Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 142: The Ugly Truth

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

“The wise adapt themselves to circumstances, as water molds itself to the pitcher.” – Chinese Proverb

Greetings friends and welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have our friend Milkman, Dan, from an island off the southern coast of Australia, sharing beachfront property with the Penguins. We're going to get right back to him in two seconds. For my part, would you kindly like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers for these interviews, viewers for the game streams, people to purchase my books. Speaking of which, 16 currently available works of historical dream literature,

the most recent dreams and their meanings by Horace G. Hutchinson, working on book what is it book 17 soon soon about halfway done with the audio book on that and then we'll get the uh get the simultaneous release also uh all this and more at benjamin the dream wizard dot com including downloadable mp3 versions of these very podcasts um brain fart also head on over to benjamin the dream wizard dot locals dot com and uh join the community there trying to uh build up some folks that might want to become uh sustaining patrons play play uh Domenici to my Da Vinci, I hope. That's enough about me.

We'll get back to Milkman, Dan. Dan, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, we were, I just realized we'd had like a 20-minute conversation. I'm like, we should have been recording all that. We'll just jump. We'll just pretend like we never stopped. You were talking about dreams and where they come from and do they mean anything.

And I was explaining something. Oh, shit. Lost my train of thought with all that. The origin of dreams. what it's thinking. Oh, okay. So what dreams is as it relates to the subconscious. So my personal opinion and,

and, you know, your mileage may vary and other people have different theories. But I personally believe, and I've come to believe this over the last three years specifically as I've spent more time and energy getting invested in this stuff. I believe what we experience as dreams is more like what our raw, unfiltered stream of consciousness is actually like. And then,

And that's like that's like that layer of what happens as things filter up from the subconscious and head towards conscious attention. And then what we're experienced, what we experience as our thoughts when we're awake is is a more focused awareness of that stream of consciousness. And we kind of pick out things or follow different. You know, we can direct it more. So it's like dreams are more undirected stream of consciousness. And then conscious attention is directing that. stream or picking and choosing where to focus our attention. That's where I was going with that.

Yeah. Yeah, I like that. I've thought of kind of thinking like in a similar sort of way. Like, yeah, I feel like this constantly, like it rains like a river. And each thought is just a leaf floating down the river. And like, when you, like, awake and conscious, like, most of the time, you can sort of, like, choose which leafs to read, like, little fortune cookies, pick them up out of the water and read them and choose how long you read them before you just chuck it back in the river. For sure. Yeah.

But although I've experienced times where I've felt like I've had, like, like, no control over, like, essentially which leaves I pick up. Yeah. Um, but yeah, that was, that was, uh, on LSD. So it was kind of understandable, but, um, yeah, or the, or, or the, or the, or the, or the, what popped in my head when we're saying that is, uh, this one's a leaf. That one's a twig. Look, there's a beaver. It's like, we never know whatever, we never know what's going to be in there. Um, but also, and this is, it, kind of what got us on to this tangent was, was, was that we have a, we have a, we have concepts and theories regarding thought, thinking, the process. And, and,

We've, it's taken us a long time to get where we're at in terms of kind of trying to understand it better and lots of different models for it. And we still don't really know what it is. It's one of those things where it's like we, we kind of have an idea of what it looks like or how it works or what it, you know. And we, even in scientific terms, we use a lot of analogies. So a flowing river is an analogy. Links in a never ending chain is another analogy and or forking. Forking paths. Where was I going with that?

We do think of thoughts in that manner of something, something that has three dimensions in some way, you know, like in analogy to physical object, something that, you know, has, but mostly it's got like a line or linear type of concept to it because it does feel like one thought to another. We call them associations, which is where we get the concept of free association, which is I say X and your brain just pops up with Y and you say it. And that was a big part of some psychological traditions.

But that also does seem what seemed to happen when we're maybe just daydreaming in a way, abstracted. Because we can daydying, we can fantasize specifically about a scenario. It's almost like lucid daydreaming is a way to conceptualize that. We can imagine ourselves in a specific scenario, undertaking specific. chosen behaviors or we can let our mind wander we can do you know wool gathering or cloud you know cloud gathering or whatever lots of more analogies people use to try and describe what we're doing oh yeah um because because a lot of us i've always been called a daydreamer it's um generally a pejorative though yeah it can be and it's usually uh but that's another thing too is like okay

so we're trying to conceptualize how thought what it is and how it works and then we start getting into, well, what does it look like to have different conditions? And then there is, so if we continue the analogy, say, of the river and the leaves, there are some people where the river, they have, flows rather slowly. It's a very lazy river. It doesn't, doesn't have a strong current and there's not a lot of leaves. And that's okay. Their brain's not moving down. Now, let's say it's moving so slow that it, it's just not as efficient at moving at all. And some people we'd say, you know, they just don't, that might be an analogy to say

maybe someone who's lower IQ, they can't process complicated things, they can't think quickly. There's a lot of ways we might conceptualize that as a problem. But let's say there's, there's a healthy average of the river's moving along at a good pace. There's not too many leaves. And then you'd say, let's say the river is hitting a lot of rapids and it's flowing very fast down a hill. And it's cluttered with leaves. And then we might look at that and say, okay, that's kind of the concept.

of racing thoughts we might find in mania under the bipolar label. So you can kind of extend a lot of these analogies to fit. And then there's also ADHD, which is like the river's not moving any faster than it needs to, but there's so many leads. You just, and you can't stop picking them all up. And that's kind of the ADHD thing might be one way, one way to think about it. It's fantastic. And now it's, you don't have a good way to discern, which are the important leaves to pick up,

like your attention is just sort of all over. about. Yeah. Yeah. And then you get some people where maybe they are, what's a good way to describe this. So maybe someone gets a bit stuck in an idea. And if we are using, again, this river analogy, maybe there's a little Eddie, a whirlpool. And those leaves are just spinning in a circle. And they're perseverating or ruminating on that type of thing. And it can be hard to break out of that too. They're stuck looking at the same leaves over and over again. And they can't let it go. Yeah, yeah. Great, great analogies. But then again, these are all just analogies. We don't know what's actually happening. And all of that, again, goes back to the

of what is, you know, does do dreams or dreaming have any relevance or any importance, any significance, anything useful we can draw from it? In a lot of ways, it depends on what do you think thoughts have potential relevance? You know, do you think it's possible to get at someone's subconscious experience that is informing their, their choices in a way that they don't understand? And if you can draw a connection between them it gives them more power over okay now I can make choices instead of those choices being made for me by powers beyond my control that are inside me but underneath uh because because I don't know what they are um yeah there's still people out there who think psychology is just a bunch of BS and they don't want to get their head shrunk by those by those damn damn pill pushers you know

that's those cranks those quacks yeah yeah there's some people the brain shirt the head shrinkers yeah yeah that's tough and you know I don't want to argue with anyone on that, you know, in terms of like, I would argue they are wrong and I would debate someone on that subject saying, look, I think this has validity. When it comes to them personally, I'm more like, okay, you know, it's kind of like that dragging a horse water type of thing, but even if you could convince, what is it? Someone said recently, I think it might have been Peterson. I think about that guy all the time.

It's a great, great example of a good clinical psychologist. He said, you know, court mandated therapy for, say, certain people who have had, criminal contact with the law and the judge says well i think you should get some counseling you get those guys into counseling and if they won't engage you cannot have any positive impact they have to want it to work they have to be willing to open up and you trust you and and uh be willing to you know critically self-examine and all these different stuff and it's like if someone's not willing to do that there's nothing the the doctor can do uh you know it's like yeah a patient that refuses you can put a gun to their head and force them to open up and be honest or something.

It's, yeah. And it's even worse than, say, someone who refuses to give consent to an appendectomy. At some point, that person will probably go unconscious and be at active risk of dying. And at that point, you can say, well, they're not fighting back anymore. Now I can go ahead and do the operation. But even in that sense, if it's a physical problem and you can physically restrain the person, you can take out a rotting appendix and save their life. It's not the same way with getting into someone's head.

They have to open the door and let you in. There's no physical method to break in there and accomplish therapy against their will. It's just not going to, it's a literal impossibility. Right now, now maybe that'll change someday. And maybe we'll say, that's a scary thing too. Like what if technology progresses to a certain point where we can enter someone's mind against their will and force them to change? change it to believe something different or to behave differently. If that's a scary thought, if that becomes possible, is it ethical to do so?

And I don't know. I don't know. Well, and there's, there's, there's, there's the serious potential for, I go all over the place. Sorry, I got my, my river is flowing fast with lots of leaves. I'm enjoying it. I hope so. And jump in any time. I could see, there's the, the overarching ethical concern.

That's fine. There's also a best and worst case scenario. Best case scenario, we've got someone who is, as I've had customers in the past who told me precisely this, I hear the voices of demons. They scream at me and it terrifies me and I want it to stop. Help me. And so we give the medication and it makes the voices go away sometimes or whisper more quietly in the background. It makes them easier to understand or easier to ignore. It makes the voices feel less terrifying.

All of that stuff is good. Now, what if we had the technology to go in and say, you know, this person's asking for help. We have their consent. We have the technology. We can go in there and just flip that switch and say, hey, you don't have to hear screaming demons anymore. Hallelujah. That's win-win for everybody. Then there's the other side of it where a person is also schizophrenic person, but they're like, these aren't demons.

They're angels. And they tell me, I'm Jesus. And I need to save the world by blowing up a bunch of people at a shopping mall. And I don't want your help. I'm right. These voices are real. I'm a servant of God. And now do we go in there and change their mind against their will?

I mean, do we or not? And then even worse than that is the idea of, well, we just, you know, we are the government and we think you're having wrong thoughts. So we're going to change what you believe so that you accept us as your Lord and Savior. That will also become possible under those conditions. That's the most worrying one for me. is if, like, it becomes something that the government can just decide, like, a citizen needs.

It's very sort of, like, 1984, I think. Ah, yeah. And it's scary, because, like, on worst days, I feel like we're heading that way a little bit. But usually, I don't know, I'm pretty optimistic. But, yeah, that's a good question. Like, yeah, it seems unethical, but, like, if it would actually help them, if it was, you know, a proven possible thing to just, like, you know, going to someone's brain and just delete the schizophrenia.

So they're just, you know, it's a sane version of them. I don't know. It sounds like a godsend to someone truly suffering, but also just a too dangerous a foot in the door, I guess, because then you could start justifying it for other mental things. And then you could justify it for... Have you seen the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Yeah, that's a good one. That's exactly kind of the idea. Yeah.

Very interesting, too. I don't remember who was the director on that. I want to, was that a tenant movie? What is his name? Like tenant. He did the movie Tenant and Inception. Was it, was it that guy? I can't remember his name. Dan. Maybe not. You look it up. That's Gulfway. Like, when I'm doing this recording stuff, I can't, I can't do research typically. I may not be the same. Michael Gondry. What else?

What else did he do? I know he did something else recently. I'm not too sure. It says the book of solutions, mood, indigo, the science of sleep, be kind, rewind, the green hornet. Oh, sunshine. Yeah. Okay, maybe I was thinking of something else or someone else, some of their different director. That's fine.

I don't actually recognize it. Very interesting in the way they conceptualize that is that. the the technology kind of worked but ultimately didn't like those thoughts kept getting unearthed and rediscovered and the the it never really if i'm remembering it correctly like they they had a hard time the process being with the process being successful and even at the end of the very end of the movie like they both erased each other oh spoilers uh three two one yes right yeah yeah yeah if anyone hasn't seen it's like a 20 year old movie at this point but still Oh, yeah, true.

Right, but still, I don't want it. So give me 10 seconds and tune back in. Even though at the very end of the movie, they'd both erased each other, they met again and the attraction was still there, and they were about to start it all over again. If I'm remembering it correctly. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Spoilers over. You can come back. Yeah, and that's, I really like that. Like, I'm not usually a huge sucker for happy endings. Like, I'd rather sometimes, just for, it'd be interesting that it's just be sad ending but um yeah yeah that i felt that maybe that did i don't know it was just the whole thing was strange like but interesting that did feel like a happy

ending to me too like they were both making a terrible mistake and then there's i mean there's and they knew it and they knew they were yeah like they'd both heard that like you know they they despite knowing that uh yeah yeah they don't i get that a lot i get a feeling a lot it's like a lot time through my life, I've had a feeling of, I'm making a huge mistake, but I don't stop. I just keep walking towards the fire. Like, yeah. It's a strange, it's a bizarre, like, sort of feeling. It's almost like I've become aware for a second that I'm not even in really control

of, like, my wife sometimes. I'm just floating through it. Like, it's weird. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and then, that, oh, so many great, great places to go with that. I mean, there's the idea of, um, Just speaking of that movie in general, is like, should we ever really even want to forget relationships with... I believe you know.

Yeah, I'm a little bit on that line. Now, that's interesting too, because we are, our brains are kind of programmed to forget a lot of stuff. And it's actually, it can be very beneficial if something is severely traumatic that maybe you don't think about it every time, multiple, every day multiple times a day. that's just disruptive to living a good life in general. So there's a benefit to, say, the natural letting go process and that, you know, mistakes we've made in the past that were horribly embarrassed about were able to make a bit of peace with it and not obsess over it every single day. I've actually heard it said by some people who have photographic memory that people tell them, man, I wish I had a photographic memory. And they say, no, you don't. I cannot forget anything.

And it's awful. Yeah. And now that doesn't mean it can't be useful, but is it worth living that way? You know, to what, not to what end, but to at what cost is kind of, kind of the idea. So it's not, you know, it's not necessarily forcing ourselves to, you know, it's one of those things where it's like, yeah, breakups are painful. And it can be miserable to think, I wish it could have worked out with this person. But, where am I going with that?

Um, but if we give it time, generally that the intensity of that distress will fade away. So it's almost like you just haven't given time. Oh, yeah. And you're trying to. It's, it's like interrupting a natural process. If you can naturally forget, that's great. If you can come make peace with it, you know, give it time. No problem.

If you have to go in there and kind of artificially zap neurons and, and delete memories, probably a very bad idea. Because you don't know what those are connected to. I think it's an unintended consequence type of thing where it's like, yeah, you had good intent. I want to alleviate unnecessary suffering, perhaps.

But you have changed as a person from that experience. And each one of those things that happen to, like a forking neuron styles, you've got all these patterns in your brain. And how, how is that going to disrupt those connections by deleting the source? You lose things you can, you make decisions.

You can no longer reference the source. of you don't know why you feel or think that anymore so there's like and again we're talking about theoretical technology that doesn't actually exist you're dead right though like um due to the facts that I think I think they even say it's um

he says I think um it's not like on par with brain damage he's like oh no no it is brain damage like yeah yeah yeah I think I remember that zapping your brain like um we're deleting part of your brain essentially so like yeah I don't like think it would be a big good idea. Like, if we had the technology, I don't think it'd be a good idea for the reason

that, like, it sounds dangerous, at least in that, at that point in the technology, but to say it got better and there was no brain damage, I'm still, I don't know, I'm a bit of a romantic or sucker of, or I don't know what it is, but like, I'm a big believer in it's better to have loved than to have never loved at all, because, like, yeah, broken hearts do hurt a lot, but, you know, that make us strong. Yeah. And I think sometimes you have to go through a learning process and maybe if you failed relationships to get to a relationship that works because you have sufficiently changed to become ready for that functional relationship. So it's very rare that anyone, you know, yeah, what am I trying to say? There's a couple different cases. I'm always trying to be the most accurate I possibly can be. So there are conditions where, let's say arranged marriage is one way to look at it. You are. told who you will marry. The selection has been done for you by people who know you well and let's say they have good intentions and they are very good at making a good match. Now you're married to

someone that was chosen for you and there's two things that can happen. You decide this will last for our entire lives and we will make it work, whatever that means, whatever we have to do to make it successful. Or you can say, you know, I don't feel the effort to do so is what I want or would be successful and you you just quit and leave and that's it's kind of the condition for for any marriage it's very rare that um say someone meets the love of their life it's the first boyfriend or girlfriend they've ever had they date for a while and then they get married and then that is the only person they have ever dated ever known that is their entire relationship experience and the partner they stay with for the rest of their life it's much more common you have crushes and you ask a few

you know, you go on a few dates and maybe that's not, you know, you're not having fun, so you try a different person and maybe you say some stupid things or you forget to buy some flower, whatever it is the other person expects. And you're like, well, I guess I won't do that again. And you learn from it. You know, I think that's much more common in people's experience. Oh, yeah. I'll go somewhere. You're going to be. So like, I think how you said with the photographic memory thing, how people are like, oh, I wish I had that. I feel that's of it very much the same with people who are like high school sweethearts or

whatever or like first, it's the first relationship and it just so happens to work like, you know, people are like, oh, I wish I had that, but I'm sure, yeah, a lot of them do think to themselves like, well, you may wish that, but I mean, like, I have that and I kind of

wish I had lived a little before you know, settling down, I guess. There's a little bit of path not taken regret in some ways. Yeah, Ross's grain, sort of. Yeah, I mean, you always wonder. And then it's a, it's a, sometimes we're left with no option to say, well, we're left with the only two options is I'm going to stay on my side of the fence because hopping over is permanent.

There's no going back once you, this things you cannot, as the internet says, cannot be unseen. There are behaviors that cannot be undone. And that doesn't mean we can't, I don't what am I trying to say? sometimes if let's say we go down the wrong road for a certain amount of time and then we realize that we're heading in the wrong direction and we turn around you can turn around and you can go back there's a lot of conditions in life with it like that you can technically undo a mistake and then get onto the right path but you can never undo the fact that you went the wrong way first that that experience of going the wrong way will always exist like the existence of that thing will never

disappear and that can be a good thing or bad thing but it's also like some of the some of the arguments being made about, you know, not to get too controversial, but some of the current debate over children and medical procedures lately, you know, they'll say, oh, it's reversible. It can be undone. Or if, say, breasts removed, you can just get implants. I'm like, you can't get your breast back. Yeah. Once they have been removed, that is permanent. Now, implants are a remedy that is a second cosmetic surgery. Anesthetic, anesthetic remedy, but it's not the, you know, once you've cut off healthy body parts. They're not,

they don't grow back. We're not lizards. There's no undoing that is a permanent choice. There's a lot of things that are like that in life. It's like, you know, at the very least, you can't get back to lost time.

Like some people come out of a movie and they're like, oh my God, I want that two hours of my life back. Never can't happen. Not as it's permanent. It's never coming back. It's gone forever. Yeah.

