Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 195: Of Mice & Men

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

Massimo Rigotti ~ https://sobermethod.com/

Greetings friends and welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have our guest dreamer Massimo Rigotti. He is a high performance coach public speaker and the author of Flavors of Confidence Sober Method. You can find him at Sober Method.com and at Sober Method across all the socials and the what-nots and the hey-he. For my part, would you kindly like, share, and subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers. You can see I don't always have an episode each week. and that's okay dreams come in their own time but I want to hear from you you don't have to be an author you don't have to be selling anything or uh uh you know be any anyone of prominence you just

have to be human human who speaks English and has a dream to share because that's that's the best I can do I can't speak any other language uh where do I go from there usually oh I do video game streams Monday through Friday most most weeks uh 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific um currently playing death loop. It's a game where the whole day starts over again in the morning. Fantastic concept. Very complicated and I think I know why the game didn't do very well.

This is apropos of nothing. I'm just going to stop right there. This episode brought to you in part by ABC Book 10, The Witch's Dream Book, a kind of charming pop culture-ish book of the time in 1885, tapping into the kind of the the zeitgeisty fascination with the occult and spiritualism and all that good kind of stuff.

So you would find this on the rack right next to the Penny Dreadful novels, those kind of things. Long story short on that, of course, you can find all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, including downloadable MP3 versions of this very podcast. So if you just want to take the wizard with you, wherever you wander with or without Wi-Fi, you can download that and keep it on your phone and play it at the gym, et cetera. although everywhere's got Wi-Fi now. Even people driving in the car just use their phone data. It is what it is. And last but not least, if you would head on over to Benjamin the Dream Wizard. Dotlokals.com.

It's free to join, attached to my Rumble account. You can give me money or not, but it's also a great place to reach out to me if you have a dream to share. And that is more than enough out of being. Massimo, thank you for being here. I appreciate your time. Hey, thank you for having me, Benjamin. I think we're going to have a good time here today. Me too.

Yeah, we already talked for like 20 minutes off, off air just because I ask people. I mean, what do you do and what do you want to talk about? And what are your link so I can write, you know, I write all this stuff down as my memories is Swiss cheese. That's the great thing about a Swiss cheese brain. You lose everything in there, but you find all kinds of crazy shit you never knew was in there. So to take the good with the bad. Absolutely, because you get to go down a little hole in a nook and cranny and then you find a thought. Oh, wait a second.

This is interesting, right? Absolutely. And then there's another one and there's a side tunnel. It's like, how did it even get connected over there? But I don't know where you want to start. I mean, you start with your book. I guess that's probably the best one. How did that come about?

What is it, what is it about, et cetera? Sure. So I spend most of my adult life being an addict of both alcohol and drugs. So yeah, I mean, looking back. Yes. Except for all the negative shit. Yeah. Except for the bad things that happened.

It was great. No one does drugs because they're not fun. They just don't like you. Right? That is so true. That's so true. So, yeah, I, I randomly met somebody on a beach in Florida in 2014, Samantha Thomas.

And she, within the first 20 minutes of spending time with her, she said, you know, you don't have to be drunk to be amazing. And I was like, who the hell do you think you are? I just met you, right? Yeah. But that started a long relationship, which unfortunately ended in her death at the hands of a drunk driver in 2020. in 2020, but not before she had helped me get sober. And as soon as she passed, I took it upon myself to share what had helped me remain sober, which was the flavors of confidence sober method, which I created myself.

And sober stands for stoic, observe, behavior, execute, and restore. And it's a five-step system that works on the Deming cycle. So you're working to like continuously improve yourself. because I had the crazy idea that I could look at myself like a manufacturing plant and I could slowly make myself better, you know, iteration after iteration until I felt like I was fully confident. That's that's me in a nutshell as far as what got me to this point and doing what I do. It's been a wild journey, though. I've been a lifelong entrepreneur and worked in many industries from entertainment to banking to telecom to, to, to, well, you'd name it, just about anything, manufacturing. And somehow I'm here now.

Very cool. So I was writing those down, too. It was stoic, observe, behavior. Execute. Execute. And restore. Gotcha. Yeah.

That is, that is great. And it's nice. I mean, if you're going to provide something to other people and some explanatory method, acronyms are great. It's that wonderful type of thing where it's like, if I keep this in mind and then I can kind of nail these things and especially when it gives you a process to follow and a recursive process that you know um you return to previous steps sometimes or once you've hit the bottom you do it again for a different subject or you apply it again and the idea of of iterative improvement over time where you just and that's that involves a lot of other things that have been said uh you know psychologically on this stuff for 40 50 whatever years The idea of, you know, one day at a time, one problem at a time. And, you know, because it's easy to go overwhelmed.

I got to do a thousand things. Okay, do one. Now you get, now you get 99. A. Yep. The journey of a thousand steps, they say, you know, it's so, so much great stuff. And what also popped it in my head, too, is you met a wizard in the wilderness. That, that's the, you know, when, when the hero is in a place, you know, when the student is ready, the master appears.

That kind of thing. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And even if you don't think you're ready or sometimes they just plant a seed. And then you go, you know, a few years later, you go, I remember that person and they were right. And this situation I'm in right now is exactly what they were talking about. And it hits you. So, yeah, it isn't always, it isn't always very obvious. And, you know, that's, I love metaphors. Like, am I, I, I'm just some crazy person on the internet who thinks he's a wizard. But I actually do believe that, or at least in training. When I, when I hit a thousand episodes, I'll be a real wizard. But, you know, a thousand interpretations are. the Japanese would say 10,000 repetitions. I don't think I'm going to get that before I die. I've only got 195 over five years.

So we're not going fast enough for that. But I'm doing a lot of talking anyway. But I love the framing of it, the understanding of where you're at. And I think a lot of our life is, it is these stories, or at least it is moments that have been captured by stories throughout time and told in a lot of different ways. So I was going somewhere with that. I don't know. The whole methodology, I love. I love these points, though.

Well, I'll tell you what you just said is so true. If you were to really look back at my own life story, it is, it is stair stepping towards where I am today. And if you were to look at it in a true hero story type of situation, then yes, Samantha was that emergence of I'm out in the wilderness and she emerges and it changes and crafts a new story and a new challenge for where I'm headed next. And it is remarkable that one individual could have such an incredible impact on my life and change the course of it in such a way that is not only improved it overall, but also what I'm investing my time and energy in because I've gone from only singularly helping myself in this world to trying to help so many others. And it's totally changed my life.

Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. And then just my head's still going down this rabbit hole with the wizard in the wilderness thing. It's like the, what makes it comedic a lot of times is, uh, the ignorance of the hero and the, and the, and the kind of knowing smirk of,

of the, of the, of the, of the guide, so to speak. And that can be like that, you know, and so you get instances where the, the scenario popped into my head and you,

you're lost in the woods and you meet the crazy old guy that's been living out there forever and you say, man, how do I get out of here? And he says, depends on where you want to go. You know, if you go that way, this is what you'll, if you go this way. if you go that way. And I'm not here to tell you which way you should go, but I can tell you which way is the way that you want to go once you know what it is.

And I think that's part of your, that's part of your method too. So you've got the, you got the, and we can, what I'll do is I'll bring my generic understanding of each term to you tell me how close I am maybe. Like stoicism, a lot of people, so if we explain that a little bit, a lot of people think it means no emotion.

I am a stone. It is not stoned. it is stoic. Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah. You're still going to have, but you are not, what it means is you are not ruled by your passions. And the Greeks had a fantastic term,

which we have adopted, and a lot of people don't know this, the term was Acrosia. And when I explained a little more, a lot of people get it, but if you imagine an apple cart, a wheeled cart, and it had a block under one of the wheels,

and that block gets knocked out, and that apple cart is Acrosia. It is just rolling downhill out of condition. control or something which is not under control or not bounded, not contained. So, um, the opposite of a crossy or a crassia is crossia control. And that's where we also, uh, get the word or the, um, what do you call it? It's a, it's a, it's a, um, sometimes we put a word in front of a word and sometimes we put it at the end.

Would you remember? Prefax. Prefix or suffix suffix. Suffix. It's a suffix. The suffix. Crasy as in democrasy. Democracy.

controlled by the demos, controlled by the people. So, and then, and, uh, Krasia is also, or Akrasia is where we all, we also get the word crazy. This person's crazy. They're out of control. Uh, I was going somewhere with, oh, so a person ruled by their passions, the Greeks would say is acrassic or is suffering Akrasia. They are out of, or is in the behavioral state of being out of control. And Stoicism was meant to address that.

It's like, look, it's okay to have desires and passions. It's okay to recognize them. That's why they, uh, a lot of people quote, or turn to Marcus Aurelius as the, as the exemplar, because he's like, hey, I love all kinds of things. And it's great. And you enjoy them in moderation and at the right time and the right place,

assuming it's not making other parts of your life worse. So you just start with the idea of stoic. And also the Buddhists and meditative folks would say, don't be reactive. The whole point of meditating is not to empty your mind, but to not engage with your mind. Look at, there it is as it floats by. There's my anger.

Wow. Why is that there? I don't even know. You don't have to grab it. You don't have to throw it out. You don't have to wrestle with it in any way. You can just let it be. Let it be.

I'm angry. Why am I angry? Dispassion. Okay, I've said way too much about that already. Go ahead. Well, I mean, it's not no emotion. It's recognizing the emotion, yet choosing not to act upon it because you see the natural progression of what acting upon it will be. It's being in true control of who you are.

The reason that Marcus Aurelius, I think is so fascinating is because when you read meditations, this is a look into the most powerful man on earth 2,000 years ago. This is someone who, even though he had control outwardly of anything that he wanted, he was wrestling with trying to perfect what was within his own mind. And that says a lot about the character of this individual. I mean, really a remarkable man, really. Oh, yeah. And he stands in, you know, so if we do the guinea-ang,

balance of opposites. Proper stoicism, Marcus Aurelius, being ruled by your passions, Caligula. And he did a lot of messed up shit. And he just did whatever he was. It was absolute hedonism. So you really can't get him, you can go down that path and you can end up like,

nobody wants, nobody wants that. I think he got, what was it? There were stories in one of the books. I can't, but it might even be in the witch's dream. It's probably not the witch's dream book. But stories of Caligula having horrible nightmares and being on. able to sleep and he would wander around at night. And sometimes he didn't know whether he was

sleeping or awake. He would ask him, am I awake? Yeah. Am I dreaming? He would ask people. Um, just so he ended up honestly tortured by his own misbehavior by, by, you know, these, these passions ruling him. And that leads into other, other layers of analysis from other traditions. I call it, you know, no offense to anybody. I call it the Christian mythology because I'm not, I'm not a believer. Tremendous appreciation. So that's where you get, I think the idea of demon. possession is you let these negative things take control of you and guide your behaviors and it leads you into a place that you where around you you create hell on earth that doesn't have to be there yeah so yeah i mean that might so first thing control your emotions or at least do not be

ruled by your passions um and then observe you got to take a look at it what's the classic line you know the um the first step is admitting there's a problem you're observe and say okay what am i looking at here. Number one, you, Stoic, you observe your emotions, but then you also observe your situation and your behaviors and say, this is, is this working for me? Is this what I want? Is it getting me the outcomes I prefer? Exactly. Except specifically what, uh, I focus on in the Stoic is we're focusing in a one thing or one behavior. So take a single, take a single verse out of meditations, whatever that might be. And then focus on how that applies in your own life. maybe it's about how others view you well i mean does that matter no it doesn't matter now as you

move into observing that behavior that would be like get a full understanding of the verse and and what it means but then as you move into observe how is that impacting in my own life um like observing your behavior as it relates to this stoic concept and everybody is constantly judging me i feel judged i have to act this way i have to oh wait a second you know Like that that is the observation of whatever that particular stoic belief is, if that makes sense. No, no. Actually. And it's also one of those things like, again, the, which way in the woods.

