Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 161: Paradiso Perduto

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

Malumir Logan ~ https://acornandburdock.ca/

Greetings friends and welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have our friend Malumir Logan from East Ontario in Canada. I can't resist. Canada. I just wanted to say it. It's like saying it that way. Sorry. I say it would love.

She is an intersectional polymath and with an entrepreneurial spirit. I can't read my own notes. You can find her at Acorn and Burdock. That link will be in the description below. For my part, would you kindly like, share, subscribe? excuse me tell your friends it's always more fun when more people pile in and comment also i want to talk to you uh if you have a dream to share you don't have to be anybody special uh you just have to have a dream we can talk about it that's that's the great thing about this show i can talk to anybody

about their dreams um if you'd like to support my work you can get one of 17 currently available works of historical dream literature the most recent is the fabric of dreams by katherine taylor craig uh all this or more of course available at benjamin the dream wizard dot com Also, if you'd head on over to Benjamin the Dreamwizard. Dot locals.com, you can join the community there. It's free attached to my Rumble account. And that's where I would like to source most of my dreams going forward. But you can contact me across multiple social medias.

I think I have a presence just about everywhere. That's enough about me. Malamir, thank you for being here. Appreciate your time. Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm happy to be here. Wonderful. Well, intersectional polymath and with an entrepreneurial speech,

hear it. Let's talk about that. What do you do? I do so many things. I can never, I can never just do one thing. I've never been able to do just one thing. I think it's probably my multiple neurodivergence. All those neurons flying around really need to be put to work. So in terms of my primary work for a number of years, I've been in leadership roles in public service. My secondary role is that I teach as an adjunct professor at a university. I teach leadership and early career navigation and skills development. I absolutely love teaching. I love it so much. And the third thing that I do is that I'm also a small business owner with very small business in the spiritual industry. And I really enjoy that because it's completely different work. And it's much more

multifaceted because as a small business owner, as you would know, you have to do all of the everything. And so those are the things that I do in terms of work, but I also have so many other interests that I could go on at length, but those are the primary things that I do. It's very cool. I wish I could consider myself a polymouth, and I am in some degree, like in the loosest sense. I have so many different interests and they all converge. It's an interesting thing of this concept of intersectionality. I mean, there are so many places where topics we research, say, connect to other things or they all come together and where they meet is something unique that is more than the sum of its parts. I love that. I love that concept, too, like, you know,

where the human body, say, is more than just a head on a torso with some limbs. And if we lose one, we're still human, but how many can you lose it? What is the ship of Theseus and grains of sand in a pile? all those philosophical questions like what what are transitional points between things I'm going way off way off here but uh it's probably the polymath type of thing but uh I've actually had to kind of rein myself in and say okay well where is that say intersection of a lot of my interests and that comes from you know studying history psychology and specifically this this kind of almost quasi spiritual fascination with dreams and I'm like this is actually something I think I have a kind of an innate talent for and then you got to lean into it and so kind of

well let me develop that. It's like you're never going to, maybe you've got the talent to be a basketball player, but you've got to sink a lot of practice three-pointers before you get on the court, that kind of thing. I was going somewhere with all that. Do you have anything to say? No, no, I think that's great.

Yeah, I think that I agree, you know, our experiences and our bodies and our lives are made up of so many, many layers. In terms of the intersectionality related to my identity, I am an ambiguously racialized woman and as I mentioned, I'm multiple neurodivergence. I have both autism as well as Tourette syndrome, as well as lately I've been dealing with some medical challenges.

And although I may appear able-bodied, currently I am not. So it's quite an interesting experience when you start layering on those various intersecting identities. It's, it makes for interesting lived experience, that's for sure. Definitely.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's, it's great to get these unique perspectives, too, of people saying, you know, what is it? Like, if you're standing behind a column and someone standing off to the side,

they're looking at something and they go, hey, I see a thing. And you're like, I don't see that. You know, and not because you're not trying. Not just you can't. You just can't from a particular angle, you're going to see something uniquely different. We get all those perspectives together, and then we kind of construct this view of reality itself based on, okay, what do most people

experience? What can most people confirm from other people's experiences? That's also fascinating, too, this kind of building, what's like the epistemology of epistemology itself, like knowledge of how we acquire knowledge. An interesting metaphor. That's a really interesting metaphor. And I think it's actually an important one in in society, especially when a lot of folks may not realize that, you know, for someone like me that I've actually encountered quite a number of very significant challenges, you know, I've had lots of advantages, sure, but, you know, I've also, you know, had my fair share of challenges as well, just for being in the body that I'm in. And so, you know, I love that

metaphor of the column and how, you know, together we can co-create an understanding of the actual lay of the land or the room. Exactly. And sometimes all you got to do is say, hey, step over here and look at it from my perspective. And then people go, oh, I see you're talking about. There it is. There it is. I just could not see it before. There's a kind of educational aspect to it. And it's also great to say have the courage to share experiences, especially ones that aren't so great. I have a lot of people on the, on the show here who they've arrived, where they're at because of what they've been through. And they have something very special to share because of that,

even if it's just transforming tragedy into triumph in that sense, although I've had a lot of folks talk about that kind of thing. It's a weird thing too. It's because you get into that, say, maybe like a bit of a philosophical trap of like, well, shouldn't we make life harder for some people so that they grow up to have better insights and, you know, should we make triumphant people by putting them through tragedy?

I'm like, ah, there's enough. There's enough tragedy out there. got plenty to transform. We don't need to make more. That's my, is my opinion on that, on that broader subject. I don't know, but then there's also the other side of it, which is making life too easy sometimes. And then you, how do you strike that balance? I don't know, I'm always, the yin yang is my, like my mandala. It's my, my spiritual focus in a lot of ways of like, not making sure everything is precisely 50-50 because I think that's, like, I mean, what goes back to, was it, I don't know if it was Aristotle or Plato, one of those two said,

The golden mean is not precisely in the middle. It never is. And I like the, uh, so in my head, I have this thing of, if you take the yin yang and then you draw a line horizontally and you move that line up and down, sometimes it'll land on more of the white side and more of the black side will be, will be in there. And sometimes it'll be well, and also a little bit of that dot, um, depending. And, and it changes from subject to subject and it changes within each subject over time. Uh, I just feel like I'm rambling again.

But that's my, that's kind of where, where I co. come from spiritually. No, I think that's interesting. And I do, you know, when you're talking about 50-50 and how it's not quite, you know, that doesn't necessarily always work, you know, something that, that I came to realize years ago when it came to relationships, and particularly for our closest and most intimate relationships, it actually has to be 100% 100% because if it's only 50-50, what happens, you know, you, you're not really in it, right?

And so, you know, I think, I agree. I think it really does depend on the context. And, you know, I've, I've also, you know, had lots of times that I've thought to myself, you know, for a number of years when I first was living on my own, I worked in food service. It's one of my jobs. I was working for jobs at the time. And at the time, it was to make ends meet because they were. were all a very minimum wage and I had bills to pay.

And I remember thinking, wow, I really strongly believe that every single person should have to work in food service at some point or a frontline customer service because, you know, at least then people might treat each other better. But I actually have come to realize that I don't know that, I don't know that difficulty is actually what makes people behave better or have better. insights, I think that that really comes down to someone's individual character because there's lots of people who've been through stuff and it just, they just let it harden themselves and then they just turn it around on other people. So, you know, I, I think it really comes down to

trying to, you know, reach people where they're at and see, are they open enough to be curious? Are they open enough to think beyond what is their own experience? That's what I tend to look for. That's true. And then, I mean, there's all kinds of different philosophical approaches to like how to make that happen. And a lot of it does come down to the individual. Are they curious? Are they interested?

Is that something we can even program into someone through training, social pressure, whatever it is? I don't know that we can. But you also mentioned food service. I think that's a fantastic thing too. of like looking at the entire concept of say minimum wage jobs. I'm like that should be in my opinion, that should be reserved in some sense for teenagers to get that job experience.

Like this is you're never meant to stay there. But then we have people that do, maybe they can't do any better or they're trapped for other different reasons. But I was thought in my mind the ideal outcome ideals being what they are. Was that no one would stay there for very long. It was meant to be entry levels, meant to give teenagers experience in a summer job. job and that that is very useful and something we should encourage to get out there and do do some kind of service job where you've got to deal with the customer. You've got to show up on time. You've got to produce a product to a certain specification because someone wants it that way. And that's how you voluntarily engage in commerce. You provide something someone needs. They provide you the money you want and everybody's happy at the end of the day. Even if you know, you get sore feet or greasy fingers.

I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. That's just something I've thought for a long time. I mean, I've thought a lot about, you know, what makes sense in terms of people when they're doing frontline customer service, what are the things that you're learning? And part of it is interacting with lots of people and getting to personally experience what it feels like when people treat you with basic dignity and respect or when they don't, right? Because let me tell you, with that drive-through window, I've experienced all of it. I used to have, you know, I'd have, you know, my regulars who would come through who are always

very friendly and kind. I've had people come through who clearly they were having a bad day. It had nothing to do with me, but then I would be the one that they would take it out. Like I had people like yell at me at the drive-through window and, you know, these things happen. I was good at handling those situations. Not everybody was. But it's, I think it would just serve to help people to realize that, you know, don't be that person. Don't be that person taking out your issues on, you know, some poor person who's just trying to do their job. But having said that, I.

I worked with quite a lot of people at the time because it was a small town. I was living in a small town at the time and working at that, you know, in this franchise was a way that a lot of them, you know, many of these people were midlife and this is where they'd worked for years and it's how they contributed to their family's finances. It was local and it was a reliable source of income. In this day and age, I'm pretty sure people are, you know, if they can get those, you know, those reliable jobs working for a franchise, especially if they're treated well. If the management, you know, has some basic dignity and respect for people, then I think

those are decent opportunities. Sure. Although, having said that, I am also, I really wish that we lived in a world that took universal basic income more seriously. I will say that because, you know, if, you know, if, you. If everyone has enough to survive, there'd be a whole lot less spending needed on certain social services and life would be better for absolutely everyone. But that's a really hard business case to make. People don't want to hear that.

