Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 199: A Rock & A Hard Place

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

Dean Taylor ~ https://offers.deantaylorofficial.com/

Well, we'll just, oh, I guess the only thing I would say is any, any last minute needs. You got to run to the bathroom. You want a fresh cup of coffee? No, I went right before. I thought, okay, I want to make sure I'm ready to go. Me too. I got my own little routine. I'm like, let's make sure I go to the bathroom.

Let's make sure I get, you know, get my water ready. And I've got my notepad, get a whole setup I do. Okay. We'll do two seconds in dead air. We'll get rolling. Hey. Greetings, friends, and welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have a guest dreamer Dean Taylor out of Salt Lake City, Utah.

He is a, of course, I write these things down because my memory is terrible. My brain is Swiss cheese and things fall into the holes. He is a speaker and a coach, part of the John Maxwell certified leadership team, teaching leaders who are often career fathers, how to align with their core values and lead with greater clarity and confidence. You can find him at offers. Dean Taylorofficial.com link is going to be in the description. You don't have to try to remember that. For my part, would you kindly like, share, and subscribe tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers. You don't have to be anyone special promoting yourself. You can just be a

regular person who dreams and please speak English. I do not know any other languages. Those are the requirements. I play video games Monday through Friday, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific, most days of the week. Sometimes I take a Thursday, Friday off and start a new game on a Monday. day. This episode is brought to you, oh, I've got it right here. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Brought to you in part by. Oh, no, what it's playing. It's playing it like it's a video. Oh, exit slideshow. That's what it was. Slide show. Wow. Don't do that. This episode is brought to you in part by ABC Book 14. It'll be on the screen right there. Dreams in Homer and Greek tragedy. This is William Stuart Messer's 1918 doctoral dissertation to join the Faculty of Philosophy at Columbia. University exploring the rich cultural history found in several epic literary works from

antiquity and representing an indispensable guide to ancient Greek conception of sleep and dreams referenced by many subsequent authors in the field that is enough about that but you can read all that on the screen too you can get of course all this and more at benjamin the dream wizard dot com including downloadable mp3 episodes of this very podcast so you may take the wizard with you wherever you wander with or without Wi-Fi. And last but not least, if you'd head on over to Benjamin the Dreamwizard.Locals.com, it's free to join attached to my Rumble account,

building a community there. One of the best places to say, hey, Mr. Wizard, I got a dream, and we can make an episode. So that is more than enough out of me. Let's get back to our guest. Dean, thank you for being here. I appreciate your time.

Absolutely. Thank you so much. Appreciate being here with you today. Nice. And then, of course, as I was saying earlier, just dry mouth today awful we had like the worst muggy hot weather and rain in the middle or at the beginning of August in I'm in Portland Oregon so um it's just been yeah it's been from I feel like I'm swimming through the air to now I feel like the air is sucking the moisture

out of my face so yeah I had a quick question for you sure are we recording oh yes yes recording now You are recording. Okay. Yes. Oh, God, if I wasn't, that would be terrible. I'd be like, oh, let's do it all over again. Yeah. Yeah, okay.

I didn't see a recording. So I thought, oh, no. Oh, yeah, I capture the video in a set that interesting behind the scenes. I use OBS to capture the video behind the scenes. But, and I'll tell you right now, I didn't mention this because I never, I'm always forget something. I was saying that before we get started. I think I'm forgetting something.

Every guest of the show is welcome to use the Zoom called. I just use Zoom. Start your own recording and save this for yourself. I mean, you'll get my version of it eventually, but this is as much your product as it is mine. So after I post these videos, you can take the whole thing, chop it up into clips, make YouTube shorts, put it on TikTok,

anything you want to do to promote yourself using your appearance here. I don't mind. Nobody who's ever appeared on my channel assigned a release. I don't own this anymore than you do. It's just, we're two people building a, a collaborative project out of it. So, um,

let's throw that out there. That's, that's the way I roll. Okay. Sorry. I was like, oh no, I didn't see the recording thing starts though,

but we're good. No, make sure we weren't. We're never hesitate to stop me and go, Ben, did you forget something? Because the answer is probably yes. No words.

No worries. Well, where to begin with you? So I know you had a button. I was even looking at like, should I ask him the questions that are on his, his, his page?

And I'm like, I go a little more organically. I mean, from what we chatted about beforehand and putting together your introduction, where do you think is a good place to start on describing what you do or what got you into it or how you do? I'm a terrible interviewer, honestly. So I don't know. Do you have any thoughts?

No, absolutely. Yeah, thanks for asking. I am, I still work a full-time job. That's something that, but I have, as I've, been a little bit further in my career. I've felt that I think probably a lot like a lot of men who are nearing the end of their careers potentially and looking back and saying, what kind of legacy am I leaving? Am I?

Or maybe they're feeling a little unfulfilled, feeling like I got to get up one more day to do this thing that doesn't really drive me or create a deep passion. inside of me. And I've certainly felt those feelings. And I've experienced that. And I spent the last several years thinking about that. And one of the experiences that really triggered this in my mind was my mom passed away back in 2015. My dad, he passed away in 2018. So right before he passed away. We were living, he was living in Oklahoma and we went to clear out his belongings from his house to get his house ready for sell. And when I had when I was younger, my dad had this dream of starting his own business and doing his own thing and he wanted to do

small engine repair. So he went, I remember him going to school, getting the manuals. He brought home a small engine that he would take apart and put back together and did that multiple times or many times. And for whatever reason, I don't recall why that business just never took off for him. But I remember how excited I was as a kid. My dad was going to finally do this thing that he had this passion for. And now here we are clearing out his house. And in the garage, I'm discovering these old manuals that were still sitting there.

And in the corner of the garage buried under all this stuff. was this small engine that I remember him taking apart and putting back together so many times. And now we're throwing all this stuff in the trash. And I thought, am I on the same path? I mean, I know I wasn't living the dream I had for myself at that time. And I thought, I don't want to be at that point in my life where I'm just living with this regret of not having done

what I always wanted to do, which throughout my career, throughout my life, when I've gone to see speakers or when I've seen people on stages, I've thought, how can I be that person? I want to be that guy. And I just never really done it. And so I thought, I want to change that.

And so I got involved with a speaking coaching coach and a mastermind to help develop that skill and help me improve. And that's really the beginning of where it's got me on the path that I'm on now. And so, and I'm loving it. And people will sometimes say, well, what are you going to do when you retire? And I'm like, well, now I've discovered what I love. Why would I retire from what I love? I'm not going to retire ever.

For sure. No, I feel the same way. Like, I can see myself doing this until I can't get out of bad. anymore you know which when I'm yeah or who knows what and even then I don't know maybe we roll the roll the laptop over to the bedside and I'll just do it just do it that way but these are these are all great things that a lot of thoughts popped in this but that's what happens is how I do the dream thing too it's like people start talking like oh there's all these ideas and connections and what what kind of seemed to run

through it was well not running through the whole thing that's that's that's bad way to put one thing that popped into my head was the idea of a midlife crisis and there's a, there's a, there's a bit of a trope about that or a, um, a common understanding that it will happen to a lot of people. Because when you're young, you're like, I need survival basics. I need a job. I need something that pays. And hopefully it's something you're interested in.