It depends on what you're looking for. So there are at, and I'm going to do a book one of these days. I've got so many ideas for books. They're never going to, half of them are never going to get made. I hope to do some of them. One of them is a wizard's guide to the aspirational aphorism. So it's like you can actually try and just, what does it mean an apple a day keeps the doctor away, that kind of thing?

Something so simple. What isn't and what is it not? So this idea too is like there are times when you absolutely should ignore bad feedback from trolls on the internet. You know, there's people who are just jerks. They're doing it for the lulls. They want a reaction and agitation. They're not looking out for your best interest. You should definitely ignore those guys.

Then again, if you've got a, if you've got friends and family, you've got a business circle, there's people whose opinions affect you and you should at least be aware of them and why. they have that reaction to you. So observing yourself in the context of all the people you're working with or live with or love. Do you want your marriage to work? We should probably care what your wife thinks. Probably.

Unless you got a very non-traditional a relationship where for some reason that doesn't matter. But I can't imagine it myself. But and then so once you've, once you've stoically allowed an emotion to exist without engaging with it, you've observed how that. connects to you and the people around you, then you get into the behavioral aspect, and that is assessing your behavior or implementing behavior. How do you quantify that? This is assessing the behavior and remapping what that behavior should be. So you now, you know how you're reacting with the observation of this example we're kind of moving with right now is how other people's

view, other people view you, right? So as you move into that, how do I normally react? Well, a troll says something to me on the internet. I just like get into this back and forth with them. minute, I go down a rabbit hole for three hours. Well, that's probably not healthy. So, like, what should that behavior be? So in the behavior step, you're moving through two things. What am I do? You know, you've observed what you're doing now. You're mapping out that behavior now. Remap it to what might work better so that you can then execute, which is the testing, your next step is actually testing this out. Definitely. Because as they say, no plan survives contact with the enemy. You probably didn't think through all the complications that are going to get you there.

That's a big deal for me sometimes. I put off projects because I haven't fully conceptualized every step beginning to end. Now, sometimes you got one crack at something. You probably should think about it for a long time. That's okay. But sometimes, and I found this for myself, I don't understand the process until I'm in it. And then it becomes obvious what I need to do to finish it.

but that portion of obvious obviously this is what I need to finish it couldn't happen until I started so you get sometimes you got to just get going and and then I'd imagine you you know and there's a bit of maybe a each step almost seems like it can recursively lead that's exactly that's exactly right that's what happens oh you get stuck in a little bit recursive in OBE observe behavior execute oh that didn't work let's go back observe what just happened Why didn't that work? Okay, we're going to remap the behavior, execute again. And you go round and round and round until you find what works.

And once you do, ha, ha, it's that eureka moment where you're like, okay, we can move on. Well, not only that, but I think it, I don't think it's just the OBE. I think it also, so you, you observe, you assess or try to constitute a new behavior. You execute it in practice. And then, let's say it fails. You got to go right back to Stoic. It's okay. I am not all bad.

Like a lot of people, especially in. with addictive behaviors, it's a lot of black and white thinking. And it's like, oh, of course I failed. I'm a failure. I fail at everything. I might as well give up. Who cares if I self-destruct me? A lot of that negative.

No, no, no. Stoic. Okay. I'm having feelings, negative feelings associated with failure. That's okay. People fail. I didn't have the right method. Let's observe this.

What went wrong? And then you bam, right back in it. But that first thing, too, is that emotional regulation. A lot of people have a really hard time with that. That's why that's a lot of times why they engage with trolls. Now, I do it because I think it's funny. I like saying mean things back to troll. Why not?

So as long as you're doing it for the right reason, you know, but if you're like caught in this, I'm angry. This person has to know how wrong there. They don't care. They don't care. You're never going to convince them. They laugh at your rage. So definitely the internet could use a little more stoicism, I think.

That reminds me too. I mean, he's retweeted some of my praise as well. But there's a guy, Akira the Don, if you ever heard of him, he does lo-fi kind of hip-hoppy beats that are that use samples

of Marcus Aurelius Jordan Peterson Joe Rogan I can't think of a half a dozen other people he's done oh Paul Harvey I don't know if you're

remember that guy I love Paul Harvey of course and that's the rest of the story I love that guy so much I used to listen to him anyways as a kid but he's got like

so he'll set like he partly inspired me to do my AI radio thing where I'm like he's sampling great wisdom from from the ages and putting it to music so people can enjoy it as music and they don't have to read it as as as words on a page or it's it's more interesting maybe than than just an audio book but it really captures the essence of certain it's going somewhere with that he's got well check him out what we're just talking about we're all over the place it's this welcome to my brain that's that's how it works no no yeah I care of the Don I can't

recommend him highly enough, but he, he had, I think he had something he released recently that was relevant to what we're talking about and is gone. I got lost in the explanation. That's, okay. And, okay, so we've finally gotten down to the idea of restore. What does that mean in your, in your lingo? In my lingo, that is looking at those that have been impacted by this behavior in the past. You know, who did you possibly overreact with in the past that you, you lashed out or did whatever. And this is in the traditional like 12 step programs, this would be the concept of making amends. This is this is going back to those. And and of course there's a big emphasis in my method that, hey, look, we're not looking for forgiveness that's two-way street here. You're reaching out. You've,

you've let it go on your end. If they are mean or hostile or whatever, it's like, that's your deal. And then you just go right back to Stoic and you work on something new in your, your existence and that's what keeps you going in the path. Yeah. It's also good to maybe acknowledge to people you are justified to being upset about that. I screwed up. So it's okay if you're still angry. I'm not, I'm not mad at you because you're still mad at me.

I'm saying, sorry, you're supposed to accept it. Like, that's not how it works. Yeah. I was sorry. No, it's a classic. That's a classic thing too. That is such a classic. Yeah.

It's almost cliche, honestly. It's such a classic. What is there's another saying? It's, you know, cliches or cliches because they're true. Yes. It's not like you're not like it's, it isn't true. That's good too because the restore actually, I mean, it has so many verbal associations with it as well. It's like it's restorative for you to acknowledge to the person you hurt that I know this was wrong.

And I'm not happy about this. I didn't want to do that to you. Like, I mean, maybe I did at the time, but it was, you know, that's not who. I really want to be. But then it also hopefully restores healthy relationships around you. A lot of people, they're looking for a reason to be forgiving. I know there's a lot of trolls out there. There's a lot of people that are mean and angry and whatnot.

But most of the people in your life are like just normal people who aren't jerks. So you do something wrong and they really would, what they want more than anything is for you to say, I didn't get it at the time, but this was bad. And I did it. I did it to you or involved you in something that made your life more complicated. I want to acknowledge that. And they're like, God, that's all I wanted. Just an apology.

And then most people are willing to be forgiving. Depends on how badly you screwed up that relationship. You know, you steal from grandma one too many times and you don't get to crash on her couch anymore. Sometimes that's, that's over. Even if she loves you and she's like, I just can't take that chance anymore. It happens. And then you're like, well, I've learned that lesson the hard way. That's, man, I better not screw up that way with anyone else ever again.

But only if you admit it to yourself and to them. And that's, but that's an important thing, too, is like, If you're doing it to get them to forgive you or to get something back from them, like you only apologize to grandma, so she'll let you stay on her couch again. That's still in that addiction cycle of like I'm manipulating people to, what is it, instrumental behavior versus, you know, versus just, just keeping a real. Being authentic. Yeah. Authenticity.

You just want to be authentic. You want to be your real self. And what you said is so true. people the vast majority at least 95 if not greater percentage of people out there they want a life that doesn't have a lot of challenge they they want they want they they seek out a life that is balanced and is peaceful and and peace comes in that forgiveness so it's amazing how many people that i just like completely on purpose destroyed the relationship at the time have forgiven me. And, you know, I don't talk to them anymore, but when I reached out and sought that forgiveness, I received it. And that's amazing because some of those people I didn't think would ever even take a phone call for me and or more meat for coffee with me so I could have the opportunity to say, you know what? I did some horrible stuff to you. And, you know,

I'm sorry about that. And it almost instantly comes out of most of them. I know. I know. You were going through a tough time, but it looks like you're doing better now. I'm proud of you. Okay, great. Fantastic. You know, and that's, and then that releases tension on your side as well because there's a huge amount of weight that you carry when you know that you've hurt someone if you're a good person at heart.

Oh, yeah. It does, it does drag on you. And coming full circle back to talking about Caligula. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's a perfect example of doing everything that you're just, whatever whim you might have. If you act that way, eventually it will collapse upon you. You cannot, I don't think we were designed in our minds to be able to handle acting on our every whim. There have to be some guardrails in our existence or else our minds just kind of wander into madness.

Oh, yeah, for sure. And I think ultimately too, I believe, if I don't have this wrong, I believe Caligula was assassinated eventually. Like people just got sick of it and were like, man, we know you're the emperor and we put up with this as long as we could, but you got to go. This can't, you know, now you're fucking with too many people. Yeah. You know, you just, you just kept it to the peasants. That would have been one thing. You started pulling us into it and we got the, we got the swords.

So maybe you don't want to do that. So it's definitely consequences. Well, one thing that came to my mind as you were talking about that is the, cycle of guilt and shame that goes along with things is like, you know, so you have guilt and feel ashamed of behavior from the past. And that becomes a reason to use more to cover up that feeling, to numb that feeling. And that's a vicious cycle too. But but also the idea of, um, sometimes we, what is it? That guilt or shame that we have from past behaviors leads us to repeat it because we have to, we don't want to feel bad about it. We don't want to admit it was a

mistakes. So we're like, there's nothing wrong with this. Even though I do feel bad, well, I'm going to do it again to show myself that it's the right thing to do. I'm going to reinforce that behavior instead. And that actually, if, if you want to get out from under it, you got to, in some senses, rip off the bandaid and say, okay, I'm going to feel all the horrible about how bad this situation was. And I'm going to shame myself in it, in an interpersonal manner, at least with an apology. It's like I'm accepting guilt and I feel ashamed. and I mean, getting to that point can be very, people go to pretty extreme lengths to avoid that. A lot of this is emotionally based. It's, it's, you know, I, I feel like I want this or I feel like I want to avoid this negative emotion.

