to the dental round. If you have a infected tooth or a cavity and it hurts like hell, you would like to enter the chaos of getting that tooth drilled so that it stops hurting. And then a new order forms on the other side being, I am free from pain. Going from pain to no pain is an act of chaos, which then solidifies into a new order and the circle remains unbroken, as they say. So there's nothing wrong with, you know, change.

It's not like order good, chaos, bad. It's like too much order also bad. Too much order would be you never get the tooth fixed. The pain never stops. That is a very consistent, rigid order. No, boy, no. And very contextual, you know, some things we don't want to change going from alive to dead. We might prefer the continuation of the state of living versus the chaos of changing into a dead person.

So all of these things, you know, neither one's good or bad. But night, stillness away from people, time for self-reflection. Maybe these are only animals you can be aware of in the right context. And so the context shows itself in their representations. When you're in your ability to reflect the stillness away from the world, the world slows down and people are absent of distractions and whatnot, that's when these things come forth. But they carry in essence, like the bear specifically, and it's probably interesting that it's on the chest, whatever that means for you.

The first thing comes to mind is, you know, it's where our most vital organ, the heart and the lungs, it's where we're, oh, speaking of heart and lungs, she's going to cough up a little hairball, I think. Oh, that's okay. Come on, boo-boo.

Miss patch you. I always worry about him. She's fine. She does this all the time, but, like, oh, what is she? I'm going to say it up. I catastrophize in my head. Like, oh, no. You're going to be okay, boo-boo-boo, there you go. We're just going to pass you.

All right, I'm going to stop. So what was I saying? So there's the splotch of white in the bike. So even in these, you know, the, let's see, we're getting away from the pressures of the day so we can reflect on the day. That's the dot. It's the dot as we can carry that with us, even though we need to move into this other realm to see it better.

It's like the dot stands out against the contrast in the background. So, and I was saying something about breathing. and lungs and chest and heart and the bear heart stood out to my mind i don't know if that feels right to you or makes sense or um you know because that's why maybe it would be yeah i you know and if it is in terms of bear versus elephant i would think that an elephant is is to me would be more associated with the mind and intellectualism because you know arnifference elephants elephants are very intelligent bear could be more heart based just because the nature of the nature of the bear where even though they're both wild animals, for me, the bear seems like he acts

more like on instinct and, and more of feelings than an elephant would. And I might be just projecting my own ideals on animals, but that's kind of where I would go with that. Well, I think it's your projection that matters. I mean, that's what comes to mind. No, and I think it makes sense too because those are very um whether or not it makes sense to me it doesn't matter but i think it does um and then the idea of okay so if the bear had the spot why were the colors on the elephants kind of rump what why why are the uh what is you know why not the trunk why not the ears right you know why not a what do they call it one like the half of a face we got a cat like that's got half dark half kind of calico on your face i can't remember what i forgot yes

There's a name for it, yeah. But it's on the backside of the elephant. So it's actually, I don't know, when something is behind, I seem to think of it as the like the true, whereas the bear's chest might be pulling him forward, the white spot. The elephants dapple, you know, on its rear end might be pushing it towards something. I don't know if those modes of approach differ in your mind in some way. being pushed towards something versus being pulled towards something? Hmm. I'll have to think about that.

Nothing comes out right now, but that doesn't mean that we may not discover something later. Yeah, no, that's true. And sometimes there's no way we can go. What just kind of connected in my head is like sometimes we are pulled towards things that we feel pulled from our chest to things we feel attracted to or desire us of. And this is not, you know, sexual in any way, of course. It could be.

No, no, no. But the idea of, you know, we like a particular color. We feel, oh, attracted to that color. Being pushed is, I would say, more of an intellectual experience. It is the experience of duty or obligation in some ways versus, you know, things we do because we feel a responsibility versus an enthusiasm. Well, you can have a responsibility and an enthusiasm at the same time. But that's kind of where I'm thinking these things might, might differ.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, especially since I do often feel at war with more of my, I don't want to call my intellectual side, but, you know, I do have to tap into more of a logical side, especially with my career and kind of just doing what's best for, well, I was about to say what's best for my family and everything, because, you know, I do, I am kind of, I am kind of, that pillar for them and um versus you know more of my my heart side which is more of like doesn't have as much structure doesn't it's a little bit more chaotic and so i can that does make a lot of sense now that you said that for sure yeah the dichotomy definitely is in the the yin yang is so powerful because it has such broad application to almost everything anytime there's a dichotomy. And it's heart and mind. Definitely. We get pulled by what we think we should do and what we feel like we want to do, a very, very common experience. So maybe that explains that one. And then also, again, you're a little bit in third person mode examining the experience of feeling these drives in conflict

with one another. And your intellect says, okay, I see what's going on here. I understand. And it's, look, I'm going to the forest. That's where I belong. That's where. I think you should go, you make up your mind because our drives and thoughts can't actually control us. We can choose to ignore them. We can say, I think this is the right thing to do and I'm not going to do it. Now, most of us don't do that. We don't like the way that feels or we don't like the results we get when we do that. But it is possible.