That is true. I've heard that as a, well, UBI, as a, what I'm trying to say, if it was done properly as a replacement for a lot of social services, that's a tough thing because I'm looking at government. I'm no, broadly on the libertarian side of thing. I'm no fan of government. I don't like government programs in general, mostly because they suck. They don't work. They don't fix the problem, in my opinion, broadly. Now, maybe it's better than nothing, but also the idea of, so we've got all these services.

And then probably what would happen is they just add UBI on top of it. I'm like, how do we get people say in government or politics or whatever to say, okay, look, no, this is a replacement. This is, we're not trying to just expand endlessly the, you know, power, power of the state, so to speak. But like, trying to solve a very specific problem in a, look, here's the cat. She's going to, I call this value added content. We're going to bet the cat. Yeah. So I think a lot of these things were, you know, if they worked better or could be made to work better, there's a lot of possibilities and opportunities.

I'm a little skeptical of UBI, just to be honest, in terms of the big risk in my mind is that it resets the bar for. zero. And I don't know if that's a concept you've thought of before. If you have any comments on, you don't have to. But yeah, I mean, I think, I think, um, sometimes the reason people have concerns about it is that there are certain beliefs that, well, if someone's just receiving money for nothing, then they're just going to, they're not going to work. They're not going to contribute. They're not going to produce anything. They're just going to sit on their butts all day. The fact is that most people actually don't do that. They actually, they want to contribute.

they want to create, they want to find ways of adding value. And I mean, there have actually been studies done on this. And so I think there are some concerns about that. I mean, the fact is in any system, no matter what you do, there will be lots of people who, there will be people who don't contribute. But I think, you know, I think most people are naturally, as humans, we naturally want to contribute and create. we are natural creators.

We do things. We make things, right? We engage with others. We want to, you know, engage and, you know, and be in the world. And so I'm, I don't think it would actually increase the rates of any of the undesirable, like, vice type behaviors that there are that I think people are worried about. you know, I think people are right now, you know, I think people become tired and they become discouraged when they just can't even make ends meet, right? When you're going all out and working multiple jobs, not getting enough sleep, not being able

to pay for nutrition because grocery, I don't know about where you are, groceries have skyrocketed here. and there are so many necessities that have just skyrocketed and, you know, people just don't have, they just don't have money. And that's also not a way to live because all that does is it increases the likelihood of chronic illness and health issues, which also costs a lot of money. And when people are stressed, when as they have mental health issues, then that also creates additional issues not only for health and other social services, but also in terms of corrections and law enforcement, and that costs money. So, you know, and then you can end up with homelessness.

And, you know, it literally costs less money to house people than to have them homeless and end up having to pay for hospital and other services. So, you know, there's, I think there's a lot of benefits. I don't know that we'll ever get there as a society. I don't know that we will. But it's one of those issues that's interesting to think about and talk about. For sure. Yeah.

And no, and in no way do I have all the answers. I'm not like, now, look, let me tell you here what we're going to do. I don't want to be in charge of anyone. That's kind of broadly my libertarian thing. But this isn't an interesting, we just had a little moment of intersectionality that happened with this concept of where do, say, socialist programs and libertarianism meet? They meet in the free rider problem, which is what if people just take and don't give anything

back? That's a critique that is levied at libertarianism, too. And I don't have all the answers for either of those things. But it's a very, very interesting thing that say both proposed systems have this, have a, a perspective of critique that, that I think is valid for both, you know,

in libertarianism as well, the whole idea of, well, what do you do to prevent warlord feudalism? How do you make that not happen? Because let's say you remove one power source, you know, nature pours a vacuum.

You get all these different things. So yeah, I don't have the answers for that either. I kind of, you know, and this, my show is never this. We've talked about quasi-social political stuff more than I usually do.

But I was going somewhere with that. I don't know. I just follow whatever naturally comes up. If we talk about it, we talk about it. So do I. I'm good. I like that we were able to. I can keep up with any conversation.

For sure. You want to throw at me. Yeah. Yeah. Well, just because some of these issues get so contentious. And actually, I mean, the focus of my show is collaboration, of course, because we get into the dream stuff. and you can't like the answers are not in me I'm not here to tell you what anything means

there's a there's a there's a different genre of genre different philosophy um were you the one who was who was mentioning to me you wanted to talk about my philosophy behind behind my approach I message with so many people I can't remember was I was very curious about I was very curious about it yes okay good deal that was you sorry I've got like six interview scheduled and I've been going back and forth with folks. So, um, what I'm not is, and there is, there is a certain philosophical approach to dream interpretation, which is there, there is an expert and authority and they tell you what

things mean. And they have their systems. They've got their, um, you know, maybe rule books. I, I am, I am very much of the opposite side of, I don't think dream books with alphabetical listings of items. I don't think everything means the same thing to every person. And that's a weird thing too, because there's a certain, and you can do it top down or bottom up, almost like pyramid style, but there's baseline human experience. You know, most people have eyes and we see, mouths and we eat. We have a certain relationship with water. We need it to drink.

We can swim in it. So that's, and that's kind of where I think, that's where I come from on the, Jungian side of things in that collective unconscious. And he had, there were multiple layers to that as well. But one of them was the commonality of, of human experience. And we're going to interpret certain things or represent them to ourselves in our mind to mean certain things. So that's usually where I start with stuff. I'm like, what's the basic human experience of this kind of thing?

And then I'd start throwing out suggestions because as I was starting to say before I tangent and didn't. And I came back. It's amazing. I'm not, the answers aren't in me. I don't talk to spirits. That's not. That's a whole other realm or, you know, the voice of God or, or I don't think I have any magic powers.

I'm just guy doing, practicing the art, more of the art than the science of psychology in that regard. All the answers are in you. I describe it as you invite me into your head to look around. I stand kind of basically like behind your shoulder and shine a flashlight around going, do you see what I see? What if we look at it from this angle? What if it meant this? I offer all these suggestions that are purely hypothetical. hypothetical tentative. And then what people have is like a zagic, I call it a zing. I mean,

it's almost that chakra style goes from gut to gut to brain. You go, wait a minute, what you just said. Or they go, none of that. Everything you said was wrong. But I had another thought. Good. My rambling paid off because you had a completely different thought. I say I rattle a lot of doorknobes and some of them come open. Some of them don't. So that's kind of broad strokes of my perspective to I don't know if you've had, we didn't even get into your, like your spiritual practice and whatnot, but how have you conceptualized dreams in your life? Yeah, yeah. Well, I, I resonated a lot with what you said.

And I actually am also trained in neurolinguistic techniques. And so I love what you were saying about how, you know, you could be, you know, they could have that kind of that zang moment of, which is like, I would call that an integration, right, where suddenly things are coming together and they're making sense and the light bulbs going off. But in terms of my own thought on dreams, a lot of it, I do believe a lot of it is, well, it's your own psychology, it's your own head, it's the things that are on your mind, things weighing on your heart, maybe some of the things, the aha moments that are just behind the corner, they're just around the corner, you maybe haven't cognitively had the

them as aha moments yet, but your unconscious mind already has. And because I am I'm a very spiritual person. I do also believe that there is a possibility for having dreams that are more spiritual. I would say that most of my dreams I have not experienced as spiritual. There's only ever been a couple that felt particularly spiritual. The rest, they just feel like dreams. Now, I do tend to have, for the most part, pretty cinematic dreams. they tend to, you know, have a start.

And I'm aware that I'm dreaming the whole time, very involved. And, you know, it kind of goes through a whole story. And I'm aware that I'm dreaming the whole time. That tends to be how I dream. And I am actually also, I regularly go to an online dream circle where we share our dreams with one another and just kind of share reactions or thoughts. or other insights that we might have. And I enjoy that as well.

Very cool. Yeah. Well, so much to respond to in there. First, the idea of dream programming. I think we might have spoken about that briefly before we started recording. So what we could say it again is that I think that is very real. So doing the historical research come across what other people have written and said and the stories they've collected. and there was one situation presented by one guy. I can't even remember what book.

I should remember what book it's in so I can plug it. But he said, you know, as far as they didn't call it dream programming at the time as a modern concept or at least phrasing. But he said, you know, he knew of a story of one guy who used to obsess over specific topics before he went to bed to make sure he did not dream about them. Very interesting. Keep it in mind as he's fallen asleep to make sure his dreams were not about that. It's a very strange thing, but for him that worked. On the alternative side, you can actually focus on things as you're going to sleep so that you do dream about them. Now, I'm not sure how to do that.

I'm going to leave that to other people. So a lot of what I do is try and stay in my lane. I do the, you bring me a dream. We talk about it. We try and figure out the personal meaning to you. But there's a whole range of stuff. And that's the other side of things is, you know, if I do not actively disbelieve in the possibility of, psychic connection and dreams of prophetic dreams. What I do know for sure is that if you bring me a

dream and ask me, is this dream prophetic? I couldn't tell you. I don't know how to tell the difference. I, you know, I do what I do and that's my specialty. And other people, maybe they have a better grip on it. But if that's your bag, if that's your, uh, what you find fascinating and you, I mean, these books are full of prophetic dreams. People dreamed about the Titanic going down before. And, you know, maybe there's a non-paranormal explanation. A boat sink. My friend's going on a boat journey. Oh, no, I worry the boat might sink. And then it did. Well, how many times didn't boat sink when you had a dream like that before? We get that kind of confirmation bias of the dreams that paid off and we forget the ones that didn't. Maybe that's an explanation. Or maybe

there's psychic powers. I don't know. That was one layer of Jung's collective unconscious was, you know, it's common human experience. He also, what was called atavism was very popular at the time. And actually, ativism has become, has resurfaced 100 years later as an idea of, you know,

genetic or racial memory. And so we get the concept of, say, you know, generational trauma. It was basically atavism resurrected from the lake. Legacy of intergenerational. Yeah. And that was big. And, you know,

because we were coming from, you know, Darwin. Let's see, was Lamarck. I don't remember who did the, like the peas. They're trying to figure out, you know, how are we, how do we breed or what's happening when we breed animals for specific traits?