And they get, you will contort yourself. I think every, everyone will contort themselves into ways that are almost unimaginable to a sober mind in order to remain in their pain. and to keep it covered up. So they have this underlying pain. They're covering it up with substances. And any time that they get out and feel just sober enough to realize the pain they have, they immediately push it back under with the numbing. And so you're exactly right.

And the more that you do, especially in the case of like alcohol or opiates, you're always needing more and more and more to get that numbed. And so it's basically it's making it. problem even worse. The underlying pain and the underlying whatever has occurred, that hasn't actually changed at all. But the amount of effort required to keep it down becomes greater and greater. Oh, yeah, definitely. And there's an image popped in in my mind of like, you know, what we say to people sometimes stop digging. You're in a hole stop digging. Well, that is the, but you instantly, you got what I'm talking about. So sometimes we fill this, this pit and it's full of out.

guilt and changes deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. And then actually tearing off that bandaid and apologizing, you lift, lift a cover on it and it kind of, it wants to just come all out. Now you got to feel it as it hits the surface, but the hole goes away eventually. Yeah. It empties of that. Once you've addressed it, looked at it specifically taken action and apologies and changed your behavior.

And now you've established a new, better, healthier pattern. You stop digging the hole. And it's like, but a lot of people don't want it. They don't want. they don't want the pain of letting it out of letting it escape the hole they'd rather stuff more in there until the hole gets deeper and deeper and then i mean i think that's what drives most people to to the self-destructive side of things like i feel so bad the hole is so deep i can never get out and that's where we get a lot of the depression suicidal ideation type of stuff

coming up uh yeah yeah yeah i mean so yeah it's hard to tell people very sad but that's also why you have the term rock bottom absolutely yeah you know you've dug so deep that you have nowhere else to go. This is it. You're going to crash. And it's, that's, that's the end. You have covered it up as long as you possibly can. And so many people never make it out until they hit rock bottom. I mean, I didn't. For sure. Yeah. And it's different for everybody. It's just when you've, when you've lost enough things you actually care about, when you're like, wow, the last few things that gave me any sense of feeling like I was a good person, my relationships that that made me feel fulfilled and like I was doing something important

gone and it's like wow I got really now I have nothing and then I did then you get the the aphorisms that are that are like you know well you know there's nowhere to go but up you hit rock bottom it's like now you can start that journey oh man is it gonna suck but it's gonna be worth it at the end that's there's that hero's journey thing we're coming back around to that of like you know it's uh going through the dark woods is not easy uh it is it is It is, you know, painful and scary and all of the above, but that's where the treasure is. You got to get through. You got to get.

Well, in some ways, you're already in the dark woods. Do you want to get out? You can die here. You go, go right ahead. Not, not, this is not professional advice, but you can. But most of us don't want to stay there, I would say. And I mean, some people do. It's hard.

How do you convince someone you're in the dark, scary woods, and I can help you get out, but you got to listen to me and you got to follow me. and they're like, you know, screw off and it's like, that's sad. That's too bad. But, you know, and some people aren't ready yet.

You know what? You're ready when you're ready. And there were plenty of people around me saying, oh, you know, I mean, it all started with Samantha, but that was the first person who said it and I heard it.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, I mean, there were plenty of people before her being like, you know, you need to stop drinking.

You need to stop doing this. You need to figure out what's going on with you. You're getting, worse. All of those comments were said, but, you know, it took her for whatever reason. Yeah. She woke me up and she woke me up almost instantly. So it's just, it's really wild looking back. And hopefully everybody has a moment like that. Sometimes as it comes from within, but you have to have it and you have to want it. For sure. Yeah. That's where, that's what I would describe as magic. Uh, because we

don't know how to make it happen. And we don't know why it works. And we can, we've put all kinds of theories and boundaries and, well, if you look at this way and, but when it comes down to it, it's like, why that person at that time, at that place with you in the right state of mind, deja vu stuff. It's like, where does this even come? How does this even happen? I think of it too, like, um, inspiration.

Like, um, Archimedes and the water displacement and he's, eureka, eureka. Eureka. Well, he had a moment. He had a, what in his brain made him notice that and the, and relate it to the volume of his body and the, um, we don't know. We don't know. It's like, I described it as a pyramid of knowledge that takes you only so far. And there's a little gap and then the all seeing eye or the flame or the light bulb turns on.

It's like, what happens in that gap? I think that's, I think that's magic. Um, how to make more magic happen more often. That's what we should be looking at, but, uh, I think that requires. I think that requires a state of mind, which I constantly focus on now. Because having experienced that, looking back at least two to three times in my life, like moments like the one that I had with her, is you have to keep your eyes. You have to be aware, much more aware of things, aware of the subtleties of the things that are happening around you.

Because most often it is the things that are in the back. or you know it's just just past the foreground of your vision or maybe it's something you hear off to the side that ends up triggering something deep that resonates with you that will totally change your perspective on things and it's it's really interesting to me because it's never something you're looking directly at it's like too much focus on something does not allow you to actually see what you're trying to fix and oftentimes that's why I just stop what I'm doing and I'll go for a walk and then I invariably will find the answer out in nature. I'll see like a, you know, I can tell you that I had an idea that came to me this weekend

just because I was out on a walk and I stopped because the wind started blowing and it was moving this leaf, just this one leaf and the whole tree, but just this one leaf was moving. I was just totally captivated by this. Like, why is that one leaf moving? Just that one leaf? And then all of the sudden the branch started to move. And so I brought that back in my thought process. is that I was struggling to understand how one small voice could impact greater voices if it isn't heard or seen.

You know, like you have to see something or observe something for it to happen. And this was an instance where I saw that one leaf. And as I focused on that leaf, then everything else started to blow around it. I know it was probably because the wind came in at a certain angle and all these other things. We can give a mechanical explanation. Yes. But what happened in that moment is that it changed my thought process about, something else that I was that I was struggling to come to a conclusion on.

Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the best I've been able to do in terms of you can't actually, you can't manufacture those, you know, there isn't a process of like, well, you know, you cut and paste here and, and, you know, turn this dial to X and it doesn't work like that. But what you can do is try and put yourself in a state of receptive readiness to, to observe. And then, amazing things happened. There was, go, go somewhere with that of the, oh, this relates to speaking of I love these books I've I've created my own modern versions as an editor

of classic you know so like I said the witch's dream book I didn't write it's from 1885 well there's another book where they talk about relating dreams and sleep to inattention and that there's um and it talks about things like uh going for a walk to get away from a problem because you're you're very very

attentive to it and letting your mind wander onto other topics and kind of meditatively in a way I'm walking. I'm looking at nature. And then for some reason not focusing, you get that peripheral thing and an answer starts to tease itself. It's almost like a beacon in a foggy night. It's like you don't know how far away it is exactly. You don't know what is the shape of the land over there.

But you know there's something there and then that allows you to look in that direction or avoid it if you're like well there's probably rocks we should go this way if you're if you're on a boat you know but i look at that as like and i look at that as um because i've talked to a lot of people about intuition it's like intuition can't always give you an answer but can tell you which direction to look like look at's correct there's something here let's let's see if we can figure it out uh so trust you got to to point you at something but not necessarily to give you a conclusion from whole cloth without investigation that's sometimes that's not uh not the best way to go yeah well let's look at the facts and figure out what's actually going on.

There's something going on. But that's my whole ramble too. When you were talking about the leaf and whatnot, all of that came up, all of that was in my head. Like, boom, I got to, I got to say it. No, no. It's perfect. What you said is exactly what occurred, though, because that looking at the leaf, it, it,

it taught, it showed me something that was going on over here and this other problem. And then suddenly I was able to go like, hold on a second. This applies over here. Yeah. Let me think about it in an application of what I'm trying to solve. And then boom, problem solved. Okay. And then I like immediately turned around and I'm walking home to take care of my challenge. Oh, I got to go do this. You got to strike with the iron's hot. Yeah. I love, I love allergies.

Oh, yeah. It gets your energy going because, you know, you've solved a challenge. So I think that there's there's something to be said about about that focus. Focusing on doing things. You know, oftentimes you talk about just general things that everyone does. You know, you've probably taken a test at some point in your life and that there's some evidence that the best thing to do before a test is not to think about the test at all or any of the content or anything. Yeah. Yeah.

And then just go in there all relaxed and take it because you know it already. And if you have the knowledge, then, you know, showing it up on a test is a piece of cake. So why should you cram? Oh, yeah. And well, I think that relates back to preparing yourself. for an opportunity that you can't force to occur. You know, it's not mechanistic. So there's two different kinds of test anxiety.

I studied really hard and this really matters and God, I hope I don't choke. The other anxiety is, I didn't study at all. I didn't even read the book. I don't know what I'm doing and I'm probably going to fail. And so there's that anxiety too. But I get teasing out which is which I didn't, you know, every overachiever thinks I didn't study enough. And that's kind of why they overachieve.

Like, I'm always pushing myself to do boards. sometimes you got to relax. And then again, it depends on what you're looking for. I guess if you're like, I must achieve the highest. We don't, that's a weird thing. Driven people accomplish the greatest things, but man, are they tortured by their drive? So it's one of those things where it's like, I can't advise someone, hey, dude, you should relax. Like maybe you're doing exactly what you need to do as long as it's not killing you, which is a tough thing too,

because there's a lot of tortured artists that end up dead through different means, but man, And they made some great art. And it's like, I thought this a long time ago, you know, early days of going to school and whatnot. I was like, is it ethical to try and secure an artist's depression? If that is what helps them to make their great art. Is it? I mean, now, and again, my answer was no defaults to them. If they want it.

If they want to feel differently, let's talk about how to make that happen. But, you know, I don't know if we should force it on someone. I always felt uncomfortable with that. You had some thoughts, though. No, yeah, no. I was going to say that I lean towards no. I do too, yeah. You, you, I think that that greatest, the greatest creativity comes forth from a mind that is not hindered.

And so if, if, if let's say, for example, that I wanted to continue down this path and be a drunk the rest of my life, I mean, it didn't. I mean, it didn't keep me from being a creative individual. I certainly was. But I feel like I'm more creative now because I have less burden upon my mind. It's interesting. Now, I didn't believe necessarily that. And I am bipolar. So I have that unique up and down of mania and depression that can impact me from time to time.

So I see it. And I see it in others where, it can be a huge challenge in their life. But sometimes the tortured souls provide inspiration for thousands, millions of people in their art. And should we, who are we to say that that that isn't what they're supposed to bring forth to this world? For sure. And then you get the situations where it's like this person, you know, poor tortured soul, driven, driven, driven. And they invent something amazing that helps a million people at the cost of.

So they've literally sacrificed themselves to save a million people. But so it's hard for me to tell someone you should be as relaxed as I am about everything. Maybe you shouldn't. What have I accomplished? It's great. And what have I built? You know, I'm doing my thing. I'm just kind of chill.