So, and the bear also just kind of sits down and doesn't do anything either. And you're looking at them both like, what the hell am I supposed to do now? Yeah, exactly how. That's exactly how it's like, well, now what do I do? You know, it's because I don't really understand my fate with the bear. You know, when the elephant leaves, like I don't have access to the elephant anymore. So I'm just stuck with this bear who just kind of had kind of a traumatic sort of interaction with them. And so I'm just kind of like, well, okay, well, now what are we going to do?

You know, what's the next step? But also, it's very interesting. the bear didn't take that opportunity to say, ha ha, now you're alone. I got you. I'm going to drag you back into the water. He just says, you're out of the water now. You got it.

Now you got to make a choice. And you woke up without, because I think in that moment in your mind, you had an idea of the problem, but you didn't have a solution to tell yourself. You didn't have a, you hadn't made a choice yet. Gotcha.

Sometimes that's what our dreams do. They just allow us to see the problem more clearly. And that's kind of step one. Step one, there is a problem. here's what it looks like. Here's the things that might work and what are you going to do about it. What do you implement and how is that going to resolve it? I mean, it's multiple steps to problem solving it.

I haven't diagramed that in a long time. I should look at that. There's like a step by step thing, but that's kind of the progression you have to go through. You can't skip a step. Some of us do. Actually, some of us intuitively know there's a problem. We know what it is and we do something about it. And that actually might have happened from this dream.

Sometimes just, okay, I tell people to sleep on it, not because I'll give it some time, but literally sleep on it. And your brain will process these things. You'll wake up the next morning, not remembering a dream, but you've got an answer. You don't know how you got to that answer. You just know. And then sometimes you can work backwards and say, now that I'm at the solution, I can figure out why that makes sense to me. But getting there and being certain about it, it happened completely subconsciously.

And that's why sometimes we've got to question those and say, let me look at this twice and make sure. Um, but for you, it seemed to have been framing that and seeing it play itself out and, and in that stark imagery, let you put that to bed because then, then, uh, the nature of the dream changed again, you weren't back in the water having this conflict. You didn't have another experience of the elephant and the bear fighting each other. You got the message from that, whatever it was, whether, whether you got it consciously or not. And then what was the, um, what was the next one? Who was the elephant?

Well, I was about kind of next several dreams that I had was more of the bear trying to herd me into a specific location. But it always felt like nothing was happening. And so the next dream that I spoke about was when he ended up hurting me to that. Yeah, chapel. That's right. Yeah. So now the bear is actually, he didn't try to push you back into the water. He came with you into the woods and said, okay, you're going into the woods.

I'll come with you. let me help you find what you're looking for in the woods. Yeah. Very interesting thing. So in a way, that's, let's see, you haven't tamed the bear. The bear cannot be tamed. It is what it is, but it isn't always going to fight you. It's, I think once it's one of those things like you accept the bear for what it is.

And then it comes with you on your journey into the forest. But it's still going to go ahead. But it has a specific path that it wants me to. go. But it never, but it only kind of quote unquote punishes me if I choose the wrong path to take. Like if I

step in the right way, then it will growl at me or it will swipe at me or it will like body check me to like move somewhere else. And I never get an indication I'm doing the right thing. I'm only getting an indication I'm doing the wrong thing. And so how I know that I'm going

and making progress is that there is no no negative consequence, I guess, is the best way to put it. And I think, I don't know if I just thought this or we said it, but, you know, a bear, it very well could have been a talking bear in your dreams. But I don't think it was that, or I think it was not that specifically because the, this, this side of yourself that this drive doesn't, it's not a verbal thing. It's not, it's not something you can put into words. It's a feeling you have.

So feelings don't express themselves verbally. You know, they express themselves in this feels good when I do it or it feels bad when I do it. So there's only kind of a visceral or physical, tactile, emotional sense of decision making when you're when you're dealing with the physical side of things. It isn't an interesting concept that the bear doesn't, it doesn't make a goofy expression and its tongue lull out as a reward for picking the good thing. It's simply neutral in a way or uninvolved. It only hurts you or you only feel. So there's something going on maybe in your, in your personal life or whatever, or just in your experience of the world where choosing to indulge the side of yourself that needs recreation, that needs self care in a way, doesn't feel as good as it feels bad when you. don't do it. Something going on there? I don't know if you can explain that a little bit.

Yeah, you kind of hit the nail on the head. That's very surprising. I am kind of wired in such a way where I don't take time to bask in my accomplishments. I don't really rest on my heels. I'm one of those people where if I accomplish a goal that I'm like, okay, well, that's done. now what's the next one? And so I've always had a problem with the reward aspect of accomplishing things. To me, it's like that's just a stair step. That's not the end goal. So let's just keep going.

And then looking back, it's like, wow, I just did like 20 different things and I didn't even say, good job. Yay. And so maybe that's probably what it is, is that I got no reward for under understanding are doing the right thing because I don't even reward myself that much. I always say, what's the next obstacle to climb or what's the next thing do I need to overcome? And so that's very, wow, that's cool. You're having a moment. You feel it. I love that. Yeah. That's honestly, that's how we know we're doing this, right? I'm like, whoa. Yeah. Yeah. Let me tell you why.