So, you know, I got into psychology and whatnot because I found that. Well, I want, long story short, I wanted to be a, maybe a philosopher in a way. I mean, I've always had a passion for philosophy. But when I look. at the job prospects, it was be a full-time philosophy teacher, which, okay, there aren't that many jobs and I might have to move to a different state, who knows? And then do I really want to be an academia for the rest of my life? And the alternative for someone with that degree is standing on the street corner yelling at traffic. And I can do that for free, and I have. But it doesn't

pay as well. So I'm like, well, what can I do that's practical that is in the similar, you know, So instead of the why of everything, I started looking at, well, let's get into the specific realm of the why of human behavior. And like, that's plenty big. That's, you'll spend a lifetime studying that and never get to the bottom. So, but, but yet again, so as we were saying beforehand, I've spent, you know, 20 some odd years in inpatient emergency psychiatric. So I've seen, seen a lot, done a lot. And I always thought maybe someday had hang out a shingle and going to private practice. I'm like, well, I never turned to that.

I'm like, what do I really want to do? It's like, I'm really fascinated by dreams. So I'm just going to. So in a way, if you get lucky when you're a kid, you might stumble into a lifelong career that is fulfilling. It just unfolds that way for you. Or it becomes a means to an end where you're like, well, this is an honest living.

And it's not that difficult in terms of like, I can do the job and I'm not killing myself. But I have other things that are, I'm just working to pay the. bills so that I can have a family so I can do other hobbies that actually motivate or stimulate me. But, but again, too, it's, so there's, it's not uncommon. It's not, what am I trying to say? It's not uncommon that people get to a certain point in their life. And it's very natural as well, that you start to evaluate, do I want to keep doing it at the, at the halfway point, do I want to

keep doing what I've been doing or do I want to do something different? And that, you really got to check in with yourself and say, what do I want? what am I doing this for? What is, and then that gets you the idea of purpose, right? Yeah, I, I,

having been, we have, my wife and we have five children and, and various, you know, amounts of clarity of what they wanted to, quote, unquote,

do. As I've thought a lot about this, I've thought, and because I got to ask that question, well, what are you going to do when you get out of high school? What are you going to do? I didn't,

I don't really know. Nobody knows, right? You think you know. You think you know. And I felt like a better question to ask them, how do you want to live? Instead of, well, what are you going to do? Well, what kind of life do you want to live?

What kind of lifestyle do you want to have? And then talking about clarity and purpose. Because I've had the same struggle about, well, man, I felt passionate about so many things or I like so many different things. How do I narrow it down to this one thing? And that's where the purpose and, clarity really and having a vision were so important to me because without that purpose, it's like having a GPS that doesn't have an address put in it. You can go anywhere.

Yeah. When you have your GPS really becomes valuable when you put in an address and you know this is where I'm headed. And I use that analogy to say now that I've aligned what I value with my purpose, and my strengths, that becomes a lot, has become a lot more clear, very clear in my mind. And I know where I'm headed. I know what I want to do. Interesting, you had an impatient experience. I worked in a newborn ICU for seven years as well. But I've always had a passion, desire to help and to serve. And but I didn't really know how it was all going to come together.

And so because I had in my back my mind this desire to speak and to teach and to coach and to train. And I didn't know how, but I love serving. And like you were saying earlier, it's like, well, I got to pay bills. And so I'm just going to go do this thing. And, you know. So, but now I've really become really clear on what are my values? What are my desires? What are my strengths?

And when those things have become aligned, I, I'm going forward. It doesn't feel so, it doesn't, sometimes people say, well, I'm just grinding. Like, I want to grind through life.

I want to flow through life. And that's how I feel now. Absolutely. That's a great, you know, grinding. I mean, that metaphor comes from video games,

which I still love to do. And it's interesting that opportunities change as well. I mean, like, you know, let's say back in the days of, the, the original Nintendo in the 80s or whatever.

I love that. There was no such thing as a video game streamer. There was no way I was going to build a life that included other people watching me play a video game as entertainment. So, you know, times can change and then certainly we reevaluate with new technologies that come along. These cats. Hey! Leave her alone. Boba.

Now he's going to come over here. He's going to get all up in my paperwork. That's fine. That's what they do. Call it Value Added Entertainment. Where was I going with that? Anyway, oh,

you also mentioned, you know, as parents pass as well, that's another thing that kind of happens around that midlife, as much as it's a cliche. I mean,

it's normal to reevaluate what, am I satisfied with what has gone before? Because I only got about a half left. And when parents die, exactly. It's one of those things where it's like, well,

what do they leave behind? There's physical objects, too, but there's also their role modeling. And role models don't have to be parents, but very often it is. Like, how did my parents succeed at raising me to this? Wow. Stop it.

Wow. He's being a real asshole today. Sorry. That's by the black cats. He's Bubba. And then the other one's elderly females. She's been with us for 15, 16 years or something. He's one years old.

She's 16. And he's like, I want to play. And she's like, I will cut you. She almost has. Anyway, so that's, yeah, we often look to our parents as a model. And then, and then, you know, their passing really triggers that in us to say, you know, my life will also be finite. And what, what do I want to accomplish with the rest of it? So, I mean, as much as I don't tend to give people advice, it's like, I'd never be afraid to

at least have that conversation with yourself, to reevaluate. It can be difficult to shift gears. Sometimes you have responsibilities and you're like, maybe I'm pushing 50 or 60 or whatever, but I've still got two kids in college. I mean, I can't throw everything away and start a new hobby that doesn't make any money. That's not going to work. So sometimes we get stuck in the grind and it's unfortunate, but as long as you're, but then again, there's purpose in that as well. I'm doing this for my kids.

I'm doing this to make sure my, my, and then in that sense, the kids become your legacy. So sometimes you can grind, excuse me, grind through some things or get stuck in a grind and it can be hard to get out. I mean, part of that conversation with yourself has to be about real practical things as well, you know, not just what might make me happy, but is my happiness the only thing that matters in this equation? And sometimes it's not, you know, not that that isn't important. Go, go ahead. I'll say absolutely.

And that's one of the things that I'm, I'm in the middle of that, what you just described, balancing a long career, which I still have, and pursuing a dream and a passion that I, that I have and how is that going to work? And I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, what I've learned and what I'm learning is I, is I, is I keep moving forward is that, uh, if I wait till I feel like I have it all figured out. Oh, right. I'm never going to get there. And so I'm just, I'm just, I'm moving forward.