I'd probably be more successful if I was more focused, dedicated, active. But I'm definitely, uh, I don't know. It's been years and years now. I've been the, um, leaf on the wind type of thing. Like, I'm not blown any which way. wind blows, but I'm definitely along for the ride on some things. And I've, for me, personally, I've found like going with that flow, whatever it is, whatever kind of little weird channel I'm in, it's taking me somewhere. And I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to find out where

this goes. And no, but it involves a lot of, ah, I don't worry about it. I'm pretty chill. Like, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. No, I like that. I really do like that. It's, and, uh, it might surprise you a little bit because I definitely am more the overachiever type. But I'm also someone, as I said at the top of our conversation, that has done a ton of different things. Because any time I've been like, ooh, that looks interesting. I've literally stopped whatever the heck I was doing, switch gears and just done that.

And people around me are like, but you're like literally the best at this. I'm like, yeah. Been there done that. It's not entertaining anymore. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, this is. This has become boring. I'm onto this now.

And so I think that also we tend to put ourselves in this, what is success? And success is different for everybody. And this is actually something I stress in the sober method. It's in my book two or three times is that the reason that this method is so successful is because it's different for everybody. Your map of success for you is different than my map of success for me. and everybody else out there. And what I view as a successful person is different

than what you view as a successful person. For sure. And really what matters in life is, are you happy with where you are with your existence? If you can say yes, then you're right where you need to be. Yep. I think that's definitely right. And that's also what goes with the thing.

Like if you are driven and you want to do more than I do, it's not for me to tell you you shouldn't, that you shouldn't try, that you shouldn't want that. definitely. I'm looking at the clock and I want to make sure we give you a good dream interpretation. So I don't want to run, run us out of time. We could probably talk about this for another hour. Oh, absolutely.

I can tell. We could probably talk for the next four or five hours. But yeah. We put a little time stamp here. So as per usual, I'm just going to shut up and listen as our friend Massimo tells us about his dream and then we'll try and 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 dreamscapes program features real dreamers, gifted with rare insight into their nocturnal visions. New Dreamscapes episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks, 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 growing catalog of historical dream literature available on Amazon, documenting the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past 2000 years.

That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube. Wizard on YouTube and at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com. All right. Well, a handful of weeks ago, this is about a month ago, I had a really interesting dream that was a combination of a full-on dream, but it also had, you know, some lucid moments in it because I awoke at least twice talking to myself, remembered that I did, and then falling back asleep and finishing out the dream. So here is my crazy dream. So I had a dream where I showed up in this town.

I hadn't lived there before. And I was this well-to-do individual successful. And I was kind of in the end of my career, so to speak. And in this town, they had taken this human and they had turned him into a mouse. But before he was a mouse, he was like a pretty evil human. So like their form of punishment for this, this person was they turned him into a mouse. But not only did they turn him into a mouse, they put him into mouse prison. So he was like in this prison, but he had this little cell.

And for whatever reason, I got introduced to this mouse. And this mouse, his name happened to be Phil. I don't know why his name's Phil, but that was his name. And this evil mouse, somehow I morphed into an attorney, I ended up, like, defending this mouse in some appeal to try to get him out of jail. And on two occasions, I got his, like, life extended from being executed. And the final time, like, there was no chance he was going to be executed within a year. But I become really good friends with Phil. I mean, he was a pretty okay mouse.

As far as I could tell, and all these things that they said that he'd done in the past, which never really got elaborated in the dream, but it was just called evil. And so I just felt like maybe we should not execute him. Well, then the mouse escaped. Phil's on the loose. And they, the community,

They just like, they figured that I had to be hiding him. Like, why wouldn't I be hiding him? You're the one that's come to like him and all that. And so they were ready to run me out of town. And so this mouse could actually talk too. So it's like a Stuart Little type of situation going on here as well. I just wanted to point that out. So Phil wasn't like mouse that somehow didn't speak.

He was a talking tiny little mouse. He didn't wear like a suit or anything like Stuart Little, but that's kind of like how I connected in my head after I woke up. And so anyway, they eventually, they find him, and they realized that I hadn't been hiding him. And that they're like going to go ahead and execute him. And they're reading out all this list of grievances. But for some reason, I don't remember them or didn't hear them. because I didn't retain any of that when I woke up.

But as I was standing there in the moment, I started to think about all of the bad things that I had done before I'd come to this town. And that if the town knew some of the bad things I had done, they might lock me up. And everyone here thinks that I'm a good person. But am I really a good person or am I evil like Phil? and I mean, what if they find me out?

And so I get really nervous about this. And then they are putting the needle into poor little Phil to kill him. And that's when I woke up and I was like, I started crying. It was really weird. And the first thought I had after this was that there's a lot of, nuance in what people are made up of and that people who are good could have underlying evil within them and that it's always like a wrestling struggle within someone on what part of them is displayed.

And that's basically, that's all I remember after the dream. But it was just so intense. Yeah. That's a great one. Love it. Love it. Okay, it happened about a month ago, partially lucid. So the, when you say partially lucid, it's because you woke up, I mean, did you wake up a little bit and then go back into the dream?

Yeah, yeah. I woke up a little bit. And when I woke up, it was during the, the first time I woke up, it was during the, when I was like in court or whatever arguing. And I woke up like in the middle. I actually was talking about or giving my argument in court. And I woke up to hear myself actually talking. And as I mentioned before we got started, this is something that happens a lot. I'm a talker in my sleep.

And so quite often I will wake up in the middle of the night and I'll be, you know, full on talking. And people have been known to have conversations with me while I'm dreaming. Oh, yeah. Actually, uh, uh, Greek word for that, of course,

somniloquy, literally sleep talking, uh, just like somnambulation, sleep walking. Uh, and they're, they're considered a same,

the same thing. So actually way, way back in the day, it was, they were all somnambulisms. Anything you, any behavior during sleep, laughing,

crying, uh, talking, walking, um, we're all under that, under that umbrella. Then we started to tease him out a little bit and say,

Well, there's sleep talking and the sleep walking and there's some crying and whatnot. So what causes those things? There's broadly speaking, there's a physical physiological anyway. Disconnect that happens that is programmed into us so that we tend not to be unconscious while our body is walking around doing things. And something flips that switch where it's like not fully disconnected. You know, if it's like electrical pathways like that, that breaker isn't, isn't all the way down. It's still kind of leaking through. Why?

We don't know. We do know some medications sometimes help. But if it isn't, uh, majorly disruptive, I'll be just leave it alone. Like, whatever I talk about my sleep sometimes, as long as you're not crawling onto rooftops and waking up, balanced on someone's chimney. You know, three houses down. Like, how the hell did I get here? I had one instance myself, which. it's it doesn't typically happen to me the number one i don't tend to remember my dreams but i was at a um

some kind of convention and i didn't get a hotel room and i i don't know why i didn't even think of it until i was there and i'm like i guess i'm sleeping in the lobby i was gonna just post up in a chair and lean over and and uh i woke up walking through a kitchen and maybe i was maybe i was looking for a bathroom or something and then so and so where where i became fully away because i'm out in this alleyway and uh and i just looked at back at the door I'd come through and I walked back in there and it was it was a kitchen, the kitchen of this hotel or whatever. And I asked the guy, did I just walk through here? And he's like, yeah, man, I said, you know, something to you, but you didn't respond. Like, yeah, I think I was sleepwalking. I'm sorry. Like, is this way back to the lobby? Okay.

So he went back to the lobby and there's my, you know, I think I had a, like, but not a briefcase, but some kind of a bag where I had my supplies for the con in it. This was, hey, stop that. Don't be a bastard. They're always trying to. They're having too much fun over there. Anyway, that's my only experience with it. It's very disorienting, very weird. That's my experience. I don't know if it's apropos of anything, but we're talking about you, not me.

Just so, you know, I have a kind of a, I have something to reference, which may not be exactly true. And then my wife talks in her sleep sometimes. Should be laughing. I'm like, what's so funny? She's like, it's, and then she's out again. Yeah, yeah, no, no coherent thing. And then I'll ask her, you were dreaming. And did you remember talking to me?

No, no. Do you remember what you dreamed? Nope, not at all, nothing. She's got nothing. I'm like, okay, well, that happened. Wow. No, I actually sometimes remember the conversations. And then, you know, like whoever is sleeping has been sleeping, like my ex-wife,

I would have conversations with her. And then the following day while I was asleep, it would integrate into my dream. I would remember the dream. And then I would say, do you remember when we were talking about this last night? And she said, what are you talking about? I'm like, well, I mean, I was. probably dreaming, but we had a conversation about this. Yeah.

And she'd be like, uh, and she doesn't, uh, maybe doesn't have any memory of you sleep talking. Like she was, she was asleep for it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, she said she was like, I don't know. I was so tired. And I was like, you know, so like, yeah, I guess maybe you said something, but I would remember the conversation and she wouldn't.

And so it just, I mean, like she wasn't yet asleep, but I had already, yeah, it was just really wild. So because I don't. tend to have lucid dreams. I think I maybe have one. What I'm trying to do is, is understand your experience better by trying to relate it to my own. So this isn't just me. Hey, enough about you. Let me tell you a story. It's like there's a purpose behind this. So because I have very little experience, it's hard for me to know, there's a recursive loop. There certainly is with the idea of external stimulus, physical stimulus, or environmental, whatnot, affect. dream content, well established.

And then there's a bit of a recursive loop with the lucid thing of like, we have a, a dream experience that leads to lucid or semi lucid experience and then it bleeds over into sleep talking. And then that comes back into the dream with us because we just had, it's all one continuous stream of consciousness that we're experiencing as that's going on. And then it feeds back into the thing.

So it would be difficult for me to tease out, know what's conscious thought process versus unconscious, dream process. And my, my theory on, on dreams is that it is, the experience of dreams is more like what our raw, unfiltered stream of consciousness really is, what it really looks like. And then what we do is we then filter that through conscious attention, pick and choose, form sentences to express thoughts to other people or, or try to organize those, or those images and stream of consciousness into an executable plan, including steps. Those are things we typically only do consciously or that we're aware of doing consciously.

At a whole point to that. Nope, gone. It doesn't matter. Oh, boy. Maybe I just needed to throw that in there so that it's a, to more context for what we're doing.

Well, so I guess I would say that's what I do when I'm trying to do the, the dream analysis thing is, what was your thought process here? And I guess ultimately maybe it doesn't matter what was lucid, semi-lucid or sleep talking or fully awake. It all fits together. And so what I'm looking for with these things is the most likely relevant thought

process you might have been experiencing due to what's going on in your life at the time or what the content of the dream seems to be showing us. It's like a point. There's like a thought experiment. Yeah, as I was saying earlier, a thought experiment. You're running for yourself. in your own mind. Dreams are always a test, you know,

and I personally feel like because I remember almost all my dreams, I keep a like a note pad on my nightstand. That's recommended. If you want to remember them, you have to write them down. You have to record them in some manner. Yeah, yeah. And if that,

sometimes I'll be like staying in a hotel or something and I don't have it, I'll immediately open my phone and go and like put it notepad immediately. Because it I like to go back and look at them and and pull them apart and understand in in the context of what it just as you said, they relate to some problem I'm trying to solve on the surface. And so then I will reflect on the dream and try to see what what was a solution in the dream and how might it improve the thinking I am on this idea. What idea or what problem am I working on that this relates to. But this one this particular dream and the reason

I brought it to you is that I'm not exactly sure other than the fact that the only way that I can really relate to it is that obviously I've I've had quite the life and I've done a lot of things that were probably bad in my life and I I do I'm I live right now in Lincoln, Nebraska. I moved here two years ago but I've spent most of my life away here. I was born here but I mean like so I'm kind of like new. to the community that I'm in. And so I can relate that like aspect of it. But I've been here for two years.

