Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 140: The Spire of Wine & Illumination

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

“Within our dreams and aspirations we find opportunities.” – Sugar Ray Leonard

Greetings friends and welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have our friend Avi Wolfson from Boston Mass. He is a published author, sales professional, public speaker, and three-time axe-throwing champion. We're going to talk more about that in just a moment. Would you kindly like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers. As you can see, there have not been episodes lately because dreams come in their own time. So the wider the pool, the better. The more people who are interested.

and I will literally talk to anyone. You don't have to be, you don't have to be a published author. You don't have anything. You can just be Joe from Kentucky. That's fine with me. All of that said, I also have 16 currently available works

of historical dream literature working on book 17 coming soon. The most recent available as of a few months back was it's book 16, dreams and their meanings by Horace G. Hutchinson lovingly reproduced, recreated, and enhanced by yours, truly your friendly neighborhood dream wizard,

if I do say so myself. also i've got benjamin the dream wizard.com where you can find all this and more complete list of all the books find the one that speaks to you there's there's a great variety there um and also benjamin the dream wizard dot locals dot com where i'm trying to build a community i'd prefer to receive any sustaining donations there if you like what i do you know come in and kick me a dollar a month i'll take it you know i'm not not greedy i'm not looking to get rich uh i just like knowing people appreciate what i do that's the shilling and that went on longer than i expected and longer than I usually too. Avi,

thank you for being here. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. It's been such an honor. I've been really excited and looking forward to this. And, you know, we kind of had to work things out to get a date down. But finally here and super, super thrilled to be here. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's another thing I can mention too is like, hey, we, we commit to a day and time.

And it just doesn't work. It happens. And as I think I responded to you, you wouldn't believe how often it happens. It happens all the time. Life happens. It gets in the way. And this isn't like your dream's not going anywhere. And I'm not that desperate.

I'm definitely not angry about it. If you have to get to cancel, you cancel. Don't leave me hanging. You know, it's 3.30. We were supposed to meet at 3 and I got no communication. That's not a good thing. But you let me know, this is not working for me. Whatever.

You know, I'm pretty easy going with that kind of stuff. I'm not that type A. Definitely not a type A kind of guy. For sure, for sure. We had an appointment. Screw you. No. It's never going to be me.

Um, so we should talk, well, that's, I can talk about me way too much and I do. Um, we should talk about you. And one of the most interesting things I learned just a few minutes ago, I do a little pre chat, you know, with folks before we record always. Um, you are Avi Wolfson, but you go by a different, uh, pen name for your books. And you've done, I think I wrote this down correctly, 31 books on parenting. And you go under the name of Frank Dixon, D. I X.O.N. And, uh, there was a reason for the pen name. And that's, I'll just, I'll just. let you take it from there. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, the reason for that, there's two reasons. The first one is I wanted to keep business and personal stuff separated. And I do mention a couple of things because the books came from inspiration from my past, from my childhood. I wanted to provide parents a guide to having healthier, better families where they raise kids that flourish and thrive. And so being transparent about that is important, but at the same time, I don't want, I want to make it clear that I'm not here to bash my family at all.

It's strictly business, but there is that reason. And the second reason is for marketing purposes. There aren't a whole lot of, well, obvious not as common as Frank, right? You can't miss spell Frank. But my name gets butchered a lot. I've gotten Harvey, Avey, Ivy. Yeah. The list goes on, you know.

Too bad I wasn't just born Frank, but, you know, that's, we don't get to pick and choose. Yeah, for sure. And again, that can be a tough decision when you're trying to get into starting a project like that is like, you know, for me, one of the first things I consider is like, okay, I want to do this thing. What am I just going to be Ben the dream guy? I guess. But I went kind of with, okay, well, what, what's the archetypal, you know, mystified? type of figure that would hopefully bring the wisdom of experience and, and, you know, bridge the gap between these, these things and science and magic in a way.

And a wizard. I'm like, okay, so I can be a wizard with the wizard, the wizard, the wizard Benjamin or Benjamin Benjamin the dream wizard. Oh, now I got branding. Now I got, I got to grow the hair out. I've got to get the logo and everything. And it just kind of, you know, these are all things. A lot of people don't consider when they're, say, making a business.

Maybe they do. But, but how important that is. of like, okay, let me pick something for a reason and have a plan behind it. Maybe we can talk a little bit about what some of the particular themes are for the books, because the only parenting books I'm well aware, so I'm not a parent. So what well aware of are like, you know, Dr. Spock or some of the other stuff that's like, you know, what to expect when you're expecting, like for new mothers, like here's a how to be a parent type of.

So how, where do your books fit and all that? So when I did this, it started with resilience, right? That is the main theme. That is my first book was based on resilience. That's a big one. Yeah, it's a big one. It's a really important one because I think that is one of the founding pillars of raising a healthy, strong child that thrives in life into adulthood. So that is the main theme that carries through my books.

But I wanted to have a really broad spectrum. So within the books, you'll find nutrition. You'll find divorce. You'll find countering negative thoughts. How to foster friendship in the parent-child relationship. Transparency, having honest kids, raising teenagers, girls, boys, specifically, ADHD, autism, ADHD, as I mentioned, Asperger's, how to be LGBTQ parents.

So there's a lot that, you know, I've covered a broad spectrum because I wanted there to be a book for each parent, like so that if, okay, maybe this book doesn't apply to you, there's going to be most likely at least one book that will be the right fit. and there is no guide when, you know, kids coming to this world, there's no official guide book, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's about what resonates with you as a parent. You're like, oh, this makes sense. So my approach is the books are fairly short. They're straight to the point, no fluff. And it gets you the answers that you want. And, uh, and that's why I built it. And what kind of the foundation of, uh, where my thinking is with all that. Yeah, for sure. And that's, no, that's great too.

because it's and each so each book is kind of um as you said shorter and more focused on on a kind of like a topic by topic basis and you started with uh resilience i think that's that's a fantastic one it's like uh just realize that you're you know what it means to be human in the world you will face challenges you will have setbacks you will have failures you will not be born knowing everything you will have to learn and uh that was that that line for From the dark night or Batman Begins. Why do we fall down, Bruce, to learn how to pick ourselves back up again? Just off back up.

Yeah, I love that line. Great line. I didn't get it for a while. But yeah, that is one of the greatest things. It's like, and probably one of the most foundational things that you almost can't do anything else without it. It's a great place to start for a series. And that without, so you use a pseudonym to protect family. but there was probably something from your past that motivated that first book in terms of,

you know, you felt like either you never learned it or, or you did learn it and you want to share it with others. You had to learn it late in life. What motivated the first book on resilience specifically? So there's a few things in your thinking on that. It is exactly right. There was motivation for that based on my childhood specifically. In my childhood, I really struggled. school. I got bullied pretty severely. That affected my self-esteem, not just in my childhood,

but into adulthood. And society says, oh, those are, that's in the past, you know, grow up, you know, forget about it. Like, no, if you are educated about this stuff, the thought leaders who talk about this all talk about our inner child. If you've heard of David Goggins, he talks about the inner child. Like the people that are the strongest and most knowledge, all know and recognize that the kid we are in our childhood does not die or go away. That is always within us. And that manifests in different ways. And a great book that I read recently that I recommend that was really eye-opening to me,

it was Soulblazer by Lisa Heisha. And she talks about the seven different types of masks that we put on are saboteurs, right? That inner child comes with us and manifests itself in a number of different ways. There's the seductor, there's the overthinker, there's the judge, there's the, you know, egotist, you know, so like there's all these different masks that we put on, the Joker. So, and it's so true, you know, because when I read it, I'm like, oh my gosh, my friend, I know, I know what he is.

I know it. Like I could put the mask to him and like recognize it right away. And within my own self, and that was extremely helpful to me. So that part of us getting back to that main point is that it comes with us, right? So my childhood had all these things that made it really difficult for me in my journey. And it took me a long time to realize how smart and impactful I can be as a person, what I have to offer to this world. And I think so many people don't know what it is that they're supposed to do or what makes their heartbeat.

Right. Like for me, I didn't know what that was. At some point, maybe you didn't know. We're all trying to find that thing that gives us a reason for being. Who are you? You're Ben. You are the wizard. You are the man.

You are the dream master, right? I hope someday that is, that is, I hope someday that will be, but I won't feel like I have imposter syndrome when I say that someday. Yeah. Very soon. That's, that's the whole thing. Like, right, that's the whole thing, finding the genuine thing within us. In my childhood, so often I was forced to put a smile on my face when I wasn't happy. And I had no outlet.