And as I keep moving forward, the path just becomes more clear. And I, I, I, I'm, so I'm figuring that out. So I, I know exactly. Yes. What you used to say is so true. Like, I know I can't just walk away and throw away all this stuff because I have people relying on me still. And, but I also am really committed to being true to this purpose and vision that I have for myself. So I'm figuring that out.

So definitely that's a great statement. Yeah. And one of the things you mentioned earlier is lifestyle. My head popped again too is like, I like the, there's different shades of meaning. that all use the same word, but in different contexts. And a lot of people think of lifestyle as simply material success. Like living,

we think of the phrase living a lifestyle of a certain. And it's generally that material. I want this kind of a car. I want this kind of a house. And sometimes that reevaluation in midlife or just at any point, you get to a point where nobody changes anything until it's not working for him anymore. So as soon as you get to a point where like, I'm not satisfied,

what do I do? I was this not meeting my my other needs that are not material. You might look at that and say, do I need this amount of material success? What do I really need to be to, it's not just to be content or to be happy, but the idea of like how much more beyond certain basic needs is it necessary to have things and stuff. I'm not a big, even though this room is relatively empty of a lot of things. things. It's lots. I like open space. So this is my natural, I like, I like large caves. If it makes sense. I don't really want to be outside. Actually, I mean, outside is not so bad, but I like, I like being in my cave. But I also want it to be spacious. I don't want to be in a box, you know, a tiny little, tiny little cramp space.

So anything I can get rid of, I've, for, for decades, I've tried that, um, uh, was it from, from a, from Fight Club, the things you own end up owning you. And I, I don't know if that came from another philosophical tradition. But it's true. thing you possess, it occupies mental real estate and resources to maintain. And at a certain point, like, do I need this? So, okay, all of that, bring it back around or I got dementia according to the media. If you get to a certain point in your life and you look, do I need a house this big? My kids moved out. Why am I still here?

You can downsize and shift gears into a lot of everything. So if you're starting a new hobby that you hope is going to become a business. or you're pursuing a passion like you were saying you might go from okay when I get to the end of people relying on me and I need a big house because I got seven seven kids or whatever and they each need their own room well eventually you get down to that empty nest thing and you're like I can shift gears I can work less I need to work less because my material needs decreased and I can invest this other energy somewhere else I think some people get stuck in a long story short in a living a lifestyle versus living a life that they enjoy living for the experience of it.

I'll just stop there. I've rambled. I hope you have something to say. Was there a question in there? No, no. As you were talking, I was thinking that,

yeah, it doesn't always have to be about material things, but how do you want to live? And I think that's where having a vision and knowing what you, where you're headed, what you want. and we're on this we're on this podcast

talking about dreams and that worry gets thrown around a lot about well I have this dream right what I see myself becoming and and so often I find that people have they've stopped in a sense

dreaming or about what they envision their life to be like and so and I think because it's almost like the dream sort of get knocked out of us a bit. The dream we had as a child of it,

we're going to do anything, we're going to do this thing. And so we think, well, I've got to be practical. I've got to be realistic. And I'm not downplaying any of that. But what I'm saying is that when we don't have that clarity of a vision, and we don't allow ourselves to have

imagination and we don't allow ourselves to dream about what's possible and how far could I, how far can I really go? Then that's, I think, where we get in this cycle of feeling stuck. And, and so I guess my point there is that I often say it's never too late to start dreaming again, but it's always too early to stop. Absolutely. Yeah. That reminds me as well as soon as you started mentioning dreams and and there's the two basic kinds is nocturnal visions experience during sleep, you know, dream experiences. And then there's hopes and aspirations. But the, the Greeks actually broke it down, speaking of that book that I plugged at the beginning.

And that's why I love reading all these. I've read every single one of these books seven times before I edit and republish them in a modern, modern formatting and footnoting and whatnot. And I add my own research and all that good stuff. Um, but the Greeks had like, I don't know, seven or eight different words for dream, just like they do for the different types of love. They identify it by what it's connected to, you know, love for family, love. Anyway, dreams, and it's all connected to the idea of what we think of as hopes and aspirations are in a way daydreams. But that word as a baggage attached to it like, oh, it's unreal. realistic or it's it's something you do when your mind is idle but you should be thinking about

something else you're daydreaming your wool gathering you're letting your mind wander but it but we all I mean I think it's the fundamentally in some ways what makes us human is the idea that we can look to the future and not only that negotiate with the future what do I want my life to look like I've been um one thing I enjoy doing it's just a hobby it doesn't pay yet I mean, although with the new, uh, new ownership, getting payouts became a possibility, but on, on X or Twitter, whatever, argue with people. Share, share my vision, my ideas. And vision can also mean here's what I think will happen or should happen in general.

Um, okay, all of that to say, I think I lost it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, I explained too much and then I can't bring it back. Dreams, visions. Oh, that. I, so, like I call myself a wizard and it's part branding. It's part serious and I've explained it a million times. I think it's an archetype humans can embody like the mother, like the father, like a hundred other archetypes, the fool, the hero, etc.

So wizard is a type of way of being in the world. Included in that is my idea that the world is more magical than we understand. We take it for granted that I can say, oh, I'm hungry. I have money. I know where the store is. I can make a plan, walk to the store, hand them money. They hand me food. I come home and I eat it.

We have just created the future for ourselves by, in a way, spelled this spellcasting type of thing. We've created a plan, formulated it, executed it, and come out the other side with a different future that wouldn't have existed without that choice. I think being able to negotiate with the future and accomplish goals, I think it's a form of magic. Now, a lot of people go, what? That's just like life. It's just what we do. I'm like, yeah, that's pretty amazing.

There's animals that can't do that. They act on instinct. We can choose. We can choose what we do. Anyway, that blew my mind when I, I have all these epiphanies that seem immensely important to me. Who knows? Maybe I'm just too stone sometimes.

Oh, I think you hit on something hugely important. Go ahead, please. Yeah. I mean, I think imagination. I mean, what other creature on earth has the ability to have imagination? It's one of our greatest gifts as people. And what you said when you were talking about, well, I have this in my mind I envisioned. I'm going to go to the store and I'm going to get this thing.

And I'm going to, that's a mental image that we've created in our mind. and then we act and we execute on it. It's like anything. I feel like whatever we hold in our mind, if we hold it there and we have emotion, we can make that happen. We can, we can, I mean, we, these things that we hold in our hands,

these things we call phones, that was someone's imagination. So we envisioned, had this dream that they could have a day where there would be something that would almost be like, a computer you can carry around on your hand. And try going back to the 1960s with the giant spinning tape punch card machines

and tell them, oh, that'll, that something a thousand times more powerful than that will be in your pocket in 60 years. They'd be like, I mean, maybe, but that's pretty pie in the sky. I mean, I don't see that ever happening. And it did. And it did.

