Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 180: Fathom & Flow

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

Rudy Daniel ~ https://affirmate.app/

Greetings friends and welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have our guest dreamer Rudy Daniel. He is an author, philosopher, and entrepreneur in the mindfulness space. That's my wife putting one of the cats in. I just let her out. Anyway, he's also the author of the book Behind the Mask, Beyond the Mind. You can find him or his product at Affirmate. And that link, of course, will be in the description below.

we're going to get right back to him in two seconds for my part. Would you kindly like, share, and subscribe. Tell your friends right now, I want more Dreamers. Sometimes I don't have an episode because nobody contacts me. So you can reach out across a bunch of different social media at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com on the contact page. I also stream video games Monday through Friday, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific, roughly. Most days of the week, always starting a new game. We're continuing a game on Monday, so you can find me there. This episode brought to you in part by ABC, Book 11. It is the Psychology of Dreams by Dr. William Sebastian Walsh. He penned this work in 1920.

It created for the edification of both the curious layman and the scholarly adept. Yes, I'm reading from my own notes on the book. 285 footnotes, 454 pages. That's a hell of a book. We're going to get that off the screen here. Of course, you can find all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, including downloadable MP3 versions of this very podcast and encyclopedia. cocktail recipes, all kinds of good stuff.

Also, if you'd head on over to Benjamin the Dream Wizard. Dot Locals.com, it's free to join attached to my Rumble account, trying to build a community there. Another great place to reach out to me if you have a dream to share. And I think I did that faster than I've ever done it in my life. I'm kind of on today. Rudy, thank you for hanging in there through my shilling. It's good to have you.

What a great intro. Hey, Ben. Nice to be here. Thank you very much. Good deal. Well, there's so many different places to start. But we can just, usually if a guest has a book, then we just jump right in. I mean, what's the book?

And then that opens the door to all kinds of conversations. So we can start there if you'd like. Sure. So the book is called Behind the Mask Beyond the Mind, Discover Who You Really Are. And it's my first book. It's a book that it's a philosophical book, but it's rather, you know, it's an easy read. It's a sort of a dialogue between me and the reader in which I pose questions to the reader. Instead of trying to build another doctrine or a belief system in something,

my quest in searching for understanding of reality and understanding of the self is emphasized throughout this book, which represent my personal journey in the past 40 years from a child, throughout adolescence and adulthood. And basically it's for anyone who is looking, it has this urge, this fire within, of exploring the deeper questions of life and trying to understand our role here

and what is the universe and what is the nature of reality. So yeah. That sounds like me, basically. I've been doing that all my life. I'm like, what is going on here? I'm trying to make sense things. I think most people do, but not, not everyone does, not everyone digs as deep. I mean, some people are content with, with more simple answers. And a lot of those work. And, uh, a lot of

them don't. So it's, it's a tough, it's a tough call sometimes. Just get another cat visitor there to say, to say which, but I've always been, personally dissatisfied with, like, superficial answers. I'm like, is that really? Is that really the way it is? So I always dig a little bit. It's left me feeling crazy at that points in my life where I'm, I'm like, you know, I can't figure this out. And some people go, just don't worry about it. I'm like, I have to. I think there's something biological in some folks that are driven to understand things a little bit deeper.

Yeah, I think that you have a lot of difference in sort of minds that people have. Some minds are really pulled towards this. inquiry or this investigation. For me, I have a very analytical mind. I like to think logically, and this is why when I was growing up when I tackled these questions, the tools that I had were mostly theological tools or mythological tools or scientific tools. But because of the nature of the mind, I was trying to explore further and deepen the questions within those, frameworks and none of them was satisfying.

And this is why this sort of investigation was very interesting for me. But now when I look back, I understand that for most people, it's not the case. And I used to call these people intellectually lazy people, the people who are not investigating their own nature, which seemed absurd to me. But now I understand that this sort of investigation

is not for everyone and therefore what I suggest and what we suggest in our venture in our mindfulness at me and my co-founder we think that the way to see the profoundness in life is not necessarily throughout beliefs or throughout following certain doctrines or through other methods but in a very easy way that we call it mindful living. And now I can see that a very short daily practice like following your breath or drinking your coffee mindfully. And if you want, we can explore that further. Could eventually open a sort of crack in reality.

And through this crack, you can see the profoundness of the thing itself. So if we're trying to intellectual, actually investigate the world. We are doing it through words. And words are obviously limited. And words are not reality. But when we are just in reality, we can see it is for what it is.

And therefore, the experience itself of mindfulness is the experience of true reality. And everyone can do it, and it's really easy. And if I have to use the metaphor, it's like if you have a really good, analytical mind, they can talk to you for hours as a musician about a very complex musical theme that I like or a song, but it would be nothing in comparison to the experience of listening to this song. So the experience of listening would be much more than the experience of hearing about it. As we say, an image worth 1,000 words.

So in this case, an experience worth millions and billions of words. Absolutely. So after I've been through this journey, I can certainly say that for most minds, especially in the West, in the West, mindfulness is the way. And this is what I like to promote and raise awareness about. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And it's one of those things, too, where I don't ever want to give the impression that I think I'm better than someone because I'm deeply curious about specific things. I mean, not everyone's

going to be doing. This is why I said, I think it's at least partly biological, is like, why am I interested in what I'm interested in? Hell if I know. I just am. And so that took me in a particular direction, which was very, say, deep into my own mind. And there's other people that are more focused on getting deep into a more tangible, tangible thing. So there's people that are just absolutely genius with their hands in a way that I will never be. and maybe I'm different from them that I'm, I hesitate to say absolutely genius with my brain, but I'm just going to think differently

and pursue different talents. And I don't think I ever had a physical aptitude in that way. Lots of things I can learn to do, but just the innate desire to go in that direction. So, you know, but I think what crosses the bridge between the two of them is a mindfulness thing. That is something both types of people can take advantage of. if you are deeply intellectually curious and you're doing a lot of brain work,

you still want to be paying attention for cognitive errors, for different things that, you know, for your own bias, your blindness, your preconceived notions and beliefs that might, you know, you want to be aware of really sitting with, you mentioned mythology,

really sit with those ideas and like, is this just a story about, you know, talking fox who couldn't get at some grapes? Or is this a, about something else. Is this about, you know, what Freud would call

denial. Well, I didn't want it anyway. It must not be any good. You know, that kind of a thing. And the same way with people that work with their hands. If you're working with your hands, you want to be very mindful and present with the craft, with what you're doing.