Why would this dream manifest itself now? And then I was thinking about Phil, who might Phil be? Is Phil someone I just met that I, but then I was like, I haven't really met anyone new within the most recent part of, you know, like I couldn't put anyone into like, who's Phil, you know? And so then I started trying to pick apart and say, okay, well, maybe Phil represents a type of person, not a person. And maybe that's the broader story here.

So I personally, the conclusion I came to, and I could be completely wrong about it, is that I'm wrestling with, I'm still wrestling with things that I have done in my past, which I don't intend to come to light. And I'm a pretty open book. I'm like, look what I do for a living, right? I have to tell people all the horrible things that I've done in order for them to relate to me.

So they will take a chance on themselves to make themselves better. So basically, I'll go on podcasts. People ask me the most incredible, you know, personal questions and I answered them freely because I think it will help others do things. But are there things that I may not talk about? I don't know. I don't feel like there are. But maybe there is something that I don't. want out. And so that's, that's, that's where my mind went to in all of this. And, and, and, and again, my

idea of this is, um, is not formed. I just thought it was a great one to bring to you because, uh, I haven't been able to put any, make any sense of it. Well, uh, all, all that is good. And, you know, what I, what I, what I don't want to do is, um, tell you what, what I want to do is make, and I always do this is like I tell folks and it's true the answers are not in me I'm just right you know you're a guide yeah you the dreamer invite me into your head to have a look around and I stand yeah kind of off to the side behind your shoulder shining a flashlight around going what is that over there what does this look like to you what if we look at it from this angle um so yeah yeah the last thing I want to do is tell people okay here's what it means uh but I think it you know and I also don't want to be that guy who's like

uh what don't you tell me what you think and then I'll pretend like I came up with that we're not not doing that either. It's definitely a collaborative, collaborative process. Well, now you know what I think as of this moment. I mean, like, I laid it out. I mean, like, that's the best I can make of it. And, you know, I think that I'm onto something, but I don't know if I, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because there's, okay, so what was I going to say about this? Your gut reaction to this is, you know, I think it's very true and it's based. I think, I think you're on. to something because of the way the dream played out. And I think I know the part where you got there from,

it's where you're looking at like, but there's a whole thing going on here, this dynamic of you've got a person who did some bad things and they're being punished. Now, why is a mouse and why put to death and why in mouse jail? All of this stuff. That is meaning to. We're looking at some of the broad strokes too.

So just going by what you were saying is that you kind of get to know, and he's not all bad. And you know what? I'm not all good. So am I at risk? of ending up like him. There's a comparison being made that. You know,

if I tell people, there's embarrassing things we're comfortable telling and there's embarrassing things we are not comfortable telling. And there's always some of us are like, you know, that thing I did that was a horrible mistake a long time ago. And it's settled. It's been,

it's been, you know, justice has been done for all involved, but I'm still not proud of it. And I will never bring that up again because ain't nobody need to know that. That was way too embarrassing. But we incorporate,

that into our, you know, the process we went through at the time and the, and the, um, um, resolution to it and the changes we made to grow as a human being, especially as you get old, you start getting some gray hair. You've done some embarrassing shit in your life. Especially when you were a kid, you do all kinds of stupid stuff. And you're like, man, I should have known better. I'm really, you know, especially when you start getting into the teenage years and you're like, I'm, I'm aware and smart enough to figure out this was a bad idea. And I did it anyway. And that was just God. Anyway, look, the long, story short, the idea of, we've all got secrets in a way. And usually they're not

catastrophic. They're not the body in my basement. Your life changes if anybody finds a body, but, but not, you know, not in a good way, of course. It's not, it's not, it's not usually that thing. It's just we're trying not to, some of it is, you know, there's not anything wrong with that either. It's like, you don't have to lay your soul bare to every person you meet. That's, you know, and even if you have a very close relationship, you don't have to tell, I don't tell my wife everything. Just because there is not enough hours in the day. It's practically, physically impossible.

But also in our history, like if it's long in the past and it's not really relevant to anything, and it serves no purpose, I'm not going to hurt. I'm not going to flagellate myself publicly. Look how much I can embarrass myself. Let's just not do that. You know, just try not to ever think about it. I had a whole point there, too.

Well, I think that the thing is, is that life is a, life is an interesting journey in which those that are with us at this moment will never know our whole past. They can't. Yeah. Unless they were there for it. And even then they don't know everything because it can see your internal world. That's right. That's right. And I say that a lot on people I help is that we could experience, we could stand side by side and experience the same thing.

and we will repeat it differently immediately after because the way that I interpret what happened, the world around me is built from everything that happened to me before the moment that this thing we shared together happened. Oh, yeah. And so we will say, oh, well, this happened. And she'll say, well, this happened. And I'm like, no, it didn't. It clearly was this, you know.

But the reason that people end up in those situations is because we don't share all of our trauma. we don't share all of our past experiences. And so we get to where we are in today through a lived experience. And we also, I think, protect that on some level because it is what truly makes us, us. It is our true identity. And there's no possible way that you can ever fully share who you are with anyone else. It's just, it's impossible. No, it's true.

And as much as you tried to be open and you might want to, to be that close to someone to really, uh, let down all your defenses. But you're just going to forget some things. Like I don't even remember. I don't remember half the stupid shit. I did probably. It's how it goes. Um, so anyway, I wanted to validate that idea that, yeah, there's, there's definitely. Now, here's what I would do is if you said that I'd say, that's interesting.

Why would that idea occur to you? Because I don't see it in the material. I definitely see that in the material. That's, there's definitely keeping with the theme. So you've got, you're on to something there. The other reason to discuss some of these things in this way is we got to the idea of, you know, so it opens I'm new in town. Well, you're not two years later, but you might be thinking back to when you were or it might not be about the place you're at currently. So just saying, giving me the real life connection to, I don't know, this didn't make too much sense because I've been living here for two years and it's actually a place I lived before.

So it's like I'm coming home again. But this was a new town. I've never been here before. So this is, what does it mean to be new in town? It's like you don't know anybody. So you're isolated and alone. We could go,

go all these like word cloud associations. But it also means you don't know what's going on. You are fresh eyes on a situation. So you're, what if I come to a place where I don't know the people, I don't know their history, I don't have a personal relationship with any of them. And now I'm confronted with a problem.

Now I'm confronted with here's a situation that, at the very least you felt the need to in a way insert yourself into like you became the attorney why why did you go to bat for this guy but before we get there the thought process took you through okay I'm new to a situation I'm putting eyes on it for the first I'm new to town putting eyes on it for the first time and you give up yourself a personal history of like I'm well to do successful it's the end of my career so you're not here to get anything from

these people. You're not here to build a business or relationships with them. You become almost, and it's interesting that rather than putting yourself as, well, they invited me to be the judge. No, I, I've placed myself as the attorney. I'm going to try to, and it was specifically the attorney, the attorney representing him, trying to talk them out of killing him. Yeah. So there's a, uh, you look at the situation, you see someone who, and, and you, you don't even say he was innocent. I'm trying to get him off a false charges. No, he's probably guilty. He's probably done the things they accuse him of. Um, but as you get to know him, you, you come to find out, uh, that these things are, I don't want to mischaracterize it. I can't, I can't read my own notes. Why? I don't know why

write things down. He's, he's not all, he's not all evil. I come to recognize that he is, he's not as bad as people think he is. He's not as bad as people think he is that there's goodness within him. And I start to, I would say that the, the, the, the, the, the, the that I got at the time was that I identified with him. I saw it obviously because that's where it comes to at the end is that I see myself and him and start getting worried. So I mean, so that was occurring as I got to know him that closeness and then of course him escaping and everyone think that I, you know, helped him escape. I mean, so that shows the close that to me shows the closeness of a bond that everyone else saw. and they thought that, you know, basically I was in cahoots with this, this criminal mouse.

Yeah. Well, definitely. There's always external judgment. I mean, even if people don't say it and don't even formulate it in their mind, they feel maybe a certain way about a situation. And they either like you or don't like you for reasons they maybe can't even explain. So if you've come into a new place and suddenly you're telling all these people, hey, I'm going to take up for the guy that you don't like.

I'm going to put myself out there to because so there's some manner of of necessity in in you to do this thing. There's some reason you feel like you need to be his attorney. So you show yourself, well, what would I do in this situation? Imagine I'm, you know, I don't being, you know, successful, well to do end of career. You know, it's also a very freeing thing. It's like, what would I do if I had a few money? Well, I do whatever I want, but what would I do? What do I want?

You know, now that I've got all this money, I'll tell you what I would do. I want, you know, 100 acres in the woods in a castle. I would build an actual stone castle with all, you know, now on the outside, on the inside it would be a comfy company. And I'd probably build a hobbit home. Okay, just give me unlimited money. Do you have a spare room? I can move in with you.

Exactly, right? Well, the part of it would be, I would want to host like Renaissance fairs and have the castle be a hotel where some people can stay, hot water and showers, electricity, all that good stuff. And then actually build a little medieval village. I could go on about that for ages. But so if you are a very wealthy person and you hear about this, Give me a lot of money.

Give me today. I'll make it happen. Someday, someday, maybe so. I was going with some of the building things, new to town. What the hell are we talking about? I just did that to myself. You know, we're talking about having FU money, and this is what I would. Evidently, if I had FU money, I would help somebody that was in trouble.

Definitely. Yeah, then that's, I should be throwing this back to you more often. I was like, what does that look like to you? But I'm trying to tell you what it's, what it looks. looks like to me from the outside a little bit. But you would, you definitely, uh,

your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your,

what is, what is, what is, in a way, just punishment. Now, he's been turned into a mouse and you're, even in the dream, you're confused by that.

You, so there's a, a piece of you that, that seemed to be saying, this doesn't make sense. I mean, how do they, how do they, how do they turn a people into a mouse and he's in a mouse jail?

And so there's something about, I, and you thought of Stuart Little. so there's, there's, uh, definitely influences from, say, all of us, from our childhood of like, what might we think of as a harmless, vulnerable creature that we would not want to see harmed. A little, cute little mouse,

you don't want to see it smashed by a hammer or foamy at the mouth from poison or dead in a trap. Even if those are maybe necessary things, because sometimes they get diseases and flea or whatnot, it's a whole thing. But we look at that, we feel that compassion for it. Like, I would like to protect small, helpless, furry things. Right. And that's how you saw this person, you know, and that's what they reduced him to. So there's something about the vulnerability of, of, of, of being justly accused. Like, he did it. He's not, he's not innocent.