That reminds me, too. A lot of the way, a lot of what I do, a lot of what I think wizardry is, trying to conceptualize the world in ways that crystallize ideas and for easy communication. So my one phrase I think I invented, who knows, maybe great minds parallel thinking process. Someone else came up with it. But every piece of science fact was once science fiction. And I, I referenced the 60s specifically because in the 60s, we had Star Trek at the original, the original series.

And you saw how they envisioned the future. I mean, this was supposed to be hundreds of years. And it was very much based on what's current. You kind of extrapolate from the current. But one thing they had was the communicators. Delete. And then one day we had the Motorola razor flip phone. And I'm like, we are in the Star Trek universe right now.

This is happening. And all we're waiting on is space exploration. And Elon's trying to make that happen. We'll see. What I want is I want to beam me up Scotty technology. You know that? That's a fascinating conversation, too. That gets into,

okay, brief spoiler alert, if you have not played the game, Soma, turn the volume off for like two seconds, but, and you don't mind me, spoiling it for you,

are you, video game, are you going to play that game someday? Oh, no, great. Go ahead. No, okay. It,

well, maybe I'll try to be vague. It deals with the concept of beaming yourself, or in this, in the game, your consciousness into another body,

so to speak, or uploading your consciousness to a neural net or something like that. And in the, apparently, you may not know this. I don't want to, I don't want to ruin it for you. This doubt is getting back to Star Trek. Now, Star Trek's 60 years old.

If I'm spoiling something, that's too bad. That's your fault. Especially if you were born anytime in the past 60 years. It's canon in the Star Trek universe that your body is destroyed and rebuilt on the other side. So you're not actually moving your physical form. through like a wormhole in space to appear somewhere else. It is deconstructed like a, remember the, I don't know if you see it, the intro of the movie Tron, where,

where, we know his name, the dude, the, wow, he's in all the Tron movies. Anyway, the, Flynn, the creator, I can remember is, he gets deconstructed and moved into the machine. Well, apparently that's what's happening with, so the philosophical question then becomes, are you you? Is it the same person that comes out the other and apparently the Star Trek universe says no and they've we've had that verified

this is a complete tangent like we're just we're just BS and right now it doesn't matter but there was an episode where an earlier version of Will Rikers the next generation got trapped in the pattern buffer of a transporter and they activated it and now

there are two Will Rikers. There's the one that made it out and the other one the pattern and they got trapped in the buffer. And they became, they were separate physical persons right there, the same, same guy on two divergent paths. And I think they did one where the other one grew,

grew a, grew a beard or something. Like the classic trope of the one with the beard is the bad guy. The goate, the goate style. Anyway, long story short on that is, this is where my brain goes with things.

We were talking about the future, envisioning the future. And it's interesting that we, a lot of our a lot of our um conceptualizations of things relate to to the physical senses and certainly you know we think of seeing dreams because that's how most of us experience them and then that becomes well i can so if we call that a vision based on eyesight vision uh then we we would then say you know so you could have nocturnal visions as i call them or visions for the future and we think of that as plans goals and and whatnot too and then

putting them. So maybe the, a great thing, this was going somewhere. Hey, I'm proud of myself. We can transition into maybe, uh, uh, how you put that into practice a little bit. I mean, like, I don't know, practical steps or implementation or exploration. Um, you know, what is your, do you have methodologies that you've picked up or, um, I hesitate to say like a program you've designed or anything, but like, how do you go from vision to execution? Like, what, what would, uh, what would that look like for you or is it too broad i don't know no no that's a that's that's a great great question and uh for me the way that has happened is once i understood and again going back i i spent some time reflecting on what are the things that i value and became really clear on

what are what are my non-negotiable values uh Then I spent some time identifying my strengths. I used a few different tools to help me identify that. I took a Gallup Strength Finder's assessment, which was very good. And then I looked at my, what are the things I desire? And once I, because what I learned through the process is that if my desires and my values are not an alignment, my values are always going to win out. So what I'm wanting to do, what my desire is, if it's not in alignment with who I really am at my core, then I'm, that thing is just, I'm always going to have this tension and this conflict, and eventually my values are going to win out.

So that's why I always say it's so important to have values in alignment with your desires and then your strengths. And then it was creating, taking those things and creating a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a. vision and and and sometimes that's worried i think it's thrown around a little bit and for me it it isn't just a one or two phrase sentence i actually spent time really thinking about what would it look like what would it feel like what would it smell like taste like what would it really be like if i were assuming this was already done and just writing it out and then holding that in my mind and then taking that really vivid vision and I condensed it down into a small paragraph that kind of just summarize highlighted that vision and then I repeated that to myself

every day because I'm taking that and I'm emotionalizing it just like we talked about earlier and I'm now executing on that thing, that vision. And the practical step, I think that one of the keys to that is once I started letting people know, this is where I'm going. I've announced it publicly. I'm now have some public accountability for where I'm headed. and so I've broken that down into just some actionable steps that I can take. And that's why I say it's if I have it in a short, like almost like a little short paragraph that I can, and I've, I recite it and I know what I'm doing, then it's become, I've internalized it.

So, and then I've announced it publicly to family and friends, people know. what I'm doing and and that accountability is what's helping me create it take the action steps to go where I where I want to go. So that's the way I'm doing it. Yeah, for sure. No, that's a lot of good stuff too. I was thinking as you were saying that right off the bat, you're like, okay, so you check in with yourself and you're like, what do I want? Like what really makes me happy, what inspires me in that sense. And not only that, but like, what, what doesn't conflict with my values? Because, yeah, if you, if you think something comes down to a matter of right and wrong,

it's like, well, I'm not going to do anything I think is wrong. So that's off the table. And so you've got to, from within what you already value in or to make sure that other things you value are also equally respected or not harmed by the process. Fantastic first step. I mean, that's, I think that's where a lot of people get stuck. maybe they don't even allow themselves to dream like it's either you know and then there's some people who are just uh they just as much as they don't physically dream like i i or they don't remember

their dreams that's a whole that's a whole different thing but a lot of people don't i don't want to say don't have it in them like constitutionally but it never occurs to them to dream of more to say what you know they either lack the confidence or they've just never really considered you know this is just how it is so that's a big deal too is like if you're gonna but then i guess if you never then you're not missing anything. Maybe those folks aren't where we aren't even talking to them. Like, okay, you're content where you're at. Don't, don't mind me.

I'm over here doing something else. You live your life. That's fine. But the idea of, um, what really struck me was the idea of the specificity of the dream. I wanted to look like this because what I found through, through my experience. And, oh, you do like I was talking about woodworking projects before. I put myself at the desk and I say, okay, let me draw a sketch of this. Let me try and do a schematic of what I'm trying to build.

And I find that during that process, I'm like, oh, that's not going to work. That piece can't go there. That's going to be too expensive because I'll have to buy twice the amount of wood. Let me change the design. So we refine that process. But then once we get the practicalities of it, the possibility of and all that lines up with what we desire and what we're trying to accomplish, then the path becomes clear. As you were saying, using that analogy of the GPS type thing, but it's like if you, if you, If you have insufficient specificity, you'll get in the right neighborhood, but you won't find the right house.