I had no buddy to talk to her or a place to go. And that was really hard because I just kept it in internally. And that was really detrimental to me and led me to going to do things that were not good, which I've overcome. But it was a rough journey. And because of that is what I would say is the biggest reason why I wanted to make that path to give parents the tools so that what I experienced, maybe some other kid doesn't have to have that type of childhood like I did and to struggle as much as I did. Yeah, for sure. And I think you actually hit upon one of the, what am I trying to say? one of the best ways to accomplish self-healing is to what do we have to do if a lot of times confront the truth look back on things and say you know I got to take the blinders off that made me

understand it through a particular lens see it in total for what it is warts and all now I can deal with it but what do I do with it you know so that's just the first step you to see it for what it is and a lot of times that not everyone goes on to write a book but they they think about it in in in terms of trying to understand it and then make make it a point in life to share that with others so that they don't have to experience the same thing. So in a lot of ways, trauma becomes our purpose for it living in some ways. It's like, hey,

let me help others avoid the same mistake. And a lot of us do it in very small ways. Like, you know, let's say someone had a DUI or something like that. And they're like, you know what? I see the things that led up to me thinking that wasn't such a big deal. Until it actually happened, it was a disaster.

Now let me tell other people, hey, it's not worth it. It's not worth having one more drink or getting in the Coca-Cola cab. Let me tell you, let me help you learn for my experience. So that's a great thing, too, to say, here's all the ways I was not encouraged to build resilience or I did not come to it naturally in the environment that I was in. And I suffered more than I otherwise would have, and more than other people need to. And then that's, I think that's a tremendous purpose to have in, like, have to say let me let me share what I've learned and and to want to help other people too it's like a win

the best possible win win you just nailed it that like those reasons all of them right and it's not just one thing it's multiple things it's allowed it's allowed me to own my past it's helped me in my own personal recovery and it's allowed me to monetize it so that's a great thing and we all have we all we all we all have that thing you know and we just need to figure out what that is and I didn't know It actually started in 2019. I was growing in e-commerce business. I poured a ton of blood, sweat, and tears to that. The pandemic hit, and it died.

And I was like, damn, now what? And one of my mentors is like, oh, check out Kindle publishing. That might be something of interest to you. I checked it out. I took a course, and I just ran with it. And I can look back and I can go on Amazon and literally see what I've built, how many parents I'm helping. And that feels so, so good.

That's given me so much joy and meaning and purposefulness. And I would encourage every person to really take the time to find out what our why is, what makes our heartbeat. That's so important. Yeah, you've got to experiment. And also, you've got to kind of believe it's a, you got to believe you deserve it in some ways and that it's possible for you to find it. You know, otherwise you're never going to go, never going to go.

never going to go looking and experimented. Yeah, it's, there's a, you know, I don't get to, I'm, uh, consider myself, uh, broadly agnostic atheists, but I go to all different types of traditions and the biblical tradition of, or at least the scriptural idea of asking you shall receive. It, it isn't the, um, what they call the cosmic butler style or conception of God. Oh, I just pray and I get, I get, I get, manor reigns from heaven on all of it. It doesn't work like that. Of course not. But it's, it's, it properly phrased it might be, if you don't ask, the answer is always no. That's kind of how it's been more people understand that. It's like you got to, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. That kind of a thing. It's very much. Yeah, Wayne Gretzky. Yeah. Exactly. And that's,

that's it. And you got to believe it's, you're worthy and that you, that, and that it's possible. And then, and then you'll go looking. And that's a, that's a great thing. And I think it's all part of resilience too. It's like, you know, so you've had a hundred failures. It takes one success to really because then you got it you got the thing and I'd say if you're living without a purpose it's not easy to find and it's not just like let's go find it dummy but it's like it's a miserable way to live and I don't wish that upon anyone to say I don't know what I'm doing I'm not doing anything I consider meaningful or I don't feel like I'm fulfilling any purpose I don't have something that gets me out of bed in the morning and sometimes I can just be your family you got a

let's say you had a wife and kids and putting food on the table and a roof over the head and watching them grow up as your purpose. Perfectly fine. I mean, it definitely, of course, as a parenting book author, you'd say this is, this is fantastic. But it can be as simple as that. If that gets you out of bed in the morning, you're like, I just, I just really, it just makes me happy to be a part of this experience. You don't have to move mountains. You don't have to literally climb Mount Everest or go to, you know, build rockets and go to Mars. It's a, that's, some people do that.

And that's great. We enjoy watching them do great things, but the simple stuff can be every bit as purposeful, meaningful, satisfying. And if you're happy, who cares when anyone else thinks, you know, as far as that goes. Yeah. Doesn't matter. It will be 100%. It's whatever it gives you meaning and joy in life. And that's the answer to that is not always money.

Yeah. It's about what makes you happy. If you have a family and that brings you joy, like more power. to you. You know, if you want to play video games and that brings you joy and you can explore new worlds and do all kinds of things that bring you to a happy place, that's amazing. I think that's awesome. Just finding what it is that makes us happy, right? That's why we're here to enjoy the ride. Yeah, definitely. As far as, so your specific process, like I discovered the whole Amazon Kindle thing too. I listened to another guy may have never heard of as a

uh kind of a quasi political commentary but like an occultist mystic on the mystic side i think his name is sticks hex and hammer six six six he had he was an anti-christian back in the day he's like eh now i'm just an occultist and he kept the name because he thinks it's funny um anyway long story short he found a lot of uh you know the old out of print occult works the seven keys of solomon um but that's the one that jumps to mind but like just about any of these uh books on herbals and simples maintaining a modern library of a lot of these works. And I'm like, I can do that.

I actually, because I have a fascination, I'll go read everything that's ever been written on dreams and reproduce it in a modern version that, you know, and I put a lot of work into it. It's like, you can find these things for free online.

You can find bad copies of them in other versions. Mine are the best, I say. Of course, I'm slightly biased. But I do enhance them. I reformat them. I put them in a nice package.

and I enhance them with a lot of extra footnotes. You're going to see historical figures and concepts referenced that are not well described. They don't give you who this person is, why he's important. They just give you the last name and a context. You can go look that up or you can read the footnote I put there for you. So I'll take a book that had 50 footnotes. Now it's got 350 because I put them all in there. So really trying to give, hopefully, in my opinion, the definitive version of some of these books.

Where am I going with this? Long story short. I ramble. I didn't know I could do that until I tried. And then I did one and then another. And it's a, I enjoy the process. So I found that for me. But I also learned things between doing the first and second book.

I learned things from publishing the first book. I was going to ask you that all this way to ask you that same question. You took a chance that writing a thing would be satisfying or beneficially. You don't know until you've done it. And you don't know until it sells and somebody. It doesn't even care about this. if I accomplished something. Did you,

what did you learn from that process in the beginning and how did you carry it on to other books? I may be putting you on the spot, but something may come to mind. No, I love talking about this stuff. I could talk self-publishing all day. I learned a ton. And I always,

like, I was kind of like joke with myself, but it's like if I could go back from what I know now, but I didn't know back then. And the thing was, is I just had to accept the fact that, like, you can only do the best you can with the knowledge you have, right? And for me, I took the course from a guy who is really good. He's really solid.

But since then, there have been other people coming out that have even more comprehensive content available. There's so many aspects to the self-publishing process. And I enjoyed it extremely, like, so much. there's a lot, right? There's the actual formatting of the book, creating the book, the content, the titles, the marketing. It's like a never-ending list, right? And it just branches out like a tree.

And there's just so much stuff. And I can only pick certain things to work on at a time. But these are like projects, but they're fun. But like updating 31 books, it's a lot of work. You know, it's a lot of work and it takes time. And it helps to have a VA to be able to get things done. But look, I started out and I said to myself, I'm sure I could be doing something different or better, but that's okay.

It's very rare that there are things you can't completely undo. And there are a few, for example. And this is just a minute, really obscure thing. you can't change the color of your pages from white to cream after you publish it unless you retire the asin and you start it all over again but then you lose your metadata so it's such a small thing but like and i just i just watch this stuff all the time because i love self-publishing but it's like okay so what is the actual difference why does this matter well the cream paper it's easier on your eyes. The white pages are much brighter, but they're better for like cookbooks, right,

where you want vibrant colors to be shown. And if you get like some tomato sauce on your pages, it will come off easier. The cream paper is just better for reading at night. It's not as much strain that the bright white is going to hurt your eyes. So it's little things like that, right? But like most stuff you can change, and I have made a ton of changes. But I accepted the fact that I'm going to do as best I can. And as I go, I will make improvements. And that's how I've done it. And I generate decent passive income that I'm happy with.