And so I think you can help people, people both ways. A lot of people don't practice that. They get, they let themselves get distracted and the quality of their work suffers. And it's not just work, quality of your life. I mean, you've got to kind of be at least, curious about how does how do my relationships work and how how am i approaching my my ability to

sustain myself through employment that the type of thing you know there's i mean myvelness really goes everywhere i'll stop there i'm sure you have more to say yeah you're absolutely right and i think that maybe to make it even easier my approach is very radical and it's very radical but from the point of view that it's very easy when people usually think of mindfulness they think of meditation as some sort of synonymous term, but it isn't. Meditation is a practice that its origins are from the East and from the Eastern culture. It's a tradition that's been succeeded throughout thousands of years.

So when we imported meditation to the West, we didn't have the cultural context or background for what it is. And when we are trying to meditate, which is basically closing your eyes, traditional meditation, and trying to think of nothing, or trying to quiet the mind, or trying to resist the mind. And of course, if you don't have all the cultural context and background and understanding of what meditation is, it will be a disaster for you. And most of people that try to meditate, even for 10 minutes, soon realize that most of the meditation, they are busy understanding if their leg is itchy or is it hot or is it cold or are they doing

the meditation right and this is what what they call meditation fatigue. So mindfulness is a whole different thing. What I suggest is when you are doing something, it could be anything really. It could be, you know, your favorite thing like petting your cat or it could be cooking or it could be drinking coffee, do it mindfully. And when I say, do it mindfully, I mean be fully invested in the process that you're doing,

just like you said. If you're a craftsman, you're working with your hands, you're fully invested in your art. For me, as an example, I play the guitar. I used to play the guitar professionally. Now we do it as a hobby.

But nonetheless, when I'm playing the guitar, if I'm thinking about the next, or if I'm thinking about tomorrow's problems or if I'm thinking about anything else besides being in the presence of playing the guitar, it doesn't sound that good. But if I'm totally immersed in the music and I'm fully aware that now I'm playing music, there's a lot of novelty that comes from this experience and a lot of creative processes that you see from artists, from musicians, come from this place of full awareness. Now, this is something that you cannot explain by using words.

You can just point at the phenomena. You can point at the experience, but it is there. So I suggest to anyone, just take some ritual you love, like even drinking, and just be so invested, so immersed in the process of your body when you are drinking and following the liquid inside your body and feeling all the movements of your muscles some magic happens during this process which is ineffable you cannot you cannot entertain it in words a satisfactory level so i just invite people just try just just find your shtick just find something that you like and and try it just be

fully immersed fully invested and you will see is just a short practice and it's not a It's not a quantity thing. It's really a quality thing. So when you get a grasp on what it is, it could happen in seconds. You don't need to wait for 10 minutes or half an hour. It's not something rigid. It doesn't require any effort. Therefore, there is no reason for someone to skip this idea and say, well, it's kind of a philosophical idea.

that maybe I'll entertain someday. No, you can do it literally now. You can do it tomorrow morning when you're drinking your coffee. And just see, you know, just experiment with yourself. Yeah, I think that's a very good. Yeah, it's a very good point to say that, especially in the West, we get the idea of mindfulness confused with the concept of meditation or as if they were synonymous.

And there's, there's truth to that, but, you know, what am I trying to say? There's truth that it is you can develop mindfulness through practicing meditation, but they are not synonymous. And what the clinicians do a lot is try to get people who are emotionally dysregulated in one way or another. And it can be personality disorder-wise or it can be anxiety conditions. And meditative practice in that regard can involve mindfulness can involve a meditative practice. element where you're trying to say, okay, when you're having anxiety, sit quietly and feel your body as a means to dissipate that energy or ground you. So there's a lot of great ways that mindfulness can be beneficial, but it is not limited to that sphere. That's like a nested Zen

Venn diagram type of thing. Really, when I talk to a lot of mindfulness folks, and I'm spoken to some, we get into discussions of flow state or, what athletes would call being in the zone. And it's like that, that almost seems like when, when mindfulness becomes effortless, you are so in the experience. And I've had this, just a sweet couple of times in my life where it almost feels like you are watching your body respond. You're not even thinking it's just happening. And you're almost blown away by your own performance. And athletes describe this too. It's like, it wasn't even me. I just, it just happened. And I think anyone can,

And what is it? Getting into mindfulness practice or exploring that, that realm can increase the probability that those flow states and being in the zone happens more naturally and more often for folks. Now, why has it happened so infrequently for me? Well, I've got a scattered brain. Just, I sit still. A great example. So I played drums for years. He played guitar. And I played a little guitar myself, but, you know, by no means an expert. And I would be in the music, but just at a random moment, my brain goes, hey, what about 500 other things that we're not thinking about? And I drop the beat. And I lose my, I lose my place. I forget how to do what I'm doing. And it's, it's, I've got a bit of a natural barrier to that. But I do, just to be able to wrap it up, I suppose,

this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, I get flow states when I've talked about one of the books I've got, um, I'm editing. Um, I'm editing a one now and it's just I'm just reading words on a screen and I'm doing, you know, I'm fixing the text and the formatting. There's just this, there's just this whole experience to it where you have to be present and you have to focus and sometimes it takes an effort. But then after a while, it becomes, what is meditation supposed to produce? It's supposed to produce a no mind state where you're no longer thinking about what you're doing. You're just doing it. And you don't have to, concert. So, so I get it. I get it in that, in that way, in ways that.

that I can't access in other realms. So probably each individual is going to be needing to develop their own method using tips and tricks. It's like, well, how do I get started? And then of course, you got a book for that. And if I can, maybe, respectfully, I just want to share an advice with you. I hear what you're saying.

And I have a mind that is very similar to yours. I believe in this regard. So from my experience, I would say that it is absolutely okay that your mind wonders because you have a lot of years of training your mind in a certain way and the way you train your mind is the way everyone trains their mind, mostly in thinking and perceiving. So when you're trained thinking and perceiving, it's no surprise that your mind will act on these structures that it has, all this accumulated experience. So the way to go about it is not try to force your mind to change because it's impossible.

The only way that you can do it is pay more attention to the immediate moment. So when you have this experience of your mind wonders, it's okay. And the moment you can snap out of it and return back to being aware of the present moment, just do it. And don't judge the experience of your mind jumping from one theme to another because it's absolutely And this is why people struggle with meditation so much, because when they're trying to think of nothing, we soon find out that it's impossible. Yeah, right. You build on thinking and perceiving. And this is what you are trained to do throughout your life.