And, and, but then you, uh, so even the guilty, you look at them as, as someone, uh, worthy of compassion in a way. And, and, and you don't want them to be more harshly judged than is appropriate to the actual crime. I think like wasn't wasn't being turned into a mouse enough. That's also that. Yeah. I mean, I mean, replaying this dream right now, I feel like that was a fleeting thought in there as well. It's just, but maybe I mean, more punishment. Yeah.

I mean, like, what else do we really need to do to this person? I mean, they're a mouse and they're in jail. I mean, like, I love being interrupted because that's a fantastic thought. It's like the harm that they've done. is being punished and they have been reduced to a state of harmlessness. They can no longer hurt any, they're a mouse in mouse jail. Done. Problem solved.

Why do we need to go to this extra stuff? Why, why more punishment? And that, um, question could be explained later on. Um, I, I struggle with what to do with the lucid moments. Then I explain why it's the best ability at the time. But do you remember anything you said about the, the arguments you were giving in favor or what you were saying is his attorney. I mean, I think you might have said, I don't remember what I said. And that's, I don't, I don't remember exactly what I said. Uh, yet, I mean,

replaying this and saying it right now, I would imagine that my conscious mind is saying, I would have argued, isn't this punishment enough. So I would imagine that would have been something I would have said unconscious as well. Um, possibly. Yeah. For sure. Yeah, I mean, either you remember you don't. I mean, I ask a lot of questions. I don't have answers. Yeah, I, I don't remember I wish I did and and that's actually one of the challenges often when I do uh sleep talk it's about a 50 50 I mean sometimes I remember it word for word and other times it's just gibberish when I play it back yeah for sure now that's that's that's definitely true I mean that's as I said we've had the situations with my wife I've actually had conversations with her and she gives me nonsensical answers

now probably the answer makes sense to her but you can't explain why and she has no memory of it so we're never going to know but it was I wish I had a great example too there was it was a couple of funny ones which could crack me up in the morning. I'm like, let me tell you what you did. And she's like, I did not. I'm like, yeah. That'll be an embarrassing secret. No one will ever know.

I'm not going to say what it was. So you, yeah, so you're definitely, you know, it isn't about mice. It isn't about prisoners necessarily. But you've got all these things of like, if you've rendered some, you know, even an evil person, if you've rendered them harmless, is that enough? Is that enough? And so you're taking up for them saying, do we really need to kill this? guy is that have we gone from justice to vengeance and is that is that really appropriate um and i mean

in the broader strokes of your creative endeavor and your book and the sobriety thing and and wanting to be someone who helps others there's definitely going to be situations where what you're trying to do is help someone who's probably done a lot of shady things become a better person get away from doing those behaviors and that includes an amount of accepting responsibility you got to see it for what it is and realize it was a mistake that's motivation to you. to change. That's the whole point. If it wasn't a mistake, why would I even change anything? It's working for me. I'm getting rich and, uh, and people love me and I'm a, and I'm a, and I'm a drunk. And okay, no harm, no foul. I guess. I mean, it's not good for your liver and

you're probably going to regret it later. But at least you're not destroying your life and hurting right. There's a big difference. Um, yeah, long story short on that. So you've definitely got this thing where you, your job, your business is reaching out to the damaged who are suffering and trying to help them deal with just the just consequences of their actions. And maybe let's not let that happen again. Let's get you out. Let's get you out of trouble, not erase the trouble, just no more trouble. If we can do it.

And the mouse, okay, so where, what preceded that thing? Oh, actually, let's, let's do this. So you became an attorney to get the mouse out of jail, you know, and he's, his name is Phil. And that's very interesting too. Because I mean, the first thing came to me, he'd in my mind was Dr. Phil. but that never occurred to you.

That just popped into my head. Why? What is Phil? Philip, are there any literary characters? Are there any, um, exemplars, people from your life, nothing he can think of? Well, I, I can think of a, I can think of someone with that name who, who I helped year, when I was actually living on the street when I was homeless. Okay. Um, yeah.

Yeah. Um, I haven't. no many people named Phil actually. Sure. And then that one, it occurred to you. You're like, okay, do I have any associations with the name Phil? But it seems like a weak one, this particular guy. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's really weak.

Because you'd get a Zing. You'd go, I help that guy on this. Phil. I remember Phil. Bam. And then, but no, no, no. You didn't have that experience. I think we think it's something else.

I had to just go, I had to just go search for it now. And I don't know if you saying Dr. Phil helped like cement and made me. And help me remember. Baldding. Anyway. No, he was a bigger guy, though. Oh, yeah. Dr. Phil's like six something. Yeah. And so maybe that's why the connection. But yeah, I don't really know anyone named Phil. So sometimes also we get, what is it? Like nebulous connections with specific terminology.

What do I mean by that? Like, if I say, you know, what is it? What is a good one? You know, well, go to the Greek thing. Someone's name is Claudius Maximus Aurelius. or whatever. It's like, oh, big imposing. That name says something. And over here, you got Phil. He's just, yeah. And that, so in your mind, it could be, this is just every man. This is just the generic idea of a guy.

It could be as simple as that. Right, right. His name's not Maximo. Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, this is Maximilian, you know, whatever. Anyway, you, you, you, I take your point. Phil is just a basic name. And maybe that's his name because it didn't connect with anybody in my life. I don't know anyone named Phil. So maybe that that is what made him the every man.

Yep. Exactly. And they can yet. So that's, uh, rather than this is advice or, or a, a thought experiment specific to a person that you're trying to help. And it could very well could have been. This whole, this whole form. That's what's fascinating about dreams is like you about, you know, say, let's say a month or so ago, you could have been dealing with a very specific person named Phil who was having problems. And so you dreamed about it. You dreamed that Phil, but you didn't. So it's when you don't have that specificity. It's got to be dealing with broader concepts that are related. So it's cool.

I think it's cool that it's a broader concept for sure. And I think that's also why I haven't been able to figure out the dream yet. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's and that's, what do I say about that? So step one, you write them down and as you do. Yeah. Because you're not going to remember them.

Dreams are kind of in a way meant to fade. They're. And that's why I also say dreams self-select for importance. Because if you really remember stuff when they use. usually fade away and you feel strongly about it. And there's a puzzle you're trying to tease out. And you can really remember each step along the way. Those are the ones you want to have a look at.

Like, what am I, what am I looking at? Why is this important to me? Hopefully we get, we get something out of that, but by the end of this. But you, you managed to, this is what I was going to get to as well. You managed to stop the execution two times and a third time was coming. And we could say generically the old, you know, magic number three. I mean, third time. Yeah.

It's just one of those things where it's like it's It could have been one. It's very unlikely to be two more likely to be three less likely to be four five six and then we get hit other magic numbers like seven and that's certainly Sure Long story short you get what I'm saying on that So this is so So One two three it's like setting it up for you know you've had some Success getting through to these people you've managed to to make this people you've managed to make this

them reconsider twice, but the third time is coming and they've, they've now not just doubled, but tripled down. They're like, look, we get it. You're right about those first two things, but ultimately this needs to happen and we're going to do it. Um, and you're, yeah, I see, you're arguing against it. You're not comfortable. They're like, this is too far.

This is, I'm not comfortable with this. Um, and it could be, I thought just occurred to me and I don't know how, how relevant it is. I like to throw these out, but also the idea of sometimes it's, you're trying to convince other people to be less judgmental or to seek less vengeance. Sometimes you're trying to encourage the person to stop torturing themselves. It's like they're like, no, I need to do this. Well, here's a good reason not to. He's like, well, you're right, but I still need to do it. Don't let me try again. Second time, here's why you should stop torturing yourself. It's like, you know, you're right. You're right about those first two things. I acknowledge it. I can, yeah, but I'm still going to go all the way and do

something harmful to myself or self-sabotage or all kinds of different things. It's like there's a lot of death sentences we give ourselves and it's just the end of one thing in the beginning of something new sometimes if it's not literal self-suff harm in that way like when uh times where i might work with somebody and and i see light and i see light and then they completely fall off and they decide that no they're just not ready to be helped i mean that would be another example and and what's interesting again it's so true that these things in this world come in threes and seven so often, you know, they just is just weird. They do. They do. I'm not even claiming to understand it.

Just the fact that if you pay attention, it's there. Yeah. And, and this is, so there's that external judgment and some people just not willing to forgive. There's the internal judgment too. It's like they just feel so guilty that they can't let it go. They just can't forgive them. And that's a weird, the idea, forgive yourself. It's like, okay, you tell that to a sociopath and they're like, well, I never felt guilty in the first. Of course, I forgive myself. Hey, I never did anything wrong. I'm a narcissist. Uh, that's going to get a clip. that's fine let's hope so that's fantastic

that's great material you gotta keep that in right I wasn't acting not as all some people yeah but then there's the flip side of that coin where people just beat the hell of themselves for every little thing and they can't let it go it's like yeah those are the people you need to and I think of that is the balance of what is

that saying out there my job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable in a lot of ways so you know sometimes you want to take a person who's not reflecting on themselves and say, hey, here's a mirror. Can we talk about this? And sometimes you got to say someone who's just stuck in their own, as we were saying, shame and guilt and say, you can't move forward until you get out of this hole. First you got to get out of the hole. Let go with the shame and guilt. It's good. It's good for motivation. So I say too, it's like a lot of the

healing process is transforming negative emotion into positive action. Let it be, it's good that you feel terrible about failing to show up on time for your, you know, uh, your cousins, bar mitz for whatever, you know, it's like, because it hurt his feelings. He's like, hey, you miss the show. Why are you, where are you late? Like, okay, I feel bad about it, but it doesn't mean you should then go do something destructive to yourself because you, just leave a little earlier next time. Motivate like your bad behavior, motivate positive. Anyway, long story, sure, you get that. So we did get to the point of like, all right, they've accepted your, What is it?

The judgmental crowd that is enforcing this judgment is accepted. You know, there are redeeming qualities, but this is a situation that is bad enough to go all the way. But then what are we doing here? So then Phil escapes. Yeah. So we have the third time. The hammers come down. Yep.

Justice and said, sorry, it's happening. Mm-hmm. And then somehow Phil escapes. And, of course, the first finger is pointed directly at me. But you helped him. Exactly. Now that's interesting too because let's imagine a person who doesn't want to let go of their guilt and shame like we were saying. And they escape.

They do what they consider to be letting themselves off the hook with less than they deserve. And then sometimes they externalize that blame to the coach that's telling them it's okay to let it go. but they're uncomfortable letting it go to the point. Am I making sense? I don't know if you can phrase it differently. Yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah. There's a bit of hating the helper going on there.