I feel really good about. I'm really proud of the work that I've done. It's really meaningful to me. It's not always easy, but it's meaningful and it's worthwhile. And I enjoy it. And to hear you say, like, you appreciate the process, I totally understand what you mean when you see that. Part of what's delaying the release of my next offering is, well, I've been a little bit lazy, honestly, and I haven't worked as many hours per week on it as I probably should.

Mia Copa is to own it. It's my productive rate, rate of production has scaled back a little bit. Since I got 16 of a mouth there, I'm like, it takes a minute to get the next one, whatever. There's a bunch out there already. And I still got like five or six more to go, which will keep me busy the next two or three years, probably. and then some planned series of more original works. But that's, again, to start at a later date, although I'm already planning it. Now you can't plan way ahead. Long story short on that. I was going somewhere with that.

No, oh, I was. Okay. So there's the one thing, so you were talking about enjoying the process. What I actually do with a lot of these is so the books come with an index in the back and it's got all these figures. Now, I've just reformatted the information. entire thing. It's not on any of the same pages anymore. And so now I have to go and index it. And people don't know that there's, you can actually get a job as an indexer. It's a, it's a real job title.

And what they do is they send you a book. You find all the pages and you write an index referencing the page, the things are on. So I do that all myself. I do the editing and the composition and all that. Even though I'm taking other people still, whoa, I've also taken things like, um, my, my second book was, uh, it's called the mystery of dreams. And it is a 16, 1330s, I think, 1638, something like that, or 1658 sermon by a preacher regarding how to tell the difference between divine dreams and delusions sent by the devil to tempt Christians to the wrong path, etc. So specifically a Christian understanding of dreams from that perspective. Well, it was all written in like Middle English and they spelled everything completely differently. The letter I was the letter J and vice versa. And you swap enough. of those letters and the word it doesn't even look recognizable. So I took that and it translated it all into modern English. And that's what really pretty. Now someone can read that in a solid form and get a sense of what this 1650s preacher said about dreams from a Christian

perspective at the time. That's fantastic historical document. That's so cool. That's so freaking cool. I love hearing that. It's amazing. It makes me think of a video I watch. about a 300-year-old cookbook of, like, recipes, and they actually made them and, like, trying to decipher the words and, like, not, what you're doing is way harder than that. But, like, there's just so much rich, I'm just so fascinating with our past, right? Hieroglyphics and translated and figuring out their way of life and, like, how they lived. And it's just all fascinating to me. I love history.

It's just so interesting to me. Oh, for sure. And that's why I want a lot of these works preserved too, because it not only is it, it's serving that dual purpose of a, well, a triple purpose, I guess. It's like, number one, I need to read them because I need to know if I'm going to go from broadly working in psychology to working inpatient psychiatric and dealing with the most acute cases and getting them out of a crisis. And this is again, narrowing focus. And now I'm going like, okay, if I'm going to focus just on dreams, I'm going to read everything that was ever written on it, number one, or my own, my own, my own, my own, my own. special master class in how do I what do I need to know and I don't take everything as gospel everyone's ever said a lot of it are are slices of similar they're they're looking at a broad overview and talking about how how dreams have understanding of dreams has evolved over time and the latest theories of the circa 1893 that kind of thing uh or 19 1900 and Freud and young revolution and understanding the idea that uh dreams could have some useful value to people. And so, yeah, that serves that purpose of me reading all the books, getting that material

out to other people so they can participate with me. If you read everything that I've ever published on this, it means I've read them all, and that's where I'm getting my information from, my understanding and it shapes how I approach the dream thing. And then hopefully, yeah, the passive income thing. I think one month, my highest total was 10 books so far. It takes a minute. And I'm not good at the marketing thing. I might pick your brain afterwards. Yeah, as I say, you should, please do. Absolutely.

So, yeah, yeah, and just to get that information out there and yeah, the passive income side of things, but I wouldn't be doing it if like a, you know, I'm not writing books on, you know, electrical engineering, not, no fascination, no expertise, number one, not going to talk about something I don't think I understand. But also, it's no passion there. I'm like, it's not my thing. Yeah, it's, you know, there's, when it comes down to it, there's a, there's a, a few core things.

And it's important that there's, I mean, if it's personally meaningful for you, you can put it out there. And like, especially if it's history, like, people are going to come back to that, especially in the future. Like, that's going to be more and more desired. But like, the key thing that you just said right there, uh, is that if there's no demand for it, like, you can write it, but nobody's going to read it. Because there's no demand for it.

Yeah. Like if there was, if there was absolutely no demand and for parenting, I probably wouldn't have written because you're doing. It's a lot of work and you're investing a lot of your time and an effort into that. And if it doesn't, if you don't get anything in exchange as a reward, you know, it's like time is money, right? And, you know, do you want to be investing your time into something that you don't get rewarded for? It's a very important question. You have to ask yourself.

So, but like, yeah, the, so a few things I learned in the self-publishing space, the cover is extremely important. And like, it's funny because the old adage is don't judge a book by. cover, but that's the first thing people do. When you pick up a book, the first thing you see is the cover. So that literally is part of your judgment, a major part of the judgment of whether you're just going to decide to buy this book or not. The title is extremely important for people to look at it and also for search engine optimization.

So the title is very important. And then things like the titles within the book, the chapter titles are important. are important. But like, yeah, there's, there's a few, like, key things that are really important. But, you know, there's a lot of keyword research, but I could, I could talk about this stuff, like, for a while. But, yeah, if you want to pick my brain, please do. I'm happy to share it, show the wall.

Good deal. Yeah, probably, you know, another time in the near future, just not to, number one, take up the, take up the whole stream with just, you know, recording. But also because we are coming up on, you know, for me, a closing window. I'm going to be playing some video games later tonight. Now, you've got all kinds of time, but I've set myself a little bit of a limit. So I want to give you the best possible dream experience. So speaking, which I actually do interpret dreams.

I don't just play video games and talk to people. So let me do a little thing here with the time. Cha, cha, cha, cha, cha. And as per my usual process, you know, our guests bring me a dream. I shut up and listen. We go through it again a little bit. And then hopefully at some point between the two of us, we start putting together a collaborative understanding of what's going on here. What does it mean to you?

How do you understand these symbols and how they relate to each other? So, as per that process, I'm going to shut up and listen. I'm ready when you are. 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 DREAMs program features real dreamers, gifted with rare insight into their nocturnal visions. New DREAMCAPS episodes appear every week on YouTube.

Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks, highlighting the psychological principles which inform our dream experience and much, much more. To join The Wizard as a guest, reach out across more than a dozen social media platforms, and through the contact page at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, where you will also find the Wizard's growing catalog of historical dream literature, available on Amazon, featuring the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past 2,000 years. That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube and at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com. So the dream that I have that's recurring, and it's a very intense feeling, while I'm dreaming it and after I wake up, I'm in a car.

and I am coming up to another card that I'm right behind and I am slamming my brakes as hard as I can and the brakes aren't working and I get within centimeters of smashing into that car and the brakes are just not effective and it's like I come within like and I'm like I can feel myself pushing like all my body into the brakes and they're just not working and it's very stressful and that is something that that is recurring

and similar to something actually one of my close friends told me that happened that that he had but his um he was just slamming on the brakes the brakes were working for him but um it was also like he mentioned at the time like he had stresses in his life and uh the brakes worked but he was slamming on them a lot For me, the breaks weren't working as they should have. But that's just that, yeah, that's one dream that I have every now and then at times. And I'm interested to hear what you have to say. I also did want to ask you, I'm very interested that you're an atheist and what you think about consciousness, if we have time. Sure.

And like, it's correlation to dreams and your thoughts on atheism and how that ties into life. And if it's relevant to dreams or whatever the case may be, I'm just curious. No, we can jump on to that real quick. I didn't mean to cut off the earlier discussion, and it may be relevant to the circumstance. So my description of those, it would be most appropriate to say, you know, I'm not a Christian. I'm not a Muslim. I'm not a Buddhist. I borrow from all these different spiritual traditions, I think they all have tremendous value.