You know, that kind of a thing. So really nailing it, really envisioning, getting that imagination of the finished product. What do I want this to look like when it's done or when I think it's done? It gives you something. Now, what you want out of it might change along the way. You might even get halfway down the road and go, I don't feel like going, I don't feel like doing this anymore. I thought I did. But that's one of the best ways to find that out probably is do it.

do something that moves you in that direction. That's what was going to be. My next question is the idea of baby steps in that direction. I mean, do you recommend people start small with something that's in the vein of what they think they might want to do, but to test the waters? How does that work? Yeah, I feel like, and one of the things I think that holds us back

is we create this vision and we start to move in that direction. We take a step in that direction. And then, but if that thing that I wanted to accomplish, if it was logical, and if I could logically figure out how I was going to do it, I would have already done it. And I think our brains are kind of wired to want to protect us. And so when we go into doing something that feels unfamiliar to us, or we say oh that thing doesn't feel familiar so it must not be right so i'm going to

retreat back to this place that feels familiar or feels comfortable and then we tell ourselves oh well because i'm in this place of familiarity or comfort that must be right and but if we think about that when we were when we were little when we were children we were learning how to walk or to talk or anything like that. That was, we were doing things all the time that were unfamiliar to us. We hadn't, we hadn't done those things before, but we kept moving and we kept getting up.

We kept doing over and over until now this thing that seems so out of reach, feels very comfortable, feels very natural. We do it all the time. And I think that that's the same way about achieving this, a larger vision as we take a step. We get to that boundary of unfamiliarity.

It feels scary to us. But when we take a step into the, that place feels like it's unknown, the path starts to illuminate. And it becomes, when we stay there, now that circles broadened and we feel more familiar. It feels more comfortable.

And then it just keeps expanding from there. So I, I guess my point, and saying that is taking action towards that, towards that vision, towards the dream has really helped me to become way more familiar and more comfortable with doing things that were before outside of my level of comfort or familiarity. And so I've, it's now like it's just felt more natural. It feels comfortable. It feels good. It feels and it feels right. And it feels my level of passion for it hasn't diminished. And I keep going to keep going in that direction.

So I hope that answers the question with some actionable steps that someone listening could take. I think a lot of what is beneficial is having some of these conversations and trying to put words to the concepts. Because I think once people hear it in a certain way, way they're able to go, oh, yeah, I, I, I get it. I, I think, I can, I can, I can, I can internalize that concept. Maybe I don't understand it completely. Maybe it's just, I'm just starting on that path of understanding, but demystifying certain processes that, that we go through. And I had, tell a couple of stories about me. Why not? Um, I had a coworker once who says, Ben, you, you say

things other people think, but don't say. And I'm like, yeah, And sometimes it's the most mundane stuff. I just verbalize my process out loud. I like to put things into understandable words, number one, for myself. I'm like, what am I thinking? What is this thing? What do I see? And then describe it in a way that makes sense to other people, even if it's like obvious.

I still like, I still want to crystallize it. The idea of there's a good, say, evolutionary reason for fear of the unknown. The unknown is potentially dangerous. It is potentially wonderful, but we don't know. And so if you're going to stay alive, sometimes we're, you know, we're, I think we're descended for the people who, and I think this is broadly true of all human, we are descended from the people who were cautious enough not to get themselves killed and adventurous enough to discover new things that made it easier to live to stay alive.

We had to strike that balance. People that pushed their boundaries a little too far fell off the end of the world. We're never going to hear from them again. And their line is ended. But other people did something similar. They just did it in a more successful way. So we follow their example. Again, we went back to the role model thing.

And this reminds me of, I don't know what drove me to do this, but I wanted to like perform. I wanted to sing and play guitar for people. And I used to have the worst stage frighten it to the point where I think I have a dry mouth now. It was horrible. Sweating, legs, shaking, voice tremulous. I mean, all of this stuff. And what really turned a corner for me on those, like, maybe I shouldn't do this.

Maybe this is not for me. Maybe I think I want. Maybe I have a vision of what someone else did and I admire it. Therefore, I want to imitate it. But it's really not what I want. Maybe it's not for me. And then the concept that kind of broke open my mind in that regard was someone told me, oh yeah, that's stage fright.

Now, you never get over stage fright. You just learn to like it. And I'm like, you know what? reconceptualizing and that's where uh you get some people who are like is this fear or excitement well excitement we it has a connotation of a positive connotation i'm excited as in looking forward to but there's just general i mean fear is an excited nervous system response so really it is the same fit but it's a different interpretation in our brain of what this thing is so once i realized that it was a feeling to lean into to to to um

I could just relax and enjoy it. If someone had told me that before that, oh, you're going to, you're going to enjoy stage fright. I would have never believed him, but then I'm like, that's exactly what's happening.

And then only after heading down that path did the shaky leg start to stop calm, did my voice steady, did my mouth stop being so dry. I still sweat like crazy. Nothing I can do about that. I'm just a fat guy. So, those were all the things that I thought so it may indicate danger that that there is unknown and you probably will confront danger and you want to be cautious but but also getting out of your comfort zone if there's something you think you want you just got to go and look at least you got to check it out or you never know I mean I think that's one of the things I was thinking of regrets earlier today why was I thinking of regrets um it's that I don't regret it oh I was going to

to make a Twitter post. I don't know, just because I post random, random ideas. I'm doing a lot of talking. I'm going to throw it back to you, I promise. No, you're good. You're good. And one of them was and I ran out of time because we were going to do this. Like I thought of it at the wrong time. But now I'll use it as as fodder for it for a conversation. Um, the, I have lost opportunities by being too forthright and genuine for my own good. And, and I look at those. And I was thinking about it because there's someone who I was in communication with them and then I said,

quote unquote, said the wrong thing according to them and they decided not to talk to me anymore on Twitter. And I'm like, okay, that door is closed. Did I really do anything wrong? And do I regret? And in the past I might have said, yes, I regret not having been more tactful or holding, biting my tongue maybe when it's an impulsive statement. Who knows? But lately, I think of like, I don't regret it. Regret is something different. I lament, I mourn the loss of the opportunity. That's okay to feel grief at, I wish this had worked out. It just didn't. But I don't regret being forthright. I don't regret being, you know, honest or whatever, or speaking my mind genuinely on a given topic. And if that means someone else doesn't like it, I've just realized I don't regret it.

I shouldn't regret it. It's not necessary. It's not it's not a moral obligation to be regretful of of some mistakes and is it a mistake even to do that so sometimes committing to a path also means you know it's a the presence of suffering along a certain path is not necessarily indication that the path is wrong uh now it might be your mileage may very be very careful with these things so that don't do anything to hurt yourself but you should probably expect some things to be unpleasant as you're chasing new experience experiences and getting up. That's the way as we say getting out of our comfort zone.