I very much feel the same way. And it's sometimes, what I try not to do is say, well, here's what I would think about that. But sometimes I do overlap. So I think if I could explain it this way, it's like, I take it for granted when I do the right thing. I'm like, that's just default. That's what I should be doing. That's not even anything to celebrate. I have a very, I don't celebrate myself either. I know, oh, this is an accomplishment. I'm doing this and pat myself on the back. It feels very awkward and goofy. I actually don't want praise from people. It's also a very goofy thing of like, if I do the right thing, just ignore it. And if you say nothing, I will. that will be my confirmation. If I've done something wrong, let me know. So I'm only,

I only invite negative feedback. I don't invite positive feedback from other people. So, so there's a, there's a bit of a missing or a missing side to it, a bit of an imbalance with that of like, if you're going to put value in negative feedback, in a, here's a corrective advice, you should put equal value in celebrating getting it correct and not minimize that by thinking, of it is just neutral. Things are neutral or bad. No, things are good or bad. And allowing yourself to feel that. Yeah, that's, that's where I would go with it. I don't know if that describes your experience or if it's something different. That kind of hit the nail on the head. Like, I'm kind of surprised by that. And it takes me a lot, it takes a lot for me to go like,

oh, yeah, okay. Yeah. Those moments of epiphany. Yeah, that's, I feel, I feel like I've described it this way before. I'm a bit of a tuning fork. And if I hit the right frequency, you start to resonate, resonate with that. And now, That's when we know we got something. Okay, now all of this in context of the bear is pushing you towards a chapel in a clearing. So there's what is the chapel? It could be, I mean chapel marriage comes to mind. But all, but, but, but a, it's also a smaller church.

In us, it's not a meg, it's not a megachurch. It's not a cathedral. It's not overwhelming. It's this cute little, you know, cottage in the woods type of chapel. It's a very approachable, um, religious iconography or spiritual sense of, of something, but it feels old. So it's like it's small and approachable, but it has all the gravitas of what it actually is.

It is, it's been there a while. It's, it's, so, I mean, I would say it stands out for the idea of, um,

respecting an ancient tradition in a sense. I don't know what your, um, religious or spiritual persuasion is, a Christian not, uh, oh yeah, I'm a Christian.

I mean, well, um, yeah, I would say so. for sure. I think that there's their power out there. I was raised Christian, so that's just how I interpret

the higher power. Me personally, I feel like, because a lot of people are like, well, how can you be scientists and think of a higher power? But I think that faith and our understanding of that faith kind of is on its own separate sphere.

You know, everyone talks about the Big Bang theory, and I'm like, okay, well, who started that spark? You know, type of a thing. And intel we understand that and we don't know, then I feel like that that can be totally faith-based. So, you know, so I am that, but I'm not really a, my view of spirituality is way more personal. I'm not really a churchy person.

Like, because I'm just an introvert and I, you know, going out and, and, you know, going to service and things is just a little bit overwhelming for me. But I am spiritual and, you know, I do believe in a higher. power. And in my case, that higher power is, you know, based on the Christian faith. So that's kind of where I am. Yeah. Good deal. Well, it would mean, so the chapel in the woods would maybe mean something different to pure atheist or a pagan. They would say, well, okay, maybe this is conquering territory by the enemy. If you're specifically a pagan worshiping the old ways, they drove us druids out, you know. But for you, it's like it represents the broad framework

you've grown up with something that you respect as a longstanding thing of importance. But But again, I think it was very important that it was small, approachable. It's like your idea is not the mega church. It's not being in a sea of worshippers caught up in something. It's more of a personal contained small experience for you. So the bear's kind of guiding you in that direction, or at least not telling you you're making a mistake by approaching it. Right. You know, it's a, by negative feedback has brought you to the place where you're like,

there's something about this I need to look at or experience. So you're maybe considering broadly your concept of spirituality and how it fits into your understanding. And the bear comes in with you. And what are they doing in there? They're getting ready for some kind of a performance, but it's specifically an entertainment oriented, music oriented performance. And I thought it was like a rock concert or something because they were more like modern day instruments. and things there. It wasn't like praise and worship, but, you know, I mean, unless, I don't know,

praise and worship uses fog machines and things, but it was more like, maybe they're trying Yeah, they could be trying something new or there's also that concept of we look at it and go, is this out of place here? Like, is this really what it should be? Or, you know, they're trying to keep up with the times or make it a more interesting experience for people. Hey, if you can get the message across that way, is there really anything wrong with it? Maybe it feels a little goofy. I don't know. There's some people who are like, church should be the original Latin Mass, and you should struggle to learn it and to understand why that's important, and there should be the person at the front, and he's teaching lessons.