It's like, I know you're right, but I don't really believe it. And I'm not really prepared to let myself off the hook, but I do it anyway. So there's like escaping from the jail is getting out of that prison being trapped in your emotions, trapped in behavioral patterns. Perhaps. Probably. Yeah, yeah. That would make sense. Yeah, I'm not saying.

that's, uh, that is one idea of what it could be. Let's let's go. Let's go. Let's go there. I don't want to say that's what this means. I hate that. No, no, no. I yeah. It's just given another, another line of possibility. Yes. For me to, to ponder, you know, it, in some ways, because people, because you could look at Phil as being someone trapped within his own prison of his own ideas and beliefs or view of himself and and and I've given permission to Phil to not see himself that way and but Phil's like oh but I'm still in this tiny little mouse jail and and and then without my knowledge or anything Phil gets out somehow yeah and the whole town's at my door like you know pitchfork and and torches and hand going bring out Phil I mean that's basically what happens and and I'm like exactly

Exactly. And then I'm like, Phil escaped and they're like, you know, he escaped. Right. For sure. No, they're going to look at you. Well, you're the only one. You're new in town. You're a stranger. You're the only one sticking up for him. Now, that might also relate to what you could be thinking through is, is how do I help someone when the people around, you know, someone who tells me I'm having problems and the people around me are really angry. And I want to start getting out of this hole, but they think I should be punished. And I'm conflicted. guilty. I know I did a lot of these things. Do I really deserve to forgive myself? You might be trying to think through how do I advise this? How do I advocate for them? How do I be their attorney?

How do I solve this sticky conundrum, a subset of other problems in my process? I don't know if that's making sense. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like it makes sense. I'm thinking through it. But yeah, I can I can see that as being a potential way to interpret it as well. Yeah. Yeah. And it would And what I've done, we're not really done yet, though. So once they accused you, you know, because you're friends, because you're the only person that took up for him. And then there was a reading out of the list of grievances is what I wrote down. Yes, yes.

Yeah, so they cap. So then Phil gets captured. They capture him. Right. And so then it, like, very quickly, we go from recapture to, like, the scene is standing in, like, standing in the, this traditional, like, penitentiary, like, execution room. And they got this tiny little mouse strapped to this huge human table.

Yeah. I mean, like, that's the visual. Oh, yeah. And so, like, I'm on the other side of the glass. And they're, like, reading out all of his lists of crimes. Now, I don't remember what any of them were. And, you know, they're, they're ready to execute him. Oh, yeah.

And it's like, it's almost comical in a way. That's exactly what I was thinking. We were both laughed as soon as you see that visual. And that's probably the purpose of that visual is like that. like this is ridiculous. This is overkill. This you're showing yourself, this is not, you know, the mouse didn't get out and kill a bunch of people immediately. And you're like, oh, well, I guess he deserved it.

And now, then it wouldn't be comical at all. It'd be like, this is a dangerous animal that needs to be stopped. No, no, it's comical. It's a, it's all of this hullabaloo. It's a giant table and a needle for a tiny mouse strapped in there. Just absurd. This is absurd. This should not be happening.

This is too far. Yeah. Exactly. But, you know, the other thing that popped into my head as well, afterwards being awake is why was it execution by this method? Why was it a needle?

Why wasn't the punishment of feeding him to the wolves or something? Or why was he able to live? Or, you know, how did he live for the period of time that he escaped without you know, mice are pretty fragile in this work.

You know, like, it's pretty easy to get killed if you're a mouse. I mean, you just, you've got three cats running around your studio there that would happily eat a mouse, right? So, and would be able to catch one with relative ease. So how did Phil survive? He survived for some reason to be brought back and then strapped to this massive bench. I'm sorry, I still have the visual.

And for whatever reason, he couldn't fully escape. He couldn't get out of town. He couldn't run away somewhere else. And that might be metaphorical for the idea of, you know, we can't escape ourselves, wherever we go there we are. You bring your problems with you. So sometimes leaving and starting over can work. But if you have all the same bad habits,

you're going to repeat those negative patterns. You're going to screw up the new place. The new town is going to try and kill you too. If you go to a new town. In the broad strokes. Yeah, yeah, exactly, which is why when you like then they go to push the needle. But as that is occurring, I'm having the thought in my head standing there thinking about the things that I've done.

after hearing these grievances, whatever they were. And I'm like, oh, no, I've done some of those things. Are they going to lock me up? Yeah, then I wrote down the quote, you know, am I good or evil? Like, like, yeah, like Phil. And where do I fall on this? And they followed through. They followed through and you woke up angry.

It says as Phil was executed. I think, you know, there's, there's, probably part of you that will always, because you're using such personal experience and what you've learned from it and the motivation to help others, all of it's very personal. Your whole enterprise is very personal. So everything you do and everything you advocate is probably going to be related to that. There might be a part of you that's still struggling with letting go of some things or wondering what kind of just consequences probably should have happened as a result of some behaviors and that you were lucky to escape it.

Now you hear you're looking at, well, what if, what if I get into a fill situation? What if no matter how much anyone advocates for me, I just can't escape the consequence. And maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I'm, maybe I shouldn't allow myself to. There's some of that like some guilt that is threaded through that. Yeah. Probably just, you know, we'll be with you forever and you'll probably just revisit it.

Like I think back, we get a visceral like a face flush and. a cringy feeling when I think back on some stupid things I did. As I said, I will never tell it. I won't tell my wife. But I think about it. I'm like, God, that was just embarrassing and dumb. And why did I think that was ever going to work? You know, I think that's a normal human thing.

We, you know, but usually it didn't hurt anybody. Usually for most people are embarrassing mistakes. Or like, you know, you just said something stupid once and you can't believe you did that. And you don't know what you were thinking. And no harm, no foul, but still maybe somebody was upset. at the very least. But isn't it amazing that you can have those thoughts? I have them as well.

I can think of various times all the way back into childhood. I literally will cringe thinking, I can't believe that I did that. In my face and my body does the thing. I can't stop it. Just thinking about it or picturing what happened. And then the likelihood that anyone else remembers what occurred is so slim. Yet it can it continues to have that massive of an impact on us to this day.

And I mean, we're not alone. Everybody has these. Oh, for sure. And it's interesting, why? Why do we hold on to a moment like that? What is there has to be a purpose? And I oftentimes try to ask myself, well, why is this thought still a thought? Why am I still holding on to this?

I'm just ever so slightly. going to go on a segue just for a split second because last last night I have this recurring set of dreams that involve the owner of the first business that I worked at. It was a small local chain of pharmacies. And I worked myself up from like a stock boy to being the assistant manager and then the head buyer for the for the company before I, before I left a short shortly after I started college. And so the owner had such a, I learned so much for him. He was, you know, just this really talented, smart individual.

And he took me under his wing and he just like any question I had about business or anything. And I always relate back to it. And, and, and so he shows up in my dreams all the time, like constantly. He's been dead. He's been dead for five years. Yet for some reason, he's like, still shows up in my dreams like, you know, like, and I always say, whatever happened in the, in that time period, in those four and a half years that I work there has impacted everything

in my life because it shows up at least twice a week I'll have a dream that involves it. That is very cool. That's good. Now, a lot of us don't realize the, the exemplars or the heroes in a way we look up to, the people we've learned. And a lot of times it is conscious. Hey, I, you remember the guy. You remember he taught you a lot of things.

And for you, it's a little more close to the surface in terms of how broadly, deeply, I mean, comprehensively, he influenced your life by just being a good role model. And for a lot of folks, that's their dad or their mom or a mentor. Like, like, you know. Yeah, he was my first, he was truly my first business mentor that taught me like, well, this is what you'd have to do if you wanted to start a company. This is how it would have to be. Oh, no, you would have to hire employees and do things. I mean, like, he taught me all of that.

Yeah. And I'm a lifelong entrepreneur. That's all I've ever done. I've worked for myself, basically, aside from two short stints at large companies, but I couldn't handle it. Now, his name, his name wasn't Phil, right? No, no, no. Just his, that way, you probably would have thought of that. I just had to ask.

No, no, no. Yeah, no. His name was Bill, actually, not Phil, but close. But he was a super great guy. But anyway, the reason I bring that up is that he comes into these dreams as the applier of knowledge. And it happened last night. And I don't remember all the specifics with, I'd have to go look at my notes. I don't have him in front of me.

But I just, he showed up in this dream and said, and basically was suggesting that maybe we look at the problem this way. And I was like, oh, that's a great idea. And then immediately that's what I sit out and do. And the dream was a success and I woke up. But it's just wild that that, and I find it so fascinating that someone that for my life when I was a teenager, you know, 30 years ago. Because you've had some other more recent mentors. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

And some that I would think are more impactful, but evidently not. because otherwise those people would show up in my dreams, right? Maybe so. And they might or it might be a case of like, you know, begin at the beginning, start with the basics. What's the foundation of everything? So definitely, you know, if someone helped you lay that foundation, you'd probably think back to them a lot and say, well, what would Bill do?

How would he approach this? What would he tell me I should do in this situation? You're just tapping that well, like going back to the well for more inspiration or exactly. But sometimes it's sometimes it's not even on things that he, would have taught me. And that's what makes it so fascinating. He's like, he's like this guide that has become a part of my dreamscape that, that, that is, that is, that shows up and provides that knowledge. He's, you know, he's like the knowledge panel or something, you know, yeah. Yeah, well,

there's two, two examples I'll give to, which is this is not, I won't say it's not as uncommon as people think, but that's the general ideas. Like, this happens more often than you might think, even if it is not common. Um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, One was a book, it is ABC Book 6, Studies in Dreams by Mrs. Mary Arnold Forster. And she actually, this is one of the earliest books I could find written about lucid dreaming. And so she talks about her experiments in her,

her studying her own dreams and conducting studies in her dreams and studying dreams in general. It's a nice, clever, almost triple entendre title. Long story short on that. She had dream guides that sometimes they were like invisible, fuzzy things. and sometimes they look like her father. But sometimes it was not like, you know, so if it looked like her father or brother,

what I can't remember who it was exactly. But it wasn't that person and she knew it wasn't that person. She knew it was the dream guide. Whatever, whatever category. So there's a, just two. Okay, the second thing was how Carl Jung, he would do waking meditative dream states where he would consult a spiritual,

guide or whatever it was. In his own imagination, he called Philemon. And so he would have conversations with this person. What would Philemon say? Let's go. Let's have that thought experiment as a kind of waking dream meditative experience. And this was like, so what he was assigning to it was, okay, if this is, this is a beneficial mentor, a deep source of wisdom and knowledge, what would the example or the

avatar of beneficial wisdom and knowledge say to me? about this situation. So you could, you have this guy and you really, he was, he was good to you. He gave you a chance. He gave you,

recognized your efforts and your promotions. He gave you good advice that worked. All of these wonderful things. And then later on, you can say, and as you do say, he's not in current dreams, he's not talking about anything he ever taught me.