That's kind of where I look at a lot of, you know, decisions. Sometimes you just got to live with that. But yeah. And that's what it is. So, okay,

all of this was a tangent from the grass is greener concept. So you make that decision. I'm going to choose to never know what's on the other side because that decision is permanent. There's no, maybe I can hop back over the fence. Maybe I can't, but there will never, there will never be a condition again where I have never hopped the fence.

That's a, one time deal. It's like, you can never have your first time twice for anything. First time you had ice cream. I was just about to say that. I was just about to say, yeah,

you can never lose your opportunity twice. Exactly. Yeah, that's a one time deal. And, you know, it's a personal opinion how important that is to you. And it may have other consequences. But now, now then again, if you do hop the fence, you might find it tremendously rewarding. You might go, oh, my God, why did I do this sooner?

But it's a one way street. You can never unhop that fence. And you got to be sure. Sometimes it's better not to know, to have that regret. Well, then again, you know, some people. What do they say? They surveyed some old folks who were on their deathbed. and they're like, what do you regret in your life?

And a lot of their regrets were I should have done more things I was afraid to do. Now, that isn't quite hopping the fence necessarily because I don't think they were referring to that. But a lot of people regret the things I should have traveled in Europe. I should have asked that girl out in high school. I should have seen what would have happened if I had changed careers, you know, but I was scared. They regret the things they didn't do. I didn't do. Yeah.

Not so much of the things they did. Yeah. And I can understand that. Like, they, like, I don't believe anyone should regret the things they've done if they have, like, if they've done bad things, like, even, that's, you know, if they've learned from it. If they've learned from it, and they're remorseful and I can do it again or whatever. Yeah, and it didn't hurt anybody too badly. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Like, like, when you were saying before, like, you know, doing a loop sort of thing, like,

just using that, like, I feel like when you do that loop, you can either, like, let it sort of drag you down and you come out of that loop, yeah, going forward again, but you're going slower. Or you can, like, sort of almost use it like going around a planet or something, like, use the, what's what they call it, gravitational slingshot or, I don't watch much sci-fi, but. Right? That's how they, that's how they traveled back in time and Star Trek forward. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, yeah, I've, so I've heard. I don't watch much Star Trek. I've watched a bit of Deep Space 9, but I'm not a treky by any means.

Yeah, I've heard that was a pretty good series. I mean, I watched a little bit of it. I was more of a original series and then NextGen. Like, I'm old enough that I watched, I watched the very first episode of the next generation in 1989, and I watched it weekly every Sunday night when it was on until the very last episode, like six or seven years later. That was a big part of my life. Yeah, I was pretty young back then, too.

It was 1980. God, I was like 12 when it started and like... Oh, wow. Yeah, like 17, 18 when it, when it ended. Something like that. That was a big deal. No, actually what you were saying too, but I love the gravitational slingshot type of analogy. A lot of things, so what do we do with trauma?

Like, what is a broad strokes? This is not the actual process, but like the broad concept of it. What do we do with someone who has trauma and why does trauma in a PTSD way seem to continue to have lingering effects and how do we then address it in a way that makes that negative life experience improves it, you know, broadly speaking. And the general concept is you've got to turn that experience into something useful. You've got to get a grip on it in some way. A lot of the reason our brains get stuck obsessing over negative experiences, fear, anxiety,

trauma of that kind is because our brains are literally designed to analyze negative experiences to figure out how to avoid them in the future. Our brain wants to learn the pattern so that we don't re-experience that emotion, that we don't suffer from the same experience. So a lot of the secret, and again, broad strokes and, you know, correct me if you're a clinical counselor out there, but a lot of the secret appears to be making, coming to coming to grips with it in a way that it becomes useful you've got to transform the trauma into triumph is the is the kind of you know catchy phrase phrase to it but but it is

a process of understanding what happened why did it happen how do I make sure that doesn't happen to me again and once you've got a handle on that it's it's a lot easier to kind of put it to bed and it's it's kind of related to the same thing we're talking about with recurring dreams is that, you know, why do we, why do they keep coming back? Because there's a lesson there we feel is necessary to learn. Our brain is saying, this is a pattern. It's going to happen again. You better understand it.

And until you do, you're going to keep having these dreams. Yeah. Yeah, I was going somewhere with all that. I reckon, yeah, I'd, um, I'd agree with that. Like, um, I think, yeah, it's, uh, trauma happens to them. they like sort of um i don't know if ruminates the right word but they just let it loop in their head essentially fine well trying to understand it and failing and not being able to um i guess either find uh good help or maybe it's like a communication breakdown they can't

probably express like um sort of you know They can't probably verbalise their trauma or whatever, so the person treating them or whatever can't properly sort of help them. As well as I think a lot of people, you know, I'm not trying to victim blame, and I'm definitely not qualified in anything. So, you know, my word, take it with five metric tons of salt. But, yeah, I reckon it's a lot of people don't want to properly. verbalize it, I guess.

It's not that, like, they don't want to, and it's not like they're intentionally not like, properly, like, or honestly, I guess, I don't want to use that word either, because then it makes it sound like I'm saying that being dishonest, but... You've got my permission to say it wrong, and we'll figure out how to say it right. That's all good. Yeah, sweet. Yeah, all right, cool.

Then I'll just blurt it out. I feel like they, like, I don't know, inside their head, they won't allow themselves to sort of, like, honestly open up to the, therapist or whatever, because there's a element of shame around part of the trauma, like, I don't, you know, whether it's be like someone was, you know, caught in a dark alley or someone was in war or like whatever's caused it, there's been some, maybe like a good feeling in amongst it and that's tainted it and like made them feel like just feel ashamed

about like the entire situation and they can't honestly say to the doctor or something like you know, it's this because they don't want the doctor to judge them or think that they're, you know, a bad person because of that. For sure. Yeah. There's, oh, there's a lot. You're, you're touching on a lot of really very real, very real things. So you're, even if all you've got is kind of a rough layman's sketch, I mean, you're on to some, I think some very real things. Part of it is, okay, I wanted to mention, too, there's, there's an element to it, which is physiological.

We get our central nervous system gets primed to respond very strongly to certain things that are similar to past trauma. So the classic example is the Vietnam vet who comes back and a car backfires near him and he hits the deck because he thinks he's being shot at. Now, he's suddenly embarrassed because he realizes it's just a car. But his, he was on the floor before he didn't even make the decision. It wasn't like, I think that's a gun. Maybe I should get down. No, it's bang, floor. And, who, I just activated my mouse.

So that's a very real phenomenon. And there are, you have to address the intellectual, so to speak, layer of it as well as the physiological. And there's a lot of things weird. There's a weird thing they show works, which is like certain tapping exercises that people can do when they're having physiological responses. And you can train that to reduce that physiological response, which then allows you to say maybe get a better grip over your thought process and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Okay, so that's one layer I wanted to throw in there too.

I kind of as a bookend on my own, my own comments earlier. There's a bunch of layers you brought up too, which is the idea of there's almost always invariably a strong element of shame. And that's whether there also may be a subset of part of me kind of enjoyed it, but I'm also ashamed of that, which can be, you know, and that can go for the rape victim who had an orgasm during the rape, involuntarily. It's like, why would that happen? Why would I enjoy it in that way?

Well, that's not actually that uncommon. It's not common, and it's not proof that rape is good, or that she actually enjoyed it or would do it again, or gave any kind of consent to the experience, nor that it wasn't traumatic, but there's an element there that sometimes happens. But then that goes for that, and it goes for the... Well, and from men as well, I've heard that, like, if a man's being raped, it's not unheard of.

for the, like, the victim to be, to get an erection. And that, a lot of the time makes the man feel like he, well, shame, because he feels like, well, he must have enjoyed it, must be. If he got an erection, like, he was obviously having a good time, like, when it's actually, it can just be a, like, a physical thing, like the, it is, it is. What is it, the male G-spot or whatever on the butt? In the, you know, that.

Prosting stimulation or something like that. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly. Absolutely. A purely physiological response. So it's not like they're mentally like enjoying it or something. It's just, yeah, pure reaction. But, yeah. Yeah.

No, exactly right. So that is absolutely a component. And then that you can only get to that kind of stuff and even discuss it and address it. If a person, as you said, is willing to open up to a therapist and talk about it. And that means also that they've. overcome the shame of having, you know, post-traumatic stress in the first place.

Like, oh, I should man up and be stronger. A lot of people have had worse things happen to them and they're fine. Or they've, they've been successful or they've managed to deal with it, but what, I can't.

So there's so many layers of shame, all built into that kind of stuff. And there's also in some ways, what am I trying to say? Excuse me. I'm trying to say belch. There's also sometimes a reluctance to address things at all. It's like if I can just, in some ways, in some ways it's almost like a lay.

Avoidance. Avoidance. And there's some ways that that is, and it's really tough to parse out too sometimes because sometimes it's like it is so intensely negative that I just can't bring myself to do it. God, I'd love to, but it hurts so much and they can't force themselves to do it. That's one kind of thing. There's also a kind of thing where it's like, if I could just forget about it and avoid it and be fine, I'd rather do that. So they're reluctant to do the work to address it, even if it were possible.

And we're not, you know, so intensely negative that they couldn't, couldn't touch it with a 10 foot pull. So many layers of like how to connect with someone and what their experience and motivations are. And this is just in one tiny slice of, say, dealing with someone who had specifically a trauma and then, PTSD resulting from it and then their life is disrupted enough that they would even consider whether it should be addressed. Yeah. You know, yeah. And then we have a whole different.

Well, yeah. It's a whole different issues. Like some people might just need a bit of time from like almost like need to be separated sort of temporally from the event for long enough to be able to approach it even. So there's like, yeah, I'm sure like some people there's a period of time before, yeah, as you said, ready to. even face it but like yeah there'd be of course other people that are like well uh when i'm drunk i don't seem to feel that bad or like that whatever and or like on drugs or so the

avoidance can yeah be like pretty pretty easily attained um if you like are determined to not like uh think about things you can yeah it's it's far too easy i think uh solution that people use to avoid certain trauma or whatever is to, yeah, just to be high all the time. And that is a big source of, say, drug abuse is, you know, not just because we're biologically susceptible to that kind of thing, but what makes some people able to quit more successfully than others? Part of it is the substance abuse is providing.

relief from something that is in their internal experience worse. I heard an old joke, you might have heard me or seen me cracking a little bit of a smile while you're talking about terrible things, because I thought of a joke that, you know, people in the military and people in the medical profession and psychology and whatever,

we have a wonderful morbid sense of humor because if you do not laugh, you will cry. And sometimes it's okay to cry, but usually you'd rather laugh. The old joke is I'd rather have this bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. and that's that's basically like how people

yeah how people conceive their choices in some of these ways and it speaks to a very real state of mind which is you know the only way to solve this problem is to literally cut out the piece of my brain where the problem sits therefore what am I going to do I drink sue me you know and uh it's a bit of a false dichotomy because well there's other ways to deal with it well yeah I always feel like there's a like a meta like level of that

which is well drink enough and get yourself some Corsicoff syndrome and you essentially have given yourself the equivalent damage of like a frontal lobotomy. I've met a lot of people over my life who have, as far as I can tell, effectively pickled themselves. Their speech is constantly slurred. They like have virtually no short-term memory. It's amazing what a life of what I'm assuming is hard drinking can do. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So to the human brain, I guess. Probably preserves it, though. Yeah. And so, I mean, certainly preserves it for the person that... The person that dissects it later, sure. It'll be well, it'll be well pickled.

It just won't work very well when it's in your head. That's very true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, dementia is a wonderful cure for PTSD, right? Just forget everything. Oh, totally. Yeah. Except it isn't, technically. No, no. Yeah. But just joking.

In a joking. In all seriousness. It's not. In a joking way, yeah, definitely. I am not a doctor, but this is also not recommended. Yeah, do you not go out and get early on set dementia if you're thinking it will cure your PTSD. That's not so much. Not the best medical advice.

Yeah, there's better ways. There's better ways. No, and then a lot of a bottle or the bottle. Yeah, I mean, yeah. It's one of those things where, I don't know if you, there was a movie with Sean Conner. where he was just kind of a a bit of a pugnacious, contentious,

combative type of person. He was very angry and he liked to argue and he, you know, what do you want to fight about it? He was that kind of guy. And they, the whole film was kind of,

what are we going to do with this? What's, how do we medically approach this? It was a precursor from the 60s to what would eventually become one flu over the cuckoo's nest with, uh, yeah, yeah,

Jack Nicholson. Yeah. And they weren't like, like that, uh, one flew over the cuckoo's nest. nest was based on a book, but this movie was earlier kind of dealing with the, say, late 40s, 50s, when they were trying to sort out, well, what do we do with this lobotomy thing?

Is this good? Are we doing this? Is this medically, is this an abomination or is this actually? Are we the baddies? Are we the baddies? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Ed was, again, spoiler for now an 80-year-old movie at this point, something like that. Yeah.

Or 60, sorry, 60-something year-old movie. at the end of the movie, they gave John Connery a lobotomy. And you're like, and the way they set it up was like, he was finally captured and subjected to this against his will. And it was kind of horrifying.

And then he, he wakes up from the procedure and immediately starts picking a fight with the doctor. You bastard, what did you do to me? It didn't work. Anyway, they did lobotomy for nothing. It didn't change his personality. So I think the overall,

all the message of the film was, these are stupid. They don't work anyway. Why are we still doing this? It was almost I think it was a comedy in a way that the way they presented it. That was a very funny end. Now, the end of one flew over the cuckoo's nest was very different.

And again, spoiler alert, if anyone hasn't seen that, they lobotomize him and he's now just sitting in a chair drooling. And again, they're like, is this? Is this better? Is this better? Is this preferable to just let someone, you know, know when they ask him you know why did you get put into this hospital he's in group therapy he's trying to open up or they expect him to open up and he says well as i see it too much fucking and too

much fighting usually not at the same time and that's i mean yeah you can't and and then there was an open question of like is is jack nicholson's character in that the what he portrayed for the book was he personality disordered in a way of like was he a sociopath and or was he just kind of a different breed of man for maybe an earlier time where if he'd been, if he'd grown up in the Rome, Greek or Roman times, they probably would have just put him on the battlefield and he would have been a hero. You know, they had a

different standard for what it means to be a civilized man in society. And that's where a lot of our psychiatric standards come from, unfortunately. And it's a very interesting question too. Like, I don't get into a lot of the different tangents, but you're great to talk to

on this because you get it. Um, it's a very interesting bootstrapped or circular argument that having suicidal thoughts means something's wrong with you. Therefore, we must treat you such that they go away. And that is a definitional argument. I mean, we might agree with it. We might say, yeah, it's ideal that humans don't want to kill themselves. But is it ever possible that someone could have those thoughts and it not be a disorder?

Like, is there ever a rational reason to make that decision? And I, you know, I'm open-minded enough to say, I think there is. And that's recognized in say, I live in Portland, Oregon. We have a death with dignity law. And they've started that in Canada, too. I think the Canadian thing is a bit of a mess because the reasons they're doing it is, we just can't afford to treat everyone. Have you thought about dying?

And then they like offer that to people. We can't fix you. We don't have the money or the resources. So we'll kill you if you want. do. I think that's different than I have terminal cancer. It hurts everywhere. The drugs aren't helping. I'm out. Tlative care sort of level. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, palliative care. It's like, if you've been on the palliative care for a while and those, you can develop a tolerance and it's not helping with the pain and there is no cure. And you are just waiting to die painfully,

miserable. Yeah. At that point, I think anyone can understand that. It's when you get someone who's like a 16 year old kid and they say, I just think life's not worth living. And you're like, well, is that depression or are you being kind of a normal kid where you're a bit rebellious and you're like everybody else loves life i screw it i hate life okay that's a perspective you know uh what would we get goth got teenagers are angsty teenagers are emotional like yeah well that also connects to the idea of certain traumatic events that are normal your parents died yeah that's trauma i mean even a divorce even a marriage these are all hugely stressful events anyone says getting married Married isn't a traumatic event.

And so you're blending to house. You're living with someone. Now you've got to negotiate stuff. Now you've got kids in the middle and all kinds of extremely stressful being a married with kids and all that stuff and just trying to live your life. But let's say a parent dies, even if you're older and you were expecting it. And that is, that is an unavoidable trauma that most of us are going to go through. And it will take a certain amount of time to get over it.

and you may never get over it completely. Like there's always going to be something missing from your life. And then we have to look at that and say, okay, well, that's normal as well. So there's a certain, and, you know, you kind of pick yourself up again and get back onto a baseline and carry on with life mostly. And we would say after a certain amount of time, if that's not happening naturally, yeah, maybe we've got a problem. And you hope, you hope someone wants to do something about it and get their, get their life back.

You know, it's just your, your parent died. You didn't. So what would they want you to do? In honor of them, carry on and don't be miserable forever. That's one argument to make the people. Oh, most definitely. And you're lucky if you know someone in need of support, like, to say their parent had died, it's quite manageable to sort of solve for one or, like, to support for one,

disaster, but when you get them compounding, so like, when you said that, it actually just reminded me of when my grandpa died, so my mum's dad, when he died, that was within the same year that one of my mum's, like, two best friends also died, and she moved to house. And, like, I think moving, like, buying a house or selling a house buying house is, like, in the, there's like in the top ten, I think, yeah, Death of a family member, death of a friend, like buying a house, selling house. I think getting divorced is like a, there's a lot of like major sort of events that, yeah, I think people don't really appreciate like how stressful they are.

Like it's okay to find that a freaking hard time. Like that's natural. For sure. Yeah. No, there's, and that's a funny thing. It's like some people don't realize how traumatic in that sense, normal. And by normal, I mean, things that most people go through. Maybe most people will not be, you know, rear-ended by a drunk driver and have their partner die in the car.

That's an out of the ordinary, but getting married, moving houses, very normal, ordinary things. So some people downplay those as not stressful because they're normal. Like, no, no, normal things can be very stressful. as a kid normal you're asking a girl out for the first time never done it before terribly stressful worth it normal but not you know it's something we can if she doesn't say yes I could just die like yeah it's like yeah or if she does say yes I don't know which I'm terrified of more then then we have to go on a date and I don't know what to do oh no I got to do something about it this isn't just a I'm signing up for more awkward situations what am I doing for sure

yeah yeah yeah so however however normal something may be in terms of how many people go through it. It's, yeah, it doesn't make it any less stressful. It's just being alive is stressful in a lot of ways. Yeah, and, you know, lucky of the people that find their own sort of life hack or whatever for dealing with it. So like, for example, with, I used to do debating back in school and, like, really enjoyed public speaking. But it made me nervous as hell. Like the way people who have nightmares, essentially, that they, they, they're speaking in front of their entire school or something and they look down there in their underwear or whatever.