So how will you make it stop? If we could control our minds, we would have a beautiful life. We would say, I want to just have beautiful thoughts. I want to have sweet thoughts. And then your life would be perfect. but obviously this is not the case and your mind is far more, let's say, smarter than what you can perceive as the thinker. Your mind is much more powerful and it can produce all these thoughts, even negative thoughts about yourself. But it's not about fighting the mind, it's about realizing that this is the way you have been brought up,

This is the way your mind has been conditioned and it's okay. And every time it wanders, when you snap back, just bring your awareness to the present moment. And with time, when you're conditioning this sort of practice, with time, it will take over. Just like music, you know, when you started playing the drums, remember what a terrible experience is in the beginning. You know, you're offbeat all the time and you're trying to understand the rhythm. your hands feel so heavy and you're getting tired after two minutes. But after you had some experience and your mind has realized that you can actually do these things that you want to do,

it all comes naturally and then you tune into the flow state as you describe. And this is this sort of experience of flow comes with the practice of conditioning the mind to a new sort of pattern. And it happens with artists, with musicians, with everything. athletes and with, you know, any kind of mind activity that you commit to. Absolutely. Well, I'm sure we both have unlimited amounts of stuff to say about how that all works. But we're probably about 20 minutes in now, and I know we're trying to keep the episode length under control.

So I did want to shift gears a little bit to, you'd mention that you have some of your own theories about dreams or unique perspective you wanted to share on that. just on the theoretical side before we get into the interpretation portion. Sure, sure. But I do warn you that I entertain these kind of topics sometimes on a very deep level. So, you know, without some context, it will be maybe difficult for some listeners to understand. So I will try to simplify. I'll try to simplify my views.

and if you want to dig deeper, you're welcome. So I think that dreams are a very good clue about the nature of reality. And what I mean by that is everyone dreams. So it's a phenomenon that is worldwide. It's spread among the human species and even animal species. And it's kind of weird that we have these parallel realities that we experience every day. And then we wake up. you know, act as if nothing happened.

It's kind of funny. So when I think about dreams and what it has in common with the nature of reality, at least from my perspective, is my notion of reality that this is a mental world, what we are experiencing right now. Scientists would say that this is a material world, but when they're looking for the matter in stuff, they can't find it. So dreams gives us a very good clue about how a mental world could appear as a physical world. Because obviously when you dream, you have tangible items.

You have buildings, you have even people. You have different people with different personas. And you have heat and you have cold and you have everything you have in this world, but more it's a bit different it's not as rigid yes your your dream is flowing but in essence you can see

that when you wake up from the dream state you soon enough understand that all the experiences that you had during the dream or the activities of your mind so you were never in a different place and in a different time, you were in your bed. You realize that when you wake up. So you understand that the nature of consciousness is, at least one of the virtues of consciousness,

is to play sort of hide-and-seek game to say, well, I will appear as multiplicities. I will appear as different things. and then what consciousness does is locates itself within a body and a mind in the dream world. So in the dream world, most of the time you are a body and a mind. Sometimes you are not, but a lot of time you are. So there is a way for consciousness to localize itself within a world that it is the consciousness itself. The dream, you might say, is the mental activity of your mind.

of or of consciousness, never mind the terminology right now, but the dream world is one, is from one origin. It is the activity of your mind. And within this activity, there is an ability of your mind or consciousness to localize itself and pose as the dreamer. And then you have yourself as the dreamer, and you have all the others as something else, not you. And when you wake up, you realize, oh, all those things are really me.

It's the activity of my mind. There were no multiplicities and diversities. It just one thing. It was an activity that appeared to be as multiplicities and diversities. So it was a very shocking discovery for me when I was thinking about it. And I said, well, we can obviously see that a mental activity could be transformed to something physical, you can see a rock in a dream, but you never see in a rock transforming to something mental. You never see the other side of that. And so for that reason, I feel the dreams are a very good

clue or what consciousness could be or what the nature of reality could be. And it surely supports the evidence that we can be right now in a dream or in a mental world, not a physical or just a world that appears physical, but it is mental. Yeah. Oh, so much good. It's so much good stuff to respond to in there. And I mean, I'm right with you on almost all of it. What, oh, what am I trying to say?

What came to my mind, as you were describing that, is the kind of Eastern or specifically Hindu perception or assertion through the Bhagavagata that actually reality itself is a dream in the mind of, God. It's like that that's what's happening here. We are we are the we're just we're just reality itself is a dream. Now as the participants we feel that it is real but there's an interesting thing that happens. There's so many psychological principles come together as well so I'll start with the idea that when they did functional MRI testing where we can get a live view of of brain activity.

on diagnosed schizophrenics who say they hear voices. They put them in the MRI and they say, okay, just put your finger up when you're hearing voices. And every time they indicated I'm hearing voices, the functional MRI showed the auditory processing center of the brain lighting up. So when they say they hear voices, it's indistinguishable from the phenomenon where a physical stimuli rattles, you know, sends airwaves, rattles the eardrum, and then that electrical signal gets carried to the brain. And how do we process it in the auditory processing center?

So if that gets triggered on its own, there's no way to tell the difference between this is physical reality. So that gets to the idea that we are what consciousness is or what we are, you know, I tend to believe in a soul, even though I'm not a specific denomination of any particular religion. I'm kind of a deist in that way of like, I think there's a God. I think God made nature. I think we can understand, you know, because I didn't. Something above me must have created all this. So that's where I come from on that.

And that the only tool we have to perceive the so-called physical world around us is our brains. And if they process accurately, properly, and that's what we consider mental disorders, is when they deviate from accuracy of perception and judgment or logical connections. And then we get a variety of different disorders. So there's, you know, then that, okay, all that to say, to bring me around to the idea of the philosophical question of what if I'm just a brain and a vat? I'm sure you've come across that one before. Like, how would we be able to tell the difference if we're getting all the same

signals that are telling us there's a physical world out there, but none of it's actually happening? And then that, that brain and of that concept is kind of what happens when we're in the dream state is now we are just a brain in its own environment with no input. That's true and not true, but for the sake of simplicity. experiencing things, experiencing whole alternative lives in other worlds that seem to go on for centuries. People have reported those phenomenon. So it's all beautifully connected, I think, too.

You know, it's all these. I'll stop right there. And you probably got some feedback on those concepts. Yeah. And you said that people that hear voices that you can see in the MRI machine, the indication for that. But I would say that that's no surprise. because when you're dreaming, you can absolutely see and hear, but you don't use your eyes or ears.

So the phenomena of hearing and the phenomena of seeing is not necessarily a function of the eyes and a function of the ears. It's just the way we understand how we see and how we hear. And when you said that God created all of us because you certainly didn't, well, I can challenge you on that and say, well, when you're dreaming, you also feel the same. You feel that this is you and this is the world, but when you wake up, you realize that the world was you. So that's a thought for you to sit with some time. Yeah, I've actually had thoughts very similar to that, too.