Now he's, but he's still giving me good advice. So now he's transformed from Bill and all the things Bill actually did to avatar of good advice and which, wisdom who will show up and put on Bill's face and say, yeah, remember this guy that helped you. I'm here to help you too. So I think that, okay, all of that to get to that point. I think that's

what he is now. Like, it isn't actually Bill anymore. It's now it's something. No, no. It's, it's not, but it's really fascinating to me. Anyway, uh, I digress. That's right. Both of us. This is all episode is one, a big digression. That's what we do. I took us on that journey. No, no, that's, I think it's all relevant. Like, I tell people too, don't hesitate to tell me if you're not feeling it. If it's like I rattle a doorknob, it doesn't come open. We move to the next one. It doesn't matter. I'm happy to be wrong if it gets us where we're going.

We can rule out things too. But the other side of is, interrupt me anytime. I just ramble until I can inspire thoughts for you or give you something useful that makes sense. So if you go, wait, wait, wait, stop. I just had a thought. Please stop me. So that's definitely. Now, I think it was a worthwhile tangent because why would you wake up angry?

You know, it's because you perhaps tried to come in and serve a, a similar purpose of, you know, saving someone from themselves in a way or from unnecessary, unnecessary, excessive vengeful judgment. And it didn't work. And you were, and you were upset by that. And, and right, you know, reasonably so. I wouldn't, you know, I don't say whether emotions are, are, they're always real, but they're sometimes reasonable and sometimes not.

Like, should you be that angry? Maybe not. Should you, you know, should you be that upset? Well, this is life and death, literally. The mouse was put to death by, and you're like, this is too far. So all of that... It's like I tried really hard

to make something happen to... Almost like I was trying to... Not only was I trying to help Phil, but I was also trying to help the town folk to recognize that perhaps they had become vengeful. Perhaps they weren't looking at this

with the... in the right light any longer. and then my own reflective right before I wake up to think about the things that I had done that could put me where Phil was. Yeah. And even though I don't remember this in my dream, I can see where in my natural conscious mind's application is, it goes immediately to. And how many of the town folk are just as equally two-faced? For sure. Yeah.

And that's a complicated dynamic as well. It's like sometimes the bloodthirsty mob. wants attention off themselves. They want it on this guy. They can say scapegoating. They can say, I'm better than this because, look, I want to punish him. Even if I don't want to talk about this stuff. It's deflection.

It's not. Yeah, deflection. Absolutely. That's what it is. Yeah. That too. And I mean, it's, as we were saying, it's reasonably upsetting that you would go in with a purpose and, and fail. And you're, and you feel bad on like, at least, you know, a couple of different levels. but the idea that you failed the person and an unjust outcome has been obtained.

You failed the people because you couldn't convince them that they were going too far. And in some ways, you maybe feel like you failed yourself of like, what am I lacking that I couldn't pull this off? What else could I have done? Right. And what did I miss? What did I miss? Yeah. What did I not say?

Yeah. Yeah. What did I not see? Did I say the wrong words that didn't show the right things? Yeah. And those are some things that I do struggle with sometimes in the work that I do is that, you know, like sometimes I feel like the words don't hit necessarily. Right. And then I have to back up and go at it a different direction to try to because words are interesting, you know, what in the, because they can frame an idea in such a way that make it either too complex or to, you know, beyond comprehension for one person.

Or too vague and they're just not getting it. Yeah, yeah. What am I not saying? Yeah, this is just, this is all fuzzy. And so did I, did I not do my best work? And I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a perfectionist. I, I do strive for doing things right and doing them properly. But it hasn't kept me from doing a lot of wrong things, right?

Because I'm human. Sounds like you might be a little tortured by your own drive, as we were saying. That's how it is. No, it's how it's. it is for sure. And again, I would hesitate to say to someone like you, don't, I don't worry about it. Be more like me. No, you're not me. You're not me. And that's okay. You get your own thing going. And I'm not even trying to tell you it's good or bad necessarily. I think that's something you're going to discover. It just is. It just is. Yeah.

But at the same time, even though I am driven to do things, I'm also the person that will say like, you know what? I'm going to take a break right now. And I'll just disappear for four hours and and leave all of my devices here and just go into the into the wilderness. Yeah. And you got to know when your cup is full and you got to let it drain a little bit. You got to know. And it's so wild in today's world. It is almost impossible to disappear like that because then when you do,

and I had an instance of this just a couple weeks ago or someone literally went into panic mode and thought that, you know, like either I'd done something to myself or I'd been in a car accident. I'm like, it's been four hours. Like seriously? Yeah. I mean like, do we really have to start texting everybody? You know, FYI, sometimes I leave my phone at home and go for a walk and you're not going to be able to reach me. That's becoming uncommon.

People want like, he didn't get back to me for a whole five minutes. What's going on? Why? Yeah. Why did it take so long? Maybe I was watching a movie. I mean, maybe I was on the toilet and I didn't want to talk to someone with the echo. Yeah.

You know, you know more than that. And it comes into the, the reflective state that we do get in our dreams and it is one of the last places that we truly can escape this world and be reflective and think and i wish more people could remember their dreams like i do um i i i think it's a gift that it has been given to me and i'm so glad that i have it because it but it's only a gift if you allow yourself to reflect on it and see and try to figure out what it means and how because if you for and and i don't i'm not saying that i write about this but i personally feel that every dream that i have is has solved a challenge that i feel that i have

but i maybe consciously don't know i have it's something it's like i'm unaware that this is challenging me under the surface and and and so that's that's what these dreams are for me and that's I write them down and I know a lot of people think that that's funny and crazy, but, but it, and, and a lot of the dreams are just absolutely nonsensical. If you would read them out to most people, I'm like, oh, this means this. And they're like, how do you get that from the, like, well, it doesn't really matter how I got it. It solved challenge that I was trying to. For sure. Yeah. And there's a, I put them into two broad categories of like, sometimes they are problem solving specific. They give you an answer. Happens all the time. Sometimes they are. observational. What you're trying to do is explain what you're seeing to yourself. Before you even get to, okay, now what do I do about it? How do I feel about that? A lot of dreams can just be, let me clarify the problem without even getting to an answer yet. And this actually might be one of those kind of dreams where you're trying to clarify a problem rather than give yourself an answer because the answer was, I woke up angry and I failed. That's not an

answer. That's a problem. No, no. That's what I'm looking at is like, I'm still searching for the solution. Yet what you've helped me do today is like I think that the greatest thing that we've discovered today or you've helped me discover today is the fact that this is most likely reflective to the work that I'm doing now and the intertwining of what I see in other people when I'm working with them and my own past and trying to to weave myself in as the person who has walked into their life. I, so if, if I suddenly have been, uh, hired to help somebody, I am the new person in town, in the town.

The town is their group of people. Absolutely. And suddenly I'm in a situation where they're counting on me and my guidance and council to help them navigate the challenge that they're in. And sometimes maybe the things that, that we work on together doesn't work. and when it doesn't work, then it could potentially unravel and I haven't quite yet figured out

how to deal with that unraveling. I don't know. I'm like totally going on a mind search as I'm talking out loud. Yeah. No, I think that's fantastic. I, all of this has been worth it to get to the last minute of everything you said. Just to help you describe the situation to yourself. Now that you're seeing a little more clear,

you can go, okay, what do I do with that? What do I do when I Burst onto the seat, new in town I'm here to advocate for them And it doesn't work It doesn't, you know, whatever I'm trying to help them with Doesn't work. How do I pick up the pieces from that? How do I maintain a positive relationship with them?

Do we build that into the recursive cycle? Maybe it is. Maybe it is referring back to You know, observe behavior execute and and trying to say, okay Maybe one way to let yourself off the hook a bit or to incorporate it in a reasonable manner is let them know ahead of time. You know, we're going to, we're, we're, um, you and me, we're going to collaborate on solutions. And we're going to give them a try and they might not always work. We are fallible.

We're, we're, we're, we're things we, we're always going to learn something. This is what I would say is, you know, as long as you learn something from failure, it's not that bad. If you learn absolutely nothing, you don't even care, that's bad. Um, but if you, you, you tried bonus points, you, you, uh, you, it didn't work, but you didn't give up bonus points. You review and look for improvement bonus points. Bonus is the wrong way, it's about positive versus negative. So maybe building that into what do we do?

What's it? The Batman movie. Why do we fold down, Master Bruce, to learn how to pick ourselves back up again? That is probably those leaning in that. That's what I would say. If I were to give advice, which I don't, and this is not, consult your doctor. But that's what I would say.

Probably that's the maybe one pathway I might suggest for you to explore. We'll put it that way. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. No. It's good. This is, uh, this is giving me some new direction to ponder and pull apart the rest of

this dream. I think I'm closer to solving it that I, than I wasn't an hour ago. So I'm like super happy and excited about that. That is fantastic. If there's one thing we like on dreamscapes, it's new directions. And you're just about out of time. I got to get you out of here. We'll end up that joke.

That's a good one. You feel we've gotten everything we can have. You don't have additional questions. I'd like to give you the last word. No. I'd be like, I'm super happy. Thank you so much for walking me through that and guiding me through some new possibilities and new ponderance. And I think that the most important deal picking all of these apart is to have an open mind because anything that is being suggested, it can sound off it for.

but even as you were saying, I was like, ah, it can't be that. I had a couple of instances of that, but then once I thought about it a little bit more, I was like, well, hold on a second. So now, what if it is? Yeah. What if it is?

And if it is that, then these other pieces fall into place and the more, you know, pins that you fall into the lock, the easier that you're gonna find that key that unlocks the whole story. Oh, yeah. And a song lyric, which pops into my head frequently just came back.

It's you want to hold on loosely, but don't let go. If you cling too tightly, you're gonna lose control. I love that. It's a great. I love it. I love it.

Great song. That's why I'm trying to turn all that poetry and music. I'm going to go on another tangent here. Let's do this. Let's say, this has been our friend Massimo Rigotti. He's a high performance coach, public speaker,

and author of flavors of confidence, Sober Method. You can find him at Sober Method.com and at Sober Method on, or is it, wait, is it at sober. I wrote at Sober Method. At sober. Oh, at Sober Method.

Okay, got you. On all the socials. All the socials. There we go. And my mouth is horribly dry before I launch into my... Not many cats on the screen today. This is unusual. Bub is sleeping.

Anyway, I'm going on another tangent here. For my part, would you kindly like, share, and subscribe? Tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers. I do video game streams Monday through Friday, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific. Most days, sometimes I take Thursday, Fridays off if I finish a game. This episode brought to you in part by ABC Book 10. The Witch's Dream Book, a kind of pop culture, occult work out of 1885. Fantastic there.

Lots of fun. It has one footnote, and I'll tell you what that is, do not eat or drink any recipe in this book. That is the one footnote, and it is on every page. Oh, yes, these are not for human concept. This is for entertainment purposes only, but long story short on that. You can find all this and more at Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com, including downloadable MP3s of this very podcast.

if you would head on over to Benjamin the Dream Wizard.locals.com. It's free to join attached to my Rumble account. One of the best ways to get in contact with me if you want to do a dream interpretation. And that is enough out of me. Massimo, thank you for being here. It's been a very fun talk. Hey, thank you so much. It was great.

Good deal. And everybody out there, thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.