Yeah, yeah. I, I, um, I feel that. I feel that terror, but I sort of re-channel it into, like, I almost, like, take that, that, that, that, that feeling of terror and I rechannel it into, like, excitement almost. Yeah. And I'll, like, then just feed off that energy as opposed to sort of, like, let it paralyze me or worse, like, make me start stuttering or, like, forget what I'm meant to be saying or, you know, something disastrous. Like, yeah, I can, I don't know how, but, like, I think it's got something to do with, just not giving it, um, flying that sort of thing. Yeah, in some ways, you've got to get past that, that caring. A phrase I heard, oh, like 30 years ago, was you never get over stage fright.

You just learn to like it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I think you really do describing is very, like I used to, well, what I'm doing now, talking to be recording and put on the internet for everyone I'm in kind of, so be it. But I used to do live performances. Now, okay, so let's say, I was 14-ish and I was a part of a, this goes even further back.

So I think before my parents even had me, they were part of a group of dancers that performed at October Fest. So then when I got older, when I got older, they were still doing this. And then I picked up playing drums. And it turns out that the little band that played for the dancers wanted a drummer.

So they're like, Ben, you're, you know, you're the son of the dancers. So why don't you come in and see if you can learn few of these songs for us. And I did that for a while, like a couple of years. We went to a bunch of different October Fest all throughout, you know, September, October in the California area. And then eventually, and that was terrifying. And I was always glad I was sitting in the back on the drums behind people. And no one, not, how did you know, the rest of the band and the dancers. I got kind of a little, uh, eased into it a little bit and the dancers are out there and everyone's

no one's looking at the band. So I got like, I get to feel like I was just in my own little world back there behind the symbols and the drum kit. But then I transitioned into what I picked up the guitar. And then I wanted to be a barred at Renaissance fairs and sing, sing songs. You crazy little bastard. Come here. Come here. Come here.

Come here. What do you want? I don't even know. It's so hard to know what he wants. You can see if he's off Canada. Yeah, I don't talk dog. Yeah. Come here.

Come here. Okay, he's going to go eat some food. That's fine. I don't think he wants me to throw his toy or something. I don't know. It's hard to tell. Right. Anyway, long story short on that.

And then I started playing solo. And it's like, you get up there with the guitar and you start singing in front of a crowd of people. They're all looking at you. There's no hiding behind the drum kit. There's no dancers. And that would my leg, one of my legs would just shake uncontrollably. I'd feel short of breath. And after a while, that goes away.

And I think it's a very interesting thing. It's like humans are extremely adaptable. So you get into situations. which raise your anxiety level to the state of physical symptoms, the more you do it, the more it, it's like exposure therapy is what they, what they'd call it,

broadly speaking. The more times you do it, the more successes you have at it, the more you realize this is not a life-threatening situation that I need to have this strong reaction to. And it, you calm down. And you make enough mistakes where it's like,

I screwed up and I was embarrassed and I didn't die. I guess I'll be okay. know, I guess it's not that big a deal. You survived. Yeah, yeah. And that's a big lesson for the brain, too, of like, I guess I can handle this. I guess this is, because that's what a lot of our responses are. Your skin isn't that thin.

Yeah. I consider it's a sign that you, you know, can fail and that's fine. Like, you know, even if, you know, well, in my case, just say I was, you know, reading a, like, you know, doing a presentation or something. and everyone just started laughing at me for, isn't that the weird thing? I reckon a lot of people in their dreams when they're having their like, you know, nightmares of public speaking,

I think in a lot of those dreams, and I'm just assuming here, because I've obviously never had one of those dreams because I like public speaking, but when people have those dreams, for some reason, I just assume that, like, they never think about why other people laughing at them.

I think, like, a lot of the time it's a they'll then look down and they're in their underwear or something almost just to rationalise why everyone would just for some reason spontaneously all of a sudden just start laughing at you it's it's kind of bizarre like if you were

if you were walking down the street like not in a dream but in your waking life you're walking down the street and all of a sudden everyone on the street like strangers as far as you tell just start looking at you at the same time and laughing you'd be like, okay, Ashton Coochard, come out, you know, I get it, I'm being punked, or like, you'd find it completely bizarre, but it's amazing the things that can happen in dreams that you just, you don't question it, you just go with it.

So, of course they're laughing at me. I just, I must be laugh at worthy, like, I'm a fool or something, like, and you just sort of accept their laughter as like the, I guess the correct, the correct response. response or something and then go, oh, I must like and, you know, wake up sweating or yeah, whatever happens. But do people, do many people tell you about nightmares as well as dreams? There have been some which which people characterized as nightmares. And it's usually up to the, the experience of the dreamer. Because two people could have the same experience and one of them could go, you know, could tell me it was interesting because you think I would be scared, but I wasn't. I had no negative emotions. I was very almost detached from it, just observing.

And then some people would say for the same situation, I was horrified. I couldn't. I was in a panic. I needed to get out of there. And that was their experience of it. So it's very subjective. I was going to mention that too in terms of, uh, I had, I thought and I think I lost it about dreams, dream experience.

Damn. Nope, gone. Can't, can't think of what it was. What were you just saying? I can understand that. Yeah, it can be the same, essentially the same dream of the same experience.

And yeah, one person can find it completely mundane or didn't affect them. And the other person can have, had quite an emotional reaction to it. Oh, yeah. I remember what it was. It was, oh, no, I lost it again.

Damn. Oh, it was there. It was there in my head. And then I thought about something else. Dream. Oh. it's killing me it's killing me it's right there especially since i got it back oh yeah the the the feeling of surprise in dreams or lack of surprise more specifically this is another thing

that's referenced in the books is that a lot of the things that happen in dreams we regard as unsurprising and by that i mean like we can be violating the laws of physics flying dreams it never occurs to most people who are having a flying, if it's not a lucid experience, if it is, that's something else. But it's like we accept uncritically anything we see as, well, this is just happening. That's just the way it is. We're not asking, how did I get in this house with my feet stuck to the floor and a monster

coming after me? It never crosses our mind. We just say, okay, this is happening. Now what? How do I feel about it? Yeah. Or I'm flying. This is impossible.

Why am I flying? I shouldn't be flying. Never occurs to us unless it does and that's its own thing, but usually not. Yeah, well, I was actually about to say, it's funny you say that I don't know why I haven't even brought up that, yeah, I have lucid dreams before and it's funny you say the flying thing because that's usually like so I completely get what you're saying. Like it's amazing how in dreams like something can be yet extremely bizarre like flying. You can't fly when you're awake. So like while you're in a dream, why do you just accept it as like, well, of course I can fly. like that's normal um i'm sort of i'm a bit of a cluey person like um in general i guess in

or whatever but um in my dreams that's that that's how um my lizard dreams always start is generally with me flying i'll i'll be like wait a second this ain't right and then i realize i'm in a dream and then i think i've got roughly like it only feels like 30 seconds in the dream to do whatever i want and you think like so many people who have said to me, like, so have you, like, you know, who have you had sex with? And I'm like, uh, no one actually. It's really bizarre, but all I want to do when I realize I'm listening is fly. Like, I just fly around.

If I could choose sex with, I wish I could actually choose the sex. Yeah, of course. But I don't think of it at the time. I was actually going to go the other way. I mean, but, you know, your mileage may vary. There's no right answer. I was just thinking, if I could choose sex with anyone. one celebrity I might have a crush on for many time in their life going, you know,

going in the last 50 years, 100 years, whatever. Or the, you know, in this in real life, let's like if I could, if I could make that happen in real life or I had the power to fly, I'm flying 110%. I will, sorry Scarlett Johansson. You missed your chance. I'd rather fly. You know, that's, I agree. And I only say that I wish I could like at the time think to do the sex thing because

Why not do both? Yeah, I've, well, I've, I've never had a wet dream, and I think it's a bit of the grass has always been a thing. I want to know what that's like, but my dreams are just never sexual, just never. Like, I don't know what's, whether my brain's too much of a prude or something to, like, or whether I just don't find, like, find that interesting. But to be honest, actually, I'd probably rather fly in a dream than dream of having sex, because I can have sex in real life. I can't fly in real life. This is true. I'm the same with video games.

play FIFA because I can buy a soccer ball and go down to the field. I'd rather play a game where I'm tying up hookers in the Wild West days and chucking them on the rail like train tracks or something. Or Cretos or Master Chief. Yeah, yeah. These things you cannot do. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. And we get pretty much like

shooting someone. I live in Australia. We have quite strict gun laws, including the one I think most of the world has, which is like no shooting people. Yeah. One of those. things where, yeah, or even if, uh, even if it was, say, justifiable in terms of self-defense. And there were no laws against it, yada, yada. That's still going to be a very rare circumstance.

I mean, it's very hard to put yourself in a place where I get to shoot someone today. Generally doesn't have. And would you, and would you want to? Like, if you look at written house, I'm sure that's like, I'm sure that kid's going to have, you know, lasting effects from that. But as much as people want to paint him as like a, a. cold-blooded killer and he wanted to go there to shoot people. That's why he brought a gun and all this sort of stuff.

You can say that, but at the end of the day, he's a human being as well. And I don't know what having to, like, defend yourself like that would do to a kid's mind. But, like, I mean, you can see what it does to adults' minds when they come back from, like, being in war or something. Like, it's a serious, I think it's a much more serious thing to have to live with on your conscience than people give, like, It is. It is. Props to. I mean, unless you are legitimately, you know, animal torturing sociopathic, it does. You know, unless you are literally a serial killer who gets off on it, yes, it's a very negative experience that most people would rather not go through.

And that's a funny dichotomy that, let's say a lot of the maybe anti-gun people don't get is like, personally, I am absolutely certain if I had to pull the trigger to save my life, I would. And I would live with that. And I, but I don't want to. and I would rather not have to. It's one of those weird things. I'm not, they like to make that, oh, you're just bloodthirsty.

You want to kill someone. I really don't ever. I hope I never get put in a situation where it's my life or theirs and I have to kill someone to save my own because I think I would and I think I wouldn't like it. And I don't want to live with that either.

I don't want to, I don't want to second guess for the rest of my life. Is there anything else I could have done? I mean, at the time it didn't feel like it, but how certain can you ever be about that? And, you know,

how much would you, would you live the rest of your life? life wishing I had done something different or that I could have done anything different. Why didn't that guy just stop running at me with a knife when I pulled my gun? Why didn't he stop? I wish he had stopped. That kind of thing. Good more butters.

Actually, I think, um, go ahead. Yeah. Oh, I was just going to quickly say, um, I think, uh, like, if you, the most you could do is, like, learn to live with it. I feel like it's not something that you could really feel has benefited. you like or made you stronger if only like the only way you can feel it's made you stronger is if you've actually sort of managed to work through it to the point where you can have some sort of normal life like I think that's the only real win you can take from it like yeah and it's one of

those things you'll never think was good it's not good that you had to kill it's good you're still alive it's good the attempted murderer did not succeed it's not good that you had to kill someone to save your own life it's just like well unless you think it is good but I don't. That's that that would be my No, not at all. My impression of it. Yeah, yeah. I think it was unfair the way he was painted as like

having somewhat wanted it or like brought it on. I feel I feel it's a bit of a double standard. A lot of people say like you can't ask what she was wearing what you know when she was right right but you can for some reason say like you know I feel like that

well why was he there like do you see what he was wearing he's wearing a gun like why would you wear such provocative item of apparel if you didn't want to get chased by a psycho mob? Like, I don't know what to say. This kid was like a freight tree's

life and it looked like he had good reason to be. Like, he's being chased. Yeah, no. And I mean, I'm definitely one of the people who believes he did nothing wrong at any level, you know, except for... It's a tragedy, but...

Except for maybe getting separated, getting separated from the... guy he was paling around with like they should have stayed together whose fault that was i don't know maybe that was the only mistake but you can you can anyway also it'll be on the list of things he thinks about that he could have done different like not getting separated like that will be on the list of things i think they will plague him yeah in in terms of um what could have or should have been done better it should not have been necessary for a 17 year old kid to show up to a riot with a gun because yeah the the the the government the the

police should have been taking care of the National Guard. There should have been no need for protecting a business from being destroyed by arson because it was being effectively protected by the people that are supposed to protect us. So it's one of those situations where, like, I mean, you can very easily choose to just let your community burn or in that circumstance, he said, no, I'm not going to let this happen. You know, I'm going to do something about it personally. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And it's not so time started when he arrived with a gun. Time started before that when, I don't know, I guess the message on Twitter or whatever it was organized on, the riot, like, that's sort of when it started or like I guess when all the riots started. Certainly. That was a crazy year. It was. Well, certainly at least the night before he arrived to defend that location by request. had the city government, whatever, not told the police to stand down

and let the rioters do whatever they want, there would have never been a second night of rioting. They could have cleared the streets and made it a strong deterrent against a repeat of that behavior. It was preventable, yeah. Yeah, I think so too. And I think that's part of the problem of,

I mean, I get where they're coming from when a lot of those folks say, yes, riot is the language of the unheard in some ways. There's, it's, it's almost like what did you think was going to happen if you're, if you squeeze people too tightly, they're going to act out. I get it. Yeah. I get that whether they're, whether we believe they're justified or not, they do.

So fair enough. But then there's also, okay, what do you do in those circumstances? Do you fail to stop a riot because you're sympathetic to the reason for it? I'm like, I don't think you can't. I think both things can be true. You can say, I get you. This feels like. something you need to do because

you're being hurt. Also, we're not going to let you do that because I'm sorry, we don't burn down our own community to solve that kind of problem. So you have to stop it for the sake of the innocent people that are going to get hurt. You can't punish them for

this other group of people having something bad happened to them, whether or not that's true or believing something bad happened to me. Most definitely. I mean, it's a riot really like, I mean, if it was going to be protests, but if you know from the night before that it's riot and not protest, then yeah,

I think it's kind of on the city to be like, look, we don't want to be out here telling you all to disperse, but we're not doing this. Like, come on, guys, we can't every night burn the city down. There's going to be nothing left. And there's also the right way and the wrong way to do it. Like, there's... It doesn't

solve anything either. There's protest. It's a famous MLK quote that, you know, a riot being the language of the unheard. But if you're going to follow his teachings, you've got to do it right. He marched to Selma in a suit and tie holding hands and singing hymns in broad daylight. He had, he made a statement with the protest. M. O.K. did not come out in the dark and night wearing a balaclava and throw a Malatav at a car dealership that accomplishes nothing.

That's people that just want to see the world burn. And those are the people that need to be dealt with, quote unquote, in whatever fashion is least. necessary to solve the problem. Yeah, he can't just let it, you can't just let that happen. Just burn the city down. It's like,

that's not helping anybody. My opinion, you know, your mileage may vary. I don't get political on this, the show very often, but it touches on these things. Personally,

I agree. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, I know we're not. Yeah, well, I mean,

I just mean, there's nothing you've said so far. I think that's, um, unreasonable, uh, in regards to it. I think,

yeah, it was, it was preventable, and hopefully it's just, like, if anything, I just hope they've won't to sort of nip it in the butt before it turns into 100 days of riot.

Like, being where you are, I'd imagine you would have had a front seat view if you wanted. Like, I know I was hooked. Like, I mean, it was the best, well, not the best, but like, I mean, it was amazingly like addictive, like, entertainment, not entertainment. Well, some of it was funny, actually.

But, like, I mean, a lot of it was, like, sort of horrifying. but I found these YouTube channels where they would actually grab feeds from all different people on the ground. I watched those. And, yeah, eyes on, I think was the channel I watched mostly. But yeah, they would sort of, what's that called when you bring them all together, like aggregate? Yeah, they sort of like had all the feeds on one screen essentially. Yeah, yeah. And it was insanity. I just couldn't take my eyes off it. It was like watching a year-long kind of.

heart crash of people into streets or something. I don't know. Well, and you're right about there was a literally about a hundred day siege of the federal building downtown in Portland here. And I did. I was almost obsessively watching every single night during that entire summer. And there was one point at which some of the clashes with police in the surrounding

neighborhoods away from the downtown, you know, kind of heading towards suburbia. One of those incidents took place within a. about two miles of my house. And that night I was very, uh, very attentive and prepared. On edge.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, vague vaguely. Yeah. It's almost on your doorstep at that point. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ready for it to show up on my doorstep and, and, and, as, as needed,

uh, you know, and not a, not a fun time. And fortunately it, it kind of, you know, because the police did engage and did their job and broke it up and,

and it never, it never, it never reached. to my doorstep. To what degree it seems to fizzle out when it moves into, like the further away

from the city it moves. It seems to fizzle out. Like I almost feel like when Houghten House was being chased like through that, like what looked like a more suburban street,

or at least not so, you know, middle of town. It did seem like the crowd was like even though he's still being chased, it didn't feel like it was anywhere near the numbers of people that were at

the original scene. Like, it's sort of like, maybe the streets get, uh, thinner or longer or people get like, I don't know, separated or something, but at least it,

like, I think of it kind of like a tsunami. Like it, so it, it crashes against the city and the, that takes a majority of the, like, energy out of it.

So like, the water that still, like, will flow onwards into, outer city, into suburbia and stuff is like, um, much more like, like less energy

for sure yeah it's a very interesting phenomenon that a lot of folks intent upon riding don't drive out to the

countryside and do it in an empty field they they do it in these dense urban downtown centers uh for whatever reason but yeah

you don't get too many riots on the countryside uh I think it's probably for attention like maximum maximum attention I guess exposure yeah they went off into you know

50 acres in the woods uh nobody would care. Yeah, yep, absolutely. Yeah, but it does make you sort of think because, like, I don't know about Portland specifically, but, like, most big cities have CCTV everywhere. I know most people are wearing galvan stuff,

but, like, facial recognition software and stuff's getting pretty good these days. And I believe it actually did, like, there was a lot of people that were charged for, like, things, but I'm pretty sure most of the charges were dropped, which I'm sort of fine with, like, I don't think, yeah, like, there wasn't, you know, like that much, like, stuff that you could say,

all right, go to jail for 10 years for or something, but I didn't like the, so, like, I'll be front up. I have no problem with law enforcement, as long as they have no problem with me. Yeah. Like, I respect the law. I respect police,

but I understand they're just human as well. They have long days. They have bad days. They can slip up. They can abuse their power. I don't hold that against all police. just the ones that do do that, I guess. But I still felt really uneasy about seeing, like,

well, the fireworks and stuff, I didn't so much bother me, but the really high-powered green lasers in their eyes, that was like, I was like, you seriously look like blinded? Like for life, this isn't like corrective laser eye surgery. This is like fry your retinas out. Yeah. That's dangerous, man. Yeah.