And how are they passing on the, this is all the, the burgeoning area of genetics, which then also spawned eugenics, like, well, we can just pick, pick the good ones. We do it with dogs. We do it with, with, uh, with the crops. Why not do it with people? Like, yeah, people are a little different. Maybe we don't want to do that. And now that idea is coming back too, because now we can, what, CRISPR gene editing,

you can pick, pick the custom base. I'm like, I'm not sure we should be doing that at all. There have been movies and stories about that. Yeah. Well, and it's a, it's, it's tough on both sides because it's like if you could eliminate certain, let's say you could eliminate cleft palate and no one would ever be born with a cleft pallet again. We might look at that and go, that's not so bad.

But if someone's trying to do it for other reasons and then how do we really, I mean, sometimes it's easy to tell the difference between that's broadly good. I don't see a downside. And that's just horrifically evil. we should never do that. Those examples, but then you get the gray areas in the middle where it's like, how do we, should we apply this thing at all?

I don't know. I was going somewhere with all that. There was, you know, it's funny, you, it just in terms of prophetic dreams and collective unconsciousness, there was one night.

It was a few years ago, I woke up at three in the morning, 3.30 in the morning. And I'd had a dream that grumpy cat had done. died. And you know, you remember the grumpy cat from the meme? And, you know, I couldn't go back to sleep. So I just got up after a while and I just, I just did some journaling and then I went back to sleep. And I went back to bed. I couldn't fall asleep. And, you know, that morning I got to the office and I was like, oh my goodness, guys, I haven't, I've been awake since like three in the

morning. I had this dream that grumpy cat died. And someone's like, oh my gosh. And they pulled out their phone. They showed me grumpy cat had died. Wow. And I mean, I hadn't seen. it anywhere so I don't know right I think there's something to the you know the collective unconscious beyond just the idea of shared human experience and maybe there's a little more to it because how on earth would I have known that I don't even I don't really even always understand memes I think it's my neurology sometimes I'm like okay I get it other times I'm like I don't get it but I wasn't even a huge grumpy cat fan I mean I love cats but you know I wouldn't have otherwise known but it woke me up at three in the morning with this dream so

Yeah, and Jung was big into the supernatural stuff where he, that was basically a third layer to his collective unconscious is that we're all possibly also psychically connected. And that's another thing that's waxed and waned, but was big in that late 1800s transition into kind of modern, modern medicines. How much of this spiritual tradition and, and, you know, hocus, pocus, superstition, are we going to bring in, how much can we actually prove? And it's never quite died out. And I think that's because there's something to it.

How do these things happen? How do you think of a friend and they call at that moment? That happens. Exactly. It does. Yeah, Jung put that in there with like the synchronicity thing. This is just, uh, uh, you're in sync with, with something at the right time and the right place.

I've had weird experiences too. Um, that I, that I can't explain. It's like, you know, but then you have to, it's a combination of, of being presented with an opportunity and being prepared to engage with the opportunity, um, you know, had had any small thing. Well, I'll just tell this one story. My car was having issues and now looking back on it later,

as an old truck, it was a little little metal clip that fits on the alternator to charge the batteries. And I didn't know this at the time, but it was just loose. And sometimes it would charge, sometimes it wouldn't. Sometimes the car would start. Sometimes it wouldn't.

Well, I got, I was having issues. And so I pulled into this gas station. I'm like, ah, I better call somebody AAA or, whatever. And as I was in there, this young couple was walking up and this car screeched into the

parking lot and these guys jumped out and were like hassling them. So I, uh, I had been at the counter asking if I could borrow a hammer because I was just going to kind of knock around in there. So I've heard of like sometimes the celladoid gets stuck. I didn't know what the hell that was. I was like 18 or something back in the day. Uh, so I'm like, maybe if I just got to tap around something to loosen up because I don't know what's causing this thing. Anyway, so I had a hammer in my hand and I'm walking out of the store as this young couple is about to get mobbed by some guys in a car and I've got a hammer in my hand and I'm like, hey, knock it off and they're like, what's your problem? And I'm like pointing the hammer at him.

I'm like, I'm going to be your problem. You get the hell out of here. And they did. They left. How did that happen? How was I? Card trouble. He had a hammer.

I talked to him just long enough to be walking out at the moment this happened. If the couple had been a few seconds delayed, I wouldn't have been there at the right time and the right place. blew my mind, still blows my mind today. I mean, these are things you can't make happen. You can't anticipate that. You can just be ready to respond properly. Now, and also if I was any different at that moment, if I was someone who was more timid,

if I was, you know, late to work and couldn't be bothered. Like, I got a car to fix. Screw those guys. Now, I was the right kind of person and the right kind of place,

the right kind of time. What was that? I don't know. So I don't dismiss the supernatural at all. That's what long, long story short, that's those coincidences are amazing. yeah yes definitely and I you know I I will say as as much as I'm a spiritual person and I certainly

have ideas about some things that I absolutely do believe I also don't try to suggest that I have it all figured out I think that there's lots and lots that that some that none of us understand I think that there's lots of things that that I'm just not aware of yet that other people are and I think that we can we can all grow and we can learn as time goes on and you know so for my own practice I I stay curious and I stay grateful and I allow my opinions and beliefs to be updated by my experiences and so and that's how I've navigated my own spiritual journey and it is a it is a nice place to be I will say that because as much as sometimes I think people want to feel a certain sense of certainty in order to feel grounded I actually don't

need that certainty to feel grounded I can feel I feel very at peace and grounded with where I'm at and with remaining curious because it means that as I learn new things as new information and awareness and knowledge and practices come to me, then I can learn and I can grow and I can explore. Yeah, definitely. And there's a, this actually loops back to something you're saying earlier and I wrote it down to make sure not to, not to forget it. It was smart of me. I'm actually proud of myself. I wrote it down. This idea of, so speaking more broadly or specifically getting back to the topic of me, my approach to what I do. And that is definitely it, is that staying curious and accepting a certain amount of unknown chaos in general like the yin yang chaos

and order it's both are necessary like a progress and tradition that that kind of thing um there is and this relates to so i'm trying to capture the recapture the train of thought this relates to the idea of of inspiring things in people like inspiring an answer that i was talking about how i'm happy to offer a suggestion you feel the zing it's there or be completely wrong but you have another thought because i said all the wrong things and that's fine too there is there's kind of a pyramid of action or knowledge or whatever and then there's a gap and then there's the flame that pops up so this is ancient some people put the all-seeing eye up there like that as a as a new idea or an inspiration and we don't know how that happens we don't know

what that is. I call that the magic of the gap in there. It's magic because we don't understand it. So that also feeds into my philosophy of like, why do I call myself a wizard? Well, there's the archetype of the wizard or the wise one, the person who's, you've been around for a while, so you got gray hair, maybe it's a little long because you're retired and you can do that. You're walking with a staff because your back's a little bad, your knees ain't so good anymore. And we start putting all these things together and you get a wizard. You get a wizard. to get the wise one to get that archetype. So do I, as I might have mentioned, I think, earlier before, like this is episode,

you know, 161. By the time I get to a thousand, I'll be a real wizard. I will finally have had enough age and experience that I will have fully embody. Right now it's an aspirational archetype for me. You know, I'm a level one wizard. I can cast magic missile. That's about it. But soon I'll be able to, you know, summon whatever.

But I also like feed into that from a, what am I trying to say, a metaphysical level of there is such a thing as seeing the future, scrying, as they would call it. It's knowledge of causes, cause and effect. You could tell someone younger, hey, don't do that. That's a bad idea. I've seen it go horribly wrong for other people. Please listen.

Or if you want to succeed, here's what you do. That's a variety of, but also magic words can happen in, what I consider magic words is the idea of that building up. And you know you've got the right magic words when the, when the inspiration occurs. in someone else. And that can be motivation to, to accomplish, but it can also just be practical knowledge. Here's how to change a spark plug in a car. And when you know those magic words that teaching has reached something, you know, being a, you know, teaching in college. I think, I think,

you know, teachers are very much, I'm still trying to figure out my, my concept of wizards. I'm going to write a book someday. It's percolating. You know, a wizard's guide to the art of wizardry. Like, what does this actually mean? Who, who, who do I? think I am. How does someone embody these things? Are there different kinds? And I think, you know, a successful teacher across many disciplines can, can, you know, embody the wizard archetype. And these are a lot of things we take on. Like, you know, you can play the fool sometimes. And sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's not. But it is a particular way of way of being in the world. So I just wanted to mention that, you know, inspiring that aha moment is to me magical. And I love it when it

happens. And I couldn't, couldn't make it happen if I tried. I just do what I do. And it happens if it happens. So those are my comments on my spiritual perspective on that. I love it. I love it. And it certainly resonates. It certainly resonates a lot. You know, that moment that you can tell that, you know, you are there to facilitate or witness someone having the aha moment, having that moment of integration from their own internal resources, right? Every single person has so many internal resources, even if they don't think that they do. Every single person does. And it is such an amazing experience to be able to kind of sometimes remind people that they have those resources and connect them into a current challenge they're having so that they have this amazing aha moment. I love that

moment. Me too. I'd say that's probably the thing I enjoy most about this is participating with someone in reaching for that and then actually achieving that moment, that understanding. Speaking of which, we're about, I don't know, 40 minutes in. I know you don't, it said you didn't have a time limit, but this is probably as good a time as any to kind of move over into seeing if we can help you get an aha moment. Yeah. Well, and I was actually having a hard time choosing because there were two dreams that are dramatically different from dramatically different decades.

Oh. But they're both really in my mind. One is like ridiculously short. Like I could explain it in about 15 seconds. The other, you know, I might need a minute to explain it. But so I'm not really sure. if I should be trying to pick or what is the best way for me to proceed with that. You did mention you had more than one.