So when I, and some people say you can't be an agnostic and an atheist. at the same time. And I'm like, well, I think you can. I think it's, you put it in a four square window thing. And it's, you can have Gnostic atheism or agnostic atheism or vice versa. For me, it is agnosis without knowing. And I'm not, I'm not sure. So I'm trying to be like, almost that open mind,

that scientific, skeptical side of things. And atheists without a theology, I don't subscribe to a particular religion. So that said, you heard me quote the Bible earlier. I was like, yeah, there's a tremendous amount of wisdom in there, whether it was written by God and it's a very specific type of God and we should understand it in a very specific way. I'm not so sure. I would even be willing to say, I think there probably is a God in the unmoved mover philosophical sense. I have some other bizarre ideas about that too that are just my thoughts of like, the way it seems reality is composed, but those are like way off topic. And but, but, you know, so I don't, that's my concept of agnostic atheism, is, I'm just not sure what God is and what it wants from us, but I'm looking, I'm seeking. I'm open to possibilities. Yeah. That's, that. That resonates really well with me because I consider myself. Yeah, I consider myself agnostic. And I think it's interesting. I feel like that our beliefs kind of evolve and change over time. I don't know if that's the case for you, but for me, I think, like, being raised very religious and then going from that to, like, being angry at things specifically in the religion and feeling more, like, like, you described, like, atheists. And then, like, going from that to being more optimistic where I think I'm more agnostic, but, like, leaning toward atheism, but out of, like, frustration from religion and going from that to being agnostic, hoping that there is a higher power.

I think it, you know, in my estimation, it just makes sense that kind of has to be. But then really understood. So I lean more towards the deist perspective that, you know, so whatever this God is, it made nature. And the only way to really know it is to observe nature, it's a very scientific perspective. So it's kind of like conducting the scientific method is an attempt to know God better in some ways. It's very, I don't think there's a, there's a tension or, or um i think science and religion are polar opposites necessarily i think that's been a false false dichotomy kind of foisted on us a little bit i think they fit better than most people realize or would assume so i'm not i'm not trying to go off topic care i promise i'm i'm i'm very

very interested in extra extraterrestrial life yeah and i want to know your your thoughts on that and if what we what people think of as god is actually extraterrestrials that could be possible Sure. So I consider myself, and it goes with the agnostic atheists. I'm a credible, credulous skeptic. I am willing to believe anything. My bar for proof is pretty high. Are there aliens out there?

Almost certainly, I've never seen one. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not sure I want to just in case. It's one of those things. I've never seen, as far as I know, I've never seen a ghost, a vampire, a werewolf. I'm happy never proving to myself those things are real if they are.

Because I would have to meet one. And maybe that's not going to be, it's not going to go so well for me. certainly don't want any anal probing uh not you know not against my will right so uh yeah yeah so that that's where i'm at on on most of this stuff is like it's all very possible and also that too so this and i've said this before but i'd love talking about it anyway with the dream thing i very much separate and i say this lovingly i separate the spooky woo from the science and that doesn't mean prophetic dreams aren't real psychic experiences and dreams aren't real, you know, all that kind of stuff that,

but if you bring me a dream and say, is this prophetic? I couldn't tell you. I couldn't tell you that that dream will come true for specific reasons. So because I can't apply a reliable method to it, I, I set all that aside, maybe, but let's look at this thing. I can understand, which is we all have experiences. We're all human. We all have concepts of what certain symbols mean to us personally.

We can string them together. and hopefully get a kind of a narrative or understanding that works for you for this dream under this circumstance. So I don't know if you had another question there. I didn't answer it a part two or something. So the alien thing. The only thing that's good. No, no, that's good.

This is all very fast. You know, you have a very short dream too. So I think we can nail it down. We can talk about anything we want. Yeah. I mean, like, so that one of the things, and I know we're limited with the time we have, but like there's the, there's the few reoccurring dreams I've had. Yeah.

There are one-offs that are very, very, like, intense memories. Like I can remember in such great detail, which doesn't always happen. And then there's times, it's happened, I think, three times in my life. And I remember them because they're very rare where I recognize that I am dreaming or somebody brings to my attention. I'm in the, yes, lucid dreaming. So that has been something very fascinating to me. That's an interesting phenomenon that bridges the gap a little bit because it's very real. It's very real that we have this experience.

What it means, I'm not sure how I tend to unfortunately have to push it over to the spooky woo side just because I don't know what to do with those. I'm not sure they are subject to the same kind of interpretation. When I have a better group on what they are and how they function and whether they can be addressed by my method or I, I need to adapt my method or whatever. Then I'll kind of bring him in more. But until now, if someone says they have a lucid dream, I'm like, I'm not sure I can work with that and give you a really good answer. Because it's hard to know how much is guided.

I think in some ways the best is when our dreams are unguided. Or at least we have no conscious experience of guiding them because they're showing us something different than a waking fantasy. where we're imagining something we want well fair enough that's the purpose I mean it's almost self-contained in a way if you um but one of the books I've got a published out there

I think it was book six it's called Studies in Dreams and it was a 1920 work by a I think British gal and it was all about her flying dreams and how she was a lucid dreamer and could remind herself if she's in a bad situation I can just fly away and then she does but then she mixes a little bit of like okay I go flying on purpose but then what happens is I end up in these different locations,

experiencing different things. So it's like semi-lucid, semi-not, the choice to fly, and then forgetting that she's dreaming again. And great, great interesting. So it's a double entendre there. It is her studying her own dreams. And it is studies into the nature of dreams itself. This is the self-study of her experience with dreams.

It works on both levels. I like that. I rambled again. Sorry. No, it's, this is all fascinating. to me. Absolutely just fascinating. I think it is too. It's captured by imagine. I can talk about it all the time. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just so much a part of our lives too, right? We take the time to actually think like, man, I spend a lot of time at work in front of a screen in front of a computer. We got to bed. Like we spend most of our, you know, most of our life sleeping. One third. Yeah, of our life. One third. That's a lot. Yeah. That's a lot. We don't think about it. It just, it's like it happens and it's over, right? We don't feel the time just goes. Yeah. Right.

It moves faster. It's almost like it seems. But I wanted to ask the influence of consciousness, our consciousness. Yeah. Yeah, that was it. And what dreams are? Like, what do you believe the purpose? Why does the brain manifest dreams?

Is there a correlation between that and consciousness? And do you have it? Do you have any thoughts on reincarnation? Or you said you're atheists. So that's so that I'm open to that. I mean, it's entirely, it's entirely possible, maybe even likely. At this stage in my life, you know, I've been toyed with this idea in the past. It seems to be becoming more and more, it feels more and more likely to me.

And that's a weird way to put it. It's like my gut. What am I basing it on? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I just think about it. I'm like, well, what's going on here? if this there's something called simulation theory where it's like well we're in a simulation

we're we're real as far as that goes but um but it's almost like we are uh unaware that we are something else and we're just playing a video game it's like we're in a video game but we think it's real and that's i think that's kind of where we're at but it's this idea of the soul or this cosmic energy it's hope so many words for it um i think it's probably that we choose to come to this reality, whatever it is, and experience things the way they are as these manifested physical entities for a short period of time as. And I imagine, I mean, why would you, why do we go on vacation or why do we climb a mountain? It's like, well, it's something to do. You know, it's like, I want an experience out of it.

Why do you go to Disneyland? I want to ride the rides and see the sites and, you know, and have some fun. So I think that's kind of what we do. We, we, uh, so, so have we done this before? Uh, maybe. I mean, if you, if a human lifespan is 100 years and the universe is infinite and, uh, you know, cosmic energy has no beginning and no end, it's almost certain, whatever we are has done this before, uh, you know, in different forms, you know, it just has to be probable.

Yeah, but, but, but am I specifically say the Hindu reincarnation style, uh, trying to escape this carmic wheel. I don't know. I mean, I think I would imagine if some of us didn't want to come back, we just wouldn't. Like, I'm over that. Been there, done that, don't want to do it again. Okay, fine. You can just be universal energy again. And go back out there. So this is, this gets into all this spooky stuff. Like, I can't have any proof for this now. Of course not. It's no, it's not possible to have a scientific method that we tried to measure the soul. We thought we discovered electricity and we're going to talk to ghosts and they didn't quite work out that way. That was 150. So in the spiritism movement of connecting, connecting and communicating

with the other side. But as far as consciousness goes, I conceive of consciousness as it isn't a thing as much as, I think of it like a waterfall. I mean, there's water in the waterfall, but a waterfall is, it isn't the water. And it's never the same water. It's the, it's the, it's the thing that happens when water falls is a waterfall. So there's like a river and even even like a bucket of water. You say a bucket of water is a thing. But it's not a, it's a verb, not a noun. You know, a waterfall is, it's not a thing.

It's a process happening. That's where I was going with that. So I think that's what consciousness is for us. Like, whatever we are really, the spirit, essence, soul, when it touches the brain and interacts with the body, this synergy happens or something where it's like, that's what we experience as consciousness. And then it stops when the soul's not there anymore, not intersecting. It's like when the water stops falling.

That experience is over. It doesn't exist anymore. That's rambled all over the topic. That's kind of where I come from on that kind of a thing. Yeah, that's a deep, this is some deep stuff. so I'm just trying to wrap my head around it. Yeah. But it's very interesting.