I don't know. That's tough. Like, who's tough? Like, who's who told them that laser? Like, what are they thinking? Like, they're just fine with it? Like, yeah, that's grinding my gears. Some of them really get into a mindset where they're like,

these are the enemy and it's a battlefield. This is war. And sometimes you've got to kill people or blind them in that case. Yeah, I mean, I... I feel the mob mentality encourages that. Like, it does create a very up versus their mentality. Like, if you're not with us, you're against us. Like, yeah, kind of thing.

Or even someone who's just like, Like, you know, their main job is maybe to make sure that guy gets arrested for rape or murder. That's not so bad. I think most of us would want them to do that. It's when, and I think a lot of the problem is, is that the purpose and beneficial function of the police that could and should exist, perhaps, is often obfuscated or corrupted by too many bad laws. you get the police become the enemy people because they're not really helping people as much as they are then on the other side

of it and persecuting people and you get different opinions on this but I think the drug laws are one way that that goes horribly wrong it's like I don't have a problem with you arresting a murderer please do lock them up I don't want you to hassle

some guy smoking a joint I just don't I don't care it's not it's not hurt me so as long as those two things are both forces being used on both things, you know, I think that's not, I think it's not proper or good. And, you know, and I think it's conductive. Yeah, yeah. One, one definitely to me seems more oppressive and the other ones like more,

thank you for helping, you know, that's what we want. Yeah. And there's a difference as well. I think, especially when it comes to drugs and the law, it's, they're all, they all seem to be painted the same, like it, like something. that drives me insane is hearing, oh, weeds a gateway drug. Like, if it were a gateway drug, then why is it that most people who, like, you know, try a joint or something don't end up on heroin?

Like, it's clearly... There's a lot of bad arguments in that regard. I'm not saying it can't be a gateway to doing harder drugs and stuff. Like, it definitely can, but it's not most of the time. So why is that put out there as a, like, legit? legitimate warning that people should be super afraid of. Like, I mean, it should be said that it can lead down a path of, you know, looking for a high or high or whatever that may be.

But, yeah, and the way it's like, you know, the painter is like, you know, drugs are drugs. Well, no, they're not. There's a very big difference between weed and fentanyl. They are not, to say like, oh, yeah, I just have a relaxing, you know, bit of fentanyl at the end of the day. Like that's a pretty serious drug. Like, you know, that's, you have that in like the micrograms. And like, you know, like a gram of that could kill probably, I can't remember the number off the top of my head.

But it can kill a lot of people. That's a very potent drug. I think they've had some cases of even, you know, police or whatnot that get a little bit of the dust on their fingertip and it absorbs, absorbs through the skin. And they, OD on just a tiny amount. I don't know what the solution is to it. a lot of that kind of stuff. But how are you doing for time? Are you okay to take maybe like a 10-minute break?

And then we'll come back and do the dream. Oh, yeah. Yeah, actually. 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 Dreamscapes 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. I'm back. You are, good timing. I was wondering if you can put aside maybe like just five or ten minutes before you're at time. Can I ask you like, I've got just some questions. Like, mainly related to dreams, a couple of friends who also had questions for you.

Yeah, like none of these are like gotcha questions or true questions or anything like that. They're just, well, actually half of them, to be honest, questions wrapped in a joke. I'm a bit of a class clown, so like I can't help, but it's actually kind of a curse and a blessing. Like it's a blessing because I can like almost instantly lift the mood. but it's a curse because it's also a defense mechanism. If I feel shit's getting too serious, like I make a joke. I find an out with humor. Yeah.

Well, is this something you wanted to do after we're done or as a part of the stream? Well, as a part of the stream, I thought, because it's mainly dream related. Yeah, they're just like, I mean, they're not funny jokes. Like, I'm not saying, like, I want to like do some standards. up or something. They're just... Yeah. I'm fine with it. We can do it now. Yeah, before we jump into the... Oh, yeah.

Usually we wrap up the show with the dream thing at the end, and that lasts as long as it lasts. So whatever's on your mind. Well, actually, that might actually lead right into it, at least the way I've written them out in no particular order. So one friend just simply wanted to know, have you read, um, uh, Carl Young's, uh, uh, so he's got He's asked black book, red book, Gnostic, something. I can't read my own writing.

I think he just wanted to know how much of Carl Young, are you familiar with pretty much? Or like, you know, what have you read on him? It's been a while since I've read any of the source material. I don't think I've read the entirety of those books specifically. I've heard it's quite dense stuff. Like it's sort of, it's like really rich chocolate cake, isn't it? like takes, you got a really chew it sort of thing.

Yeah. The same with a lot of the philosophers I've absorbed. I've gone to the source material sometimes, but I almost prefer, not synopsies. That's one way to put it, but commentary. I like to read other people's commentary because the way I approach, the way I approach a lot of these things is not that reading the source material in that manner is bad.

I think it's actually good and I should probably revisit and pick it. up some things that I haven't read in a while or for the first time. But very often, what I find myself doing is, is when I do read that material, I have thoughts about it. And I don't know if they're valid critiques or not while I'm reading it. And so what I prefer to do is go to someone else who has, who's referencing that material and giving their understanding of it and their critique of it at the same time. So that's what I, what I've tended to do over the years is go to, say,

critics of someone who, who isn't, yeah, yeah, more of that. That kind of makes sense. Like, you,

you, I do the same thing with a lot of, um, like I'm just, I seem to just be endlessly interested in almost everything. Like there's not much I come across in life that I go, oh, that's boring.

Like I'm always, I always find something in it to, that, interesting. And yeah, I find I do the same with a lot of things. I'll go to not the source material, but if the, like, if the critique or the, um, commentary that I do, the commentary that I do listen to, I find intriguing or I, like, I feel like requires more sort of investigation, then I will go to the source material. Yeah. Whether it be like a, um, like a, a, a, a, a paper, like a science experiment in whatever field it is, like if I feel, like, if it peaks my interest, essentially,

I'll dig further. But, like, I find it's time-saving, if anything, just to get at least, like, someone else has taken on it. Because if they're just like, well, this guy's a complete crank. And you're kind of like, what I've heard that he's actually got some, you know, there's some kernels of truth in what he says or something. It may cause me just out of curiosity to go, like, well, I don't believe you. I'm actually going to check for myself now, whereas other times I'll be like, okay,

this sounds like a, on the face of it, fair sort of analysis. Like, so I, you know, I'll either take that as good enough. Like, I'm not actually interested in digging further or, yeah, you know, I find that across, like, almost every subject. Yeah. And I think it's, it's a time-saving thing, surely. Like, it's saving you the time of, like, um, it is, it's sort of weird and it sounds kind of wrong, I guess. but like people have people in their lives for purposes type of thing. And I find I have people in my life for certain purposes.

So like I've got one mate that's really into Shakespeare. I despise Shakespeare like most normal people because I had to do it at school. And I hated it. Like the fact that you actually have to, it's almost like learning in the language and all the layers of meaning and all this sort of stuff. And I just found it exhausting and uninteresting as a teenager. So I like paid no attention. but now, like later in life, and especially, I guess, with someone who can explain it well, I've come to appreciate it more.

But yeah, okay, interesting. Just to book in that as well, so I found it's, in my estimation, a bit of a life hack to streamline that process on a couple of levels. One is that a lot of times, let's say if you get someone who's a very balanced commentator, they will say, here's the things that seem to make sense and that jive with what other. other people have said in this in this broad and here's the things I think are a little sketchy that's one way to do it and then another ways to go with someone who's a pure critic who thinks it's all shit because they won't mention any of the stuff that they can't attack they will only attack the stuff they think is sketchy so that's almost almost also one way of saying okay so all that other stuff you couldn't find a problem with fair enough week that gives

it it's kind of a validation by the negative of oh you we left all that out so you didn't want to talk about it yeah because you couldn't find a problem with it but then also you want to take those critique seriously and into varying different degrees of good faith, depending on who you're listening to. But, uh, yeah, because that's what I want to know more than anything. I'm like, okay, if all, if this guy said all this stuff, what's the stuff that doesn't, that makes the least sense that seems to make the most assumptions? Where's, where's, where's the logic fall apart? Yeah. And that's where I get with the philosophers, too, is you, um, you want to,

you want to, you want to find the people who were not a fan of their work. And, and, you want to, yeah, you want to find the people who were not a fan of their work and try to pick out whether their arguments make sense about the source material. And then you got to compare it to this, you know, in some ways you got to go, wait a minute, did they even read that right? Did they quote anything? Is that really what that guy said? And then you got to dig deeper too. But that's, yeah, yeah, long story short. Well, I think as I've heard you say, I couldn't tell you which episode, but in one of the episodes. You said, you know, there's so many different interpretations for just even the word

water. Like, there's so much you can pull out of just one word that, like, yeah, it does, it does sort of make you think, like, yeah, is their take on this right? Or is this just what they see? And if I look into it, I'm going to actually read something completely different. Like, because if something is, like, super open for interpretation, that makes me, yeah, always curious. as to like, or would I just read it and read the same, like, um, out of it. Like, uh, yeah, it's, it's interesting. I've only recently sort of gotten into poetry a little bit. I used to think that was super gay, um, hated poetry.

But, um, but now, like, I've started to appreciate it. And yeah, just all the different meanings words, like the different, yeah, ways they can be used. It's almost endless. Yeah. And it is a bit outsourcing your, um, brainstorming to the to the what is it to the to the to the to the to the wisdom of the crowd in some ways is the way I look at it. It is not possible for me to think all the thoughts on a given subject that could be thought.

But if you get a dozen people together between all of them, probably they're going to cover a pretty good spectrum of all the different ways of looking at something. So the more critical sources and critical in terms of being of critiquing rather than being critical of. Um, those people between them all, they're going to, they're going to generate thoughts that I would never have thought of. They would read a passage that I'd read and go, okay. And then they go, wait a minute, but did you think of it this way? I would go, I did not. That's an interesting take on that line. I never thought of it that way. So just it's, this is all, all to say, it's not like you should avoid the source material and never read it. That, that's stupid. But more you're, you're going to get a better understanding by maybe looking at a bunch of people who've read it before.

for you and let them tell you what they thought, then go on to make up your own mind about it and put it into context and things like that. Now that you've heard that range of opinion on the subject. So that's kind of how I do it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think Jordan Peterson said, I don't know if it was one of the rules, but like he was, you know, don't assume someone, don't like assume you know more than someone. I always assume someone knows something.

you don't know. It was something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Which is where, like, another opinion is like, I think it can't like ever, like someone else's opinion can never be like truly valueless just because it's from a different perspective. So like if you've got blind spots or biases or like just things that you just wouldn't

see because of your lived experience or whatever, like it's just something that you wouldn't never occur to you. Yeah. Someone asks the opinion, although possibly 99% shot, is still never truly valueless. Like, yeah. I think that's cool. Yeah, there you go. Okay, this is a silly question.

Like, I think a lot of people give it a good crack. Can you do a Jordan Peterson impression? Like, can you do a decent Jordan Peterson impression? I don't even think I could do a bad one. Yeah, I was going to say, before you do, I mean, like, one that if he were to say, see this podcast, wouldn't be like, oh, well, I'm, I'm bloody mad, I'm mad, like, or whatever. So that's mine, I think he would take offense to that.

He'd be like, yeah, I feel like mine's not very good, but, yeah, no, that's fine, that's fine. Yeah, not a good impression. My wife tells me not to do voices. Okay. Well, I mean, at least, you know, at least just giving you honest feed. back if that's the case. Okay, this one is a question that just answers itself.

What is a Freudian slip, which, yeah, you can answer it if you want, but I don't know, I assume people watching your podcast would understand that like I'm saying fraudian instead of Freudian, I'm Australian, so I understand the accent could confuse. Yeah, no, I think that's a fair question. You know, I got to ask, okay, I'm coming back around to it, but I got to ask what was the difference between a hypnagogic hallucination and a hypnopumpic hallucination, which are both related to sleep during an interview a year ago. And I could not pull it out of my head. So I tried, I actually grabbed one of my books off the shelf and I'm like, let me go to the glossary. Most of my books have that kind of, oh, hypnogogogic, what page is that on?

So I went to the page and in the footnote I'd added, here's what it means. means. So to answer that question, now that I've got a hypno, let's see, hypnogogic, the root word, hypnosis, sleep, and Gogic, gorgos, from the Greek, I think, means leading to, so that hypnagogic is as you're falling asleep. Hypno-pompous, or hypnopompic is related to the word pompous in a way of leading away from. So as you're exiting, so there are different kinds of hallucinations we might have as we're falling asleep. The one,

and the way to keep it straight in your mind is, have you ever had that feeling where you're laying in bed and you're comfy? And you feel like you're falling and you jerk suddenly, that feeling like the bed just dropped out from underneath you, but it's still there. And you try to catch yourself, catch your balance in a way. Is that ever happened to you?

Yeah. Yeah, that's called it. You really are a wizard, aren't you? Your psychic, at least. Oh, there goes a question. You just knocked a question off without me asking. Well, that's called a hypnagogic jerk, and it almost only happens as you're falling asleep.

I don't think anyone has ever had that experience as they're awakening from sleep. So if you ever get those two confused, a hypnagogic jerk, hypnagogic as you're falling asleep. Yeah. And like, so, well, my question is, Freudian slip. We're going to come back around to it. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, with the hypnogogogy, yeah, with the, specifically with feeling like, like, so it's almost like I'm lying on the very edge of like a multi-story building and I roll off it, wake up.

And I wonder, so, like as far as I know, the different like a sleep, brainwave states like when it's sleep, like, it's REM sleep or REM sleep that's when you, it's, um, it's when you. You do the most vivid dreaming, isn't it? But you can, you do still dream in the other brain states, don't you? Like, surely. Yes, absolutely. There is, and this goes. Because I was wondering. Go ahead.

Oh, sorry, I was just going to say, so I was wondering, like, I'm just going off my, like, I learned all this stuff like a long time ago. I haven't looked into it recently. So I'm just going off memory here. But I thought it was like something like 90 minutes or something, get to sleep. You go into like the REM sleep. But at the very start, it's. It's like, you know, restful, wakefulness, well, alpha wave sort of there.

How is it, like, I sort of wonder to myself, do I just, like, invent the side of the building? Is that like a sort of like post-foc, like, just invent, you know, conjuring in my brain of I was on the top of building rolling off? Like, or is it, like, actually I'm dreaming that that's happening? because I feel a lot like I just sort of justify it like that after I've jerked awake, I've sort of gone like, why would I jerk away? Because I thought, like, I had the feeling of rolling off something. And I'm just filling in the blanks and going, well, it must have been somewhere high. There is a real problem there.

And speaking of Freud, I think he was one of the first to propose the problem of what he called secondary elaboration, which is where we kind of reflect on the dream and even immediately after the dream. And we start adding things that aren't there or making sense of things in a way that filling in gaps and stuff coloring coloring things. Yeah. Yeah. So there's always the, and the problem of secondary elaboration seems to get worse the longer from the dream. We are reflecting back on it. So our understanding or experience of a dream what we think we saw could be radically different the morning after or 10 years later and less accurate 10 years later, which is actually.

just kind of our problem with memory in the first places, the further we are away from something. And this is another interesting thing about memory is that it seems as if, or the current theory and there's evidence for it, is that what, if I remember a past event today,

what I'm remembering is the last time I thought of it, which might have been last week or last month. And I'm not remembering the event itself. And so what we do is we make this kind of daisy chain of the event, the first time we remember. it and we remember that first time the second time what we're remembering is the first time we remembered it and it just goes and that's why memories get more and more distorted the further from because we're and you get that you get that kind of internal game of telephone going on where you're

telling yourself a story over and over again and the story might change the further from the event definitely yeah i think that varies from person to person as well i i suspect that people who have um a lot more um like they're a lot more loose with how willing they are to, I guess, play with or color their memories or whatever, or how far from their memory they feel like they can essentially elaborate or add to. They don't feel like they're talking shit or making it up or whatever, but like I feel like that will change person and person because some people I've noticed like, because once you're around someone for long enough, you start to hear them say the same stuff. Yeah. And I've noticed with some people,

they're actually quite accurate because they only ever really repeat the things they said in the first place. They're not adding much to it or it's only slightly changing or being exaggerated a little bit or whatever. But yeah, very interesting about the way that, yeah, when you first experience the dream, that's like the first painting of the canvas and then like, yeah, when you remember it, like when you've like just woken up or whatever, that's like you've sort of like gone, okay, and told someone say, that's your first time you've painted over it, but like it's still like pretty close to what it was. But yeah, as time goes on, it does seem as though like if you don't repeat that, like,

it seems as though just like thoughts or memories that are repeated, like it's a whole like I guess repetition learning thing. But like the more it's repeated, the more it seems to get burnt into your memory. And yeah, you've got to try, I guess. your best to not let it get too coloured. Because I do realize, like, I see it in my own self. Like, I know there's, there's, like,

memories that I have almost photoshop to the point of, like, not even resembling what happened. Makes a better story. But I can recognize it. It does, though. It does. And, like, um, and sometimes I will flavor it a bit, but, like, generally afterwards, you know,

be like, and, you know, and that's exactly how it happened, except for, you know, the part where I said that I, I flipped a car and landed it on the wheels or whatever. Like, yeah. Yeah. Flavor it up a bit. And I didn't want to lose the,

the original question. What's like, what is a Freudian slip? And Freud was one of the first person to document the phenomenon and give it, give it a name. And I don't think he called it a Freudian slip. I think he called it something else, but that's all I can remember at the moment.

That'd be quite the ego. Right? To name it after himself. I don't think you named anything after himself. I think that's what we call it now. And that's, I don't remember what he called it. He called it something else.

But the basic idea is that we, and it's usually better to give, give an example. And I was racking my brain to try and come up with one. But it's like where we say a different word than we intended to speak, but that that different word is more revealing of how we really feel is the basic concept. So, and very often it's a word that sounds similar to what we composed in our head for that word in the sentence.