And I said, you know, when it came time, we would talk about it. So usually what I tell folks is, number one, anything's fine with me. So I leave it all up to you, which is great. Thanks. This is no guidance at all. But sometimes one dream or another feels more important. So it's kind of a vibe check with the dream. itself. And sometimes one of them has, it doesn't feel as important as the other one maybe

in that sense, but it presents more of a mystery and maybe you've held onto it longer and you're like, I'd like to settle this. What does this mean? So, I don't know if that gives you a, gives you an idea of kind of how to sort of. It does. Yeah, I mean, I think the more recent one, I mean, I can analyze it myself and I think I have a good sense of I think what was going on there, but the one from decades ago, it does still puzzle me. I don't really know what to make of it. At least, you know, part of it, I definitely know what to make of it. But there's one element that I'm like, that is, it's a very key element and I just can't make heads or tails of it. Yeah, yeah. And it was a recurring dream. It was a recurring dream for a long time. Those are also fun too. Those are some of the

most important to figure out, I think, because it's like there are one-off dreams which are relevant to an immediate concern. And then their recurring dreams tend to be something unresolved that has endured over time. So it's something you, you're still trying to figure out. I mean, that's, that's kind of where I think dreams come from is there basically are, the way I describe it. The heart beats, the lungs breathe, the brain thinks. And it does it whether you're asleep or awake.

And that's why I put it in the category with other things that don't stop when you're, when you're unconscious. Um, and so what we're experiencing, I think my, my current theory and, and it makes sense to me is dreams are basically our unfiltered thought process. It's like it's what we actually experience when we're awake before we translated into words that we're communicating to someone else. So how you think is kind of how you dream in, in that way. Um, and, but then there's also the idea of, is it close enough to consciousness that

we're able to retain some kind of memory of it. And in my case, um, I am, I am the dream wizard who does not dream. I do. Everybody dreams. I think we dream the constantly,

the whole night through like we never stop. But what, what we consider a dream is a memory of a, an experience during sleep that we bring with us back to waking consciousness. Those I almost never have. I sleep so deeply that whatever I was going on in my head is just way down low. Um, and I just hardly ever see it.

Very rarely I wake up having had the experience. of I was dreaming. Gone. It's gone. Whatever that was. Yeah, yeah. It's just the moment I wake up, my conscious attention takes over completely and the memory. My memory's always been crap, too.

So that's, and it's, it's constitutional from person to person. And I say that like in the D&D sense of how you are composed physically. I think it's a biological connection to some people are going to remember that. That's also, you mentioned lucid dreaming too. It's like, I've never had one of those in my life. But some people have. every night. I think there's something biological, something physical about that type of person, whatever they're, however they're composed, that allows them to have an experience that others can't.

Like some people can see, some people are blind. I think some people can lucid dream. Some people can't. And then there's others who have a different philosophy as well, you can train it and you can bring it. And maybe so. Maybe that's the thing. It's not, again, not my wheelhouse. Like the, the training and the manipulation of dreams or dream experience. Maybe I'll get there someday, but I'm rambling again. Anyway, um, I was all about, I was getting around to, thank you for your patience. Recurring dreams. Yeah, yeah.

So if something's on our mind, something's unsettled and it's usually something, I want to say foundational to our personality or some deeply philosophical question that we're trying to figure out. Maybe some life experience, very often a life experience that keeps coming back. The question itself is posed by our experiences on a recurring basis. and we still haven't decided what we believe or what's the best way to resolve a given conflict. All of that to just say that about recurring dreams. Oh, boy.

Oh, it's all good. Well, I think I will go with the dream that, I mean, and I haven't had this recurring dream in decades. But at the find that I was having it, it was very regularly recurring. occurring and I think it was that way for, I don't know, at least a couple of years. Okay. Yeah. So I think I'm going to use that one. Well, my process is first I just shut up and listen.

You tell me the dream and then we talk about it. So I'm ready when you are. Benjamin the Dream Wizard wants to help you. Here's the veil of night and shine the light of understanding upon the mystery of dreams. Every episode of his dreamscape's program features real dreamers gifted with rare insight. into their nocturnal visions. New DreamScape's episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks exploring 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 documenting the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past two thousand years that's benjamin the dream wizard on youtube and at benjamin the dream wizard.com okay so the dream was that i i was almost like floating in the sky toward this story type of pedestal that was in the sky and there were these stone columns.

There were white, almost like white curtains, white fabric that were hung from the columns and they were floating and kind of flapping gently in the wind. And I was floating toward this. As I was, so that's the part that I don't understand. I have no idea whatsoever what the stone column piece is. The part that I completely understand what it's about was the physical sensation, the somatic sensation, and the sound. So what I heard while I'm floating towards the stone column was the voice of my biological mother who was abusive and lots of other people, you know, speaking. almost like in a crowd and you're in a crowd and you can hear lots and lots of people.

But, you know, above the crowd was her voice. And I can't remember if it was yelling or whatever it was. And the somatic physical experience was that there was pressure building and building and building on my head, especially. And how the dream would always end is that whether or not I reached the stone pedestal, the pressure would all and the noise that all the voice like the voices talking to each other in the crowd would get too much and it would wake me up the physical sensation of the pressure and and the noise would wake me up sometimes I would be on the stone pedestal and just trying to look out and enjoy it because it's beautiful it was absolutely beautiful like in the blue sky there's fluffy white clouds it's so peaceful there

and, you know, these curtains are flowing in the wind and it's just so beautiful, but I could never just enjoy it because there was always, you know, the voices of my abusive parents in the background and all of this pressure that I could physically feel. So those were a couple of different variations, but that was the dream. Very cool. Very cool. Always fascinating. None of these, I don't think I've ever heard of dream and just been like, oh, this is terrible.

I'm bored. No, no, no, not a single time. because I'll be immediate my brain starts going, ooh, what does that mean? What does that mean? So, okay, so that's step one. Step two is you and I go through it again together. We do what I call it deep dive and we just kind of start looking at each discreet element

and put it together. Maybe a couple more little bits of info about this. What time period of your life were these, did this begin and end? I think it started when I was a, round about four years old and I don't remember when the last time was that I had that dream, but I probably wouldn't have been any older than seven or eight, I think. Okay. Interesting because there's some folks who, uh, they got the last guy I talked to,

like his recurring dreams have been like lifelong. And it's, he says it's two or three times a week and it's the same type of dream. I'm like, that's very interesting. So there's something that is really, and we talked about that in the last episode, if anyone saw that. Um, by the time this gets, this gets released anyway. Um, but there's very often, uh, this exact situation where a certain type of dream experience recurs in a window around a certain age. And it's very often tied in with resolving something at that age to, um, put it, put it to rest in our mind.

Um, you did mention having abusive parents. Thank you for being just, you know, uh, uh, I mean, I'm very forthcoming. I'm very forthcoming about it. Yeah. Very forthcoming about that. Fair enough. Yeah. And we don't have to, you know, we'll definitely talk.

Okay. So there's two types of dreams I don't do because I think it needs to be handled privately in actual clinical counseling. This is not counseling and therapy. I don't offer any license service. We were just two people talking about dreams. I forgot to say that before we started recording, but that's something I usually say to folks. It is dreams of specifically sexual abuse, but in two categories that occurred as a child that you're still processing or whatnot today. That's, if you're still having dreams about

that today, you need to talk to somebody. Not me, not me. This is not entertainment fodder. And the other one is rape. Basically, it's the idea of, you know, if you're still having traumatic nightmares about an experience, I'm not going to put that out there. for Jerry Springer style entertainment. So, but so, so I guess this is a good time to ask if your experience of being abused was in that category or was it more of just kind of just physical, emotional? It was primarily, so it was primarily my, my mother. And I actually don't use the term mother and father because I think those are earned

terms. And unfortunately, they didn't earn them. So, but, you know, for the sake of. of people understanding who I'm talking about, it was my biological mother who, at that age group, that that was where the abuse was focused and it was not of a sexual nature with her.

It was verbal, it was physical, it was emotional. However, I will also say that, you know, I have had years of counseling and I actually continue to be in counseling because I think it's just like we, go to doctors to make sure that we're keeping our physical health in good shape. I think it's also sensible to see therapists to make sure that we're keeping our emotions and our minds in good shape as well. So it is, you know, these are not new unprocessed traumas. All of these stuff with my biological mother is very well processed. Okay, good deal. Yeah, I don't want to violate my own

ethical standards, of course, but also for your sake, you know, it's, I don't want to do that to anyone either. Okay. So, and it's a funny thing to say, well, okay, well, if it was just physical and mental abuse, we can talk about that. That's bad enough too, but it's, I think there is an additional layer to it. It's different. No, I get it. I do, I do understand. And, you know, it doesn't, it does not diminish those other kinds of abuse. But no, I completely agree. Those other forms are of abuse are those, like, even to me, those are a completely different category. It needs to be handled so delicately that you just, I'm not going to be able to do it justice. And like, also, And also what I do is a bit of the edutainment side of the dream interpretation.

What you would really get in full counseling and therapies, you could take one piece of one dream and talk about it for literally weeks with an analyst, say a Freudian psychoanalyst or a youngian, especially because they love the dream work too. That's real clinical hands-on, you know, dream interpretation stuff. We're doing a little bit of a condensed version. I think it's legit. I think it leaves us sometimes with more questions than answers, but at least, you know, it shows people it's possible and the results come from this and it's a legit practice and skill. Anyway, we talked more about it than actually talking to the dream experiences. Okay, so I wanted to settle that real quick before we dive in too deep.

And you did have a, the sense, I mean, looking back on it and having processed it, that a lot of the, say, abusive experiences you had with this, you know, biological mother were in that time. timeframe? Oh, I mean, that those went, I mean, that, that experience started when I was two years old or younger and continued up until I moved out as soon as I turned 18. But I think what, what I do know was definitely happening during that period. So when I was young, I was very young, I used to be able to physically see spiritual things. Like, I used to be able to see oras on plants or what we think of as or. I had no idea they were oras. I just thought, oh, it's normal. It's like it's the poofy,

colorful thing coming off of the plants. That's normal. And like, it changes color. Oh, look, it's purple today. Oh, look, now it's orange. And I didn't think anything of it. It was just, you know, I could see things that we are told are spiritual. But then the abuse worsened around the eight, when I was around the age of four or five. And by the age of seven and eight, I had shut all that down. I did not have any spiritual experiences at all. I still, you know, I could still feel that there was a spiritual world. I still felt that there was, that there was universal love out there.