And then there's the other side of it where spirituality can be a little more like a rock concert. You're going to feel something for the right reason. It's going to help build community. I don't know that I have a strong opinion on either side of that. So I'm coming from it from a broadly agnostic side of things, more of an understanding of the very very, very understanding of the value of mythology in storytelling. So I would refer to it, say, as the Christian mythology. And within that, though, saying whether or not it actually happened, it is still real and true. That's, I have a great respect. You know, I think the Greek and Norse gods, all of these things were absolutely real human experiences, just the way we conceptualized it. And that's the difference between me and

it, say, an actual Christian, someone who says, yes, Jesus lived. Yes, he was the son of God. Yes, my Lord and Savior. You have to accept him into your heart. Very specific understanding. Nothing wrong with it. Not my path. But I respect that greatly. And I understand what that means to people. Yeah. I mean, for me, I always like to be challenged. So I'm okay with having, you know, discussions about faith or religion or anything. I mean, I don't. The path that you choose is what you choose for you and I'm you know I'm not here to tell you otherwise so so I respect I respect all religions I respect because I can maybe get a new insight because to me I can't evolve unless I'm not challenged and so I like to feel that kind of feeling of discomfort and that feeling of

of me questioning things because then I can think about them and then I can make my own decisions so for sure yeah yeah yeah for sure another of this is by any way of confrontation. We're just talking about ideas. Yeah. Well, this, but it also, I think where I was going with that is it broadly highlights, if I were to rely on my own understanding, I would get a different understanding of that imagery. So I need to know where you're coming from. Sure. And what's important to you? It doesn't matter what I think. None of these answers are in my head. And the bear comes in with you and you're sitting in the pews maybe because you, like, you don't participate. You don't offer it.

help or they don't have a job for you? I mean, how do you considerize that? They said, because I went in there, I'm like, what are you doing here? And I'm like, well, I don't know what I'm doing here because the bear hasn't told me. And he's like, well, are you here for the show? And I'm like, sure. Yeah, I'm here

for the show. He's like, well, you're early. I'm like, oh. I'm like, well, can I just wait? And he's like, yeah, I guess that's okay. And I'm like, okay. And so I'm just, I'm waiting for the show to start that I don't know the nature of the show. I don't know what it is. I don't know anything. I'm just, I'm just chilling out. And then, yeah, and then so that's when I'm sitting on the pew and

just waiting. Gotcha. So that, yeah, okay, so that whole thing, and I'm getting all kinds of ideas from that. So if the bear represents not just recreation as such, but more of self-care, more of personal growth, maybe even, it's guided you to this place where, so there's a side of you or a piece of you, this, this kind of self-care, personal growth side that is guided you towards, well, maybe it's the feeling that you're going to find something of value in this chapel, that this is something you need or the bare side of you thinks you need. And what you're realizing is that maybe you're not ready for it or you're, you're, you are there too early.

whatever you're going to approach is coming, but it isn't here yet. So you're in the right place a little too soon. You're early for the show in a sense, whatever you're going to learn about it along that journey. But maybe what you needed to see was, and waiting for it is boring, waiting for it to start. And you get like, ah, I might as well take a nap. We get kind of involuntary drowsiness when things are boring. Like this is just going on and on and on. And we're like, oh, this is fascinating.

You know, no offense to any of my previous guests, if I've yawned, that's not you. That does happen sometimes, but that's not what that's never what that was. These are always fascinating. Sometimes I'm just exhausted. But this was an actual real, real imaginary drowsiness. And the bear puts his head in your lap. He's like, it becomes more of a, it doesn't feel like he's comforting. It feels like he's endorsing your feelings at the moment.

Like you're drowsy, yeah, he's recognizing yes. this is boring. Waiting for spiritual epiphany to hit us is. It's not the most entertaining of things. It's not very exciting sometimes. But if we look at it kind of in that direction around that time, were you considering spiritual matters? Or should I start going to church again?

Should I start reading the Bible again? Do I need some contextual meaning for my life? Yeah. No, you did. I'm kind of, I guess I should go ahead and say this. So I was going to say it a little bit earlier. and then we got gone, but actually my mom is having some health problems. And so, and it's caused me to kind of have a crisis of faith.

Because typically I'm okay. Like, I know, I know, I know bad things happen, you know, and that's, and a lot of people ask, well, why God, you know, why does God allow bad things to happen? And for me, it's because for most of the case that, you know, we are, granted our free will. And sometimes people make the wrong decisions and that impacts other people or you make the wrong decision. But we have to have that free will in order to have, you know, really give our hearts over and have faith. And, you know, it's the whole part of it. And so, unfortunately, what's affecting my mom, it's like nobody, it just happened, you know,

nobody has control over it. Nobody has any of that. And so it's really hard to kind of have that sense of sense of of faith when something bad is happening is something that you love and there's nothing you can do about it. And it's no fault. And so it's like well how can that exist? And so you know as she's getting worse is

when I'm struggling a little bit more with that for sure. So I'm sure that everything in the context and I was like, am I going to start crying when I talk about this? So I wasn't going to go into, but I think I can talk about it. It's actually pretty common. A lot of people do. Well, number one, we all would wish to have the, what is it called? I guess patience of Job. We all want to look at this and suffer and say, it doesn't change a damn thing. I still feel exactly the same way. That's hard. That is extremely, that's the most difficult thing. And something popped into my head while you're explaining.

I think it's fantastic. You're the question that you may have been asking yourself, is my Christianity, my expression, is it is saying I am a Christian or one of the faithful? Is it just for show? Is there substances or am I putting on an act? You're here for the show. So some of us think of it that way of like, this is all for appearance sake. So I may have been questioning that yourself.

Like, am I taking this seriously? And is this, now that my, my self-care-ish side, my heart is driving me towards this church, am I, am I taking this seriously? Is this just for show? Am I doing, is this going to be what I need? Am I going to get what I need out of this experience? And that's a tough question too, because it may not feel like it at the time. It may be exactly what we need.