And that's why I can't think of a very good answer or an example. Well, I was just backing my reign and like, no, I'm joking, but like, you know, like Spoonerisms. Like, I feel like they're almost in the same class of, like, things as a fleeing. Because, like, I've noticed, well, I mean, not in the same class, but, like, they can be mistaken as each other quite easily. like so sometimes like um if i want to say uh goodbye and see uh at the same time it'll like blend into the one word because my brain tries to say both at the same time yeah yeah yeah blends but it like just flukeishly sometimes it will actually blend to like almost sound like another word another like unique word that a real word sorry that um somehow you could still find a like it could still make

sense type thing. So, like, I'm trying to say two things at once. It blends together. I'm failing to think of a good example of that at the moment. I've got a feeling like the word, like, it's something wrong and fuck and something else is a common one that I do. But I make those brain farts all the time. Yeah.

And the Freudian slip, I've, I'm not, yeah, I don't make many Freudian slips, but I do claim a lot of, yeah, like, failures that's like to talk properly as free in slips. If I do, like, just mess something. Yeah. And an example came to my mind, but it's not a good one. It's just all I can think of. It's as if someone says, hey, wow, what am I trying to say? What's the setup for it?

Hey, what are you doing on Friday? Can you come over to the barbecue? And your response is, no, I'm sorry, I have to go to jerk. I'm sorry, I have to go to work. And what you were thinking was, I work for a jerk that's making me come in. And so I can't come to your party on Saturdays. My jerk of a boss is making me work. But those, you know, I'm sorry, I have to go.

At my job. Like, it could even be like working job, like trying to, like, your brain just at the last moment, sort of like it's like you can't make up your mind, which is the better word. And so you literally just try and say them both and you mix them together. It's such a weird thing. I would say that is actually a separate phenomenon. That's more along that spoonerism side you were talking. So a Freudian slip is actually different where what you were thinking is my boss is a jerk.

So when you went to say the word work, the word jerk came out instead because that's, because you were thinking of the person and how much of a jerk, how much of a jerk they are to make you come in on the weekend when you were supposed to have the day free to be able to go hang out with your friends. So it's more along those lines of it's that revelatory. like an accidental word substitution that reveals a more genuine feeling is kind of a Freudian slip tight of it. It's not what you meant to say, but it's actually the truth is kind of a thing.

And then that gets weaponized against some people because if you stumble over words and you'd make a spoonerism, they'll go, oh, you're really feeling like not what I meant at all, not how I actually feel. Freud was a little, um, he was a little more on the patience or liars side of the equation. that I mean people don't honestly self-report as much as might be beneficial to them in the therapeutic process. So he felt you had to dig a little more. You had to confront a little more.

You had to assume the person was not telling you everything. And he very much conceptualized that in his theories of defense mechanisms. He's like, everyone's putting up these walls to keep the world out and to protect themselves. He wasn't wrong about that. But where it exists and how it manifests. and whether it's, you know, and it's very rare for me in dream analyses to say, you know, certainly in this format with, with, with, um, uh, guest and it's being recorded for the entertainment value and what I try to give people a good experience.

But one thing I also try not to do is say, I think you're not telling me something you should. I think you're hiding something from me. I think I need to confront you because what I'm seeing is pointing me in one of direction and you're telling me not to go there. I think you don't want to go there, but we should. And that's kind of more what Freud was getting. Now, I don't do that in these because that is something that I think you can only do after you've built a trusting therapeutic relationship, after you get to know the person a little bit better, I might have an intuition that that's likely. Like, I've done a few private dream interpretations and I've gently pushed a little bit

saying, I think there's something more here. And I was told, no, there isn't. I don't want to talk about that. And the person gave me a lot of cues that were like, let's focus on something else and avoid that issue. And I'm like, okay, you know, you're the client in terms of, you know, all I could do is kind of gently suggest. I think we should look at this a little bit more.

And, you know, because it was, again, because it was a one-off, even though it was private, even though no one was ever going to see it, even though maybe I didn't know them well enough to to even suggest that technically. Yeah. My intuition was saying, I think there's something here that you could benefit from having a look at. But if you don't want to, I'm not here to ruin your day. I can't even say for sure. I know there's something there that we need to have, I need to confront you on that and get over your denial or whatever it is. Yeah. So it's a lot of it has to do with the proper arrangement and circumstances to really be able to tell the difference about what's going on.

And Freud may have gotten to know his patience well enough to say, when he hears a particular Freudian slip, he'd say, aha, this is a pattern I've seen about other stuff. Now the person seems, it's almost like a cry for help in that regard of like, we haven't addressed something that I know has been waiting for us to get around to. So let me use this opportunity of a slip, a slip of the tongue to open the door to that, door to that and say, as the doctor, as the authority, as the authority, I know this is something that is what you really feel. Tell me more about that. We need to confront this now and have this out. And that's, I think a lot of Freudian psychoanalyst still use that methodology today. I think there's people who are pretty much a hundred years later still carrying on his legacy and doing things pretty much the same way he did in a lot of regards. Seems a bit, it does seem a bit, not forceful, but it does seem a lot more forceful than what I would think would be most people's comfort level. But I've, yeah, I just, I think I'm a bit touched in the head or something. Like, I just don't, it's not like I don't have a filter, but I don't have, like any, like, yeah, any problem telling anyone, like, literally anyone, like a completely. stranger on the street, like anyone on the planet, anything about me. Gotcha.

Which I know it sounds like a lie, because that sounds ridiculous. Like everyone has stuff that they won't tell people. Actually, I do too, of course. Like, of course there's stuff that like I would never tell a living soul, like, let alone a therapist that I would like had an, you know, ongoing like relationship with or something. but of the majority of my life, like, yeah, I'm a completely open book. Like, so, yeah, if there is anything that I say personally that you think I'm maybe not going deep enough on or something, yeah, feel free to, like, say it because, like, I won't take offense. Like we were talking about before, with critiquing as opposed to being critical.

Yeah, I find, like, I find stuff. like getting corrected on my spelling. I don't find, I don't take that person. I don't take that as a, someone being critical of me. I take that as a critique, like an honest like, hey,

you're, you spelled that wrong. So, because if I don't know, like, if I don't get corrected, I'm never going to know in spelling something wrong.

Like, um, yeah, but yeah, I'm an open book pretty much. Well, and there's, and when people say things like that,

they're not lying. And, and I think you, you caught the caveat, which is also true for most people's, like, there are people who are an open, book except for that page. And that's still an open book in broadly speaking. And then there's

people who are like, you can look at the cover. You're not looking at any of this book. And that's very, you can read the blur, maybe. Yeah, you can look at the blur on the back. That's it. That's all you get to know about me until I invite you in. And then I'll let you look at certain chapters. And that's, um, it's kind of a broad strokes way of looking at. I think that's more normal. Maybe so. And I think both are normal in their own way. I'd say most, people fall somewhere in between. So there are those who are very closed off and those are people who are very open and everyone else is in the middle.

And I don't think it's, you know, as you said, touched in the head at all to be, I'm pretty much an open book like that too. There are some things I won't talk about, relatively few. I think I'm significantly more open and freewheeling in terms of whatever's on my head. I'll just say it than most people. So to have that be, you know, to kind of validate your spirit. experience and say that's not broadly speaking abnormal at all.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's reassuring. Don't worry. You're fine. Sweet. Thank God.

Right. That's most, that's, that's most, that's, that's, that's why it's, that's, that's actually a lot of what, say,

therapists do is because a lot of people have, uh, what am I trying to say, misunderstandings of what is, or is not normal. And a lot of times the, therapist job, not their job, like their only purpose, but a lot of what they do is to say, oh, yeah, okay, a lot, that happens to a lot of people, no worries.

You're not, you're not crazy is, is the line. You know, that thing, that thing you thought made you, you wackadoo was, is perfectly, perfectly normal. And a lot of people have that. And, you know, it doesn't have to destroy your life. We hold us all to a lot of standards. And it gets worse with, say, social media. And these days, I'd have to worry about kids.

because what we're seeing is carefully curated best parts versions of people's life. When they, the sixth take, when they had the camera angle and the lighting just right, and they made all the, all the correct cute expressions, not the other five and not the three they did after that because they weren't sure it was good enough.

But that one version gets put out there and someone looks at that and goes, I'm not good enough because I can't do that. Well, takes to if you put the time and effort into presenting yourself just in that one particular way from that one particular angle. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So that's...

I wouldn't have to pay. I wouldn't have to patience for that. You're going to sort of take me as I am. That's what, and especially that's why I much prefer, like, verbal, like discussion rather than in writing because, like, A, really slow type up. But, but, um, but B, like, I like to just sort of, like, yeah, free flow sort of talk. And if I, you know, stumble on a word or I mess something up or I say something like, like just say with the what is a fraudian slip, if you took that to heart because you're a,

you know, you're the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, fraud, uh, frayed a fucking out. That actually was a, wait, was that a, yeah, that was a fraudian slip because I said it fucking again. But anyway, just say you took it at heart and you're like, oh, um, that's a, joke about like, you know, making a Freudian slip, but the connotations like negative towards Freud or something. Yep. People get touchy about stuff sometimes.

That's, yeah. Yeah. And like, like, you can't always control the way someone will take things. The best you can do is just try and get your message across the best you can. Like, it's a, it's a strange thing. Like, it always takes two to tango. And it's a, like, when you're talking to someone, it's a two-way street. like, you know, it's much your job to understand the person you're talking to us.

It is to be understandable. Like, it's, it's amazing. We can even talk to each other, to be honest. I do find it, like, crazy, just the depth at which, like, humans can communicate with each other about just insane shit. Like, and, like, I assume understand each other. Like, I don't know whether I'm assuming too much, but, like, yeah, I'm pretty sure a lot of people, um, Yeah, on the same life length of a real. Yeah.

Well, that reminded me of a, I think it was a Joe Rogan joke. He said, you know, we're just psychic monkeys who make mouth sounds and our thoughts appear in, in the other person's head. Like,

yeah, that's kind of, that's a great way to look at it. And broadly, again, we're doing my Jordan, this is my Jordan Peter and Peterson impression. Broadly speaking,

I keep saying that a lot. But there's like, there's about four, and there's different models of communication, the communication process. what is it has it work. But I like the one where there's four parts to it. There's what's in my head, how I conceive of it. There's the words I choose to try and communicate it. There's how well you hear the words I'm saying and the tone I say them in and how you interpret all that stuff. And then

there's there's your understanding of the message itself. And anywhere along those four parts, the entire communication process breaks down. And no actual communication occurs. Wrong concept. wrong words, wrong hearing, wrong understanding in the other person. So that's a tough part. And that's why it's such a big deal to say have good faith debate or discussions because it's very easy to for the person you're trying to communicate with to break down the communication on their end by saying by understanding it wrong intentionally or accidentally by hearing it wrong.

I'm not really listening well. and by critiquing, well, you use the wrong words. So I'm going to hold you to account for phrasing it poorly in a way that, if I gave you a little charity, I'd say, okay, I get where you're coming from. Let me, let me try it this way. What if you said it like this? Is that what you mean? And so there's a lot of that feedback stuff going on.

Yeah. Yeah. So there's a lot of it comes down to how generous the listener wants to be in understanding it because like it can be sort of almost like, you know, incorrectly assumed that it's the communicators. like it's the talkers fault because like, well, why does another person understand what you couldn't say it, like, in a good enough way? So it's almost like the power is held by the person understanding, which is like, I think when it comes to good faith, you've got to always look at the listeners response. Because that's where they've got the power.

They're the one that chooses whether they take in good or bad faith, ultimately, which I think is why. I don't, like, I'm pretty sure most things people say to me to insult me go straight over my head. Because, like... Because I don't give a fuck. Yeah. It's not just that I don't care. It's just that I don't, like, understand the... It's a joke or something.

Like, it's, yeah, sometimes I've got to ask people, wait, are you insulting me? At the moment, and they're like, no, what do you mean? I'm like, oh, sorry, I thought what he said was. maybe meant to insult me or something. I just didn't understand and then they'll like explain a whole bit, oh, yeah, okay, no, I'll get with you something. Yeah. I'm just, I'm just a, I'm a slow day. Yeah.

Well, and for me saying, you know, don't give a fuck is more like, it's not like it isn't, for me, it's not the insult so much as the intent. Like, someone could say the exact same thing and, and they're joking, not meaning to be hurtful. Or maybe they're even, you know, what they say, you don't take in the piss of, like, uh, hey, you're being, here's, you're being, here's, There's a, you know, here's a gentle, Oh,

it's a gentle, it's something you do that's kind of stupid. And, you know, play for it in that regard. And then there's people that are just malicious. And they're not, they, you know,

and there's a bunch of ways that can go wrong too. They're trying that. They're almost going to get like a bono from ruining your day sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Their purpose is not saying, you made the spelling everything. Their purpose is not to say,

oh, look at that. You switch those letters. You might want to fix that. Their purpose is to say, we'll look at the fucking moron they can't spell. What's wrong with you? I'm not interested in your feedback.

Thank you very much. So at that point, it's like, don't care. You know, if it's a constructive criticism, then it's just criticism for the sake of it. Like, yeah. So that's where I come from that.

Did you have more questions written out? More, more friends that had, Oh, yeah, go for it. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

One friend wants to know. So you're in, you're in favor of, the NAP or non-aggression and support? Yes, absolutely. And is that, so the question it is, is that because

you're a dream wizard and it spells nap? Is that for your reason? I should, I should have thought that. Is that just an amazing coincidence? That is what Carl Jung would call a synchronicity. Yes, it is. I, I had never considered, I should have thought of that myself. I believe in the NAP because I'm a dream

wizard and it spells nap. That's fantastic. That's the origin story. That's kind of the culmination. That's the culmination of 30 some odd years of thinking about moral systems and what's the best way. What are the proper limits on human interaction?

And so for me it is Yeah. It's a, the non-aggression principle says that initiating aggression being force, fraud or coercion against other people is inherently bad or wrong. wrong, that I should not twist someone's arm to get them to do what I want, no matter what I want

them to do. Other people have different standards. But it comes down to like, you know, I might want something from you or I might want you to do something I believe is beneficial for your sake. But at that point, that's where my authority ends is in that desire. I can communicate it. I can advocate. I can use my words to say.

would you please give me that? I'll make you a fair trade, voluntary. Or I can advocate. But no force or coercion sort of thing. I think you should quit smoking or go for a walk because it would be good for your health. That's as far as it goes, no force, no coercion, no, you know, no threats. Yeah, you're not going to start hiding their cigarettes or like, you know, shaming them if they're outside having a cigarette or something. Maybe shame.

I don't know. That's a thing. Just a little bit of shame? A little bit of shame. I think we need to bring more shame back into society. Shame is not force. that's yeah I don't like that I don't want to be around you when you do that if you're going to do that I'm not going to be around you that's ostracism it's like if you value my time and energy and friendship like your your wife says your mouth tastes like an ashtray I don't want to kiss you would please fucking quit smoking and you're like I would really like to kiss my wife maybe I should quit smoking so she wants to kiss me that is you know some people would view that as coercion but she's just I look at that like that's her limit she has something she doesn't like she's saying look I'm not going to use force on you. I'm not going to threaten to use force to get you to do what I want

you to do. But this is my limit. I don't want to kiss your mouth when it tastes like that. Yeah. And that's fair. Yeah. Yeah. And some people have a hard time parsing out that idea of what is and isn't coercion. Coercion in my estimation that the definition I use is it is the threat of force. It's when the mafia comes in and says, it be a shame if someone burned down your business. So maybe you should pay us for protection. That's coercion. Because the threat is implied. you don't do this you're going to you're we're going to burn your business down it's in the it's it's in the offer you can't refuse um but let's say these are my boundaries this is something i will not do that is always acceptable this this far and no further um thank you know i will not voluntarily do

that thing under these circumstances that it to my estimation is not actual coercion so there you have it yeah yeah yeah no good answer um okay next one is, is it true? I think you mentioned earlier, something about personal sort of theories that people have that can sometimes be a bit wacky or like, turn out to be true or not true, whatever the case. Sort of, I got a little pang of, like, panic inside me when you said that because I worried that so me eating blue cheese before I go to bed probably doesn't actually affect my dreams. Is that what's more likely in your opinion? Or? Well, it is a bit of an open...

Because I can't even find much of a correlation, but I have had some crazy dreams after Blue Cheese. Yeah. And actually, that might be a factor for you. It's not like it's impossible. So the old theory used to be, you remember when they, in medieval times, they would say the humors of the blood, sanguine, phlegmatic, bilious, those they have the four... colored the four humors model and they didn't really understand biology back then i mean they could see what happened if it cut someone open his guts and spill out but they didn't really know how it worked so so they had this four humors model and what they thought was if you eat yeah cheese specifically um and this may not have been again i'm going to hedge hedge around all this too and try and give you

my best understanding it isn't like they were necessarily way off base or what they were suggesting was impossible. They just chalked it up to that entirely, which wasn't a good explanation. So that's where I'm going with this. So it, we, we do know very, very certainly that your physiological state can affect your dreams. But that's much broader than people think. So what we found or what they came to be accepted understanding, 100, 150 years ago was, would they let go of that model, that old humor's model. And they started looking at things like, well, if you have a dream, and they actually knew this way, way back 2,000 years ago to some degree.

But if you have a dream, the classic dream is you dream that you are driving a carriage and you're the guy with the whip riding and the horses and the horses are sweating and panting and struggling to get up this hill. That was a sign that maybe the person had something wrong with their heart. and if they would go to get their heart analyzed by a doctor, medical doctor, they would find, yeah, you have a heart condition. And it was indicated by the dream. So physiological, another dream this guy had was he documented his own dreams. And what he had a dream was a giant buzzing lobster-like insect, huge, that landed, landed on him and attacked his hand.

And he woke up and there was a mosquito bite on his hand. where that giant lock. So this tiny mosquito bite, this irritation, got into his dream and the buzzing of the mosquito and the, and the feeling of the welt growing and the itchiness translated itself into this imagery of a giant, a creature of outsized proportion to the actual mosquito and the bite itself and the damage that, you know, that was done in the dream compared to just an itchy lump. Okay, long story short on that. So we're getting, getting back around to dreams.

We do know that different medications can cause people to stop dreaming or start dreaming when they didn't. Or in that, in that sense, and this goes back to the REM question too. I wanted to address that as well. I forgot, forgot about that. There are some people say, I used to never remember my dreams. Then I started taking this medication. And now I have the most vivid dreams. And there's a long history throughout the literature as well of people who have,

extremely vivid and sometimes terrifying nightmares because they've been drinking alcohol, because they were using smoking opium. There's a very famous case of a guy, um, De Quincey, something to Quincy. He wrote Confessions of an English opium eater. And one thing he detailed in that book was all of the, uh, strange and horrifying dreams he felt trapped in that felt like they went on forever. Yeah. Yeah.