It's like, what is, well, because I don't follow a particular religious tradition. You know, I have a great appreciation for the Bible, an old and New Testament. I'm getting lately into, because of one of the new works I'm editing, becoming a little more familiar with the Quran. But I've always been a big fan of ancient mythologies, you know, Greeks and, and whatnot. But also different tribal perspectives on these things and Eastern philosophical approaches, both Hindu and, say, Buddhist. Long story short, I've had my, so what I tend to think is most likely is that we are,

and this is like deep belief type of stuff where it's like can i prove it no it's just you know i've thought thought about it this is what seems most likely to me that um there's no conflict between the idea of you know god said let there be light and the big bang i'm like the big bang was probably a very bright light so there's a there's an entire um there's no conflict in my mind between yes humans were produced by evolution and thus created by god i don't see any conflict in that whatsoever but also the idea of like what are we what is the soul and i think of it like you know in the beginning everything was the singularity before the big bang and the singularity was god in the void just like the just like the bible says i mean this this old ancient um explanation of of you know what was the fundamental

nature of reality goes back to this this original thing and then what uh god did in my estimation is fill the void with himself i mean he was the only thing there everything is of the substance of god But when you say that, like the world is God, people go, what do you worship the earth? No, no, no, it's not like that. The earth is one planet. We're talking about everything, the universe. So in a sense, what I believe, you know, what I think is most likely, we are living in the body of God, the physical body in that sense. I think the Hindu tradition is right.

We are the dream of God. What's happening here is that that's the easy, one of the best ways to conceptualize it. But what is the soul? I think whatever, you know, spiritual substance God is made of, he also, he also, fractured off pieces of himself. We are all tiny sparks of the soul of God and that what happens when we die is we go back to the one. And so this is mixing a lot of different philosophical and religious traditions.

Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Absolutely. Yeah. And I would also say that I don't subscribe to any religion and I don't believe in any gods. The only thing that I do is basing my knowledge on self-experience and experiments that I do with the philosophy that I entertain.

So everything that I say is true for my own experience. And I always urge people, do not take my word for it and do not take anyone's word for it. If something, you're basing your idea of life on ideas of someone else, you're fooling yourself. Because the other side of belief is doubt. It's two things that arise mutually. It is the concept of duality.

It's like good and bad arise mutually, high and low arise mutually. So if you're believing something, the living is also doubting because you don't know. And I say, well, if you don't know, you didn't ask profound enough questions. So if you ask profound enough questions, you will know eventually. And I don't necessarily, you know, that the Buddhist, not the Buddhist, the Hindu tradition,

is built in a way of a story. You mentioned the Bhagavad Gita, and it's a beautiful story, but what I think that this story is an attempt of very smart people to lay out very profound knowledge that will sustain throughout millennials, and how do you do that?

Because language keeps on changing. So if you're just trying to explain it logically, it will fall away. It will only be good for the academics, for people who are studying in our scholars and stuff like that. And back in the day, most of people couldn't even write or read. So how do you convey so profound messages? You do it through storytelling. So you don't have to take the Bhagavad Gita literally. if you read the Bhagavad Gita and you try to understand the subtleties of the philosophy,

understand the battle of the battle that Arjuna was facing is the battle of each and every one of us. It's something that goes inside our own being. So I don't necessarily also subscribe to the idea of a soul or being something separated from God. If we want to use the word God and it's a sort of representation to the source, as you said, the void, something that is called Shunyata. This is the origin of everything. Well, you can go back to the origin and say if the Big Bang was the origin, so we can treat the Big Bang as God.

But if not, it was something before, let's call it void. So let's say that the void is God and from God, you have all these different vibrations that are keep complexify with time and you see more and more complex forms and eventually the form gets so complex that it evolves a mind and and it thinks it's something individual but nevertheless this is not a part of god this is god there is no there are no parts of god where where would god put his own parts or its own parts there is no place outside of the void. So there is no way to split the void and then cut pieces out of the void and place them

outside of the void. Everything is within the void. So what Hindus believe that all this state of reality, they call it Maya, they call it the illusion, this is the dream of the Brahman or the godhead. And in the Hindu tradition, they don't treat the Brahman as a human entity or an entity at all. It is just an ineffable description of something that you cannot describe. It's like the Zen tradition called it the Tao. There are many different kinds of names for this sort of void. But if this is the origin of everything, therefore, everything that you see in this multiplicity and diversity kind of realm is in essence one, just like in a dream.

Everything appears to be different, but everything is one. So thus, all living beings and non-living beings are not part of God. From my point of view, they are God. Yeah. That's kind of how I conceive it, too, is that it's not, we're not separate from, but we're like a piece of. So, and that's, it's hard to say, say that in a way that doesn't sound like it's been chipped off, but more defined down into a locality.

into a specific into a point it's one point on a on an infinite plane in in more than three dimensions kind of a thing going on there so yeah I don't think of it as separate either but that that gets into well I don't need to go there we're running out of time I we're 40 minutes in so far and I want to I want to get your dream and get you out of here in a timely fashion we probably have to have you back and we'll keep this going I can talk about this stuff all day This is what my brain's doing when when I'm not talking to people. I'm thinking about all these things. It's just nice to get a chance to try and put it, put it into where.

The last thing I will say, though, is narrative stories. I, you can write, you know, a thousand, you can write a hundred, 10,000 page books, trying to describe something. You can tell a story. And that story, we connect with those differently because it, it embodies these principles. Whoa. Something just happened. I think I lost you.

Did the cats do something? Nope. You're back. You're back. Okay, good, good, good. This guy, I keep throwing his little, he's got one of my hair ties. I keep throwing it because he's just all over my notes. He keeps bringing it back.

I don't think I've had a cat that played fetch like this book ever in my life. It's like a book. It's crazy. Yeah. So they did just a book in that. It's like, yeah. And before we were literate. In the written sense, we had oral traditions.

We had stories. And it was all about. community. Like these are the these are the ways we bring meaning to our experience as a group. And so you've got yeah, that great tradition of stories around the campfire. And then eventually we put it in a book. And in some ways, that loses it, loses the experience of it. And we've in some sense, um, broadened out to, what am I going to say? Too many different traditions in contact and conflict with each other around the world where it used to be a little more regional. It's like if you live in this area, this is what we,

believe here and this is how we live and then eventually two different regions but up against each other and it's like oh i don't like what you're doing now we have war now we now we have a conflict of visions that only one can prevail unless we just don't live together which it's a weird thing to say but i think in the world today it would be nice if we were less global less international less connected in terms of of all the conflict and like let's just keep you want to do your thing where you live god bless i don't do that over here i do things differently where I live. And we just leave each other alone is the way I'd like to see it.