But I had shut down so much of my own spiritual stuff. So I think it was during that period. That was a key thing. Because I used to be able to like see oras and then I went to not. Yeah. So would you say in retrospect, maybe some of that abuse was directed towards your expressions of, of saying, oh, I see colors around these objects or I have a spiritual experience. No. Okay. No, I never talked about them. I never talked about them because to me, I just assumed everyone else could see them too. So I didn't talk about them. It was just, I just, you know,

observed. What are normal? You know, my, this is my experience, of course. Yeah. It's normal to me. Okay. So it wasn't that you brought these. things to her and she shut them down necessarily or uh not not on the spiritual stuff no not not not on the spiritual stuff no fair enough no um no no no no i mean i i i i don't know why it happened to get worse around that era you know i mean who knows you know why why things got worse uh in that era on her end um but they did um i think i think the um around that period, because there was a recession in the late 80s, right? Mm-hmm.

There was a recession. I, and I know that our family was affected because my other parent was laid off, and so I think that was a source of stress. So I would imagine there were a lot of other external stresses, and given that, you know, that, you know, we're only talking about this one parent's abuse at this time, you know, given how. she was already behaving. It was just, you know, it wasn't a new thing for her, right?

Like, it just exacerbated what was already there. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a, it's a very interesting thing to say, talk about these experiences. And then in some ways, empathize with the person who was acting poorly without excusing it in any way to say, okay, well, it's understandable why that happened.

Why their natural tendency, something hopefully they would work to overcome. instead got worse because their ability to even address it as a, as a flaw that they should work on was just absent due to circumstances. That's what makes the tragedy of the whole thing. It's like sometimes we want to, we definitely want to hold people accountable, but we don't want to villainize too much because then it's like, no,

if you dehumanize it, right? Like, yeah. I mean, I think I, I do think that, um, you know, some people, I think there are some people out there who,

for whatever reason are just really malevolent and maybe it's because, you know, they, they have some kind of, you know, mental disorder that makes them that way or maybe they just are malevolent for whatever reason. I think that is a really, really small percentage of people. I think that hurt people, hurt people. And, you know, so I hold both, you know, compassion for both of my parents, while I also maintain the balance. that I think are important because you're right. Accountability is important and there is never, ever a reason to,

you know, to abuse a dependent for any reason. So, you know, and I, I like being able to hold both because at the end of the day, you know, each of us is a person and,

you know, we've, we've all had hard moments. We've all been through things and, you know, no one's perfect. And understanding how, someone has arrived at a particular practice or a way of life.

And frankly, I mean, abuse is a way of life. That, you know, that someone, someone who is abusive, they don't, it's not like they do a one-off thing and it never happens again. That's a pattern. Like, once you're okay with, with, you know, with being like that, that's, I think it's probably more rare that people stop, you know, behaving in that way. But, you know, certainly I wholeheartedly agree the idea of being able to hold both the compassion to see the person for what they were experiencing.

And, you know, whether it was a character thing, you know, whether it was just a, you know, set of other experiences or lack of skills, lack of awareness and choice. Those were the choices that were made. Yeah. I like the way you describe that, too. That's how I do it as well, is you hold two kind of. conflicting ideas in your head at the same time and say they're both true. One aphorism I like is, you know, an explanation is not an excuse.

You can understand how something happened without condoning it. And it's, I'd say it's, it's critical to understand how those things happen. So you can go, well, maybe we can fix that. Maybe we can do something about it. Maybe next time this doesn't have to happen. Well, that's a lot of background. I usually get to that later, but I was like, I just wanted to, you know, what was happening during this time?

So that's, that was your experience of it. and now the dream itself and going through it. So the, this, this is a little tough. Let's see. So with a current set of recurring dreams that have, what I usually ask people to do is think of the most recent instance of when this happened.

And let's talk about that one. Let's dial that one in a little bit. And then we can start comparing it to the other. So this is a challenge for me. And, and, fantastic when I get this. What we've got is is the aggregate memory of a certain type of dream from a long time ago when you were very young. So we can we can still, you know, apply my process.

It's just let's talk about it. So there's no like dream I can't, I can't talk about. It works better for. Well, if you like, I can, we can do it. We can do a different dream for more recently if it's, if you prefer. Oh, no, no, I'm just, I'm just given a little, um, given a little context to thinking out loud. Yeah, thinking out loud to my, to my, to my process. here. So it shifts my approach a little bit. Sometimes I'm not going to get as specific with stuff that's in this, you know, because we're, we're not dealing with this one dream that was recent, that's fresh, that's, it's got a lot of these details. We're looking at the broader overview of so we're doing it backwards to the way I usually prefer to. So we're going to, we're going to get

what we can out of it for for that experience. But I think we can, no, I think it's fine. I can, I can work with anything. Even if, even if I do it poorly. And it doesn't work. I'm going to, I'm going to try. This is all, you are honestly helping me, helping me train to become a better,

better wizard. So the initial experience is being, being, I don't want to purge, what was you meant? You said it's floating towards a set of columns or a pedestal. On like a stone pedestal. It,

you know what reminds me a bit of? It reminds me a bit of like, you know, like in Greek, um, Greek mythology or an art, how they would have like stone, like there was stone called like pedestals where almost like their temples, right? It reminds me of, you know, the Greek or Roman temples. It was, you know, it was like a roundish or oval stone pedestal in the sky,

floating in like a blue sky with white clouds. And there were columns on the pedestal. And actually I forgot to mention two of the columns were connected with another like elaborate designed stone facade of some sort and there were these really beautiful white flowing types of curtains or um other drapery that were floating down from the columns and kind of flowing in the wind and I would always be floating toward this pedestal I and my body position while I was floating was always that I was like upright, almost like I was standing, but floating, upright, standing in the sky toward the pedestal. And then somatically, it would feel like there was pressure building in my head or like from coming in from outside of my head. It was never

in my head. It felt like the pressure was coming from outside of my head. And it's always sounded like there was a crowd of people who were like talking like in a restaurant but it would get louder and louder and then the voice of my biological mother it always sounded angry whether or not it was yelling it was always an angry voice and that would also get louder at the same time and it was such the reason that that dream stuck with me is that it was such to juxtaposition between like the violence almost like the aggression of all the that sound, all that noise and the pressure. And this otherwise beautiful, beautiful scene that was so peaceful and calm and, you know, it was just so open and free. But then to be experiencing all of this, like it was, they were just so, such such opposite kinds of experiences in the same place. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's great detail too. So you, you experience your, and this is what I'm, what I'm looking for. Uh, just a quick, quick side story. but one one gal brought to me a dream, which was nothing more than the sensation of falling through a void.

That was it. That's the whole dream. And we talked about that for quite a long time, trying to tease out, okay, what does that mean to you? So for you, you've got this. And what I imagine,

and this is why I ask these questions, is like the physical surroundings being blue sky and maybe clouds? Or what was your... Yeah, so I'm like, you know, the wist. The wispy white clouds. So not like big clouds. It was mostly blue sky.

But then, you know, those kind of wispy, fluffy-ish, I don't know which kind of, like cumulus clouds, whatever they're called. You know, a few of those so that I knew that I was in the sky because I could see it not only was the blue, but because of the clouds. That's how I knew that it was the sky. Yes. And I was always in a standing position. Yeah. So that's why I asked. Is it very well?

you could have gone, no, you know what? There were no clouds. Or no, it wasn't a blue sky. It was something else. And I'm like, okay, I'm happy to be wrong. Let's get that, get that clarification. So that isn't an interesting thing in and of itself, just the location. It's like, okay, so it's up in the sky. And you are up in the sky and you are floating. Do you have a distinct impression of whether those columns reached the ground or they just disappeared in the clouds? No, they were on the pedestal. it was a stone pedestal. Okay. Right?

It was like a platform, like a stone platform and the columns came up out of the platform. Okay. See, I had it backwards in my head. I thought the pedestal was being held up by the columns. But it's the opposite. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. So the pedestal, yes. Yes.

So it's just a platform floating in the sky. It doesn't attach to anything on the bottom and there were columns coming up out of it. Yes. I think there were four columns. Okay. That was the next question. Absolutely. yeah so how were these positioned arrayed uh there was maybe uh four columns total yeah i believe

there were four columns and they um they had been carved so that um they weren't just smooth round columns they had been like etched um up they'd been just a vertical uh vertically i think they call it fluting yeah whatever it's called i don't know i'm not no i'm not a mace so i'm not sure That's what I saw in my head when you described them as the typical, say, Greek and Roman type of, type of colonies. Yes, yes. Which those things have. Yes, exactly. Have different meanings at different times.

Like, to me, now they evoke the idea of, what do they call it, the Lyceum or the academia academy of Aristotle or something like that. So to me, those speak of ancient wisdom. But at an earlier time in my life, they may have been more indicative of Greek mythology. And I'm wondering. And usually as a kid, that's our first introduction to those kind of symbols. Can you think of how you would have been introduced to that? What connection that would have? I mean, did you see them in storybooks?

It's an interesting thing for a four-year-old to dream of Greek columns, right? I, my reading and consumption of media tended to be well beyond my age group. So I, like I always read well beyond my age group. I actually didn't start talking around the age when developmentally you're expected to start talking. And then when I did start talking, I was using words like condensation and caterpillar and helicopter. So I figured if I was going to do it, I'm going to do it right. So I think, I mean, we always had lots of educational books around the house. There was lots of encyclopedias, but also it was a fairly religious household.

and so especially by that era, it was becoming more entrenched and a little bit more patriarchal. And so there were movies. I don't know if you know those movies, I think they were made in the 70s of like Moses and you know those like four hour long movies, you know what I'm talking about?

Also like Clash of the Titans, I think came out in the 80s. Speaking of Greek mythology, one of the Ray Harry Houses. Well, we wouldn't have watched that because that that would have, yeah. as I said, the religious aspect had become increasingly assertive in that environment. So, no, we wouldn't have watched that.