So there's definitely adding chemicals. And okay, so what's the difference between food and drugs? Well, drugs are defined as any substance which alters the structure or function of the living organism, comma, except food. Because food also alters the structure or function of the living organism. That's why cheese is not a drug, but caffeine is in a coffee, you know, that kind of a thing. You can live without caffeine and coffee. Cheese is just, what is it? It's, you know, we have different types of, you know, fats and proteins and,

that kind of thing, sugars. Yeah, well, I was sort of more curious as to, is it like maybe something in the mold? Like the blue, whatever strain of mold that is that grows in the blue cheese, because, I mean, mold's the same, well, I mean, mushrooms are, like, mold and mushrooms with both fungi. So I was thinking, like, could that maybe be it? Because, like, I'm allergic to penicillin, which is also mold. Like, is it, like, it's a strange kingdom. And this is always, I mean, the answer is it depends.

And usually it depends on the individual and specific circumstances. A lot of factors that have to come together. So long story short, I say that, and it's never a long story short, or never short, it may be that you, based on your physiology and taking into account the idea that, well, you have a sensitivity or allergy to penicillin and you, when you specifically eat blue cheese in a certain quantity at a certain time of night before falling asleep, you will have more likelihood to experience a certain type of dream. That may be a very strange, unique circumstance to you that is not so bizarre, broadly speaking,

but definitely the blue cheese because it's you and because it's related to this other, you know, sensitivity. So someone else who ate a different kind of cheese or what did they say? There was someone who reported once that if they wanted to have, there was a, there was the author of kind of gothic horror back. in the late or mid-1800s, and they reported that they saw a lot of their gothic horror novel content in their nightmares, and that they induced those nightmares on purpose eating almonds or walnuts that they found on the nights when they ate those nuts.

So they may have had a mild nut allergy that caused them to have associated nightmares due to, and people like, if you have gastric upset, you can go to bed with an upset stomach where one develops because let's say I'm sensitive to red tomato sauce. If I have red tomato sauce too soon before I go to bed, I get a lot of stomach acid, and then my sleep will be disrupted by physical internal sensations of discomfort that may not wake me up, but they might creep into my dreams and make me have a nightmare that I was being disemboweled. And I've watched it all fall on the floor in front of me, specifically because I'm having an

upset stomach that if I was awake, I would go, where's the N acid? So all of these things are very, very valid contributors. Yeah. Well, that's excellent. You give me a perfect justification why I can keep feeding my addiction to blue cheese. Oh, I also wanted to address that. Yeah, true. You'd ask the question about when do we sleep?

And I think I was heading there and we got off track. There's so many tangents. That's been great. So it used to be, well, you know, I've enjoyed it too. That's no, no, no, no. And if I never thought of it, we never talked about it. So be it. But since I did, I want to tell you, we used to be fairly certain that dreams only happened during rapid eye movement, REM sleep.

And that was based on some data. And it's almost like, well, we observed a thing and it seems to be a consistent thing. Therefore, we think that's the entire thing. And it isn't that they weren't wrong about anything up to that moment they said, and that's the entire thing. If they'd left that part out, like we only dream during REM sleep, their conclusion or their data otherwise was was perfectly fine. What they did was, oh, we notice people's eyes tend to move when they're asleep. What's happening? So we'll wake them up and we'll ask them, what were you experiencing?

And they'll go, I was dreaming. And then the conclusion they drew was, oh, moving eyes means you're dreaming. And that only happens. So for a certain amount of time after you've been asleep for a certain amount of time. So it's a very contained experience. and they used to think that was, that's the entire circumstance under which dreams happened. Well,

what they did was other experiments then saying, let's wake people up at random times and ask them what was happening. And no matter when you wake someone up and ask them, what were you experiencing, they will say, I was dreaming. So it appears dreams happen the entire night from the moment we are fully unconscious to right about when we're waking up and coming out of it.

And even kind of there's a, what's been called the kind of twilight space. That was a word of work. I can't remember where we're not quite asleep and not quite awake. We're getting an awareness that we're in bed and where we are, but we're still in the tail end of a kind of dream experience. We're still having images or thoughts about. And what I think is that the, it's almost as if that river stream of consciousness just goes underground for a while. And then that when we're awake, it pops back up above ground. so to speak.

Yeah. Yeah, that's actually, yeah, that's a really good way. But it never really stops. As far as I know, the,

the lungs breathe, the brain, the heart beats and the brain thinks, and it doesn't stop ever until we are dead. It just, it's a constant.

Or in a vegetative coma or something. And even then, you know, actually, yeah, people still will report having like some. Wake up from comas,

having dream experiences. Sure, I was in another place and I was there forever. Yeah. It was amazing. or it was terrifying. But also there's the circumstance where the body's alive and we can keep it alive with

intravenous feeding. It'll keep doing all its autonomic stuff. You know, we can put it on a lung machine and breathe for it. But they do the EKG stuff on the, or that's not it's EKG is for the stomach. Ah, ECG. Yeah, ECG for the brain.

Sorry, ECG, ECG, encephalo, cardiograph, it's, that was for the, this. C-E-G. Encephalore. Encephalogram. Yeah, yeah. Because it's an encephalosephaly water on the brain.

It's cephalic. Anyway, long story short, you're right. You get your medical terms, right? It shows no results. Like the brain scan is like no activity. And so I don't know what's going on in that, you know, it's certainly not firing like it is when we're awake or asleep. That's, it's some third state, which is, I mean, that's why they call the brain dead.

It's like, it's dead because we can't see a move. It's not doing anything. Um, at that point, you might as well kind of just turn off the pump and let him go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I've, I've actually got a family friend who's, uh, been in a coma for like, I think a decade now or something.

Wow. Like brain dead essentially, but they just couldn't make the choice that, like at the time they just couldn't bring themselves to turn off the machine. Yeah. And then, you know, when they finally did, his body had sort of like, regained enough sort of like control to like half breed half sort of survive and they saw that as a sign that he was like you know fighting and he was going to make a comeback or something like yeah he didn't get any better than that he's not ever going to get any better than that

that's that's yeah a bit tough choice yeah to give up hope for their kids you know what if he is because there have been stories of people that you know yeah we're in a coma for 10 years and they woke up now it's rare exactly it's rare but not impossible and you hold out hope like to someone who, you know, loves their kids so much and it's, you know, oh, totally. It's hard to argue. It's almost bankrupt to them as well, which is even, like, makes even sort of more heartbreaking. But, yeah, I mean, they've made their decision and that's what they wanted.

So it's, um, if you ask them, you know, even if they, you know, turn, turn it off and he dies, eventually they would probably go, we regret nothing. We, we had to try at least that hard to be. Oh, yeah. No, his mom doesn't regret a thing. Yeah. She's, like, fine with it. Yeah.

For sure. Um, I think I, um, more stuff. only had one more question. That was, yeah, what do you think the deal is with why certain dreams seem important or, like, there's a meaning behind them? Whereas other dreams can be like, so, like, I think the majority of my dreams are, I reckon super mundane. They're still, like, fun in a way, like, I mean fun as in, like, I'm smiling, laughing

and running around or something. I just mean like I'm finding it interesting or it's novel or something wherever I am, even if I'm just standing on a wall like next to like a couple of other dudes and we're guarding this like gauge or something. And it's like almost just nothing going on. It's not exciting. If it was a movie, you turn it off. You go like boring.

Like what else is on like? Yeah. But then I'll wake up and I'll just be like, wow, what a strangely like mundane dream. Like why can I even still remember this like five minutes? after waking. Like, there's nothing to be learned from this. Like, I literally can find just zero meaning behind some of my dreams. Yeah.

But it's still cool that you can happen. Like, it's, I guess you don't have to, like, they don't always have to be productive to still be enjoyed, I guess. Yeah. I mean, if I were to give you a short answer, which I try to do, but I'm trying to conceptualize it. It's, I would say it's as easy as the difference between just kind of idle thoughts. throughout the day, eh, whatever, and then really seriously trying to wrap your brain around

something important. It's like the importance is, the importance doesn't come from the dream as much as what the dream is expressing. So, um, but to say a little bit more about that, um, if we are dreaming the entire night through, uh, I was going somewhere else with it, um, assuming we do dream, and I think we do, um, but we don't remember, but different people have a different amount of recall. Like some people wake up every morning remembering amazing detail about long dream sequences that felt like they lasted for years. And that actually might have only been a five-minute chunk of dream that felt because there's time dilation in dreams as well. And the feeling of how long they took to occur is not always the actual time it took to have that

experience. But then there's people like me. And this is the full range of people who remember highly detailed long sequences every day without fail. And then there's people like me. It is extremely rare I ever wake up remembering I even had a dream, uh, which some, some people have said, is that why you're fascinated with dreams?

Like partly, yeah, I think it's a good, a good, uh, assumption, but, but I'm also intrigued by the puzzle of it.

Like, you know, and my you, the satisfaction of solving that puzzle and, and providing some useful benefits to people, but, um, so if we go from there of like,

so if you're, one of those people who tends to remember they dreamed more often than not most of those are going to be kind of idle mundane i was thinking some things nothing really happened does do i like chocolate better or mint chip i don't know because sometimes you're like what do i feel like when i go to the story so it there's there's buying the buying a flavor of ice cream low low importance we might say. And then there's, I need to decide what university to go to. And I only get one shot at that because I'm going to go there and that's where I'm going to spend four years and it's going to be very expensive. Big decisions that have long term consequences. So I would say the dreams we wake up from

that feel important. Well, the way I phrase it is dreams self select for importance. If you wake up feeling, wow, that left me feeling some kind of way intensely or that feels like, something I should understand than it probably is. And it's related to that, the significance of the, of the ideas you were considering while it was happening. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's what I was. I don't have that answers your question. I'm all over the place. What do you think? Oh, yeah. No, no. That does. It does.

I just want to sort of quick, just tack on to the end of that. What do you, what do you think affects, like, you spoke of like the twilight sort of zone of like when you're, I guess when you're sort of like, yeah, waking up and like your body's, I guess getting reconnected to the brain or whatever so like you can move and stuff because like I've had that, what was it, hypnagogic is when you're going into sleep and yes. Hypnipompous is when you're coming out. The hypnipompous one, I've put holes in walls like because I've like been playing soccer and

like I'm going to kick the winning goal in the game and my body's like being wired back up to my brain and my knee is just like gone through the wall. Like, yeah, I don't know how I've injured someone like over the years. Yeah. And then this touches on the, again, it scares a hell out of you. Yeah. Well, sure. And it touches on the rather still poorly understood idea of sleepwalking. We're not entirely sure what's going on there.

Okay. So the broad strokes on that are when. we go to sleep and dream, what our body is programmed to do is disconnect from, disconnect thoughts from volitional movements so that we don't walk in our sleep. Like, that's what we don't want to do is be blind and deaf and walk off a cliff. So in the, in the evolutionary sense, anyone who is kind of wired to be that way, they probably didn't survive and procreate. So what we're left with is humans as they are today, which is when you go to sleep, it

severs the connection between I think it and I do it. Now, that gets, that's a little different with certain people and it's got to be biological. And again, I don't think they've nailed it down exactly what it is. But for some people that they're able to enter sleep, but then that discon, that severing of the connection from I think it and I do it isn't broken. And so they get up and walk around and act out their dreams and their sleep. And then they're even, their eyes are open sometimes. So same with sleep talking, but just like it's your speech like, you know, control chords that are sort of being like let turn back on sort of thing.

Like, you know, you flick all the lights switches off and somehow like you turn back on the dingo. Like can you actually take anything from what someone's saying in their sleep seriously at all? Or like, or can you interpret it a bit like a dream or is it just like sort of, because you're only getting the speech. You're not getting any more context. Yeah, you don't know who they're talking to. There's like not really much you can gain from it. Yeah. You can't really interrogate them.

Now, actually that has been, I'm just editing a new book recently where there were some people who were able to be interrogated, so to speak. And that sounds bad, but questioned during sleep. And they would give answers. Some of them said some pretty crazy shit that turned out to be true. Like what was happening at places far away at that exact moment. That's some spooky woo that I don't know what to do with. That's a whole separate category. But you can actually kind of talk to people in their sleep.

And sometimes they'll interact with you. It may or may not make sense. You know, you want to be careful. What you ask is you might get answers that you don't want and are not sure. And you can't tell the difference. And they will have no memory. Yeah, exactly. wake up.

Yeah. And they're going to be very confused as to why you're angry that when you, that you said in your sleep that you want to sleep with her sister or something. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and so sleep walking and sleep. Also, dream dolls flying. But, I mean, you know, you don't think I can actually fly.

Right. Exactly. That's a good, that's a good, good thing. So sleep walking and sleep talking or what they call somnambulism and somniloquy. somnus being sleep and ambulate to walk or loquists to speak. There are also actually, I mean, a lot of different varieties of it. There was a one episode of sleepwalking documented where like this was back in the day, rather poor folks or the two sisters shared a bed when they were young.

And one of the sisters got out of her bed in the middle of the night and thought she was using the chamber pot and just peed on the floor. I think it was one of the stories I read. And then she got back into bed and woke up in the morning and they were, you know, they were both like what happened. And then they didn't, this happened a few times until one of the sisters woke up and watched the other sister do it and tried to wake her up in the middle of it and couldn't talk to her, couldn't get her to respond.

I think I'm telling the story right. But anyway, it can be, it can happen in a lot of different. There were stories of people who showed the. most amazing physical abilities of balance and strength and and like scaling the side of a house and walking the crest of a narrow roof and turning cartwheels and no no fear because they don't know where they are and what they're doing they're not connected to the real danger but also but also successfully pulling it off like stuff that you would you would blow your mind to see a circus acrobat do it and people are like you know document

getting this by observation, by observational report. You know, if we take their word for it, which I think most of these stories are not made up, as far as I know. But at least jives with what we know is possible. What you wouldn't get is maybe someone my age and weight and lack of ability to do cartwheels, doing cartwheels on the top of the house. Probably not going to happen. But someone who had that roughly had that ability. that ability yeah and maybe they're just nailing it perfectly

because like they are in a dream and like they don't have any like doubt in their ability in their dreams they're not like you know they're just doing it almost by like muscle memory in a way because like I sort of wonder how can you how can you walk in your sleep while you're asleep you're not

like your body may start just doing what you're doing in your head but like how do you still um I guess have because like yeah, I don't know. I guess I'm getting it confused with like muscle room. But, um,

well, there is, there is something. There is something to it there. And muscle memory works to, but also, um, what am I trying to say?

Training in a way, training is not the right word of practice. It's something like someone who, uh, was a sleepwalker and had the ability to play the piano might walk downstores and might walk downstairs and play the piano in their sleep. Someone who has never been trained to play piano has never touched. to piano in their life is unlikely to do that because it's not within their wheelhouse of experience.

But you were also asking about the idea of falling asleep or coming out of sleep. So, okay, all of this, just to get us around to the idea of, so what you're experiencing is a related condition. You've probably heard about sleep paralysis, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. I find that quite interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's actually the reverse problem of sleepwalking in some ways. And I can't say we know physiologically why either one happens. But if your body is not disconnected from your brain while you're asleep, you sleep walk. If your body is not reconnected to your brain as you're waking up, you get sleep paralysis, which is a lack of voluntary control of your body. because whatever that connection is hasn't been restored. So what a lot of people describe as I, I felt as if a heavy weight was on my, something was sitting on my chest and I couldn't breathe is actually,

it's actually the experience of being unable to draw a voluntary breath because you're on that automatic breathing that happens when you're asleep. So people are like, I couldn't take a breath. No, literally you couldn't. It's like when your leg falls asleep and you can't move the muscle. That's pretty much whatever. Yes, you're not in control. You're not in charge of that at that time.

Yeah. Now, now what causes people, it's unsurprising. You have the dog watered it in my lap and now he's wandering away. Come here. Come here. Screw you.

What's unsurprising is that people might panic, but what gives them a sense of dread, like they're in danger? What gives them a visual hallucination of a shadow or entity? Yeah, because aliens are a lot of time sort of, sort of involved in, well, like, I don't, I mean, I don't believe in aliens, but I believe people think that there's, like, aliens doing this to them a lot of time when, like, I

personally think they're probably just got sleep paralysis and they're tripping. I don't know. Very well could be. No, I think there's, there's something to that. What I would say is that we never heard about people being visited by aliens until aliens entered our lexicon, until that concept. Yeah. You know, so what, what you, what people described in the past was demons, because that is a concept they understood. Oh, I was visited by a succubus in my sleep that made me have a sexual dream and nocturnal emission. Or I woke up and a demon was sitting on my chest and that's what caused me to be unable to breathe and to feel terror. And, and some people may have very similar experiences.

And they, yeah, and chalked up to aliens. I saw a flash of light from outside the window. And then I felt like I was flying. but I couldn't see anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, I'm not going to discount all stories. Like, I'm willing to believe in psychic shit and I'm willing to believe in aliens. I'm just not sure.

Yeah. It's not proven to me yet, but I'm not going to say it ain't real or that I can explain it away by, oh, well, that was just a dream. Okay, you can say that. Yeah, I'm happy to, I'm happy to admit, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, me too. I'm like, whatever. That's, we'll figure it out someday, I hope. Maybe, maybe not.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, we'll find out eventually. Yep. Yeah, I think that, I think that's all I got. You brought together your friend's questions. Oh, you're talking to a dream guy. Ask him about this. Yeah, yeah.