I don't have all the best words for it either, but this is kind of, you know, you didn't put me on the spot, but if, you know, Hey, Ben, what do you think about X? Oh, well, I'll try and remember all the things I've ever thought and put it in a coherent form that makes sense. But that's why I don't preach any of this stuff to people. I'm not out there going, you know, join my cult, which I don't know, maybe I should start one, but the cult of the dream. There's a tremendous history of that kind of stuff throughout, throughout the ages of, especially in, say, Greek and Roman times, of going to a place where the priests of God there, and you go there to follow a specific ritual and then sleep and then talk to the priest about your dream in the morning and get some kind of understanding or positive benefit out of that.

you know, have your dreams interpreted to tell you how you should proceed with your life or how to solve a particular kind of problem. And I think we're still doing that today. We put it in psychology. We go, I'm having this dream and specifically for you. So can you think of the most recent experience you had of this, the breaks don't work dream? Was it a month ago, a year ago? You know, it's so strange. and it's interesting too, and I'm, I've nothing to hide about this, but like, I do take medication, and medications influence my dreams is something I've noticed. And lately, and lately I don't, I have not been remembering my dreams for like long periods.

I had a, I had a thing happened recently where I actually started a new medication a month or two ago, and now I roll around and wake up less in the middle of the night. and I actually, I'm having the experience of being aware that I had a dream more often than I have in decades. I still don't remember the content or a narrative. I got nothing, I got nothing. But just I wake up going, I was dreaming. I had a dream. I become aware that a dream happened where previously I would have no memory of anything happening.

Nothing at all. So in your end, no, and substances of many different kinds, diet, you know, exhaustion levels. a lot of things can go into that, whether or not we experience or remember dreams happening. So you would say definitely the most recent occurrence of this dream was well before that medication change for you. Yeah, yeah. Like it's hard for me to even go back. And what you just said reminded me of like sometimes throughout the day something will happen. And I'll be like, oh, that's right.

My dream. I remember now. Uh-huh. You know, something that happens to you that reminds you of what your dream. Like you said, you knew you dreamed about something, but you forgot it. But then something that happened to you during the day reminded you of what you dreamt about. Yeah. That's a very common experience, too.

And a lot of it is that, okay, what do I think it is? Not a lot of it. But what seems to be happening there is you had a dream involving almost like a thought experiment or puzzling over a specific kind of thing, whatever that is. And then during the day, you encounter an example of that kind of thing. And that's what then, that there's like almost a visceral or emotional or even intellectual, I guess, experience that does. It does trigger that memory. This is just like that dream.

But then you don't really even sometimes or a lot of times. You don't know, okay, what was exactly the thing that triggered that memory? or if you know the moment it happened, why? Why that type of experience and how does it connect to the dream? And what does the dream say about your thought process on that subject? So it isn't, it isn't necessary that we nail down. It's helpful if a dream is still recurring actively to nail down the most recent time

to use it as an exemplar and then try to extrapolate to the other ones. Sometimes it doesn't work so well to look at it as a trend of commonalities because that doesn't always give us the best picture of really what it is without a kind of a discrete example sometimes. But we're going to try anyway. I'm just thinking my way through this too. So I mean, if we were to go, what is the most common understanding of breaks not working. The first thing it pops into my head and you tell me if it's also for you,

being out of control. There's some loss of control. You're definitely attempting to take an action to control your movement and it may not be movement at all. This is a good chance. This isn't related to cars whatsoever. That's just the analogy your brain is using to say, I feel like I'm trying to put the brakes on something we use these these terminology i'm trying to put the brakes on and it's not working i can't

stop myself there's a lot of different ways to to conceive of it or i am out of control of the process i'm attempting to take action to control my destiny my future i forces beyond my control or moving me in a direction that i don't want to go and i can't seem to take effective action to prevent that movement. So I've thrown a whole lot of things at you. And I don't know if any of those feel right or they're all speaking to the right concept and we just got to dial it in. What are your thoughts so far? That makes so much sense. And for the longest time, I just like, I don't, I didn't actually understand what you just said really hit me because it, I am thinking of dreams now is not some something that, yes, it is abstract. And,

I promise I'm not, I don't mean to put you on this spot. Yeah. I just, I really, I don't know what I don't know. But like, what you just said is like, oh, the dreams are actually something that my brain is trying to send a message to me about something in my life because my brain is very aware of my life when I'm thirsty. My brain tells me to drink something. When I'm tired, it tells me to go to sleep. I need to work hard. You know, sometimes it pushes me to work harder or to focus more.

But so the dreams are influenced by something in my life that's going on that my brain is trying to tell me. But we don't know why it manifested as me slamming on the brakes. But that, but what you just explained makes perfect sense. Because I did feel out of control during those periods of my life where I'm like, like, ah, like nothing's going right. like it's just there's a lot of stress things aren't going my way and i remember during those times like i would have that type of a dream um and i'm sure there's like a whole other there's so much more to it it's like a very surface level way of looking at it but like kind of where we start yeah yeah

um no that makes a lot of sense to me that that that's helped me to think of dreams in a different way. And I guess I'd want to also mention like a more abstract one that I remember very in great detail, but it only happened to me a few times. But it was years ago. But I remember a specific dream. If I can tell you about that one. Yeah, we can try that one. Um, let me make another at least sort of fresh piece of paper here. This one is more abstract. So like the abstract dreams I'm all I'm very interested in too. Yeah. I have I have yeah. Um, so like in this one, it was dark all around

almost like I could have it could have been in space or very high tall tower from the ground and it was all dark all around but this was all glass it was a pillar that was all glass and it went straight

up and it was a spiral it was a spiral with rectangular glass steps and flowing down all through that structure was, I think it looked like it was wine. And there were a lot of people. And they looked like they were in these white garbs.

Like they could have been Greek or they all had the leaves with the, it was like a circular head thing around their leaves. And they all had a glass in their hand. And I believe it was wine. And it was so bright. There was so much light shining. on that structure and I just remember, I remember very detailed parts of that structure from a distance and also close up and the people around me and they were in sandals and these white garbs. And I remember thinking, God, this is so dangerous. Somebody could slip and fall and get hurt. But that didn't happen. And it was just very slippery. There was like, there was water. It was water or wine. It was flowing all throughout this. There was a center pillar that held up the whole thing. It might have been very high up off the ground, but it was very dark all around.

And that was a dream that happened to me several times. And it was in such great detail that I remembered it, like, unlike most of my dreams. Yeah. Well, if it's okay to ask, like I said, you don't have to answer it. We can always edit stuff out. And I'd make this promise to anyone. If something's too personal, you're like, no, I don't want to talk about that. It's perfectly funny.

First thing came to mind, did you ever have a problem with alcohol, alcoholism, overindulging? I don't think so. I mean, I drink socially when I was younger. I would drink more, but I don't drink anymore. Fair enough. That's something to rule out. Like, I go with my gut and I say, okay, is this related to alcoholism specifically? And confirmation, it's not.

I don't think it is. Yeah, yeah. No, I never like was in a 12-step program or anything like that. You very well could have been. And that would make this mean something very specific. But it's definitely a lot of times I rattle a doorknob to say, are we going? going that way and you said no no okay so that's off the table. And what do I do?

I trust people are being honest with me. I have no reason to believe you're not. But if a dreamer says, no, we move on, done. It is or it isn't from their understanding. No, that makes sense. And you've got these, so you've got a few images that stand out. icons or hierographs, however people choose to describe it. You've got you've got a tower.

and it's made of glass and you've got wine and you've got people drinking the wine you've got almost a very Greek or Roman look to the people and it's very iconic that well what did they do back then

they drank wine too even the great philosophers that's what what Socrates used to do hang out and drink wine in the public square and just argue with people he was the original internet troll when the internet was

was the public square and there was nowhere else to do it. I love that guy. That came to my mind, the idea of you've put, you've put something dangerous. The, no, what it is. Okay, so the association with the potential danger of the alcohol, but being slippery rather than ingested. Yeah, nobody was like out of,

control everybody was very calm and like just socializing and walking up and down it was like like like a cocktail party or something for sure yeah yeah but that also struck me too the idea that you've got these kind of iconic view of of what i what jumps to my mind is a like greek philosopher and and you put them in a tower which towers very often in the human mind is like we look up up to what's important. You know, this is a top priority. You know, I'm going to the, I'm going to climb the mountain towards enlightenment. Very, very strong human, human understanding.