But that's not everyone's interested in that. But the scariest thing is that we are all connected, no matter what we do. If we are on the Internet or not, we are one thing. And this is what I think you're absolutely right, that all these divisions that came after the campfires and throughout centuries with different ideas, that basically talks about the same kind of thing, but with different frameworks.

Some of the frameworks are good. Some of the frameworks are very bad. But in essence, they talk about the same thing. And therefore, I think that the cultivation of mindfulness, which would be going back to the oral traditions because it is based on experience. And oral traditions are all based on experience because they are not based on written ideas.

They're just based on experience. If you look at shamanism, they have traditions throughout thousands of years, years and who knows maybe 10 thousands of years 10 tens thousands of years and all been by oral tradition where to mouth father to son etc and and this is the way this is the way to do it so when you have an experience experience is the truth not not the written word so that's why i think that mindfulness would be such a great way to recover connect to this singularity, to this single source of truth, to see the profoundness of life

from a personal experience and not through a belief that maybe one day I will die and go to heaven. And until then, I will suffer and inflict pain on everyone else. So I think that is why it's so important. I think so, too. I think that's a great path. I think it's one of possibly one of the only paths, you know, not to oversell the concept of mindfulness, but in a very practical sense, in, say, psychology, what are we doing in a counseling

session? It's like, well, number one, we want to understand a person's experience. Tell us what happened. And to the best, to the best of your ability, or at least your version of the experience, because that's what you're living with. And then what we try to do is not tell people what they should do or how they should feel or what to think, but like, draw out the truth of the experience and then ask questions that focus that that make them mindful of that experience that bring folk in so that because the first thing to fix a problem you got to know what exists and then you go to acknowledge it and then you can start doing something about it see it clearly for what it is and that's that's all a mindful practice even going into

memory can be mindful of it to bring out um details of things that uh and I think actually what part of what I do in in my and you're going to experience in just a minute here the the dream interpretation thing is bringing a mindfulness focus to that experience. And not just me, like, I'm singularly focused on listening, understanding, getting the truth of your experience, but also you to see yourself and your own experience more clearly. And that's, that's a, it almost becomes a meditative thing.

People like, they start closing their eyes and like, I'm back in the dream. Okay, this is what I see. Like, it's amazing. It's amazing how this works. But speaking of which, so we don't run out of time, uh, you're ready to switch gears. We'll do the, we'll do the dream thing. That's that. Nice.

Let me move. this cat and write get right a timestamp here. Okay, there we go. All right, as per my usual process, I'm going to shut up and listen. Our friend is going to tell me his dream

and we're going to figure it out together. 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 dreamscapes 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 Dreamwizard.com, where you will also find the wizard's growth. catalog of historical dream literature available on Amazon documenting the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past 2,000 years. That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube and at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com.

Okay, so basically there are two dreams I can share, one dream that changed my life. It was three years back and one is more recent. So I think that I just want to start with the older dream because it emphasizes the importance of dreams and how it's connected to a reality and why dreams are something that could be potentially taken seriously and maybe get even more research about. So about three years ago, I had a very vivid dream and in that dream I saw path to mindfulness. And for some reason, I saw an app, and I saw how the whole thing worked. So it was a connection of sounds and lights that are encoded in physical objects through an app phone application. And I saw in the dream how people can be involved in such a practice easily.

Then I woke up in the middle of the night, and I was exploring this dream and thinking, that maybe I could bring it to life. And though and behold, after years so I was sitting on this balcony here behind me with my now co-founder, but back then it was my good friend, Roy, and we were discussing dreams, and I told him about the dream, and he grew excited. And after some time, you know, just ideas back and forth, we have decided to, stop with our careers which were in tech companies and just bring this idea to life. So it's an idea that was shown to me, it was downloaded, if you, some people call it like that.

And I saw it in a dream and now it's a tangible thing. So I brought it from another realm, which is very cool. It is, yeah. And the second dream, it was about a month ago. Um, oh, let me, let me, let me pause there for just two seconds, uh, because we're not going to analyze that one, of course. Not all dreams are amenable to analysis. That one is a very, is a very different kind of thing. It's like, that is a specifically problem solving dream that you came out of it with a crystal clear understanding of exactly what it was. You did your own interpretation. I mean, a lot of dreams are can be like that where the, where the meaning is absolutely very clear and then it doesn't need someone else to, to tell you. Um, So yeah, we would definitely need to do a different one. But you are, you are not alone. There is a grand tradition of people spontaneously having brilliant ideas that

changed the world. And some people who are like one guy, a guy was creating some mechanical thing. And he just could not figure it out. And there's, there's the cat. He's, you got to get down from there. Oh my God. Come on, buddy. And then he went to sleep and the dream showed him the answer.

The answer came to him in a dream. and he popped out of and goes, oh my God, and he wrote this down and it became a thing. I think it was some guy making a spring loaded something or other or some other kind of mechanical device. Many, hundreds, hundreds of stories like that. And honestly, that's my approach to dreams is that they're not just pure fantasy. They're not purely meaningless. They're not a lump of bad cheese sitting in the gut and vapors go into the brain like they used to believe.

They are actual thought process taking place. And they give us real answers. I can't tell you how many times I've not. known an answer to a problem yesterday. I wake up today, problem solved. I don't remember having a dream about it, but something happened in sleep where the problem received an answer. And I think of that is a lot of our, it's what we do in real life when we're trying to think our way through a problem anyway. It's, we put, we focus our attention, mindfully on what we're doing and the outcome we're hoping to achieve and we're looking for a path. And where does inspiration come from? We have no

idea all our fancy technology we can't we can't find the inspiration gene or molecule or or or area of the brain we know kind of where it takes place but we don't know how it just it's magic that i consider that magic and dreams are anyway that's a longer rant than i was going to go go on to but just to say that yeah you are in good company with with some of the you know greatest geniuses of the world of all time getting their answers through dreams um so i'll let you go back and and get into your actual dream or if you have any other comments, that's fine. Stop that. Yeah, I just wanted to emphasize what you said about finding the creativity source.

I would suggest that it's not possible because of a very logical reason. If you could do that, let's say that tomorrow you have found the molecule of creativity, and then everyone is creative, so no one is creative. So when everyone is a genius, that's not a surprise. You know, if everyone was a Mozart or Beethoven or a Bach, there was no joy in listening to music. Everyone would be the same. So the contrast of a genius is the pleasure that we get from a maestro, from craftsmen, from an artist. And this is something that should be never found and never could be found.

I don't think he can. So, yeah. We don't have to worry about that. That is the true magic of the world. It's a technology we're never, I don't think we're ever. going to develop, you know, the best we can do is try to set up the conditions under which inspiration is most likely to occur. And that's still hit and miss. It's still, it might as well be the muses. That's why I love the, uh, the Greek, the Greek conception of so many things. Uh, yes.