Very true. Very cool. Yeah, they've watched, like, some of you in yourself. So they were like, yeah, while you're there, yeah, if you could ask this and this. should we do the yeah I was just making some making a note of the time on here because I'm going to go back

and you all cut out our 10 minute break and that kind of thing but I'll leave all the rest of it in we're at about two and a half hours still not the longest episode I've ever done so we're good oh whoa right I know

I thought since I was thinking like an hour and a half maybe I'm actually been looking at the time right time flies having fun it's good stuff so did you you, uh,

settle on which dream you wanted to, you wanted to tell me? Um, yeah. Yeah. I, I think, um,

yeah, I think I, I have, yeah. Okay, good. Well, my,

um, oh, excuse me. I'm not yawning at you. Uh, this, the cat just yawned and stretched and then he came over here and I'm like,

you bastard. Now I got a social. The ones are contagious. Yeah, right? Social mimicry contagion. Um, so my basic process,

I, shut up and listen, you tell me the dream, and then we'll kind of go back through it again and ask some questions, and then we'll try and figure out what it means. Yeah, cool. So I'll start at the start of the dream, I guess. Actually, is there a start of the dream? I don't know. The dream doesn't really seem to start some, well, I mean, start some, like from where I can

remember from the start of it. I'm in a field and it's like wheat or maybe not wheat it's not like a crop or something it's just like wild grass or something but it's maybe almost waist height like it's sort of overgrown and like

thick but not thick enough that you can't easily walk through it and even run through it's like you know running through it's possible and I can see off like in the distance looking in front of me, I can see like on the very horizon, it's like almost in, like you can only just sort of make it out, this grey sort of like silhouette and, but somehow I know it's a giant castle and it's also my destination. It's like sort of the first moments of the dream. It's like I'm just, I just pop into existence in this field. There's a castle in the distance

and I know I'm meant to be heading there. So I start like walking. And it's, like, really far away. Like, I can't even guess how many miles, like, I don't even know how far, like, the human I can see, but it's, like, super far. I know I've got, like, ages to go. So I'm like, well, walking's taking too long, so I just start running.

And I'm running and running and running and running. And, like, I'm making progress. Like, I'm running as fast as I would in real life. You know, I'm sort of, like, a brand for maybe, half a mile or something like that, before I start to see, like, something else coming up on the horizon, but much closer.

Like, this isn't, if you think about it, it's not like a perfectly flat plane. It's almost like hillish. So, like, it's, there can be things that are obscured from, like, my site, essentially. And, yeah, as I come up over, like, a mound or, like, you know, whatever, I start to see this other thing. So it's much closer.

And I'm getting closer. were actually really fast to the point where like I'm almost at it and so I slow down to like sort of a walk type pace because it's a person standing there and um it's like this I don't know the word crone is right like um witch not maybe not rich I don't know if she was a witch like she had a wonged or something but just sort of like a mean-looking old lady type thing like sort of like the crazy cat lady from The Simpsons, if you're familiar with the Simpsons. Yeah, and she was just, like, she just looked like, not evil, but she didn't look like she was there to give good advice. And as I'm walking up to her, I'm sort of like, you know, staring at her, but, like, not walking towards her, but, you know, still walking forwards towards the castle, type of thing.

and she's like, just staring at me, essentially, and we're almost, like, level with each other as I'm going past her, and she, like, points at me, like, I don't know why, just to be creepy, I guess, but, like, she points to me and says, give up. The only way you'll get there is if you give up. And I'm like, that's... I mean, I didn't say anything to her, I don't think.

I think I just, like, sort of looked at her and just kept going, but I was thinking to myself, that's retouched. That makes no sense. You can't get somewhere by giving up. Like if I stop right now, the castle is still just as far away. That's so dumb. And so I keep like, I start running again. She's like, she's standing where she is and keep running, running, running, looking forward. It's like I'm not actually getting any closer though. Like I feel like I'm, like the castle just keeps, it still, it feels like it's almost still just as far away. no matter how much I keep running and I start looking back and the old lady's getting further and further away so like I know I'm still progressing

forwards and then after a while I come across her again like pretty much this like at first I don't realize I think it's like another person but as I get closer it's the same it's the same fucking

prone and I'm like what what is what's going on here like how did you how did you get in front of this doesn't make sense. And, like, my brain was almost breaking from, like, just how did you get here? Like, I'm thinking sort of, like, I'm being tricked or something.

And, like, I don't say anything to her. I just sort of, like, walk past, like, I guess with shock on my face or something, like, because I felt like my jaw was on the floor. I was just, like, truly confused. And she says the same thing to me. And I'm like, this is, this is ridiculous. Like, I'm, this is ridiculous. advice, this is ridiculous I've come across her again.

Like, I'm just thinking how, like, this is ridiculous. And it happens like four or five more times. And like, at this point, I'm starting to get, like, angry. Like, I'm, you know, I'm not feeling like getting violent towards her every time I run past her, but like, I'm feeling more inclined towards violence each time I run past. but not that I don't think I would have like attacked her but like well I mean I'm actually I'm not going to think about it but anyway I'm yeah so I'm getting more and more pissed off because I'm not getting anywhere I should keep running past her the same shit keeps happening and I'm just like all right now that I'm getting angrier angrier until it I don't know it just defeated me and I was just like this is fucking stupid I give up and as soon as I said it I was like in this giant castle hospital hospital hospital people like around this like I don't know, it looked like some sort of medieval sort of like giant long tables thing

kind of like out of um I don't know like Robin Hood style movies and stuff I guess like that sort of stereotypical I guess English castle sort of thing with a big feast hall or something along those lines and yeah there's like you know giant legs of

meat and fruves and like there's a giant spread on. And just the noise, like everyone's, like, chatting and laughing, and, you know, there's people, like, you know, hitting their goblets together or whatever. Like, it's a party, essentially. And, yeah, so, like, I just,

I don't even think I'd grab a piece of food or anything before I wake up and just go, that was dumb. Until, yeah, I'd had the dream, like, maybe three or four times or something then I stopped having it because I think I learnt its lesson but I'm not sure

because I don't actually know if it had it lesson or whether it was just a funny dream but I think the lesson was like yeah essentially you got to sometimes you do have to give up to like get there or move forward or something like it feels like something like that and I see it in like little areas of life

like over my life I thought about it in respect to, you know, when you're trying to, like, you just forget what you were saying. It's on the tip of your tongue. And it seems as though the more you try and remember it, the harder it is. Like, oh, like when you're looking for your car keys, the more frustrated you get, and the more you look, the less you can see them. And it's only when you give up or you, like, trust your brain to just put it on the back burner

and not focus on it anymore, that it will, like, just come to you, like, in a flash, like, you're almost in your mind see your car keys on the shelf of the pantry or something retarded like that. Like, or you'll, yeah, it's, I feel like it's, yeah, I see it a bit throughout my life. Like, or like if you're arguing with someone, like, sometimes you just got to give up arguing with them and just give it time or space or something and it fixes itself. Like there's just so many, I guess, things I can relate that to in life. And, yeah, when I sort of took that as the meaning of that dream, I think I sort of like stopped letting that shit ruin my day as often. As long as I remembered, like, and that's always the trick,

is you've got to actually, so when I'm frantically looking for my car keys, getting, like, more and more worked up, the, yeah, as long as I remember, like, dude, just chill, like, go get a drink. water or something and just don't think about it like just don't worry find your car keys in like 20 minutes when you actually have to leave like and i'll do that sit on the couch a glass of water and like almost as soon as my ass hits the couch it comes to me like so i've given up i've stops like struggling with i guess or yeah yeah i think that's a pretty reasonable understanding for Sure. Let me pick it. Make a little note here. Sorry. I'm getting better taking notes. I think we would have come around to a very similar understanding through anything I could have told you. I think that's a good. And I would say the validity of that understanding is, as I've said the past, the fact that the dreams stopped.

because they weren't necessary anymore. That whatever, whatever that lesson was, you kind of got it. It's something in that, in that range of you're trying too hard. You're making this harder than it needs to be. Sometimes you just got to back off and let it be what it is. And that comes to us in a lot of, in a lot of different ways. So in terms of finding that answer, it sounds like you already kind of found it. Are you wondering more?

I was wondering. Yeah, I was sort of wondering if, like, you see anything else, and it's like, to give, I guess, a bit more context or information that might be important. I, like, so I was, I don't want to say gifted child, because it makes it sound like I'm blowing hot air up my own butt, but I was like, you know, a smart kid compared to, you know, most kids sort of thing.

I like, always got really high scores, and especially maths and science. and stuff. Because I found it really easy to learn. Like, I just, all I need to do is generally, just read something once, and I don't need to read it again. I understand it the first time over, and I can remember it. And, like,

so it was just learning was super easy for me, which was, like, massively detrimental to actually learning to do the hard work, because if you can just remember, you don't have to do the hard work. It's true. But, yeah, memory gets worse over time. That's the, I don't tell you.

If everything comes easy up to a certain point, what do you do when something's suddenly hard? Yeah. Yeah. If you don't handle it well. Yeah, yeah. But like so with the, yeah, with the repetition of going past that old lady that kept trying to, you know, kept trying to teach me a lesson in quotation marks. Yeah, the repetition is like one of the best ways to like, um, Yeah, drive me insane, I think.

Until I take it as a slight against me, and then I'll just let the hate feed me. But, like, yeah, I just can't stand broken records, essentially. Yeah, I think it's just because I just despise repetition. Like, do these, you know, math questions. I don't need to. I'm sorry, I just don't need to. Yeah.

I think that could be maybe part of like, I don't know, maybe it was like, yeah, maybe it was trying to, like, teach me that I've got to listen to people sooner if I don't want to keep butt in my head against a brick wall or something, or maybe just at least consider what other people say because, like, being very smart also made me very arrogant. So, like, I would generally think, like, I thought I was the smartest person in my family, like, most of my life, including my parents. I think I'm smarter than my parents.

Like, even, this was from the age of about 13. I was like, I am like literally the smartest person on earth. Like, way off, way off. But like, yeah, that's essentially sort of what I thought. So I wouldn't really give other people a chance when it came to trying to convince me me of something or show me another side of something. I was, you know, my ways, like, I get this. right. Don't worry.

But yes. Yeah. I got you. And, you know, it's also entirely possible that you did have legitimately the highest IQ of anyone in your family, which does not really equate to wisdom, experience, knowledge in that regard. Like, there might have been people who are much better at other things. I know. Yeah. And that's, that can be hard for some. I wish I like that way, yeah. There's, there's a very much a difference between, you know, you know, knowledge and wisdom or, or even. intellect the the capacity for not quick thinking necessarily but deep like the capacity for thinking

itself versus the application of it in a variety of contexts yeah so you might be a very fast learner but there's still things you got to learn in that regard so you know and none of what I'm you know none of discussing this would would be to say the conclusion you came to it all was was incorrect because I think you did hit the broad strokes that they gave you at least the ability to say well I don't need I don't need to see this in this form anymore but there I think there's some value to the idea of of looking at it from different angles um one thing you have mentioned is that banging your head on the brick wall or repetition like a lot of these things are all very good what occurred to my mind and what I wrote down um was the idea of if you're trying the same method of resolution over and over again running that circle circuit of trying to head towards a goal but it's not getting any closer because you're using the wrong methodology sometimes you got to give up on that faster uh go get get the idea this okay this isn't working let me try something else

so it can be not just giving up but giving up on a particular method that isn't giving you results which and and it's very interesting a lot of so you're conceptualizing this as you're in a You're in an outdoor space. You're in a field. There's grass. It's kind of waist high. So it's a very, what am I trying to say? It is the opposite of, say, a dense, deep, dark forest.

We've got to navigate a lot of twists and turns. It's very different than, say, a desert location that is devoid of green, growing, representations of life. It's a very fertile field that is very healthy for the grass. And so there's something to that there. Well, it wasn't quite scary, but it was like, it kind of looked like a sort of rolling hills of like Scotland or something. But if you made the grass less like green and chucked in a bit more yellow and the sky was like grey and it was like, I feel like the just the tones of it all was just like very like drab or something. But once I was inside the castle, it was like someone turned the contrast.

trust that like all the fruit and stuff look like it was like it went from being like I'm not like like depressing to normal or something like almost like a bit more vibrant than normal sure yeah and there's that's weird once again to say about that there's there's there's a there's a there's a bit of a flavor of say being lost at sea and where am i going with that if you're in the middle of the ocean you have the complete freedom to go any direction but every where you look is horizon. It's like too much possibility. And so you actually, what you see in the distance is a destination. So you've got the broader concept of what if I could do everything and I am and I, what if I could do anything I want? The, the great wide open, the sky is wide open.

The planes go on forever. I can go in any direction I want. Well, you identify a goal, whatever it is. The castle. And you popped up in your, why in that? form very interesting we don't know um but broadly speaking and see i love lego that may be part of it you have a you have a fascination with uh medieval times and uh the lego castle set yeah yeah and you just you just love it castle so much and it's interesting and see this is where part of this comes in and we hold these ideas loosely too i mentioned why a castle and you said lego okay well what is it to build a lego castle it's a it's a it's the idea of you've got a bucket full of pieces and we're What do you do with it? You invest your time and energy and to make it something, a beautiful structure that the process of creating it is fun and the result is rewarding.

It's a, it's a destination to aim towards by a particular process, uh, sometimes following the instructions, sometimes making it up as you go. Because why not? You know, whenever I did the Lego thing when I was younger, I always built the thing according to the instructions first, just to see what they wanted it. Yeah. See what the Lego designers wanted it to be. Then I took it apart and built something else. always always yeah yeah I was I would like learn so I would I'd build it by the instruction booklet the first time yeah yeah and then essentially test like I'd pull it all apart again and then test if I could do it without the instruction booklet and I generally could like I generally didn't have to really look back in the instruction booklet much and if I could do that then I'd take it apart again and then maybe do that another four times

before I'd even think of make something else with it like I don't I don't think I got like the same thing out of like as most kids. Like most kids is for the imagination. Whereas me, it was like almost like taking a part of gun and putting it back together with a blindfold or something. I feel like a weird connection with it. In some ways,

there is no wrong way to enjoy something like if the purpose is to achieve a feeling of enjoyment, then however you get it. If it's not hurting anybody, it's all equally valid. I was definitely a little bit different as a kid. I would build it once by the instructions and never again. never again uh oh wow yeah for me i always wanted to make something different uh new i would

i've never followed the instructions twice on an out anything in my life probably so you know nothing wrong with that either either of our different methodologies but that that's very interesting too so so something about that something something very representative or a castle is very representative of that idea of building something maybe something worth building something something something enjoyable to build, accomplishing something. It's definitely a destination because you're trying to get to it. It is where you are destined. It is the place you are trying to get to in this dream sense.

And you start off walking until you realize, wow, I'm not making a lot of progress as quickly as I might like. And so there's something going on there where you implement, a method of moving you towards your goal, literally walking in the direction of the thing you're trying to get to, you do a kind of reassessment in the process. How is my current process, is it getting me where I want to go as quickly as I wanted to? And that's one, one method of assessment is, is this an efficient method? You're like, okay, I'm going to adjust my process. You do a little self-evaluation of what you're doing. Is this behavior

accomplish? No, let's try a different behavior. I'm going to run. I'm going to move faster towards that goal. And maybe that'll shortcut this whole process because I, you know, you weren't just out for a run. We weren't just running through the fields because you enjoyed feeling the grass, tickle your thighs or whatever. That would be a different kind of experience. And once you committed to that enhanced effort, or modified process, that's where you

then came across another kind of feedback. So there's different theories that sometimes objects or people in your dreams represent other people in your life. This one, I don't think it does.

I think it's more of an iconic stand-in for, well, the, the, go ahead. Yeah, that's pretty accurate, actually. Now the thing about it, the best, like, thing I can liken it to in my head is probably the witch with the red apple in the Disney, the old Disney snow white, I think it was, or is it Sleeping Beauty? Who had the apple? Was that snow white?

I think that was Snow White. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the evil witch in that, that gives it to her. She sort of, like, looked like that. So yeah, she was like essentially just generic bad old woman character. Because like my grandmas were beautiful women like my mom. I've got no like evil women in my life. It was just, I guess, that's what I mean.

I don't know who it could represent. I didn't have that sort of archetype or whatever in my life. Like I don't even have seen in movies. Yeah. And it is, it is an interesting form to put it in. And initially you mentioned, you know, crazy cat lady from The Simpsons. but but the archetype of the crone the witch the the wise old woman in the forest in a way and there's um and i haven't wrapped my brain my brain around this very well because uh i'm gonna

write a book someday but i don't know i haven't figured it out so is it necessarily the wizards are always men and witches are always women now that hasn't always been represented that way in pop culture, in media, in different forms. There have been, there's, there's been, there is definitely the archetype of the witch in the forest. And there's, and that's usually a more natural magic in tune with the earth, kind of the yin yang feminine style. And then wizards have always been a little more master of the element,

master of the elements, a secret laboratory working on potions, although witches also do potions too. which is brew. So there's a lot of different ways. And a lot of it depends on like, why would you need to see this message in that form? Why would you represent it to yourself that way?

So we could look at, you know, part, part of it is what she looks like. And the message to you. And she's, she's very passive as well. And like, like she waits till she doesn't come to you. She doesn't summon you to her. She waits till you approach. So you have to. So there's, um, there's a message in this.

there of messages maybe the way there's an there's an idea you're processing of like okay there you didn't have to stop and talk to her at all but you did something about you made it um seem like a reasonable thing to do to consult this form and hear what it had to say um because you could have just ignored it and ran past it uh you know it could have shouted at you as you ran by um it could have it could have uh you could have had the experience of falling into a pit and the old woman and you knew it was her. She dug it and she came over to the edge and then she told you now that she took the initiative to trap you, then she gave you the message and let you out. You know, that could be a completely different. So this is you identifying some

other feature of the landscape that attract draws your attention. It's in a specific form. You decide to interact with it and attend to it and hear what it has to say. But what it tells you is stop trying, You know, the only way to get there is to give up. Stop trying to reach your destination. So there's a reason you put that in her mouth. And also there's a reason why you ignored it. And you had to go through this cycle. You had to kind of double triple, quadruple down.

And then, and each time getting angry and angrier. So there's, there's some kind of a thing of like, what if I'm in a situation where I have a purpose? I'm taking reasonable. you have a goal I'm trying to reach. I'm doing what I think is reasonable to get there. And somewhere along the way, I get the idea that what I'm doing isn't working. But I don't want to believe it. Like I'm at least in doubt with this intuitive sense that tells me.

And maybe that's the whole idea of the woman is women a lot of times in our, in our understanding or pop culture or who knows, in our souls, women are assumed to be a little more intuitive. So the idea of representing intuition itself by a female figure, certainly an older female figure that maybe looks kind of like a witch, like a magic woman. Like maybe she knows what she's talking about and you should probably listen, something like that. So you have something along the way attracts your attention to the idea that maybe I should stop using this particular process. and you ignore it. Like, no, no, no, no, that can't be true. I know running towards this castle is the only way to get there. It has to be this specific method.

Until you keep returning. It's just not logical. If you stop, you can't get somewhere. That doesn't make sense. Yeah. Like my brain sort of thing. I was just like, no, it doesn't make sense. Yeah.