Well, what does it mean to be uncomfortable? Oh, that's an unpleasant, perhaps painful sensation for some people. Okay, I'll stop there. That's like a 10 minute rant.

No, no. I guess one of the thought I would just share, maybe helpful if anyone listening, we were talking about, you know, how do you go about achieving this thing you want? And one of the things I've definitely,

and I'm not perfect, but I'm definitely learning as I go, is that I was talking about action and sometimes the next step may not seem logical and if it were logical I would have already been doing it. But when I pay attention to those first thoughts about something that I should do to it was going to move me in the direction I want to go,

sometimes we dismiss those as saying, oh, that's not logical, that's not my, it's just, and we dismiss it when it's really our intuitive mind or unconscious subconscious mind telling us and giving us an answer that we that what we're what we should be doing and so I guess I would just say too don't don't dismiss those those thoughts of inspiration those thoughts of coming from your intuition that's going to help you get to where you want to go because again it's not always going to be logical you may need to just go do this one thing that you think, why want I go talk to that person?

And then you actually go do it and you find out, oh, this was exactly the answer I needed to get me to the next step towards this process where I'm trying to go. So anyway, that's another thing I would just share with people. For sure. Yeah. And then a lot of it is like, just do something. Just take some action. Not recklessly, not carelessly, not at any cost.

But let's say you go with the analogy lost in the woods. type of thing. It's like, okay, maybe you're not lost exactly. You don't know where the end of the path is and you don't know which path takes you there. Sometimes you got to take a wrong turn. And then you get there and you're like, this is not where I wanted to go. But standing at the crossroads and doing nothing gets you nowhere. I mean, some people get that decision paralysis type of thing going on where they're like, I don't know what is the certain path forward. Therefore, I should wait until I am certain. Sometimes taking action, exploring one path out of many will at least, eliminate something and that I think that comes with the idea of the uh that as you were saying the um subconscious type of thing that's what we're doing a lot with brainstorms how many different ideas can i come up with and most of them are going to be crap not because you know what they say there's no such thing as a bad idea i think that's true and some is that there are many bad ideas also but but when you're brainstorming there's no such thing as a bad idea because you're just trying to be as complete thorough as inspired as possible get it out there even if you eliminate 90% of those things

and say, none of that's going to get me anywhere closer to what I want to do. And I think this relates, it's a perfect segue into the dream thing because I tell people not just metaphorically give it time, but literally sleep on it. If you don't know what to do about something and it's sufficiently strong in your mind, if it's something you really want an answer to, and I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me and it took me forever to realize it as a phenomenon. and start passing it on, but I will be uncertain and I'll just stop thinking, okay, we're going to put that down for now.

And I wake up the next morning with no memory of a dream, but I have an answer. Something happened in my brain in the middle of the night that gave me that answer, gave me the certainty or at least provided the inspiration to make an attempt in that general direction. So I think it's very powerful. I've talked to more people in the last few years about the power of the subconscious and intuition. and trusting it.

The way I describe it is it's the idea of like the lighthouse on the shore in heavy fog and you're on a boat. And there's a beacon. You can see it. There is absolutely something there. And not only is there the beacon there. The beacon is pointing to something. It's on the coastline. Now, what you don't know is what's the shape of the coastline?

How many rocks are there? How tall is the cliff? How much beach is there? is the water deep enough for me to get a boat up there and without running running a ground? You don't know any of those things, but you know for damn sure there's a beacon and that beacon is pointing to the shoreline and that if you don't want to go to the shore, you stay away from that direction. So it will tell you, it gives you vague information about something that you then follow up on. You do the proper investigation, but we don't, it's, there's so many beacons throughout our lives that, you know, something will inspire our emotions. And we'll go, what is it?

Did that appeal to me? Why did that make me happy or why did that make me angry? What? What is going on in my head? What do I want out of that? Out of this experience? How does this relate to where I'm going? So I would encourage more people to check in with their own Impulses more often without being improperly impulsive to to any harmful it's such a balance. It's so hard. The idea of you know, you tell people you need to be more impulsive, but not like that. So good. follow your impulses, but do it safely and cautiously. Wait a minute. And then that's why I love the yin yang and the whole, like a Taoist perspective of things. Yes, that is it.

Which is it? Should I be impulsive or should I be cautious? Yes. And always at the same time. I don't know if you wanted to add two cents to that or if you want to shift gears. No, yeah, it was great. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, we can. There we go. I'll make a little note of the time. I didn't used to do this. Speaking of my process. And sometimes you don't know what the hell you're doing until you, I'm just going to start doing it. I just started talking to people about their dreams. And my formula has evolved from experience.

Like, so if I were to try to explain to someone how to do what I'm doing right now exactly the same way as I do it, I don't think I could. I could only tell them, here's how I started. And here's where I wanted to go. And they're probably going to figure out their own process as well. Speaking of one, one thing I never used to do was right down the timestamp. which was stupid. Once I figured that on, I'm like,

why don't I do this? I have to scrub through the video looking for the moment. I'm like, right down in time. Jesus. And of course, if I'd had a mentor

or someone teaching me how to do this, they might have said, don't root, don't forget, timestamps. Time stamps. Yeah, mentors.

Yeah, men, mentors are powerful. Oh, it's a big deal. Yeah. That's what I hope to be in a way is, as a way, I think most mentors

are a kind of wizard. I think that's what they're doing. Speaking magic words, helping people see the future, their own future. uh that's fantastic so okay um we'll uh swing on into the dream thing so uh how this works of course i'm going to shut up and listen our friend dean's gonna uh tell me about his dream experience uh as a narrative beginning to end this is what i saw and felt et cetera and then we're gonna we're gonna

try and figure it out together so i am 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 2,000 years. That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube and at Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com. Okay. Well, this dream that I've thought about happened when I was, I would say probably 10 or 11, probably 10.

We were on a, we'd gone on a family vacation. We were on our way to the Grand Canyon. And we'd stopped, and I don't recall if it was, I think it was like some sort of a gas station slash convenience store. It was one of those touristy-type places that you can stop. But I was so fascinated by this. sign about this pit of rattlesnakes. And I've always thought snakes were kind of cool, just a fascinating creature.

And so I remember walking over there and there was just all these snakes. And one of it fascinated, but one, it also sort of terrified me because I thought, wow, that's a lot of, it's a lot of venom in there, a lot of poison, a lot of danger. this pit of snakes. And I had a dream, not too long after that, that I was, I woke, I was asleep and I woke up and I was on this big boulder. And I was surrounded by all these rattlesnakes. And I remember feeling so completely terrified.