Actually, that's, that's another, well, I've got a bunch of books in my head that I want to do. And part of it's going to be, you know, a wizard's guide to Greek mythology. I'm going to get the muses in there and how they were conceptualized. But anyway, um, back to your, um, actual dream you had you say about about a month ago yes about the month ago I do have to say that I have a note that beside my bed and when I have a significant dream I write it down that's the best way they fade really fast yeah actually it's a tip that I got from my co-founder and it's a great tip so when you just wake up you write down what you remember on the dream and then when you read it it's like a trigger and sometimes you see the

different parts of the dream that you even you know you didn't remember right away and it happens to me a lot during the day get these visions from dream I had a month ago two months ago and even years ago but that's a good technique for anyone listens for sure so anyway I had this dream that the dream began in the middle of the ocean and I was looking 360 degrees around me and all I could see is water. So I understood in the immediate moment that I'm in the middle of the ocean. I had no prior knowledge of how I got there. So it came as a bit as a unpleasant surprise. And all of the sudden I could see sharks and sharks are, it's kind of an, you know, an animal that I was

I think I was afraid of most of my life as a child, maybe from movies, or maybe it's something that is unknown. You cannot see the shark until you can see it, and it's too late. So I see these sharks, and in the beginning it's just one shark, and he's approaching me, and I fight it off, and then I can see two sharks, three sharks, and many, many more, and they begin to surround me. And in this moment, I kind of understood that this, this is the end this is the end of my life I'm in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the

sea surrounded by sharks so I accepted my own death and something magical happened when I did accept my own death in the dream I had the inspiration or the motivation to try and survive because I said well I know that it's going to end so I might as well give it a chance, why not? So I began swimming back and every time a shark would approach, I would just try to fight it with my hands. And it was a process of maybe half an hour or one hour fighting the sharks. Eventually I got into a fishing boat and it saved my life and the dream ended.

So it was a very cool dream and when I woke up. I just wrote it down down to remember it. Oh, yeah. That's good. We've got some great imagery there. So what am I thinking as you're going through this thing? I'm trying to see it myself as much as I can. So at first, I imagined you're in a boat and I was going to ask about that.

No, you are in the water. But you don't know how you got there. No. And you are middle of the ocean in the water, meaning there's no land. There's no shore footing is a word that comes to my mind. Oh, that's what I'm worried about. Look at you. Are we still recording?

Go away. Oh, my God. He just can't. We're good. We're good. No land. Yeah, no land everywhere. That's a unique kind of thing.

So we've got, we've got you, we got water, we got sharks, and then we've got the experience of it, which is its own kind of thing. And we've actually got, and then a boat that you're finally able to get into. So if we're identifying, say, the elements of that thing. And you never had a, you experienced this whole dream, like looking out your own eyes, never had a third person view of yourself. Yeah, yeah. Those can be. I mean, I didn't. Go ahead.

I can look at my own body, but I definitely felt like myself. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And that's a good thing to identify as well, because there are dreams that people have where they're looking at themselves in third person. And that can mean different things. But sometimes it's reflecting back on things or stepping outside themselves to look at something. And sometimes it's like, well, this is more dealing with my experience of the thing rather than a distance analysis. So you're in the water and you don't know how you got there.

So. And certainly you can't touch the bottom. This is middle of the ocean deep as well. Yeah. So what we're looking at is not unless you have a unique fear of being trapped out in the ocean, like that actually happened to you or you heard a story and it stuck with you. We're looking at more symbolic level of things. which isn't always the case. Sometimes it's very direct,

but this is more like the idea represented by a drift in the middle of the ocean. The idea represented by the unique dangers of things in that environment, which are well adapted to it in a way that you are not. Like highly dangerous situation, not just floating in the water exposure to the sun and possibly drowning, but like, okay, actual murderous creatures trying to get you. And there's a as you're telling the story, there's also an escalation of the danger. There's like, wait a minute, I'm in the middle of the ocean.

This is a bad scene. Oh, it gets better. The sharks. They attack me one at a time, two at a time, three at a time. You're like, this escalating danger is going to overwhelm me. And then there's that, as you were saying, a moment of acceptance. Well, I guess I'm going to die. Like you saw clearly the truth of.

how bad the situation was. And then suddenly you said, well, I've got nothing to lose by trying to prevail. Worst case scenario, I die. I'm going to die if I give up. It's like there's something in there about the, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. You know, damned if you do, damned if you don't, you might as well do. You know, you might as well give it. You might as well try something because doing nothing is a guaranteed failure.

And there's an interesting thing happening there too as you're executing the do something. swim in any direction. Just just do it. The attacks don't stop, but you find yourself able to deal with them successfully. Not that it isn't scary. So you're probably terrified.

Each time these giant mouths come near you and you got to punch them, it's like you were having a visceral feeling of like, ah, it's going to bite me. There was really a scary dream in that sense. Yeah, yeah, for sure. At the beginning, it was very scary. and when I accepted my death, it turned into sort of more of a game.

You know, each time my mouth approached me, a new way to fight it. And I took it more lightly because I already accepted it, I'm about to die. Gotcha. That is interesting, too, that the, some manner of, in some manner, the act of acceptance gave you a freedom from fear

that made it more game-like. uh, that's, that's a fantastic thing too. It's, I mean, that's definitely principles we try to bring to, to real life if we can.

It's like, yes, this might be, um, highly dangerous or, or, or, our,

risk of death, but, you know, if it's, uh, no, no, no,

no, no, we're all gonna, we're all gonna, we're all gonna die anyway. So sometimes, so you might as well fight in some ways. You might as well,

especially when, you know, the, what am I trying to say, the alternative. is just to die faster. You might as well make them work for it. I mean, there's also an element of fighting back, too.

It's like, if I treat this more like a game, like I'm scoring points, I try to tell people to treat life like a game too. I mean, you want to, you want to level up in terms of your, you want to gain proficiency in training. You put skill points into different things and all of that. So as you treat it more like a game and the attacks keep coming, did the, so initially, the escalation was one shark, two shark, three or whatever. It was getting worse.