It's not logical. And that's a very interesting dichotomy, too, logic and intuition. You've got someone telling you something literally counterintuitive. How do you go any? go anywhere if you stand still. That's stupid. That's Alice in Wonderland level crazy. And it is, unless we conceptualize it as needing to give up on a process that was never

going to work in the first place, that is, okay, actually, yeah, you have to give up running because running is not going to get you there. You got to do it this way. It is not this other way that is not running. But then the dreamer ever really shows you an alternative. Like, what was I supposed to do? And she didn't tell you to stop running. She told you to give up completely, which is...

Oh, yeah, I know. Right, right? A little harder to the person. And every time I go past her, I feel like she's just sort of like, you know, picking away at me, like, trying to wear me down more and more each time I go past. Like, you don't need to keep repeating it if I've heard it once. Like, why do you keep saying? Like, either you're trying to wear me down.

Like, I was just, I couldn't figure out what she, like, I was trying to do apart from piss me off. And, like, once I got pissed off enough, I just pretty much like, stop. and I wasn't tired. That was the sort of weird thing. I could sprint for, like, endlessly. I was sort of hot and sweaty and getting, like, agitated. But, like, yeah, I never felt fatigued or tired or, like, felt like my lungs were burning or, like, anything like that.

So I probably could have ran forever, but I just honestly didn't think I was going to make any progress. So I gave up, like, out of just, I don't know, I just, it was worn down, I was defeated. I was just like, oh, fuck it. I guess I'm just not going to the. castle, like, whatever. Yeah. And then, yeah, just to be, and I was so confusing the first time I had that dream, because, like, it was the worst possible message I could possibly think of, like,

a dream trying to give me, like, give up. Right. Toadden Peterson doesn't get up on a stage and say, you know what young men need to do? They need to give the fuck up more. Like, that's terrible advice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't talk about male suicide five minutes. You're going to need telling them all to give up.

Well, would you say that? It's one of those things where it's definitely good advice for specific circumstances. Yeah. And that's why I'm, I think you might have. And with context, which could have given me more context? She gave me nothing. What did she say? I'm a magical witch and I'm going to teleport you there as soon as you give up.

Yeah. What, she's got almost like. Or hey, what do you got to lose? Try it. Statistically like, you're not telling me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Actually, yeah, that could be it. I think, I wanted to throw out a phrase to you and just get your, you know, gut reaction of a free association style nagging doubt nagging doubt that feel like what's a word nagging oh um like um does that phrase mean anything to you in terms of like conceptually like you know what a nagging doubt is like you can't shake that's doubt that nags you i guess but i'm not familiar really with the phrase or like i don't know if i've had one um a nagging yeah like but like something playing on your mind or like having like that you make a decision or commit to a path and then for some reason you just can't shake the idea maybe this is a mistake am i really sure

oh yeah yeah like i almost but you're sure was with fear sometimes okay fair enough so maybe you don't nag nag nagging doubts because all you have is doubts they don't nag at you they're just they're right in your face no no it's like you said earlier with the open landscape like it's um almost like um paralyzed from like too much choice essentially like My brain overloads on trying to decide which is the right choice because there's too many and too many factors. Like, I can't like, I mean, over time, of course, I'm talking like when I was having, when I first had this dream, I think I was like maybe eight years old or nine years old or something like that. Oh, wow, yeah.

But I had it like a multiple, like maybe another, yeah, three or four times over the space of, like up until, I think the last time I had the dream was like maybe, I was like, say, 13 or something. I reckon that, yeah, sort of start a high school or something. Okay. I figured it, well, I don't know if I figured it out, but, like, I got some form of, like, thing out of it that obviously just made it go away

or testosterone and hormones or whatever, like, teenage stuff, I don't know what made it go away, but, like, yeah. I think you're on. I think it multiple times, sort of, like, yeah, it sort of irks me as well, because, like, after the first time, each time I'd wake up from that dream, I'd almost be a bit pissed off

that I didn't remember in the dream from the start of the dream or that just give up like that you've had it before right? Yeah, I could just speed run it now that I know the That's a very weird solution

That's a very weird thing about recurring dreams Why don't we recognize them as recurring while they're happening? It feels like the first time every time That's a bizarre phenomenon Um sometimes I will feel like I've been in a dream before or it might just be the same mix of things

from my past or my memory that are getting like, you know, smushed together into this like almost like new environment, but just made up of like bits of memory. Yeah. And there's, some dreams I do feel familiar. Like I'm like, hey, I've been here before in a dream. I don't remember what I did. But like, I've been here. I've been in this place.

Like I recognize this. Like, yeah. And there's, I've had folks I talk to who are like, they asked me, have you ever had a person who says that every time they dream, they go to. the same dream world that like they might be in a different part of the world but they know it's all connected like over here is the school that's where i had one dream over here is a hill that's where i had another dream over there is the ocean that's where i had another dream it's all the same environment they have a dream map in their head yeah that's a thing and it's not yeah see mine mine changes

i try that sometimes like i'll i'll be like i know where i am but then i'll open a door and it leads down a hallway instead of like into a room and i'm like okay that has changed but other than that this is all the same and then I'll it seems as though the more I try and test that I like have been here the more it changes like it's it's almost like my brain just goes in that that not

like you're not so easy I feel like it's messing with themselves or in your daily life do you find yourself relying more on logic or on just going with your gut on intuition um a mixture of both but probably more intuition, I guess, yeah.

Like, I wing, I wing it, I guess this is short. Yeah. Were you that way when you were a kid too, when you, you know, back eight to 13-ish or so? Or were you more intellectualizing things? Intellectualizing and trying to think of things logically and things had to make sense for me to let them go almost. Like, I almost get like a dog with a bone until I'd understand something. And I'd only let it go once I'd understood it.

And not only that actually, but I felt like. to properly understand anything, you need to know everything from the foundation. Even the things that didn't work, the things that did work. So that's why I loved mathematics, because that's the foundation of science. That's the foundation of like, well, I mean, you got sort of like logic and philosophy below that. Like, I didn't know that at the time. But I saw maths as like the lapirolingua. Like, it's the pure language.

Yeah. And then science was pretty good. And that's just in that description. I'm pretty obsessive with understanding things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, me too. Yeah. But this may have been a turning point in your life where you, you confronted the need to let go of the pure intellect side of things and the obsession

with understanding and lean on trusting your gut a little bit more that sometimes your gut will tell you. And even if it pisses you off, it'll tell you, you're wasting your time. Knock that off. Don't do that. And you got to listen to it. That might be the lady telling you this, this path is not working. And what you had to do at the time was run that loop a few more times until you started

getting more and more frustrated with the fact that you couldn't shake the intuition. It kept coming back. It was always ahead of you waiting for you again. And you're like, what this bitch? What's happened? And there she is again. Right? I think that may have been a turning point for you back then where you kind of,

had to confront the need to rebalance a little bit and maybe even acknowledging this this you know it's like what am i trying to say it's a set that contains other subsets so you had a dream that was speaking to a current struggle that was then going to show you how to handle future struggles that were similar is that making any sense yeah totally because like once i sort of like decided I found enough meaning in it, I guess, that I didn't have to have the tree anymore. I, yeah, it's like

my life going forward. I found heaps of like really relatable, sort of you know, I've pulled some really relatable things out of life. Like, yeah, like when it comes to, you know, when people are looking for their glasses, it's not until

I actually like sort of stop looking for them that they'll find them on their head most of the time. I don't wear glasses, but I laugh at people with their glasses on the head looking for them. But yeah, there's like so many sort of like times in life where I've been able to apply that, yeah, you've got to give up to like get there or like you've got to give up something to get something or you've got to learn to let it go. Like there's just a, I can draw like a million sort of like little nuggets of wisdom out of it that I, well, that have sort of, not drawn out of it, but I always relate it back to that thing, like type of thing.

It's just sort of like where I, you know, how I said, like, I like to learn things sort of like from the ground up. I almost treat that dream as the ground up of like anything I can relate to that. Yeah. So it's like I'm building on that. It's almost like I'm building on that dream with, like, finding concepts in real world that can, I don't know, legitimize it or something maybe. Yeah. Yeah. And then the kind of the, the moment of acceptance, some kind of way.

I mean, describe it as so you're, it felt like your brain broke in that sense and, and that you were confused. You know, the idea of coming across her again, it's like, this shouldn't be, it's like what I'm doing should be working. And that there's, there's an experience we have where we realize what we're doing isn't working and we're confused. I'm like, I was so sure this was the right way. and we get to a point where we kind of confront, wait a minute, I'm back at the beginning again. This, I haven't made any progress. Why isn't this working?

And I think the longer we perseverate on that kind of stuff, as you describe in the dream, the more pissed off we get is like, this should be working. What the hell? This is the right. I know this is the right way. And okay, so I have a video game experience that happens to me occasionally. And let's say I need to accomplish something in a game. And I'm not really sure how to do it.

And actually, I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to do. What if I'm supposed to try to jump from here to over there? And then I do it maybe a dozen or more times, two dozen, five dozen times. And I get more and more frustrated each time. And what drives me crazy more than anything is I don't know whether what I'm trying to do is impossible because I'm not supposed to do that. Like I was never meant to jump over there. or am I just doing, am I just incompetent and I'm doing it poorly, even though that is exactly where I'm supposed to go. So sometimes just settling that question, am I wasting my time?

Is this a waste of time? Am I stupid? What am I doing here? Am I supposed? And then sometimes, uh, if, if I've got someone in the chat, they'll say, yeah, don't do that. That's not the way to go. But oh, God, thank you for saving me all this time. And I'm trying to jump this gap that I was never going to be able to get across, no matter how perfectly I did it.

Some games can be, yeah, sort of like a little. vague on where you're meant to go sometimes. You're just meant to sort of like intuit it. And because like the game designers have like ran through the game a million times, they design it as well. Like they sort of see it as the obvious thing. Like yeah, if you run past this bunch of trees and you're on this path, why wouldn't you think you go over here?

Well, because there's like, it's intuitive to you because you know you're meant to, but like to someone just playing it. Like you could go over there or you could try and jump to those rocks over it. Like which way is it? It's not obvious like to someone just facing. it, which I think is a part of designing games, like, to try and lead like, yeah, that is a part of it

to try and make it naturally lead you somewhere. Give people environmental cues. Yeah, environmental cues. Like, if you're meant to scramble up this wall or something, there'll be like a little bit of white paint or something, like, just to make it clear that you can scramble on that wall type of thing. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And that, uh, most of the time in a lot of these circumstances, I just kind of, I chalk it up to me. Like, I'm just, not as observant as I should be. Like maybe it should have been obvious. Like once I kind of get it, I'm like,

why didn't I see that before? Of course, of course that was right in front of me. But I didn't. I didn't see it. I was trying to jump on the rocks and that was not the way to go at all. So, but I would suppose the,

the final thing to say about all this is about being inside the castle. And it is an interesting thing that like, you know, when you finally felt, accepted the feeling of defeat like until a particular moment in the dream like until we

until we accept that what we're doing isn't working and that is a magical switch that flips sometimes it's it's uh what am I trying to do it's like it's like someone uh let's say someone's an alcoholic they don't get help until they hit rock bottom whatever that is for them and realize this is a mistake.

This isn't working. I can't keep living like this. Now, that doesn't mean all the problems are solved and they, you know, are magically healed by the faith of Jesus or whatever. But that's the turning point. Like until that moment of acceptance in some ways, nothing changes.

That's like the literal beginning of all possible future change. So there was something like that going on there when you had to, when you felt, you finally felt or accepted, the feeling of defeat of like, this is not working. You would kind of admit it to yourself. Then almost magically,

now you're suddenly and teleported into the castle. Like almost instantaneously, it changes the entire landscape, the entire experience of the dream. And now what you've got is in front of you, a celebration, a feast, you know, delicious food, happy people, almost like,

almost like a video game in that regard of like once you finally make it to the castle at the end, then you see, you know, and the credits roll and everyone's having a feast. And that's the up note on a good, on a happy story, the happy ending of the story,

so to speak. And everyone lived happily ever after. Um, unless, yeah, totally. Cause like, it almost served no purpose, but to say,

well, you got it. You got there. You won the end. Like, because I didn't get to actually enjoy myself there or anything. Yeah. But like,

there was still a satisfaction in like, getting there but it still felt sort of like at the time hollow because like I felt as though by doing the wrong thing I won and that still felt sort of like it didn't really make sense until I sort of like thought about it enough I guess well and as you were saying too is like there's more nuanced than I guess at my first take like yeah yeah well what the old lady was saying there's just a little bit more too in regards of sometimes the only way to win is to stop fighting in a way. And if you think about that relationship-wise to people, like your purpose maybe is not to, we were talking about debates earlier.

The purpose maybe with a given interaction is not to have the other person confess, you are correct and they were wrong. Maybe the purpose was to have a nice conversation and maintain the friendship. So sometimes pushing for the wrong goal, until you give up or accept defeat that that goal is not. one you should want to attain or one that is likely to be satisfying if you do obtain it until you give up again another circumstance of the wrong path give up on the wrong path in order to actually have a victory worth having this that was one one thing I wanted to mention but then just the broader idea of you know again this is happening when you're like eight to 13 years old you may not have known what comes next after after you get so let's say you're a having this, this experience of what if I'm making the wrong decision and I'm not sure, but over time I'm shown, you know, but I have a feeling that it might be the wrong path. And over time, it's confirmed. I've had enough repetitions to know, okay, this is not

working. And I finally give up on the wrong path. Well, what next? Then what do I do? And the only thing you could show yourself was, well, then you're in a place with happy people who are having lots of delicious food and, um, it's a little, a little victory celebration. It doesn't matter where you are. You're not running anymore,

which is like, uh, a relief. Yeah. And it is very interesting that you chose to show yourself that the, that the, that the, accepting the need for surrender was,

what was the condition for victory. Oh, in this specific scenario. Hmm. Yeah. Something like that. Something like that. I don't know.

Yeah. I can, like, yeah, I can relate it to just way too much stuff in my life. But I feel also like it helps me with, because that was when I was a kid slash teenager. But then when I got into like my early 20s and started to experiment with like hallucinogens and stuff, it's like it's always, I think I've just been very lucky in the way that like most people can't handle hallucinogens. And I don't mean that in a slight against most people. I just mean most people can't deal with the ego death. They freak the freak out, like, when they're losing control over it.

Like, they feel like, well, when you're hallucinating, you kind of are losing control. Like, you can't be expected to, like, you can't drive a motor vehicle while you're tripping balls. Like, if the sky's melting and it's, like, changing color and stuff, don't get behind the wheel of a car. But, you know, I, yeah, I don't like, that ego death doesn't like, it doesn't ever see. scare me at all or anything like that. Like I spent, yeah, most of my 20s experimenting with different states of mind, I guess. And like, yeah, just sort of, I've always found dreams really fascinating. And I think that's also why I've found, like, Hulu's pigeons and other drugs, fascinating,

at least to try. Like, luckily, I've been more interested in them almost like from a scientific point of view or an experience point of view rather than as a, like, to, like, I think that's what's prevented me from abusing them, essentially, or becoming addicted, because, like, I'm not really taking a drug to mask something or anything. It's realistically more for the experience and to see if I can sort of, like, I don't know, just, like, bend my brain in a different way to just, like I feel like so many times I've been on mushrooms or LSD and I've had like crazy epiphanies like about life like especially mushrooms they they they for some reason peel back this like

veil and I can see how just absolutely absurd reality is it's just like almost like hysterically funny how just like absurd it is and there's all these people around the world being so serious, taking life so seriously. It's just a joke. It's just one big joke. We're meant to be having a good time and laughing, not like worrying about, oh, my mortgage payment and all this sort of shit. It's, I don't know.

I see this absurdness in the universe. And, like, I think, like, dreams are definitely much more interesting than, like, drug experiences. Because drug experiences are very similar. Like,

if, you know, like, the experience like each time is very similar whereas dreams are like wild. They can be crazy. You can be getting chased in it or you can be like flying or you can be like on another planet or you can just there's literally anything can happen. I don't think like I don't think hallucinogens can even come close to it except for maybe DMT and even still DMT can't do what dreams can do I think. yeah sorry joe rogan if he's listening sorry joe no offense but yeah

ntie is awesome lots of fun only for the brave but it's yeah it's uh you know this dreams are yeah better and it is very interesting that dreams outside of specifically recurring dreams they're all different like wildly different you never you never know you never know what's going to happen you can't predict them uh they are what they are why why those images in that shape and uh, time, uh, who knows. And you can, yeah, it just that the unpredictable wildly different nature of them. It makes it fascinating. That's why, you know, you're not the first person ever to say,

well, I don't know if my dream is very interesting. I hope you, you know, they're not, you're not bored. I'm like, no, they're all fascinating. There's never been a boring dream. I've never, never heard a boring dream in my life. They're all very interesting. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Well, do you feel like we had a pretty good discussion around it? You got, uh, maybe some additional. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. additional layers of perspective in a way. Yeah, definitely, definitely, yeah. As I said, I don't think I would have come to any different conclusion.

I think maybe even starting with your rough understanding gives a great jumping springboard right into, okay, let's go with that and see how the different elements kind of build up to it, to that understanding. Yeah, I think it all, but it all makes great sense. I think you're always on to something there. Yeah, well, I mean, it didn't. happen like overnight but like yeah after like long enough eventually I

yeah started to I don't know at least pull something out of it yeah for sure well good deal if you think we got something of value for you then you want to wrap it up yeah definitely yeah good deal okay then we'll do this I will say once again to our friend milkman Dan from an island off the south coast of Australia sharing beachfront property with the penguins I love saying that it's fantastic Um, uh, so, uh, and for my part, would you kindly like share, subscribe? Always need more, uh, subscribers, volunteer dreamers, uh, viewers for the video game streams, all of the above. 16 currently available works of historical dream literature, the most recent dreams and their meanings by Horace G. Hutchinson, uh, very busy working on book 17 and the audio book release, uh, as well. Um, all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, uh, including MP3 downloadable versions of this, uh, very, uh, interesting. interview podcast.

Also, Benjamin the Dreamwizard.locals.com where you will find some, very often you will find the secret recipe for the themed cocktails that go with my video game streams. Most recent was the Dream Wizard, Dream Wizard's Fireball Cider. And before that was the gin Ricky when I was playing Biosec. So who knows what I'm going to come up with next.

But you definitely want to head over there and find out, So with all that said and done, rambled longer than I thought I would. Dan, thanks for reaching out. And I'm glad you were able to join me. Yeah, thank you for having me. Good deal. It's been pleasure. And everybody out there, thanks for listening.