It may be the best we can do it. It may feel miserable anyway. And it's only looking back on it, we say, actually, I needed that. I don't think I could have gotten through it without it, even if I was in doubt and struggling the entire time. It would have gone worse were I doing that some other way somewhere else. So there might be. And again, you wake up.

You don't get an answer. At that time, you don't get the answer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You left, but you, but you formulated the question. And then you moved on to another dream. You didn't go back to that same dream. Whatever it was. Something clicked for you.

you and you made a bit of a decision. Did anything change for you after that? Like after that dream, did you start behaviorally doing something different or thinking about the problem differently? Something may or not stand. I have to see what time, because, you know, this was over the past year.

That was about six, I think it was probably about six months ago, which had been about January. I really have to go back and think about it, to be perfectly honest. so that's fine. I'm not sure. If something immediately popped into mind, we would talk about it.

But at least that specific dream didn't repeat. And sometimes they didn't. But then you moved on to another one. So many. Nice, nice sequence. It's fun to take these one at a time. Then the dream with the,

Oh, the goo and the black stuff. Yeah. So that's fascinating too. So I kind of expected it. another animal to come out. I think you said a tail like thing. And it, but it, but it was kind of a tail-like thing that needed, and it turned out it was more of like, I don't know if you ever, I don't want to put this in your head, but have you ever seen a horsehair worm? You know what that is? No. Fair enough. I've heard fly is that, is that the same thing? Like,

well, these are more like a parasites that affect animals and insects in the wild. And it's, it's basically a worm that looks like a long black hair. It's kind of thin. And, you know, If you ever, there's these critters, I think they call them Jerusalem crickets. It's like a giant orange fat-bodied bug, and they look like a cricket, but they kind of crawl. They don't really hop. Yeah. And they're ugly sin. And I crushed one once, and this worm came out of its abdomen.

It was infected with the parasite living in its abdomen. Maybe it had no effect. I don't even know that insects can feel pains, but it's a creepy thing. And they can get into people and it's one. It's a thing. It's like rare. I mean, it's with this reason you've never heard of it. It's not something we use.

usually run across in civilization. But it had that feeling of, um, of that to me. But, but, but it's felt more of a fibrous goo. So it wasn't a living entity exactly. I mean, not to get gross, but have you ever like unplugged a drain in your bathroom that has too much hair in it? And you have to. Yeah.

It looked kind of like that. And there's some gray mush quality to it, but stringy. Very, very moist. It's just not, it was just not good. For sure. Yeah. It was gross. So you've got.

And again, it's in this, it's not coming out of your chest as much, which is heart and lungs type of thing. It's more coming out of stomach or middle of the abdomen. It's above the belly button and below the rib cage. So it's very centralized around. I don't know. I think that's where our stomach is, but not like, then the intestines are below that. And that's what most of our abdomen is like. Actually, I think our stomach is even like right underneath our sternum or something.

That's why when we get full, it's a little hard to breathe because it's actually above our diaphragm, I think. if I've got that correctly, I think so. I think it's diaphragm, dense stomach. The liver's in there too. Something like that. Yeah, yeah. And that's, yeah. So, yeah, for sure.

So like stomach, liver and a lot of the food processing area, I guess, is kind of a thing to it. So you've got this thing that is inside of you and it's poking out. So, but first there's, there's, okay, how did you, how did you have that experience? you had a feeling. No, wait a minute. You felt something was wrong before the bear started sniffing. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. So I was hunting for more old mushrooms and I just started having to train. I'm like, what is going on? You know, and so I'm like, it's fine. No big deal. You know, and then it just starts getting worse and worse and worse until it totally incapacitates me. And that's when I saw the raven.

up in the trees. And I was like, hey, you like, help me? And the raven's like, what do you want me to do? I'm freaking raven, you know? And so he flies off. And then that's when the bear goes out of the woods. I didn't go the right page. It was a whole intro. Yeah, no problem. Yeah. Midsection of the belly, kind of an indigestion

type of pain worsens. You double over onto the ground. And you feel like this is so painful. I might die. And yeah, and then the raven. So we've got the bears, kind of your heart maybe in the the elephant, maybe. the brainer intellect. The Raven is interesting. What is the aspect of the Raven?

It's kind of like, I mean, classic archetype of the trickster in different mythologies. Bad omens sometimes. I mean, especially people who read fantasy books. A Raven is a show up when things are wrong. When there's a battlefield full of dead people, they come and peck out the eyes, you know. So I don't know if we're leaning in that direction

or if something else feels right to you. For me, a raven is more of, how do I explain this? So, okay, so let's do a

let's do kind of D&D terms here. So for me, elephant is more of the intelligence aspect. It's things that you learn. It's things that you can read in a book.

You know, it's knowledge. While a raven for me is more of wisdom. So it's more of the puzzle solving, more street smarts, more learning by experience in a way, if that makes sense. To me, a Raven kind of uses a bunch of tools to, like, figure things out. I mean, they're very intelligent, but they're different intelligent than an elephant,

if that makes sense. That is the first thing about it in my head to is like, okay, birds are smart of that kind. I thought not too, but, but yeah, different. So I'm glad you said exactly what I was thinking more. wisdom type of thing. So you looked to your wisdom, your own understanding of yourself in context,

your own experience, what you've learned through experience, and your experience is going, this is a new one on me. This is something I've never dealt with before. What do you want? Sorry, can't help you.