How did the attacks change as you were heading for the boat? Were they more consistent and manageable? Were they de-escalating? Were there less and less attacks, the closer you got to safety? How did you experience change? Yeah, what I remember was that in the beginning it was just one shark that was keep keep attacking me and keep coming at me and then it was two then it was three and then um the moment of acceptance came and with the moment of acceptance came much more shark so i think that um in the

end there were like maybe 20 or even 30 and they would come from different angles and all i can remember that i was swimming back but always keeping eye content to see the fins and where they might come from that they was constantly attacking me and I was constantly battling them but with time it became more playful to me as if I was just playing some game obviously it seemed very real to me and I never thought I was dreaming but nevertheless the when the acceptance came the anxiety left me and and I was just treating it as some sort of a game and I wasn't thinking about when I'm going to reach some point because from my point of view, everything

was just water. And when finally my hand went backwards and I touched the boat, the boat and the fisherman pulled me. I don't remember this moment very clearly, but I was saved by a boat, which I didn't see. So it was a total surprise for me, but it was definitely a pleasant surprise

you know, after half an hour of shark attacks. For sure, yeah. So it's looking like, what are we dealing with conceptually? There's being out of your element in some way. There's, you know, and the element, what am I trying to say? If you were on land, you could have a very similar experience, but this is another level. It's like we are not sea creatures. The ocean is, oops, the ocean is.

very dangerous to us, but it's also iconic of unlimited horizons in some ways. It's like dangerous potential. It's some kind of a thing going on there. So if you find yourself in the middle of unlimited potential, there's also going to be great danger there because you are out of your element. There's going to be things there that are, it's almost like the idea of embarking on a new endeavor. You don't know what challenges you're going to find, but you know there will be

challenges. So there's there's a very iconic view of this. You're being trapped, trapped in a way, middle of the ocean, unlimited potential, great danger. And we've become aware of danger a little bit at a time. Like, okay, it's no surprise the danger is represented by sharks in the water. Um, very, very well, well connected there. But then the idea that it, that it escalates and that the, the, the experience of it changes with acceptance. And they're like, okay, This is just going to be dangerous and difficult, and that's the way it is. But I'm not going to give up because surrender is death. And maybe death will get me anyway, but surrender is guaranteed death.

You quit, you're out. Let's say this is maybe regarding some kind of a new endeavor or project to quit is to fail, even if there will be challenges along the way, even if those challenges might be so serious that they are deadly to the process. you're trying to bring, bring forth. So you put your effort into it. And that anxiety of failure dissipates when you accept, yeah, if it happens, it happens. And that actually is good because then you're not wasting, say, emotional energy on something you can't change.

You can't make the danger stop by feeling very anxious about it. Anxiety is only there to focus our attention on the danger. And once we've understood it and accepted it, anxiety is not necessary anymore. So ideally, that's what, that's the purpose it serves. And then we can just let go of it and focus on what we're doing. Also interesting that you showed yourself, even the acceptance, it changes the feeling, makes it more tolerable to view it as a game.

But it doesn't make the challenges stop. They keep coming. And in fact, they get worse. The closer and closer you get to an unknown goal. And there's something very much, I think very important about the idea that you didn't, know the boat was there until you found it. It's like sometimes we don't know how close we are to a goal until we've arrived. We go, oh, I'm finally done. I finally overcome all the challenges and worked hard enough to get where I'm going. But there's always a, even if we have a goal in mind,

there's always a, what am I trying to say? There's an unknown factor of like, how am I actually going to reach that? When have I done enough to satisfy myself that I have succeeded in the way that I envisioned. Yeah, and also, what is it? It's the, part of it sounds to me also like your belief that, faith in yourself in a lot of ways, the idea that, you know, your competence, you're up to the challenge. You can be thrown into over your head, so to speak.

And as long as you keep fighting and keep moving forward, you're going to get there. You're going to have respite at some point. There will be a completion to the project. Okay, I just said a lot. I'm going to stop there. Does any of that resonate with you? Am I on to something or is this way off?

Or what do you think? I think you are very, very accurate because it is truly a representation of a struggle. And I can link it with my personal. struggle as an entrepreneur, you know, we are working on the mindfulness app and when you're working on the startup, it's like the ocean represents the opportunity because with technology you can reach a lot of audience and you can do great stuff. So this is the ocean, but obviously you dive headfirst into the water, but there are dangers there and any project that you take seriously will overwhelm you in the process and there will be a lot of challenges and I feel like this is a way of almost every entrepreneur especially in the startup sphere that feels these kind of feelings that

it's like shark attacks you know that there's an uncertainty you don't see land and and you only see land with great luck so it could be a very accurate interpretation of of the dream with stuff I was dealing with. And I could also see with my life, I experienced that acceptance is liberation, no matter what the circumstances are. Because when you're trying to control, as you said, something that you cannot change,

you're just exhausting yourself, and there's nothing to do about it. The only thing you can control is, is what you can control. And this is the acceptance of the situation. So once I've accepted that death is almost certain and that I have little to know chance, I suddenly had the courage and had the power

and the willpower to fight back and search for safety or search for a way to get out of the situation or overcome the situation. by just moving forward. And this is something you hear a lot when you're entrepreneurial. You just have to keep on going. Don't give up. Or if you're an athlete, or it doesn't matter.

If you're trying to achieve something great, obviously it doesn't come easy to you. And there are a lot of challenges. And if you don't keep moving forward, you will never see the land or you will never see the boat. As you said, you missed 100 shots of the shots. so you don't take. So it absolutely resonates with me.

I think it's a great way to interpret the dream. Very nice. Yeah. And then, you know, once we get to the idea that I'm on to something, at least, because it feels right. And that's, you got to have that zing. I have that feeling where it's like, that actually makes it. Now, I've had people tell me, no, that doesn't feel right at all.

Okay. Square one. Let's go back. So I just either way is fine But I was going somewhere with that Hold on Jesus Oh oh once we get that Zing

Then I start Or recommend looking at What was going on in your life at the time And you actually kind of volunteered that little bit Well a month ago we were deep in the startup stuff Now you could get even more specific and say I had encountered a specific unique challenge that I'd never encountered before and I was, you know, in deep water, so to speak water.

I couldn't see the bottom of where I didn't know where the danger was coming from. I knew it was there. So we can get more specific on that kind of stuff. And then sometimes you can draw more specific understanding from the dream of like, what was it? What was it about that? Oh, stop, stop. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. You're such a little shit.

We're still recording at 90% sure. Hold on. Oh, my God. Yeah, we're good. We're good. These cats. Word of God. He just can't stay off the keyboard.

Oh, my God. Anyway, sometimes then the dream can become even more useful because then you're like, okay, well, what was it telling me about that experience and how to overcome it? And it might have come on the heels. It was my suggestion is it might have come on the heels of an unanticipated respite and an unanticipated relief. Like you didn't know where the road was going to end or you didn't know that there would be a boat,

but there was suddenly. and it lifted you out of the water where you were out of danger, but you're still in the ocean. And that was the other thing I was going to say about the dream too is like, you didn't hit, you didn't wash up on a beach. You didn't get out of the way. You're not actually out of the water.