I wanted out of there, so I wanted out because I was scared, but also nervous because if I moved, I was afraid they were going to strike. And I just remember this feeling of just being completely frozen and not being able to figure out how to get myself out of this. And then I, it was a very short dream that I can recall. And I woke up, but I've had that dream a few times of my life. since then. And it's always very, almost the exact same dream,

the exact same feeling of terror. And I, and I, and I, and I wake up just about the same, same place, the same point of the dream. I never, never comes to any sort of a conclusion. It doesn't, doesn't end other than me waking up and being really grateful that it was just a dream. And that I wasn't actually in this situation

with all these snakes surrounding me. very interesting all right so i didn't uh so before we started just behind the scenes again for the audience before we started um i always ask folks you you do actually have a dream to share and some people show up and they don't they're like oh uh i what nobody said or that wasn't clear to me fair enough i i should be more clear about that but uh most people have a dream you can remember something and it doesn't have to be long it can be short like this but also we uh i i i stopped dean before he started telling me about the dream. I'm like, I got to hear for the first time in the moment and we're going to roll with it.

Now my head's in that space instead of thinking, what is it? What do they call when you put too much thought into something? Overthinking. That's a, um, anyway, that doesn't work for me. But what we also, uh, didn't get to was the idea that it was a recurring dream, which if I, I was not, as soon as you said that I was not surprised. I'm like, there's very many experiences from childhood, broadly speaking, uh, that if we have a, a dream about him,

it will often recur because it's powerful in some way. There's something in there that's profound to you personally. So anytime you've, that, that idea becomes relevant again, that iconic image comes back to, I was talking earlier about how I very often verbalize the most mundane things in my head. I just try to put it into words where we're,

I think is often trying to do that. It's trying to say, what is this thing? How do I conceptualize it? What words do I use to describe it? What images represent feelings or experiences? Okay, so let's get down to a little more specifics. There's, so in the very beginning of the dream, are, are you always the same age in the dream? Are you always a child or are you always yourself currently?

Uh, always, it's always the child back when I'm, like, when I'm about that same age, little, yes. Okay. That's interesting. Don't know what it means. Just interesting. It's why do I ask these questions? I don't know. I'm operating on pure intuition when I do these things.

Um, yeah. So counter, uh, what do I call it? Counter. Um, wow. I cannot words today. Uh, the, um, what didn't have. What do they call it? Counterfactual. Jesus. I'm going to get, I'm going to get it one of these days. Counterfactual is, no, I'm always my current age. Would have been, would have been the other answer. So it would be, I think it would mean something different if that was. It would be all, and maybe it wouldn't. It doesn't surprise me either way. It wouldn't have surprised me as well if you had said, I have no sense of my own age during the things. But for this one, it really is as a child at the, that time. There was something about, so it's maybe less universal in a way and more specific

to that time because you've got yourself crystallized as well at a certain age, or at least a part of yourself that it will always be that age. I don't know. Very often I just ramble until my guest has something to say. If you get inspired. Yeah. Yeah. And that's okay. I'll just keep rambling if you have nothing to say, but if you do, don't hesitate to say, oh, hey, wait. Because my favorite moments are where I'm like, and I'm describing this thing and I'm saying some stuff. And all of a sudden I see the person they go, and you can almost feel their mental zing head to gut where they're like, I just had it. But let me tell you something. So anytime you get inspired.

But we're just starting. So anyway, those are kind of ground rules interrupt anytime. Don't hesitate to tell me I'm wrong as well. I rattle a lot of doorknobs and they don't come open. So be able to move on. happy to be wrong if it gets us if it eliminates those those pads in the forest that we're not going to go down um so in this dream uh it can be a sense of the size and shape of the bold he said boulder and that can be anything from like a 20 foot thing to one that's barely two or three feet wide and you're

oh i know this boulder in my dream is um it's always very large like large enough that i'm And if I were, if I were to jump off of it, I would, I would be afraid of, I would, I would, yeah, I would hurt myself. Like, it's, so it's big. Like, it's always this really massive, boulder, snakes crawling around. And I, and in the dream, it's always, too, that I, I know that if I were to jump and move, I wouldn't be able to just get away from. them like I would they're everywhere and I would be because there's other rocks away from it that I would have to like try to crawl up and get away from and I I'm so I just always feel stuck I'm just right there and I'm always in the same same clothes that I wore on this trip I was I was or kind of

what I wore probably my one of my favorite pairs of shorts and think tops when I was a kid. It's the same kind of red shorts and like a tanish looking tank top shirt. Okay. Any chance that's maybe what you were wearing when you saw that sign

and went over and looked in the pit? I'm pretty sure if I were to go back and find a picture. I remember taking pictures. If I could, I don't know if I have a family picture of us being there, but yeah, I do know I had those clothes.

with me on the trip so it's probably yeah and and does it does it mean anything really that you would be in this it would be like that's one reason that image burned itself in your mind because that's what you were wearing that day maybe but also it could just be when i think of myself at that age i think of my favorite clothes at that time which was this outfit and so in your mind the the first time you had that dream and that's what happens with recurring dreams very often the first time we have it it it i like to that phrase crystallizes. It comes together as a, as a coherent hole. And then that repeats, sometimes with variation, sometimes identically.

So, okay. Okay, where are we on that? So I'm seeing, go ahead. And it's kind of kind of funny to me, too. Like I was mentioning before, I, I love watching snake shows. I always thought they were a fascinating creature and learning about this. And I know that that's, I was so fascinated by them at that place that we stopped. And so I don't know why that dream has occurred a few times throughout my life.

I haven't had that dream in quite a while that I've had it a few times. And every time it's, like I said, it's the same thing and the same feeling of, I'm stuck and I can't get out of here. and I'm terrified. I want to get out. I want to wake up. Definitely. Yeah.

Yeah. That's kind of. So what I'm doing is trying to see what you see as much as I can. So it is large enough that you're well off the ground. So counterfactual again, it isn't a boulder that's, we might find as, you know, someone's landscaping boulder that they put in their yard or a series. of them as a as a border um that would be like act you'd be really close to the danger you'd almost be striking distance and any misstep at loss of balance you're off it but a boulder's

actually you as much as you're trapped you're sick you're safe you are safe if you don't move so there's something going on there with that as well you know they're not going to get you unless you get now that's small comfort because you're still trapped but it isn't the same kind of trapped of like I'm trapped and I'm in immediate striking distance of harm. But also the idea of there's another side to that safety as well, which is it's so far out of range of danger that I would actually hurt myself to get down. If I jump, I might twist an ankle. And at the very least, I'm jumping into the snakes because they were ubiquitous or

or spread out enough that there was no jumping over the snakes. They weren't all gathered at the base. They were spread out and large enough. I mean, there's really. Yeah. Yeah, there's other rocks and things around that I just, yeah, I can't, I can't get. If I move from, yeah, yeah, definitely.

If I, I knew if I moved from where I was at, I was going to get, I would get bit by, by one of them for sure. And if I, especially if I got off, off the rock. Like, that was my one place of, at least feeling I was somewhat out of harm's way. And if you had to kind of describe a sequence of event, and this may just be that single image and knowing what you felt and broadly what was around you, but was there any sense of a passage of time in the dream at all in terms of I experience

myself having these thoughts over a period of time or I spent hours there still. staring at the snakes, wondering how to get out. Any sense of time passing or really it just feels like a momentary event. How would you describe that? I wouldn't say it was momentary. I mean, it was, and I don't know how I got there. That was the other thing. I've always like, how do I get here?