But Moses, there was a period that I did watch a Moses movie quite a bit, but I don't know how many columns were in that movie. I really can't remember. Sure. But there were also, like I said, there were a lot of educational books around that I would just I would read them. I would flip through them. I would just, I, I absorbed all that stuff.

Okay, definitely. Well, this is, this is how a lot of this works is that, you know, I'd ramble and say all kinds of crazy stuff and you'd get inspired with ideas. But when we mention, okay, where did you see these things? The association that pops to mind is, you know, kind of makes me think of the Moses movies. Fair enough. So there was this maybe religious connotation to them. They meant something in that related to that idea. This is why they would maybe be in the dream.

But we've got, okay. So maybe, I mean, I don't know, Moses, to me, my experience of the Moses movie, I didn't interpret it as very religious. Yeah, yeah. How did you see it? I thought it was a really interesting story. I thought some of the characters in it were really interesting to look at. I thought some of the women were beautiful. I thought that I felt a bit conflicted between some of the events in the movie from a particular religious perspective would be considered bad or wrong.

And, you know, for example, when they poured the gold to make the golden calf and people were worshipping it. and I know like they created their own religion you know basically they had tried to find meaning while Moses was up in the mountain and then he comes back and he's really angry there were sometimes like that I didn't like that because even though I could tell that you're supposed to be on his side you're supposed to agree with how angry he is

that never quite sat with me I didn't I didn't think that it was fair or right that he did that. I also didn't think that the story really flowed or made sense with how they suddenly got the idea to make this golden calf in the first place. I thought that was, it didn't really flow. It seemed kind of forced. And so I just thought that whole thing felt very incongruent to me. It never quite sat right with me. Fair enough.

But it mostly just felt like a story. It felt like this long, long story. and, you know, maybe there was some kind of, I don't know, because he's supposed to be the hero, but I just, I was always someone who tried to understand, I was constantly trying to understand people, and at the time we had no idea that I was autistic. And so I was always very carefully observing to try to understand. So I actually just tried to understand each of the characters. and their motivations.

And I think it's why I watched it so many times I was trying to understand what people were really trying to get at or why they made the decisions they made. But I didn't really experience it as like, it wasn't a religious experience for me, even though religion was associated with it. Gotcha, gotcha, got you. So your thoughts on that movie were not towards the spiritual in that sense,

but more towards the human understanding of what we, the behaviors, what was going on. Also the concept of what was, say, just in regards to, you know, does Moses need to come down off the mountain and be angry? Could he just say, hey, this is not good? Why don't we try something else? I mean, he could have been more calm about it. It may be the approach.

And certainly there was probably something triggering in there in terms of the, say, abuse of an authority figure in the household. Like, you know, I don't like being yelled up by my mom. Why is Moses yelling at these people? He may, he's behaving like my mom. Do you think there's a connection there? Maybe. I mean, it's possible.

I mean, because didn't, didn't he also, he got so mad that he threw down the tablets and they broke? Wasn't that something that happened? Like, he got so angry that he broke the tablets. I remember him something. Like, he got so angry that he threw something and it broke. And I remember thinking, well, that was, that was really not. smart. Like, right. If you, because if you believe, like, if you, if this is to you, the supreme creator who is, um, you know, your, you, who is your God, who is your, your, your, your, your,

your everything, who is your, or whatever, like, this preeminent being has given you a physical thing. They have used their supernatural powers to carve writing into stone. You don't have those stones and you're walking with them to me it completely boggles the mind wouldn't those be precious when you want to hang on to those why on earth would you throw them onto the ground and break like to me it didn't make any sense i'm like yeah yeah what's this person about like it doesn't make any sense well i'm very much the same way things need to make sense like that and especially if uh i mean it's it's only in in say in my adult years in retrospect and layers of of analysis on different things it's like okay we can retcon and say okay we can retcon and

say, okay, in that moment, he's only human and he has an angry response. And so he smashes something precious. Well, that wasn't good. But we don't think that. I mean, you're four to six, seven years old in that range. You're just looking at like, well, that was dumb. Yeah, I'd probably think the same thing. Like, this, this is not, I need things to make sense as well. And, and that's where I, I either need to figure out why something happened or figure out that there is no answer. If I can determine there is no answer, then I'm comfortable to chaos. It is what it is. We don't know. Um, but I obsess over things very, very much so in that regard.

All of this from so you say there were columns. We're getting into, right? And I don't even remember columns from the Moses movie. There may well have been columns. I have no idea. It might have been a different movie from the same 1960s era. Um, they made a ton of Greek and Roman movies. Maybe.

Yeah. Benher, etc. Yeah, maybe. I mean, uh, the other thing that does come to mind are some of the encyclopedias that we that we had and lots of them had um you know all sorts of architecture and and like plants and animals and all sorts of other things that you know ancient ruins from all over the world and I just I read as much as I could I mean I was reading you know books that are designed for adults when I was quite young and so I would just absorb all of it and I'm just remembering this like

the cover of a book and I'm just I don't even remember it was an encyclopee type of book, but it was a visual encyclopedia. And I don't remember what era or what its specific topic was, but I'm getting a, you know, a flash of the cover of that as well. Yeah. No, and I think both are valid and I think both are true, actually. It's that fits with, I'm starting to see a direction maybe. And that's so I'm not, I'm not aiming for it,

but I'm exploring to see if we naturally go down that path. So that's how we work that out. together, but there's, um, there's something to the biblical stories, which are supposed to be an explanation for how the world works and what it is and the right way to engage with it. Same acquisition of knowledge coming from encyclopedias. There's, there's a, there's something about that where it's like, well, this is how you learn what the world is and what it means. And so probably both of those things are true and even in, in some senses, competing visions of, well, how do we arrive at understanding? How do we, how do we determine what is true and real?

Uh, how do we, how do we know what's, good and what we should be doing. I don't know if that resonates with you at all. It's like both of them seem to fit that, like they're heading in the same direction. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. I mean, I think one, you know, another thought that is coming to mind as you were talking is that I, again, not knowing at the time that I was autistic, I frequently struggle to understand why people would behave in certain ways. For example, even to this day, I don't actually

understand jealousy. I intellectually understand it, but I just don't get it. I don't get it. I mean, I can, I really understand wanting to have something that you do not have. Like, hello, I literally can't walk my own dog right now. I am a marathon runner who cannot run. I understand the concept of wanting to have something that I currently don't have, but I don't experience jealousy. Like, I don't understand the concept of, like, I get it. I get it. I understand. I don't. get the concept of jealousy intellectually, but internally, I just don't experience it. And at that age, I was regularly just, um, incredulous about the way that people would have reactions to things that just completely wouldn't make sense. Like, if, if those tablets are so precious, who cares how

mad you get? You don't, like, don't destroy this one precious, unique thing that you can never create again. Like, you know, I mean, do you really think you can go back up the mountain and get the being to, like, sew the stone back together or remake you new ones? No, you've now, like, destroyed a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Like, no matter how mad you get, don't break the tablets. Or, you know, like, for other stories that would happen, like betrayal. I also just don't, like, betrayal is such a foreign concept to me. Again, intellectually, I understand it. I have experienced it many, many times.

you know, I remember because there's all sorts of betrayals that also happen in that movie, that it's just like, I don't get it, or even anthropologically, right? I was reading about, at the time, about how people would go and study other people, and there were always things that didn't quite sit right with me, or when people would go on missions trips and, you know, try to civilize these, you know, these people who were indigenous in their own lands, like going on to someone else's land and trying to tell them, you know, actually here's what you should believe. None of that ever sat very well with me. And I would ask questions trying to understand.

And, you know, unfortunately, the answer was that they were never thoughtful, critical thinking answers. Meanwhile, I was always thinking critically about these things, even at a young age. So there were a lot of things that, you know, I'd be trying to understand. understand like why are people making these decisions? These are terrible decisions. Why are they doing this? Yeah. Yeah. And what I was thinking, my response to listening to you that's, so I did a test once once that was like, well, what's your kind of emotional response quotient? And like out of 83 possible points, meaning, you know, 83 is like you're, you know, fully, full range of emotional experience and connection. I score like an 11. It's not that I don't

have emotions, but they're just like. my, my response to things is always analytical. It's, it's very, very little, well, how do you feel? I'm like, I can't tell you how I feel. I can tell you what I think about that. But like checking in with my emotions. And it doesn't mean I don't laugh and don't cry and I don't care about people. But, but when you were, when you were mentioning that idea of jealousy, it's like, for me,

it's like there are things which are rational and things which are completely irrational. And I understand that irrational things happen. And to me too, I have. have emotional, I've snapped and said angry things. It happens. But the idea of like, like wanting something that someone else has in such a manner as it deprives them of it, I'm like, well, that analytically in my mind, that's morally wrong. And it's not an experience that I have.

Like, I don't want to take. And maybe I want also what you have. You have a wonderful relationship with your spouse. I would like that for myself. I don't want to take your spouse from you. I don't understand that jealous, that aspect of jealousy. I don't experience it. Exactly.

But I can rationalize it. So, so, um, that's a. That's great. Well, I guess we are both autistic. Actually, of course, we knew that. But I mean, and that's one of the fantastic things about it is, well, it's a plus and a minus, you know, it gives us certain superpowers. But then we don't have the same emotional response to people.

So I mean, I've said some horribly insensitive things because it's what the thought that popped into my head. And I wasn't thinking that this person is suffering and maybe this will make their suffering worse because I wasn't suffering. And I couldn't see that they were and I didn't really understand what that. meant. Yeah. So a lot of dumb things as a kid. Can we tell you? And probably yesterday. Maybe even today. Mine was more that I was because I've always studied people. And I mean, part of how I survived,

what I survived was that I studied people very carefully. And I learned to understand what was, like what the cause and effect and signals of what, where someone was coming from. And I mean, I am quite, I'm asking as a result. And I'm not even trying to be. It just, you know, at this point, it is, it's how I learned how to navigate. But I, you know, for me, it's more been not so much saying the wrong thing, but more, like, other embarrassing things. and like not

understanding or not realizing that I say I was talking to loudly about you know about subject matter like in a restaurant about subject matter that someone felt was very sensitive and they actually asked me they're like can you please talk quieter and I wasn't aware that I was talking

particularly loudly and or that it was something that they would be embarrassed about because you know I hadn't experienced that so I've had lots of embarrassing moments like that or when I was a kid, the number of times kids would be pointing and laughing because they were making fun of me and I didn't even understand what they were making fun of. Like to this day, there's still mysteries, but apparently it's very common, very common autistic experience.