Up is better, down is worse in a lot of ways. The heavens are over. I'm ever as. Hell is below. Those kind of things. Very, very collective unconscious. We understand those things in a lot of the same ways. So you've got a, an icon of like knowledge and wisdom in one, the, the tower.

thing and it's glass you get it's transparent it's it's you can see through it in a way it's not shrouded in mystery and actually what's outside is darkness and a lot of times and you can tell me if this this feels right for you but it's darkness is the unknown in a lot of ways or or the unimportant it's like outside of this thing for what it is at the moment it's either things I don't know about or don't care about temporarily that is one way to look at it or the other side of it is that what is in here represented by the tower is what is most important

and the other stuff is not. At least to the context you're considering something in. So there's something along my lines of something on my mind towards the idea of gaining wisdom, understanding,

knowledge, the process of learning. We think of an ivory tower that's very connected to the concept of education in general. But that there's, and it's full of, it's full of people

who are, they feel very much to you like they belong there. They're having a very social gathering. They're not out of control. They're not drinking too much. But the idea that this wine is, it's not just in their cups, it's also flowing around where it could be a

dangerous to them and they don't seem to be reacting to that danger or having a problem with it. Like they're like you see something they don't maybe or either either they know something you don't about why this isn't anything they should be concerned with. I said a lot there. I'm going to stop for a minute and just let you kind of say anything you want about what have what I've rambled on so far. Yeah, no, that makes so much sense. It was it just feels so ambiguous.

And like this was years ago, but I still remember it, but you know, I think maybe there are some details that I can't remember. I think one of the reasons I remember thinking it was dangerous was because I don't, I believe there was no rail to hold on to. It was just steps and it was, I remember seeing like the water glistening and or the wine glistening and the light reflecting and just remember it feeling very slippery. I don't know if we had sandals on or barefoot. It was one, it was either sandals or barefoot, and it seemed dangerous, but everybody was relaxed and just walking around socializing freely. And, but that makes so much sense, what you just said about, things that are important or are high up. Yeah, I'm still not sure what to make of it. You know, it's just so, it's just so ambiguous and abstract.

It's like, well, what were you? It's, it's what, if you remember, what. was the life circumstances you were dealing with at the time this dream most recently happened um you know so so one one thing i've learned from you too is that journaling right is something that is helpful to better understand our dreams which is something i never did so that has taught me something i i i haven't i can't i would i would have been like teenager or maybe just like a young adult at that point. Okay. So this is quite quite a while ago. It was a it was a we're talking about like 10, 15 years ago. Sure. Okay. Um, so I can't remember my life circumstances at the time, but now I've

learned a few things that are helping me kind of put the pieces in the puzzle of what dreams and how they match to our reality and how we make sense of them and why back in those days, you know, they would have somebody speak to the Pope or whoever when they would purposely have them in a setting where they would talk about their dreams right after they woke up. Because I feel like that is so helpful to having context. And dreams without context, it's our brain telling us a message. And it's not always a clear message. It's something we have to decipher. But the clues are there and our life circumstance helps us.

put that into context and to match the clues up. It does. The pieces. Absolutely. I've just learned so, so much about dreams, which I'm really fascinated and happy about. Yeah. There's kind of a phenomenon with the, you know, there was a time before they really accepted the subconscious as a thing at all.

There was a time before that was common knowledge. Yeah, we seem to have our conscious mind or conscious attention. and everything else. And the conceptualization of it that finally took cold was that, and it's very true in a lot of ways, like everything our body experiences physically in any way, you know, everything we see, taste, hear, smell, touch, think.

As it's effect, there's a, there's a trace in the body of that experience. So the body and the brain doesn't forget anything ever. It is the, it is the repository of everything always from the moment, were born until the moment we can't access it anymore at death. So they conceptualize the subconscious as like this vast lake of everything we've ever seen, heard, thought, or otherwise.

What consciousness is is almost like a boat on the lake in some ways with little, those little fish finders that like when you're right over the fish, you can see it, but you don't know what else is out there because we don't have the ability to attend to everything we've ever seen, heard, felt, or thought all at once for the span of our entire life. We just can't. Our conscious attention, we got limited bandwidth as far as that goes. So what happens is, in dreams is that we turn off or it is turned off for us, our conscious attention to specific elements.

And now we just kind of float around a little bit and different elements of that like throw up things that are related to what we've recently experienced unresolved. typically unresolved on conceptual understandings or problems or trying to puzzle through. So I tell people, sleep on it. If you don't know what to do, literally don't just give it time, which is also good, but literally sleep on it because you may wake up the next morning going, I don't remember having a dream, but I know exactly what to do about this problem. I know exactly how I feel about this situation that was a bit confusing to me the other day or whatever. So yeah, it's a good.

Go ahead. And it's funny too. I wanted to mention the first time I actually associated dreams with knowing that they had something to do with my life, right? They're not just completely abstract. They're actually a message. I was in a toxic relationship, and I was seeing a therapist at the time. And it was a scene from the Lord of the Flies, where I forget which character was, but they fell or got knocked over, and they landed on a rock, and their head split open. And that exact scene happened.

but it was my sister. And she fell and died. And I asked my therapist about this. And I'm like, what does this mean? I had such a vivid dream. What does this mean? She's like, this is your brain telling you that your relationship is unhealthy. It's toxic.

And it needs to stop. And it made so much sense. Yeah. Right. For sure. And so that was like the first time I actually had a dream that I've under, it made sense. sense to me what my brain was trying to tell me. But I didn't know without my therapist pointing

that out, you know, I just didn't think of it. But I guess the more ambiguous it gets, though, it can be a little tricky to decrypt it, right? Yeah. And especially lacking context. Like to really to really nail down what's going on, say with this dream from 15 years ago or roughly. We would need you to have a little bit better idea of when and where it happened and what you were going through at the time. Otherwise, a lot of these things may not line up to, we can get a lot of the broad strokes. And a lot of stuff I've pulled out almost might to some people sound like dream dictionary style. Oh, well, Tower means education and, and people wearing togas necessarily means Greek philosophy. It doesn't. Doesn't necessarily mean anything.

but if we look at your but we can pick out things like you had the specific thought liquid on glass is slippery there's there's something there's a dangerous nature to this combination in this form you know um that presents presents itself in this specific way to and you take note of it so we can we can highlight those things and and speak them aloud and try and give them a verbal or conceptual shape that sometimes that unlocks doors and you're like, wait a minute, that's exactly like this other thing in my life. We were talking about the, and I wanted to bring, bring us back to this first dream too.

Yeah. My concept of reoccurring dreams is that we have, have an, it's typically one of two things. You know, we have a negative experience which continues to pop up in a particular form throughout our life, feeling out of control. nobody likes that unless that's kind of your your jam but that's like most people we want we want roller coaster out of control we want on the rails out of control not off the rails not train derailment you know so we most of us would prefer to be in control um at least to choose the moments we we surrender control not to have that taken from us broad strokes human experience so

broadly negative type of thing that people um that when you experience a lack of ability to exert your will or or or or or control your destiny in that way this crystallized form of expressing that concept may reoccur in a dream so that's that's one one side of it the other one is we've we're we're pondering a concept that we don't understand and we're trying to wrap our brain around um it's it's hard for some of us to remember when we were younger and certain things didn't make sense. Certain concepts were we didn't have enough life experience to really get, oh, that's what that is. That's what that means. That now I understand us. So we're just shy of understanding. And that actually does keep happening in less and less throughout

our lives as we get a better grip on, well, this is what I believe. This is how I think the world works. This is what seems like consistent patterns according to my understanding. And every now and again, something also so so from those two those those two possibilities seem to drive most reoccurring dreams i still don't understand this thing and i keep getting confronted with it so i need to think about it again or damn it this thing keeps happening to me and this is what it feels like so of course the image comes back to say here we go we're having this experience again you revisit it to say now what do i what do i do with this um that can be the most beneficial part of talking about these kind of dreams when they do happen is to say, okay, what are the moments in your life where you feel a lack of ability to direct your own destiny as much as you would like?

When are you moved by forces beyond your control? When are external pressures making it miserable, making you miserable because maybe you get two bad choices. You got a forced choice between two bad options. Would you rather that stupid game? You know, I'm not going to mention any of the specifics on that as far as it's all gross. And of course, it's meant to be like, these are two horrible things. And you feel forced. And a lot of us, you know, just living, living our life, we're obligated to do a lot of things that sometimes we don't want to because the alternative is, you know, you don't eat, you die.

You don't work. You have no money to buy food and et cetera, et cetera. So we got the pressures of existing itself. It leaves us with a lot of forced choices. So if we were able to dial it in, what makes you feel, you? you specifically feel out of control, then we could start looking for opportunities to, again, in the therapeutic sense, if I give you that understanding of when this dream comes, dream comes back, it's a reminder, oh, I'm having this feeling again.