And then does he actually fly away? He doesn't stand there and watch him. He's like, my job here is done. Yeah. I let you help. Right. I'll let you know, I am useless.

Good day. But the bear stays. And the elephant didn't show up too. So this is not a problem that can be solved by intellect or by wisdom necessarily. If this is a problem, you're going to have to feel your way out of in some ways. So, the bear, you're really in touch with this bear. This bear is probably the part of yourself you're closest to in a way, but struggle with the most in some ways as well. Well, that's, it's one of those things where it's like you can, um, um, an old enemy,

right? You know, in a way, you're like, so, an enemy so old that you're so grown, so accustomed to them, but really they're not acting against you. It's kind of sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, you know. And that's really kind of funny that you're saying that because I'm not as good with feelings. Um, for me, my coping mechanism is to kind of put those feelings in a box. And then I'm like, okay, how do I logically solve this problem? how, you know, I can become in crisis,

especially, you know, the last year and a half with my mom and everything, in crisis, like, I can't feel things because I need to solve issues in order to make her life more comfortable and my family's life more comfortable. And so it kind of, I wrestle with my emotions a lot more. And sometimes I just put them in a box and it's like, no, we can't deal with this right now. I need to save, you know, I need to save the world and you can't do that when you're being emotional. It's true.

And so that is probably definitely something that I struggle with for sure, especially now. And for sure, our emotions are a part of us. Our thoughts are a part of us. They are not us, but they are a part of us. And it's a part of us that we can, that is stronger or not, depending on the person and that we struggle with more or less. Some people are really in tune with their feelings. And they're just like, this is what it is.

These are my feelings. And then they do whatever they want with it or, but, but they're more in tune with that and accepting of it and perfectly content to be guided by it. Some of us are in our mind too much on the rational side of things and like not as comfortable with emotional stuff. Or like me, legit autistic, my like someone's normal emotional response in mine down here. It's like, I have to conceptualize what it feels like for other people because I don't feel that intensity of emotion. I think I'm like 11 out of 80 on the emotional. resonance scale.

I'm like way down there. And that doesn't mean I can't laugh and smile and I don't enjoy helping people. But I can only imagine how overwhelming emotions must be for other people. And I'm just shocked that they can do anything. It's like, isn't it crippling? And maybe it is. Maybe I'm happy. I don't have it as much.

But anyway. Yeah. Long story short on that. So, yeah, so this bears it. And it's a funny thing of like when there's a piece of us that is important to us, not just we feel it is important, but like it is necessary to us. It is a necessary component of being human to have these experiences. And we can't be rid of it. The bear will never go away. The bear might transform into something else or he may stop showing up in dreams because you've integrated that. I mean, we might think of this as shadow work, what we're doing here, integrating the shadow side of yourself. The unknown part, the part we're not proud of in some ways. Like we don't, us intellectual types want to be proud of our rational decision making.

We don't want to be proud of being ruled by our emotions. We're more on the stoic side of ethical value on that side of things. Like some of the people are like, I'm perfectly fine being emotional. And I know when I feel good, I made the right decision and I don't question it. Fair enough. That works for a lot of people. So long story short on this, like, why the bear? I mean, we're getting so much good, good understanding of that.

And in this case, the bear also is acting as. So when we say it's a side of ourselves that is necessary. It serves a useful purpose. It's something we have to have. So it has to be in its proper context and whatnot. So you are in a crisis. You are having this pain centered in your, and there may be some,

it makes me think of the chakra things. I don't know what the stomach chakra is, but there's related to something. I'm not as familiar with that, but I did kind of say that. I also, when I woke up, the first thought I thought was like, okay, did I just dream?

Maybe I was having some indigestion or something. Always possible. But then when I woke up, I was like, I didn't feel anything. Like, I didn't feel nauseated or sick or anything like that. So I was trying to kind of assess something that's a little bit more logical. And then I was like, but I don't, I feel fine. So I didn't know. But I did kind of think, well, maybe that's a shocker thing.

Maybe. I don't know. I was definitely getting it. I'm glad you reminded me. I thought of that and I forgot and we were going to get around to it. But the idea of did you wake up the stomach pain. If you did, that's a. Now, now that doesn't mean that the entire dream could be dismissed because,

Oh, we found the reason. Of course, you had an upset stomach, therefore you dreamed about having an upset stomach. Okay, fair enough. But why that? Why in that form? Why this black goo that needed to be pulled out by the bear? The bear is there to take care of you, to guide you in its own gruff and forceful, bitey manner sometimes.

But it's not, it doesn't appear to be the, his purpose is not to destroy you. He's not a monster that to kill you. He's trying to, you know, a piece of yourself can't be rid of. So he comes sniffing along and you're like, wait a minute, is this dangerous? So there's something about allowing your emotions to approach your crisis that you're suddenly doubtful. Should I let this happen? And then the realization, I can't actually stop it. The emotions are coming in.