You're still in the water in this dream. So it had to be, if you were to say, well, Ben, what do you say this, did this dream come to me at the end of the project or in the middle of it? Oh, definitely still. You're still in the middle of it.

You're still in the middle of it. Absolutely. But I don't know if you had any more, more thoughts or, questions on the dream itself or if you feel like we nailed it or yeah yeah i think that that it absolutely represents like you said i'm in the middle um and this is just the middle of the project it's definitely not the end and um yeah i absolutely agree and and i think that maybe it could be a great idea if uh you know i just told you that um this

This dream is related to the mindfulness app that we are building. But maybe I can give your audience a taste of one cool practice that we have in the Affirmate app. Will this be cool? Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm on your time frame. I was going to try and end it soon for your sake. But if you want to give us more, I'm here for it. Yeah.

Yeah, it will just take a minute. So let me just introduce the practice and quickly introduce. the mindfulness app that I'm working with. Me and my co-founders are working on. So the Affirmate app is basically a mindfulness app that emphasizes the philosophy that we were discussing about mindfulness, which is mindfulness should be something that is fun to do, something that you love to do. It doesn't feel like a chore.

It should be engaging. It should be something that you would be able to repeat every day. So we have different and practices on the app and all of them are very novel and something you never see never seen before and i would like to demonstrate one of them so it's called the sound buff so basically everyone knows what soundbuff is and for those who doesn't it is a ritual of usually people lying down and you have a musician with Tibetan balls and gongs and different kinds of ancient and modern instruments It's usually more than one musician because you need many hands to play many different tools.

And it is good for promoting a relaxation, emotional release. It could be done for sleep. It could be done for mindfulness and sound healing and all those different approaches. But in essence, it's called soundbefs. So what we did is we recorded many, many different instruments. And then we created this sort of idea that people that don't have the ability to understand music won't have to. So the only thing you need to do is just click those elements and we made them in a way that they will play all harmoniously together. So you can combine different types of instruments. So what I'm going to do now is give you a demonstration of one minute or so, in which I'm going to introduce one-by-one instruments and also soundscapes.

So maybe I'll begin with rain or a thunderstorm, something like that, and I will build the instruments one upon each other so your audience can have a feel of what it is. And I do recommend that if you are in your house and you can lie down or you can sit constantly and close your eyes and just be with that. If you are driving, definitely don't close your eyes. That could be a bad idea.

And, you know, if you are driving, just listen to it, like you would listen to music. So let me turn on my Bluetooth speaker. Yeah. And just let me know if you can hear it well. Maybe I'll start with the sound of the waves. let me know if you can hear those are this coming through

not very well just because I think you have a compressor on your end so it's got a little bit of a noise gate so it's cutting out the background noise that isn't your voice okay let me try to add an instrument and tell me if you can hear that that's coming through a little bit better

but still choppy unfortunately I don't know why okay so maybe we have a compressor so I'll make it quick. I'll just add some instruments. I don't know if it's possible to just bring it closer to the microphone, then it might pick it up better. How about that?

That is a little better. It's coming through. It's still kind of choppy, unfortunately. Oh, no. This is something we didn't audio test beforehand. I know I wish I thought of it. Yeah, to bed we didn't. Okay.

So we will not do that, but I'm just going to show you that it's just instruments that you can tap on and play and you can just add them to the loop and you can have all these different beautiful compositions and you can save it and you can share it with your friends and you can compose your own music and even maybe for your podcast. You know, you can compose some sort of music for different shows and then different episodes. And it's really, I believe, a gift of music for anyone. Very cool. So anyway, thank you for letting me share this. I'm sorry that it didn't came with a good sound. Yeah, me too. I'm sorry, on my end.

I wish we thought to audio test it. It's my fault. You mentioned it and I didn't, it didn't never cross my mind. Yeah, no worries, no worries. I think the concept is clear. and for anyone that that wants to try it out, it's available on the iOS and Android store, it's the Affirmate app, it's like a letter with a vibration,

a logo with a vibration inside on a white background. So just go and check it out and see the benefits of it. Try it with your friends, try it with yourself. And yeah, I mean, I hope your audience will resonate with it. and give it a try and give mindfulness a try and so happy to be on shows that raise this sort of awareness, mindfulness or mindful living in a period of time where people are filled with anxiety, with depression,

with feeling separated from the world, feeling lack of fulfillment, and all these other things that unfortunately we experience in our lifetime. So I certainly, Thank you for that. And I feel that we also resonate the same topic, which is great. Yeah, definitely.

It's nice. Well, it's nice to have folks that are, you know, not just willing to share dreams with me, but it's also nice when people are, like, actively engaged in creating new things that are designed, like my show, to help people. I want people to understand that their own dreams can be meaningful and that they can understand them and that it can open their, open up their possibilities in life or answer questions about how to solve problems in their life. And you're doing, you know, apps to reduce anxiety and depression and increase, you know, by increasing our ability to focus and pay attention. And, you know, as I was saying, without these things, it's impossible to, to create great works as well.

You have to be able to focus and pay attention and be present with your endeavor to create great works. So, you know, I think it's a benefit to everyone's life to look into that stuff. which is the reason you should go to, where is it, Affirmate.com, or you can find the Affirmate app on AppStores, you said. Yes, both on iOS and Android. I can actually share the links with you and you can put it in the show notes for anyone. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

No, easy way to do it. That's a, please do. Send it to me afterwards. Well, then, because I'm trying to be respectful of your time and we did the best we could to keep it tight, I will say this has been our friend Rudy Daniel. He's an author, philosopher, and entrepreneur. And now the cats are, God, they're everywhere. They're so annoying today.

And entrepreneur in the mindfulness space. He's got a book behind the mask, beyond the mind. And of course, the Affirmate app and other links in the description below. I need just a little water. We're going to do my outro. For my part, would you kindly like, share, subscribe, watch my video game streams Monday through Friday 5 p.m. p.m. Pacific. This episode brought to you in part by ABC book 11, Psychology of Dreams by William

Sebastian Walsh. What if that's different than what I said at the beginning? I don't remember. Hey, it is the same. You remember good. My memory is crap. Thank you very much. Now, I'm just not sure at all. You can find that, of course, at Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com, including downloadable mp3 versions of this very podcast. Also, if you'd head on over to Benjamin thedreamwizard.locals.com, building a community there free to join attached to my Rumble account that is enough uh rudy thank you for being here it's been a very fascinating chat thank you so much band it was great happy happy to be here and hopefully we can do it in the future again yeah be happy to have you have you have you back and uh we'll get more dreams what happens once you get on the boat where does it

go i'm curious dreams so dreams continue like that sometimes but okay we'll get you out of here and uh everybody out there in the audience thank you for listening we'll see you next time