Now you can pay attention to, okay, what's going on in my life that makes me feel out of control? What, and if you can identify it, oh, this was, you know, a friend put pressure on me to attend a social function I didn't want to go to and I went because I didn't want them to be upset and it's like, okay, I'm not respecting me and my needs. I don't know how to set boundaries. All this purely hypothetical, anything that makes you feel pressured to do something against you or robbs you of your ability to be, to feel like you're in control. That's going to be what brought the dream back.

And then it gives you an opportunity to say, okay, I'm going to make this conscious. I'm going to focus on this on purpose and I'm going to say, what can I do to be assertive more in the future so that. I don't need this dream to come back and poke me with the stick and say it's happening again. It's happening again. Okay, all of that. I rambled a lot. I don't know if you have thoughts.

No, that's awesome. No, that actually popped up a few things for me. Something really important. I wouldn't have thought of this if you didn't say all that. So I had a friend that I had a falling out with. I worked for him for several years. And I felt he treated me pretty horribly and unfairly. and we had known each other for a very long time.

We're always very close friends. And I worked for about four years. And the way things ended was really bad. And then my friends ended up getting involved because we had this huge dispute. And then for a period of two years, I just didn't even talk to him. And I was at a gathering with some friends. I'm like, hey, have you thought about it? Like they were trying to push me to forgive him.

They really wanted me to do this. And I was feeling pressured too to, to forgive him, even though I was so hurt and angry and wronged. And I was having a really hard time with it. And I remember at this one gathering, they're like, so what do you think? Like, have you had more time to sit with it? And I'm like, yeah, I actually had a dream last night and I forgave him. I woke up and I shouted, no.

Like, I was like, no way. What was I thinking? Like, I'm not doing that. And like recently, after a couple of years, I, I did forgive him. That's been a really hard thing for me. I forgive him, but I can't look at him in the same way. And that's been really hard for me because he's helped me in some ways.

So what things can do better to enhance my life. And if that didn't happen, I would still be best friends with him. And so that was a really painful thing. I think it makes sense because the thing that we always talk about, taking the high road, what is the right thing to do? Forgive somebody. Lewis Smead once said, to forgive us to set a prisoner free and discover that prisoner was you all belong.

Right. So being in that state of feeling betrayed and angry and hurt felt horrible. And it went on for a long time. And I think because it felt so horrible, my body, my brain wanted me to forgive. even though I didn't want to forgive, which is like this interesting, conflicting dynamic of what I want, what I want, right? Like one part, I'm like, one side of me wants to forgive the other doesn't. It's like, no way, you can't do that. Don't be a sucker.

Don't let somebody step all over you. And then the other side is like, let this go. This isn't helping you. This is hurting you. This is creating so much negative negativity in your life and bad energy. For sure. No. And we often have those conflicting.

internal conflicts of ourselves of like both things are true at the same time. Okay, what the hell do I do with that? You know, I shouldn't be a sucker. No one should. Also, this is not good for me. Hanging on to it is is more detrimental. So how do you, and then we make peace with, with some, there's some shade of understanding that finally strikes us, and it can take a long time to get there. So as you were describing that, I'm like this imagery of the, there's a bit of a presumption in some ways that if you are the one rear-ending someone, it's your fault. You weren't paying attention. You didn't see them hit their brakes. You, you know, we're looking down and playing with the radio.

So there's a framing of, okay, imagine you're in a situation that would typically be your fault, but you got a faulty equipment. You are hitting the brakes. you are trying to do the right thing and it is ineffective. So there's a bit of a, as you were saying, holding these two things of like, is this my fault? How much of this is my fault? Is this an equipment failure that like, I'm doing my best and circumstances beyond my control? Or should I've been paying attention more? And really, I just didn't hit the brakes in time.

And you're like, bodily, I can, I can imagine that strange. If you're standing, standing on it, trying to get it to stop. And it's like there's also that, um, a feeling of kind of ineffectual powerlessness that comes with trying to take some action. And it's just not having the desired result. You know, it should this should work. The brakes should work. I'm doing the right thing.

And that's also the idea of a car crash comes to mind. It's like there's that moment of, oh, no, it's happening. And you catch it and you, it's too late to stop it. It is going to hit. The crash is coming. But you see it. just in time to be horrified by it and you still can't do anything about it. There's,

there's an element to that in getting this, in relationships, getting this pressure from other people where they are crashing into you. They're putting their, it's a car crash you can't avoid. Someone's going to be unhappy and it's going to be you or it's going to be them and they're going to keep harping on it. And,

you know, there's, it's almost like something has to give. Either you capitulate, you confront. and you get in there and say, this isn't changing it. I don't want to hear about it anymore. And you have to be then willing to also walk away,

which is a third option of just being passively like, I don't want to deal with any of you people. I'm out, pull the rip court, and then don't delete their number and don't take their calls anymore. These are all possible. And you would say if someone's in a toxic relationship with a particular person for whatever reason, sometimes there's nothing you can do to make them happy,

to make yourself happy with the circumstance you're in, and just give them whatever they want. or, and it's also going to be hard to walk away. So it's like there's almost, no matter what you do, you're screwed in some way. Someone's getting hurt. Someone's unhappy. And you have to learn to live with the bad part of it. Like it's, so there's a lot of going on with this, this imagery of the car crash idea of like, the crash is coming.

It's going to happen. You can't stop it. Well, now what do you do? What do you do? It'll be very interesting to see. And I've had this happen multiple times. If this type of dream occurs again, Does it have a part two?

Does it have a, okay, I hit the car, but there was no damage to the bumper. I just wasn't going fast enough. Did I hit the car and I jump out going, oh my God, are you okay? And they're fine and they laugh with you. Oh, shit happens. Do you have a wreck in both cars flip and it's a disaster and people die? How serious is this thing and what are the consequences? Analyzing, okay, number one, if the dream changes the nature of it, maybe the brakes start to work.

maybe now maybe conscious attention to this understanding is going to give you more control so that the number one the nature of the specific dream could change if we hit on something useful also there could be like I said a continuation of the dream that shows you what you weren't ready to see yet which was okay what are the consequences how do I deal with the fallout because at some point you got acceptance is a big deal like people are in denial about all kinds of stuff as long as you maintain the denial you never have to deal with the problem because it's not real it's not happening What you accept, it's really like, oh, fuck. Now, okay, now your brain's ready to think about, okay, what comes next. Now I've acknowledged this is a problem. Now I've got to do something about it. Or I don't, and I just let it be what it is. That's also a decision. Again, I rambled a lot on that.

But this is all the stuff I, this is all, this is what goes through my head when people tell me their dreams. I'm like, what do I say? What's the most important stuff to tell this guy? No, I love it. Like, this is just so cool for me to explore all this with you. It's just so cool. What came up to me was a,

number of different things, one of that you had mentioned earlier, the life experience. So, um, at the time, like, I just don't know how to resolve this in a way that I feel okay about it, right? And that's taken me a couple of years. And I still don't feel great about it. But I know that I feel better, knowing that I've forgiven, but not forgotten, more so accepted. and also not also having enough self-respect for myself to say, yes, this happened. I learned the lesson from it. I've forgiven him. This is somebody that is not a friend to me because of X, Y, and Z.

And that's where I leave it. And I'm okay with that. If you asked if we had this conversation a year ago, I would have been like the angry memories just surface and they boil over. I it's it's out of control feeling of anger where I go and I just want to punch a boxing bag for like an hour straight. Yeah. It's and sometimes it takes a while for those feelings to fade and for us to. They say, I mean, the classic, I love aphorisms, you know, time heals all wounds. Not all.

Sometimes, you know, what doesn't kill you doesn't actually make you stronger. It can leave you weaker, but, but the idea of it, you know, there's different kinds of strength and whatnot. But sometimes it takes a while. while and we shouldn't in some ways we shouldn't rush those decisions too because there's a and i think you found one of the optimal balances which is easier said than done and it's a very vague a tudness type of thing is like we got to find a way to as you said be okay with what it is and hold on to the idea that it's still that it's not okay i'm okay with it but what but it's not okay and in a lot of circumstances it's like coming to that acceptance of this person still believes

they did nothing wrong. They're never going to apologize to me. So how do I deal with this? Well, I'm too angry about it and it's not helping me. So I'm going to let it go for my sake, but I'm also not going to make the same mistake twice. And if I'm putting a similar situation, I'm not going to repeat the behavior that didn't work. A lot of us got to get down to that. I think this is bookends. It brings it back around to the idea of the resilience training or encouragement you could have had when you were younger and how to make sure other people get that get what they need based on what you identified was was absent. And I think part of part of that is you've only were able to give other people that advice because you found missing pieces that

fit what might have made your circumstance better. And it took maybe, I mean, however many years from being a kid to publishing the book. It took that amount of time to think about it and wait for everything to make sense. And when it did, light bulb moment, now I can describe it. Now I know what it is. I said a lot of stuff. I think I had a point there. No, no. That was all awesome. And it's true because it's taken me 31, 32, 33 years before I was like ready to actually go up and say, I'm going to be a public speaker. I'm going to do this. This is happening. And going through the madness of like imposter syndrome. Can I do this?