Oh yeah, definitely. No, that's, that's exactly, this is exactly me too. And all of this is talking about the column. So now I'm starting to get a bigger, bigger, better, clearer picture of the settings. So you're, you are floating. And it's good to say upright. Does it mean anything? Maybe not.

It means you weren't upside down. I mean, or were you? Probably not. But it means you were not reclined. I actually did ask the same question to another person who was, his floating was in a more reclined posture. It meant something different to him in that sense. So what you were is you were oriented upright towards this situation.

You were not taking it in a relaxed posture. You were not actually seeing it askews. Like I couldn't, I, count. or factual. I couldn't make myself vertical in the dream. I tried. That would have been a completely different experience. And this one, you're very much, that's why I keep coming back to that idea of oriented,

facing towards vertical posture. You're here to, you are attending to this thing that's going on in front of you. And not only that you're bodily prepared to observe it in, in this manner. So that's, that's its own kind of thing. This is more of my,

just rambling. What do I see? What's going on here? Yeah. And initially, I had the idea that, that this pedestal, as you described it, was, so it's more, as now we described, it's more of a platform. And I thought it was at the top of the columns, but it is suspended on nothing in space.

It is a platform of its own. It is the unsupported ground upon which these columns sit. So that's a reversal. So there's nothing holding this thing up. It is just right where it is. That's an interesting way to look at it as well, too, because it's, like here we are up in the sky and logically gravity exists you wouldn't be floating and and this thing would need to be supported by something so we're looking at something that is

disconnected from the physical in a way um so if we look at it as a dichotomy physical and spiritual this is definitely seems to be leading towards the spiritual or the realm of thought in that sense if we broke the spiritual down into you know thinking and and and and supernatural stuff and the physical side of things being the opposite. There's something going on there with. And then, so the Jungian collective unconscious style, we've got all these experiences with certain types of imagery.

That's where I'm going, starting with that kind of stuff. We're seeing, we see the blue sky in the clouds. That means a kind of a thing to us. It's not stormy weather. It's not dark. Dark is usually hidden, hidden things or fear in that regard.

Not always broadly speaking. afraid of the dark, et cetera. But you've got this, um, the brightness and the blue skies. You've got an you've got something suspended on nothing. But that thing, whatever it is that stands on its own, that doesn't need to be supported by anything else. That is itself the foundation for these columns. You've got columns that are two, four of them. I thought many more. It's a glad you said. And we've got, you know, two of them are connected to form kind of an archway between the two of them. And then there's also between them, these, is it between them that we've got flowing or is it attached to them? No, it was just too, it was attached to the tops of two of the columns and they were just flowing down,

like just hanging down. Okay. Did it, did they hang down partway or below the? No, all the way, all the way to the ground. All the way to the platform surface? Yeah, the platform surface. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Excuse me.

Were those attached to the two pillars that were meeting or there was the other two? Yes. Okay. So we've got some interesting things. It wasn't just four pillars standing by themselves. Two of them were connected. There's a reason for the connection. And not only were they connected, but those were the ones that were also draped.

So I don't know if anything comes to mind now that we're kind of starting to see that picture in your head again a little more clearly. Um, maybe I haven't. I mean, to me, it, it felt, it felt like such a beautiful place to be. And,

you know, it, when I think about the dream, it's like, why couldn't I just have been able to experience that? Why did there have to be all that noise and pressure? Why couldn't I just experience that beautiful place? Because it was beautiful and it felt,

it felt peaceful. It felt like, really nice place to be. It didn't feel at all unsafe. The only thing that felt unsafe was the pressure and the noise, but it felt like a very peaceful, calm place to be. It felt very solid and grounded. I mean, you know, I mean, would it be something as simple as, you know, this was, you

know, my spiritual experience at the pedestal represented my spiritual experience and I just wanted, like, why couldn't I just have a nice, you know, sacred existence because I already was. Like, I was already having a spiritual experience and there was so much groundedness in it. Like, none of it was woo-woo because it just was, right? It just was my experience. And there was, there was a lot of groundedness and safety in it, but the problem was that it was all happening at the same time that this unsafe environment was happening. And, you know, I mean, I've long suspected that, well, the reason that I stopped that, you know, that just all of those abilities shut down at that time was for my own protection because, you know, it's a, that's a lot, it's a lot of sensory overload. I mean, Sure. Being in an environment like that is a lot of sensory overload for anyone, let alone, let alone an unknown and undiagnosed autistic person.

Yeah. But especially if, you know, if you're also spiritually connected, you know, it's not like that's a great spiritual environment to be in either, right? That kind of energy would not feel very nice. Yeah, yeah, definitely. that idea of the sensory overload and autism, I was going to come back around with. I'm glad you mentioned it too.

But just that I, just that basic connection, um, that, you know, that would, uh, so what you've got going on there is,

is a couple of distinct. And of course, you've identified conflicting experiences. You've got the appearance of a thing, but then you've got this, uh, the auditory and visceral sensory experiences going on that are at odds with each other, that are conflicting.

And what, what I'd written down earlier was the idea that you've got this, um, You've got a thing of value that's being ruined by some other bad experience that isn't, it's not like the thing itself is conflicted. It's, it's an external to the thing that is causing the disruption. Yes. And my next question to you in that regard, so I like to, we're still kind of in the very beginning in the way, even though, even if it was all happening at once, but that's my, my question is, did you have a period of time where you were able to just enjoy it and breathe or was that pressure and din immediate? It was from the beginning.

it was all happening at once. It was, it was always, it was always there from the beginning. It's just it would increase, like the crowd noise and, and my biological mother's voice and the pressure, the visceral experience of the pressure. They were always there, but they would increase and increase and increase. Okay. As soon as from the time the dream started, it would just crescendo. That was the, wow, speaking of psychic connection was going to say like a crescendo.

Yeah, bam. And then that, you know, when it got. to a certain intensity, you're like, Ripcourt, I'm out. It woke you, woke you up. Yeah. Yeah. It would just be too much. It would just be too much because, I mean, it was, the noise was a lot, but it was the feeling of the pressure. That was too much. That, that, that would be the thing. That, that would be the thing that, that woke me up. Yeah. And you described it as a pressure on your head specifically or, or pressing in on your body? It felt like, um, I noticed, noticed it most on my head. My, my head was the thing. It just felt like,

Like it was all, not from within my head, but from outside of my head. Like the pressure was just increasing and increasing and closing in and closing in. There's a lot of ways to go with that too. I mean, it's not your experience that you woke up and you had a stuff he knows. I mean, it would be a very obvious, a sign of pressure, you know, type of thing. That happens a lot, too. It's hard to discount, and we shouldn't. the possibility of external forces.

One dream a guy had was he had a dream that a giant kind of giant insect landed on him and took a bite out of his hand, like a lobster insect looking thing. And when he woke up, he had a mosquito bite in the same place. So this tiny mosquito bite. No, I... Yeah, no, no. So...

That was not my experience. Yes, yes, exactly. But that kind of thing can happen. So I try to remind myself, too. There's, but, but this is, um,

then again, this is in the, the recurring dream, a range of experiences where a one-off physical sensation is not going to, not going to cause that necessarily. Unless it's a chronic condition, I wanted to rule that out in terms of, you know,

you weren't having chronic sinus infections or at this time. Um, not, not to your knowledge. So fair enough. So it was definitely more of a conceptual thing translated into a, physical experience in the dream. Um, it's an interesting concept, the idea of pressure because we, we, what, what may have been

translated into a physical sensation could have been, it, it likely was a representation of a metaphorical pressure from the outside. And that could have been a pressure caused by a lot of different things. But when you think of pressures on you at that age, uh, things you were, I don't know how to describe it any better. I mean, when you think about pressure at that age, what could it mean to you? I mean, to me, the pressure and the noise, to me, those were really obviously like metaphors of being in an abusive environment. Like, it was, you know, it felt terrible. And it, you know, and I mean it was increasingly clear that I was very.

very, very unsafe and that it was a bad place to be. Like it was, you know, it was increasingly very clear. So to me, the pressure, you know, the pressure and the sound, to me are kind of obvious connections to just being a really unpleasant environment. Yeah, definitely. And if that's what you have, if that's the understanding you've come to upon reflection over over the years, that's probably, I mean, I would never gain say it. I would never say, no, I don't think that's it. I think you're wrong. I would go.

Let's go with that. And yeah, that's, um, so it's looking like at this type of, if we try and bring it all together and try and try and draw a little bit of a narrative about it, it's like you've got, you've got this recurrent experience of your life itself where there's so many beautiful things you could enjoy. And it's kind of been distilled in this representation of, you know, of, of, of, of the pillars and the platform in the skies. There's also in it in since the earliest stories we hear as a kid and then maybe just in

human experience in general, the idea of things in the sky being elevated, being important, being better, what is above versus what's down down on the ground, looking to the heavens, et cetera, all these metaphors, you know, I'm moving up in the world. We think of up as good. So having something beautiful in the sky that is that it is self-contained in that way. It's like this is this is a representation of something important. It's such that when I look at it, I feel a sense of beauty and calm and peace. And I just can't, I just can't enjoy it.

I just can't dedicate my focus to that. I've prepared myself. I've brought myself in this upright posture facing towards what I want to embrace. And I'm driven away from it by this noise, the intensity of the noise and pressure. It's starting to feel like that, that kind of a thing of like is like, why is. Yeah. Why is my ability to experience life as beautiful being destroyed? Why is this happening to me?