They're going to happen. And they latch on to this source of pain that you didn't identify until your emotions found it. Like your emotions lifted the shirt for you to be able to see, oh, it's this black tail looking thing. wiggle in there. And your reaction to that was discussed or get it out of me or. It was more like, oh, oh my gosh, what the F is that? You know, it's like, ah, it was very disarming, very just like, oh my gosh. No, for sure. That's, um, and that that's a very natural reaction. If we lifted our shirt and saw something sprouting out of us, wiggling around that wasn't supposed to be there, that would be horrifying. That's a nightmare all on its own. But, yeah, but so the bear,

this side of you that represents something useful and important, the, emotional side, the heart side, leaning into that self-care side, that kind of thing, does its job. It's actually, this is what the kind of thing it's there to do. It takes upon itself the task of removing this thing, but not only that, letting itself get covered. It's like, it's, it's going to absorb what's wrong with you to the point of damaging itself, letting itself be conquered or, or, or contaminated or, you know, it's not, what am I trying to say? It's not like you.

That's nasty. I'm not going anywhere near it. It's like, I'll get dirty if I have to. This is what I'm here for. It's my job. I'm going to stop there and let you kind of comment on that idea. If you had any thoughts. No, I do think that that's a very insightful way of looking at it for sure.

You know, and it's, it's, it's, right now it's giving me a lot to process with my, myself. And I'm kind of a thinker. I'm a processor. So, you know, sometimes I need to just kind of sit down and just be like, okay. Yeah, okay. But yeah, you're definitely kind of. And sometimes I feel like in certain situations, I almost feel too much. And so it's easier for me to try to stop myself before that happens. And then that's when the logical side kind of kicks in. And it's like, okay, you know, hang on. You're more like a runaway train. Let's stop. Let's ignore that. now and let's try to solve your problem logically so you're not so wrapped up in how you feel about things and so I kind of am more of avoiding emotion more than anything sure yeah no I get that too and that's and a lot of people do that self-protectively and then on the opposite side some people

avoid rational thought self-protectively they live in their emotions maybe too much and just as much as some people don't live in their emotions enough so there's something symbolic of a process for you going on in this is that when you have maybe even a physical pain or something represented as serious as a physical pain of excruciating nature

your emotions are going to come in whether you want to or not. They're going to nose under the shirt. And they're going to do what they're supposed to do, which is take upon themselves the task of processing or dealing with this

unpleasant thing that just seems to be endlessly spraughty. There's no end to the pain. There's no end to the cause of the pain. But at some point, the bear does pull it all out and ends up almost cocooned in this thing. And then you had a choice to make. You could have left the bear cocooned and walked away. You could have said, I'm going to let the bear die. But you actually came to the bear's rescue and said, well, I'm going to get a stick and pry this stuff off of it.

That is its own powerful thing. of like, okay, my emotions maybe, my processing this, something emotionally saved me, but I can't, but it's, it's, it's, it's, um, it's not okay to leave it in that state. There's, you can't leave yourself, your emotional side covered in the problem. You can't let that. It's like a corruption of the emotional side of yourself, like leaving it like that. I don't know if you want to say something about that briefly. I'm, no, I think that. that's a that's a good idea because um i do try to well i'm not very good at it but i do try to not leave myself in a state where i haven't um dealt with my feelings in a way even though it's

hard for me i do try to take time to be like okay let's sort yourself out you know and and after and it's typically like after a crisis or after something very stressful or something, there's always like a day or two where I'm just like, okay, I need a break. And I do kind of try to do like some sort of like meditation or deep breathing or something just to kind of untangle my thoughts and my feelings and kind of sort that out because I know that I can't be at my best if I'm feeling that way with a lot of unresolved tension from my feelings. Yeah.

Feelings kind of exhaust me. Yeah. It sounds kind of weird, but having big, giant emotional responses are very tiring for me. Like, it just wipes my energy out, wipes my drive out. So I try not to let it get to that point. And so I do take time to try to logically kind of untease and untangle what I'm feeling and kind of get that back into order. And then I'm like, okay, now I'm ready to get back in the game.

you know, so. Yeah, for sure. I think there's a wonderful image, imagistic, I'm saying, you know, visual display of that kind of concept. Like when there's a, when there's a serious problem, your emotional side might be engaged. And in this case, it was to deal with the problem. But in so doing, the emotional side becomes covered in the problem to the point where if you don't do something to take care of your, you have to take care of your own emotional side to keep it functional. You can't leave it in that corrupted state.

or it's not going to serve its purpose anymore. And that's something at least I think internally you recognize it needs to be there. As much as much as this pushy bear is annoying, I really can't live without him. It's a part of me that I can't get rid of it, you know, or it would be bad if I tried. So you definitely come to your own emotional sides, rescue and act to, okay, let's clean it off. Let's get this stuff detached from it. It served its purpose. I'm not going to let it suffer for that or be destroyed by that.