Am I supposed to do this? Will I be happy if I do this? What happens if XYZ happens? And just taking one step back, two steps forward, constantly self-reflection and like very deep level and just like second-guessing myself a lot and like that being a very treacherous and difficult path that I was hoping would be a lot easier but was not. But I knew that that is something I was supposed to do because people have told it to me my entire life. And I, it's even self-denial, like, no, I don't want to do this.

And it's afraid because I was afraid to fail. And I know that now. And I'm okay with that. And confronting that has given me the strength that I needed. Vulnerability is a form of strength. And I think that's misconception that a lot of us have. But, you know, that's taught me a lot. And also, you mentioned failure earlier.

failure is part of the process of learning and achieving success as well. And it's an experience. It's a journey. We don't always have all the answers, but sometimes we do get the answers years later. And for me that, you know, in that sense, I feel like a late bloomer. Like, I found out later. But that's a, it's better late than never, right? It is true.

And we all have, and I'm going to get more platitudes, but this is the mystical side of me of like, as we were saying, again, to book in a bit back to the stuff I think we were talking about or at the beginning or beforehand, we met to talk today because this was the right time. Things happened in their own time. So there's like late bloomer, yeah, compared to others. But whatever your journey was,

it took you until now to get to the place where it was the right time and place and way to approach something. And I don't know that, what am I trying to say? It was the mystical side of this thing. Is that, you know, it's hard to say things happen for a reason.

because I'm not sure it is exactly like that. That feels like predestination. We're locked into a divine plan we can't get out of. But I think there are some things that work that way. And if you try to force it before it's time, it's going to turn out shitty. But anytime after it's ready, you can kind of take your leisure with it too. You can never do it. You can say, you know, I was ready for this, but I've changed my mind.

It's not a thing I want to do. or I'm ready to begin the process now and I'm going to I'm going to enjoy it. It'll be leisurely. And sometimes we're like a flip switch is like, I'm doing this. This is happening. I'm ready. Now I feel it. And I don't know.

I don't want to advise people to say trust their gut necessarily because we have all kinds of emotions that are real but not rational in that sense of like it's like, yeah. But what's what's paranoia? It's fear out of proportion to any actual danger in the environment. not the most conducive to living a happy life or a functional life if you're afraid of things that aren't going to hurt you. But it's okay also to say, you know, I wasn't ready to confront that fear until a specific time and a specific, for me, a specific accumulation of quantity and quality of experiences brought me to a place where the pieces fell into place.

And then the time was right. Yeah, I was going to. some more with all that. I do that all the time. I love it. It's awesome. And it's, I like the way you, you make a point to say nothing's off the table. And I know we, we mentioned before. And I wanted to mention this earlier, but I'd forgotten. So one of the things, I forget this guy, he was a professional hypnotist. And he would put people, like to sleep. And then he would do, he would do it. I don't know how scripted it was to some degree, I'm sure it was. It's hard to know sometimes. Yeah. It's just hard to know. But like if that is true, I mean,

it was just fascinating to me. I'm very interested to know how much truth is behind that. Because like people would have memories from their dreams and he would be able to find dates that match up to that. But again, this is presuming that it's not totally scripted. So I just don't know. But it fascinates me. The idea of holding on to a hope that, and I think this is where the basis of why religion makes sense. Because so much of our life, if we just live it to eat, you know, crap and, you know, have kids like, it's not as meaningful as having something bigger to believe in. But there can be a dangerous, you know, intersection of reality and what's real and what's not real, right? for sure um you've got a you got a bad pastor telling you're gonna you know you're gonna be you know

give us all your money and you know all your dreams will come true and you know amazing things grandiose plans are going to happen and it doesn't happen and they're like what the heck you know all these cults that predict the end of the world it'll be on you know august 12th of whatever year and then that's coming gone many times over yeah people keep giving giving a money i don't know what that's all about but oh my god yeah yeah i was going to say something else too you were mentioning uh Oh, no. I think I lost it. It's a bit about what you were just talking about.

Damn. So what happens when I don't write things down. Was it one of the dreams that we were going through? Hypnotism. I was going to just mention that too. So even if we allow for the possibility that there is some stage magic, hypnotism that's like having a confederate in the audience is common. I mean, that's a, I need a volunteer.

You miss, you look like a likely one. And she was, she travels everywhere with them. She's his partner. That said, there is a reality to the idea of hypnotism that it, and it, and it, it functions. There's all kinds of different altered states that, that are akin to and similar or, or, they're true at different levels or they're overlapping van diagrams, et cetera. It's trans, hypnotism. the one thing I was thinking of what was yeah sorry I just want what he was doing specifically was past life regression was what he was doing that that's something that I was interested in doing

myself and I don't think don't think I've been ready because I'm just like this is so stupid like why would I do this but it's like why not you know yeah why not how much that is entirely possible but I mean there's a there's a grand tradition of hypnotism in psychiatry and and specifically as it relates to dreams of like If we can, if we have too much bright lights and noise happening around us, we can't focus on what's right in front of us sometimes. So there's, we understand that basic concept of like, if you're going to study for a test, go to a quiet place, away from a lot of distractions. And then you can concentrate better. Well, I think it works the same way, but, but kind of down the other way with hypnotism is it brings us away from conscious focus into that more gray space.

where it's easier to let some things float up because we're not so distracted. We can't see them. Oh, look like you. Turn your attention this way. Ah, now I see what you're talking about. It's right in front of me. And we can access dream memories and past experiences that way, to what degree, how accurately.

There's, there's open questions. And some people are big believers and some people are like, it's all bunk. I'm somewhere in the middle of like, you know, if you can put, someone into a little bit of a hypnotic state and then just let them kind of ramble about dream experiences a lot of those stuff will come up and it'll connect to real life real life experiences as well um not my not my specialty so there's certainly not something i can do over the internet so i don't use hypnotism for my dream we just talk about it and whatever you remember you remember and we make sense of it together that's how i do it but but yeah no i just yeah and i figure you know like

people spend money on cigarettes and all kinds of terrible things It's true. If I spent it on past life regression and then it wouldn't be the worst, you know, worst use of money, you know? So it's like, yeah.

And then we're kind of like an entertaining experience. Yeah. And at the end of the day, I think to some degree, that's what religion is. Plus it has the added benefit of community. Um, you know,

and if it gives you more meaning and it, and it, it, it's able to, it benefits you in some way and it's not, you know, putting yourself, you know,

uh, in danger. a bad state. It's ultimately a good thing. I get the benefits of it. I understand it. It's not my cup of tea, but I get why people do it and why it's been around since, you know, the beginning of, you know, mankind. It makes sense. For sure. Yeah. Good deal. Well, did you have any additional questions about the two dreams we're kind of looking at? I mean, we didn't get a lot of very specific, clear answers, but we talked all around it enough to kind of, I think, give you enough to think about going forward.

Yeah. If you had more specific questions, I'm happy to do it. Otherwise, we can wrap it up. Yeah. No, I think we covered a lot of ground. I learned a ton. Totally fascinating. Yeah, no, I think we're good.

We covered a lot of ground. Very cool. All right. Well, then we'll just do the closing out here. And I'll say to all the folks out there in the YouTube land, et cetera. This has been our friend Avi Wolfson from Boston, Massachusetts, a published author, public speaker, sales professional. three times axe throwing chappie and i forgot to ask anything about that we'll have to have him back

he's got 31 books on parenting oh and i'll get when we wrap up in a minute i'll get the link from you so i can throw it in the description below of course um for my part would you kindly like share subscribe to tell your friends always need more of volunteer dreamers viewers for the game's dreams uh 16 currently available works of historical dream literature the most recent dreams in their meanings by horace g hutchinson uh lovingly reproducingly reproduced and recreated by yours truly. All this and more at Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com. Full list of the books,

MP3 downloads of each new episode, growing encyclopedia of dream-related people and terminologies. And that's the shilling for me. I'll just say, once again, Avi, thanks for being here. Good talk. Awesome. Thanks for having me, Ben. Truly an honor.

Deal. And everybody out there, thanks for listening.