What's going on here? I'm going to stop there for just a second. And you go ahead. Yeah. I mean, I do think that makes a lot of sense. Because to me, like I said, the noise and the pressure to me is always so very obvious about what that was. But it was more the floating stone structure. But in talking about it, you know, I do see a lot.

of how I think that, you know, it was that, you know, there was so much beauty that I, that I, that I experienced apart from, you know, apart from my actual family of origin, just in the world. Like, I loved looking up at the sky. I thought it was beautiful. I loved nature. I loved, you know, the feel of the wind. I absolutely loved the feel of the wind. I loved the smell of the trees in the fall.

I loved the smell of grass. I loved flowers. Like, there were so many beautiful things. and I really liked looking at the oras. I thought they were really pretty. I thought they were really cool because I like looking at how they moved so organically. And, but, you know, there,

that wasn't my daily lived reality because, you know, no matter what I did, I still had to be in a very unsafe environment. And being, you know, it's funny. So there was something you mentioned earlier, and maybe it'll come back to me what it was, but what it kind of twigged for me was a memory of the fact that

in the past decade or so, maybe past 15 years, as I've deconstructed a lot of the beliefs that I had or just let go of some ideas that I thought that I had

to hang on to and just allowed allowed my experience to guide me and really leaned more into my intuition and leaned more into my spiritual practice without worrying anymore what people thought. As soon as I did that, I started having a much more vibrant dream life again. So, you know, that's why these days, you know, I regularly have dreams and I'm regularly aware that I'm dreaming while I'm dreaming.

They do tend to be very cinematic. But I do think that it probably does speak to the fact that you know, probably a part of me was like, you know what? It's not safe for us to be this open. Because when you are,

when you're in a place of taking in nature, when you're looking at you're absorbing right like when when you're when you know I'm out in the woods and I hope to be able to be able to do that again someday if I can um get my get my health back um you're absorbing right you're you're taking in you're looking you're smelling you're listening you're you're feeling it's a lot of absorption but where you know that environment living environment was so toxic it was so unhealthy it was so damaging it was dangerous and you don't want to absorb any more of death than you have to so it's almost like you know and it makes me actually think of the the moses thing and like why would you smash this precious thing well you did that so you know this is just the reality and so i wonder if there were elements of um because yeah by the time that i stopped having that dream i had like shut down a lot of my like i shut down most of my spiritual stuff i could no longer see you oras on anything.

I was actually then became quite afraid of nature. And I still, I could still feel spiritually. I still felt that there was, you know, like spiritual world out there. But it was mostly shut down. So I wonder if it was just a process of self-protection of we can't stay in this super open, absorbing state. even though there's so much beauty, you know, because it is so dangerous and because it's not actually safe to do so.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That was going to be the kind of coming to the end-ish-ish question was, okay, now, what caused this dream to stop? Because it happened for a period of time. Now, usually if I'm dealing with a current set of recurring dreams and we talk about it, I've had people feedback of the dream stopped. We talked about it enough that I understand what it was. What I the missing piece was supplied that I don't need to think about it anymore.

It's puzzle solved. Or the nature of the dream changes. But we're, okay, so we're reflecting back on things. So it is interesting that, I mean, not interesting, but it is assumed in my mind that there will be a resolution. There's some reason the dream stopped being necessary or stopped representing a current experience. And it's very often because that experience changed. or the concept you were considering has been resolved into a more complete understanding. And it sounds like what you did is you resolved the conflict of reaching for something you couldn't have because it was being interrupted.

You're like, well, I'm just going to stop reaching. I'm going to stop imagining I'm in this beautiful place. And that's one way to resolve a fight, flight or freeze in that sense. you know, what you did was basically withdraw from the desire for the, for the beautiful, peaceful thing saying that's not possible. Yeah. I'm just going to accept that's not possible right now. Sometimes accepting a bad situation.

Which is really sad if you think about it. Yeah. It is. But I mean, I will say though, you know, I mean, it, yes, it, it sounds like it resolved because that part of my brain just like it shut off that, that part out of protection. But you know what? I'm, I'm grateful, though, to that part of my. brain because the fact is I'm still here. A lot of people who went through, you know, and we

haven't gone into all the things I've been through, but a lot of people who've been through what I've been through wouldn't still be here. And, and yet I am. And, you know, I think that my mind, my mind protected me and I'm grateful to all the parts of me who did protect me in that era. And I'm also grateful to now be in the space that I'm in where I'm not shut down. I I can't, I haven't gotten back my ability to see physical oras, but my spiritual practice these days and my connection to my own intuition feels much stronger and such to the point that regardless of the situation that I'm in, I now feel I can actually listen to all aspects of myself, right? And for some people, they might see that as, you know, maybe their higher wisdom or maybe it's, it is your intuition, maybe it's your mind as a super processor. I think it's probably a combination of all of these things. And, you know, I, these are things that I access in all parts of my life, right?

And, you know, and so to me, even though it's, it is sad, you know, I feel sad for, you know, the little me who had to give up all that beauty, but I didn't, I didn't lose it forever. Yeah. I just had to give it up for a while to get me through, you know, know, maybe not safely, but I got through in one piece. And, you know, when I've spent the past decades healing from all that, and now I am in a place where overall I am at peace and I have my beautiful spiritual connection. I always look up at the sky. I'm always looking up at the sky. And, you know, and I'm so grateful for the spiritual connection and, you know, and beliefs that

I now have. For sure. I just, you know, I actually said to someone the other day that I'm now, I'm back to feeling the way that I felt back when I was a little kid feeling wonder in nature. I'm actually back to feeling like that again, except these days I'm in a completely safe environment. That is good. Yeah. And it's also, you know, it's as tragic as it is, it's also a very functional, practical coping skill we do to sometimes like you can feel you sometimes you only have two choices I can feel intense suffering for a desire I cannot satisfy or I can just put the desire on hold and get through a bad situation and maybe pick it up again later on and some people never pick it up again it gets killed off in them

for one reason or another but it can be if you can't have something if it's impossible for a moment you put a pin in it you don't obsess over it actually obsessing over it might be the worst thing to do because you just suffer needlessly like I'll do it's a little bit. with that later. You know, sometimes it's what you got to do. It's a very practical thing to stop that. And so it seems like you reached a point in your mind where you're like, I need to let go of this at least for now. And maybe even at the time you thought it was permanent. Maybe this, this is closing a door forever. But then you look back on it and said, maybe not. Maybe it doesn't have to be this way forever. Now I'm in a better place. I can, I can pick up the, I can finally reach for

what I, what I wanted and needed all along in a more, in an environment. where it is now practical, now possible. Hopefully that's... Yes. Yeah. Yes. And I mean, I will say, you know, I am as much as I, you know, as my mind to protect me, put a pin in some of my abilities, I never, I will say that I never, ever lost my connection

to a feeling of, you know, some people might call it God, you know, to me it's to the universe. I never actually lost that connection and it was actually one of the one of the key things when I really began to deconstruct and reconsider what I actually believed was that the the loving sense of the universe that I'd always experienced was nothing like um what was uh what had been taught to me externally and what had been kind of enforced on me externally that was never my personal experience. And so that was what, you know, because that never went away. That were remained with me even after, you know, after I shut other things down. But that sense of, you know, well, how can I actually go with what my own experience is, which has always been a sense of, you know,

it has felt so loving. And, you know, that that relationship and it does, you know, feel that way has always felt so loving and so unlike anything that was. externally, you know, enforced on me. And so that's what I leaned into when I began to rethink, well, what do I believe? How about I actually go with what my lived experience has been, which has been that it feels like love. Yeah. That's another fantastic layer of analysis too. And that might actually be the summary of the entire experiences. You've got this natural innate desire to reach out to what you feel as the source of universal love and wonder, all the good things in life. And man, it's just being ruined by this cacophony and this horrible feeling in this bad environment.

It's literally, you know, your desire to love life is being ruined by these people who are behaving badly and causing you stress and pressure on you to do and be and all kinds of stuff and loud voices and yackety yak and angry words. And, and again, that goes, that's your personal experience and the universal human experience of this is something we do to each other. Like if I'm just out here enjoying nature and what this guy comes along and he's like, can't stand there. You can't do that? Screw you, man. Or I got, I got opinions. And it's like, can you just not be a jerk?

Can we? I was having a good time. So there's that, there's that layer of things too. That might have been the entire experience. Like I just, why am I being denied the ability to just enjoy life by these people who are dumb and been, and been treating me poorly? So hopefully, I mean, I don't know. What do you think?

Do you think we got a better understanding? No, I do. I do. Yeah, I do feel like we actually figured it out. And it actually feels good. It feels like, yes, that actually really resonates. And thank you for that. Because, you know, it's been something that I've thought on and off about for a long time because I never, I never got an answer. And by the way, I did at one point as a child ask my biological father, you know, I just explained. I've been having this repeating dream and it's this nightmare and and uh his answer was that i was watching too much tv by the way i was barely watching any tv in that era so uh yeah so it was uh very nuanced

thinking as you can tell and i didn't quite it was like no i don't think this is about tv um but uh you know no this has been this has been very uh illuminating and helpful and um and uh it feels very aligned for me very nice well that's that's the best for me when we uh you know when i can do something anything useful helpful towards building that that understanding and and you know my guest comes to a place where they're like that actually makes sense and this whole experience feels feels good i doesn't get any better for me i love that so i can only say thank you to you for being willing to come and share the experience so we could have that happen for both of us. So, yeah.

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much again for having me. Yeah, yeah, good deal. Well, we'll go ahead and wrap it up here. I've got my notes to read out here. Let's just say, by way of parting. Once again, this has been our friend Maliumir Logan from Ontario, Canada, or east of Ontario. She's an intersectional polymath with an entrepreneurial spirit.

You can find her at acorn and burdock. CA, that link is in the description, of course. For my part, would you kindly like share, subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers, viewers for the video game streams. 17 currently available works of historical dream literature, the most recent. Can't remember the fabric of dreams by Catherine Taylor Craig. Of course, all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, including downloadable MP3 versions of this very podcast.

Also head on over to Benjamin the Dreamwizard.locals.com, trying to build a community there, free to join. You can give me money or not. It doesn't matter. Um, I'd just love to have you. And, uh, yeah, Malamere, thanks again. This has been a great talk. Thank you so much for having me.

And everybody out there, thanks for watching.