that process. That's fantastic. I love that. Right. Right. Yeah. And the idea, I love that, that idea of at the end, you know, there's tugging and finally the last thing, the last bit of it comes out with a, with a pop, with a jerk, with a, oh, we finally reached the root. Yeah. It's almost like, I don't know, it's squeezing a pimples the wrong way, but sometimes you do and, and there's a, I don't know, I don't know if you like those pimple popper videos or the cyst removal videos. I'm not, you know, it doesn't gross me out, but it doesn't, do anything that I don't get that positive feedback

from watching that stuff that some people do. I do. I love that. I'm like, what's in there? And then you can they squeeze it and all this stuff comes out. I'm like, oh, that's amazing. That's just me. Anyway, I wouldn't have been surprised if that was your kind of thing, but this was a different

experience for you. Yeah. That's okay. Can you grab a stick to wedge it off? I just wondered if there was anything else. Oh, and you were both exhausted by the end of it. You lay down with him and you apologize. He kind of huffs as if, uh, um,

he's like what he huffs like, yeah, like yeah, like, like, like, what am I going to do with you? Like,

you know, it's almost like, you're a hot mess. What's, you know what I mean? It's just like, I've been trying to, you know,

do my bare duties. And it's like you just, you keep fighting. It was more like a frustration, but. You're not making, this easy on me. Yeah, exactly. You know, but it's like I'm stuck with you, but it's like, come on now. Give me. Help me out here. I think that's a great way to conceptualize some of our

shadow side. And again, shadow doesn't mean, again, just like black doesn't mean evil or darkness isn't bad, that kind of a thing. But the shadow side is it's, it's not even things we're, it's not a moral category. It's not, we're in the light or in the shadow and we need to pull everything into the light. It's integrating the shadow. It's saying, those things we're not, I'm not comfortable with praise. That's on my shadow side. When I get praised and I feel uncomfortable and I'm like, don't do that.

I make the face. Yeah, grimmis. That's just my shadow side. So again, with this emotional thing, it's integrating it too. And this is your shadow side going, you know,

I'm not going anywhere. You got to deal with me. I'm here for you. But this is exhausting. And you wake up, that's fantastic representation of like exactly what's happening in most of us. Across all kinds of things. Now we get to the last one, which is, I mean, this is a beautiful evolution of your journey.

How long have you been having these dreams over the past two? Probably the past year, maybe year and a half at most. It's really like a year in about two months or so. I think this is all showing a whole progression, progression story arc of like personal growth and understanding of the different components of yourself and how you understand them and how they interact with the world and how they support you. and the challenges they present. It's great.

And this, I think it's culminating in a way with this dream about two weeks ago, you said. And you've got... About two weeks ago was my last one. And that was... And these dreams, I guess I forgot to mention,

but they, you know, I've had dreams, but these dreams are the most sensory for me. Like they, the colors are crisp and the imagery is just completely there. There's very little like fuzzy moments. And,

it's almost like I'm watching a movie in a way. And, you know, I've never really had too many dreams where I can, like, smell things or hear things, but I can in these dreams. And so they're just very, very crystal clear. And the last one, like this one that I just had, just kind of just left a very standing impression on me. And so that's why I wanted to talk about it because I don't know. So for some reason, I feel like that it does have a big thing of importance.

So, yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think all of this has been fantastically important, but especially this last one, because it's, in some ways, it's all been building up to this or we couldn't have gotten into this one without that, without walking that path first. What was I going to say? Oh, so there's a, there's just, I'm fascinated by the whole realm of things. So I have a theory that seems to be true. Dreams self-select for importance. If you remember it and it feels important, it probably is. Now, that doesn't mean we remember all dreams that are important. or that we're guaranteed to have a string of dreams that feel so vivid and important like, like you did. So it's a, it can be a tough thing for me to say remotely that I actually understand what's going on here. Like, why, why these dreams, why it was, let's see, you could have had many, many more dreams that you don't remember that have very similar things. And that's entirely possible or not. We have no evidence of it's pure speculation.

So I can't say that. But why? What am I trying to formulate the question? What? Okay. So another theory I have is that we have depths of sleep is a good way to, you know, and I think, why don't I remember my dreams? Why do I most often wake up not remembering?

I even had a dream. And yet I believe we dream all night long constantly. Our brain never turns off. But I'm not remembering. So what causes us to remember a dream? We're not, well, I think of levels of consciousness. And there's some. liminal zone or a borderland state, as some people put it where we're asleep enough to let our

mind wander in the random dreamlike way and see these images and have these experiences, but we're close enough to the active conscious attention that we can remember. We can form memories and carry them with us. So it may be, it may be completely roll of the dice that you just happen to be a person who sleeps pretty, constantly in the dream place where we can remember and reflects consciously when you're awake on yourself and as an analytical mind of that kind that would want to examine these things and that there's just a series of happy accidents that all come together to you to give you this opportunity to say look at yourself and your experiences and I wish I wish I was so all of

this to say I wish it were more predictable I wish I knew how to explain why this happened to you in this way. Long story short, I end up with the miracle. I don't know. I don't know how else to explain it. Yeah, yeah. And it is, yeah. It just leaves me with that feeling of, well, I'm confused.

The Wizard is stumped. I don't know why. So why? I don't know. What we can do with it is much, much different. Maybe I didn't need to talk for five minutes about that, but that's where my brain's out on these. But I'm glad it's happening to.

I guess that's one way to say it. I was looking at my notes here. So, and the most recent, yeah, this one had like two pages. And then I actually started doing diagrams with circles and in representation, so I didn't forget. Yeah. So you awaken in the forest. Have you had that experience of waking up in the forest before? Mostly my...