How did I end up in this place? And there's no one around. There's no one I'm, there's no one else in my dream. there's no other people. It's just me trying to figure out how I'm going to get away from this danger. But it does when I, it felt like it was a long time that I was there.

That it wasn't, it wasn't just a few minutes. And so I definitely felt like I was there for, period of time. I don't know, I don't know how long, but it seemed like it was a long time. Yeah. And this, this is very often how it goes with dreams. I mean, you did not include a description of the passage, a feeling of the passage

of time until I asked for it, not in your original description. So does that mean it's not important? No, but it also means that understanding these things requires a little bit of pulling it apart and seeing what's, what's what the connective tissue is. and that can very often mean having just at least one other person to say what can I think of what would help me experience this more closely to what you experienced in my own imagination so that that is so counterfactuals again it could have been you know it was momentary it felt like no time at all it was just that that sense of intense dread that of being trapped

it was no way out and then but no actually you you felt stuck there for a significant portion enough that you were like I've been here for a minute I mean and we say quote unquote minute in modern parlance it means I been there longer than a moment but uh indeterminate amount of time and I do remember having the thought it's kind of funny like you're almost a thought within the dream yeah yeah ever thinking about Why am I here again? Why? I remember thinking, why, why am I dreaming this dream again?

What I don't, I don't like it. And that was on one of the subsequent experiences. Yeah, one of the subsequent dreams. Yeah, yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. Very interesting. That is another way of judging, say, passage of time in a dream is like how many,

sometimes people think of dreams as, well, I need to describe events, but your internal state or or experience also is part of the dream. So if the dream was I'm standing on the rock and I don't move and it was brief, fair enough. If it was I looked over one side, I looked over the other side. I looked up to the sky and shook my fist and then I woke up. That's a sequence of events in a dream. And even if it all took place standing on a rock.

So that would be the next question or an angle to look at this from like, Do you have any recollection of a series of events like that happening during the dream? Or was it kind of, I'm just standing here and then you had a couple of thoughts and then dream over. Yeah, I guess it's not that I'm actually, I didn't describe it, but I'm in the dream. I'm never standing. I'm sitting. Okay. And part of it is I'm in this dream.

I am, I'm sitting with my feet. and I'm using my feet to kind of keep me up because I am fearful that I'm going to slide off or fall down or if I move too much. And so I'm feeling I'm worried about moving for fear of falling and not just falling and getting hurt, but falling and I'm losing my footing and I'm slipping off and into the danger without. because like yeah because I'm not I'm not standing I'm yeah I've never stood in the dream I'm always sitting kind of with my hands behind me and my feet and I'm sorry like just trying to keep myself upon the on the rock so there is kind of a sensation of almost um the danger of an involuntary fall and you're actually preventing and there's the feeling of sliding as well where where you got to kind of struggle to stay on the kid there you go that's why we talk these things out

that is fascinating as well Um, this, it keeps, uh, popping up in my head the idea of, um, typical dreams, one of which is the boogeyman dream, which very often is attempting to run away from a danger and feeling the, your body lacks power to move. Like, you can't make your muscles cooperate to get them moving. Or you feel like you're, the floor is. sticky or there's there's other there's some other force pushing back against you making it more difficult to escape what's so this is almost the inverse of that in a way where the danger is static and you're trying to keep from moving towards it uh very very interesting on that um and of course you always wake up before you fall or but but you you um get close to falling or you

get like right to the point where like any further and you're going over or how would you described that um i'm trying to think like what's triggering away i i i think thinking about this dream uh it it's usually right i've typically woken up right before i'm uh i haven't fallen i've never fallen into the pit but i've definitely been uh where i i'm now about to get bit like right there's something like some one of them has gotten close enough to me or something and i remember just feeling like i got to get out of here i got to get out of here and and then and then i wake up i've never actually been bitten but it's always been like right before right when i'm at that point where it's like oh my gosh this is going to happen and then i wake up

that's very often in dreams too with the with the boogeyman dream there's the you wake up right before the monster gets you uh or the falling dream you wake up right before you hit the like that kind of thing usually the consequence we fear almost never hits in the dream sometimes it does there was one person who had a dream where they were torn apart by wolves and they actually it wasn't just the wolves jump and they're about to catch me and i wake up no it's they got a hold of me and they're pulling me to pieces and i'm like wow that's that's rare that that often does not that does not often happen um yeah so if we start trying to build a narrative about what what this dream is why it happened certainly in the context of the dream you say oh

i got a dream first let me tell you what happened beforehand here's a real life experience that filled me with equal parts fascination and fear i couldn't look away that's amazing i love to see snakes i don't want to be that close to them those are very dangerous so And there's often a push pull with that of things in life of like there's things I want that I fear. But I want to get close enough to it because it's, it's an interesting thing to look at maybe. But I don't want to be close enough that I'm in actual danger. So watching a snake show on television is perfect for me too. Sharks as well.

Never getting, never getting anywhere near a shark. But I don't mind watching the shows. The Shark Week, that's fascinating. Did you ever go ahead. Oh, my experience with snakes, that wasn't my only. I mean, I as a living in New Mexico, we lived up in, we had 13 acres of land up in the mountains of New Mexico. And running into various kinds of snakes was not uncommon. And having our own fair share of rattlesnake.

And I had a close encounter with a snake. We had chickens. And one day I saw them out surrounding a. sage brush and every now and then one of them would jump in the air. I didn't, it was far enough way I couldn't, I just thought it was fascinating. I was, again, I was a child. I thought, this is interesting. So I go over there and I can hear the snake rattling.

There's three or four chickens around the sage bush. And of course I want to see it. So I got down on my hands and knees and I could see this snake. staring at me and now I'm terrified I'm like oh my gosh I'm right pretty close to the snake

but the chickens were distracting and enough and it was bleeding on its head like they would strike it yeah yeah so they would hold their wings out and he would strike at their wings and they would jump and they would peck it on the head

because I think he was probably going after their eggs yeah or anyway so that's that was my assumption that's a whole evolutionary dance has probably been going along. Birds and birds and snakes fighting, fighting over territory and reproduction. And so I had,

I mean, I had that kind of experience. I had a, we had a, well on our property. And I went into the well house and I stepped inside the well house and there was a rattlesnake behind the pump. So, I mean, I had, I had several other experiences with snakes.

We had one in our house. on the ones. That's always fun. I can ever live with an Australia. Too many things I want to kill you there. Snakes, insects. I'll stay in Oregon. Yeah.

So, again, like, I mean, I had these experiences, you know, outside of that trip. So I don't know. I don't know if that plays into any of that. Sure. Yeah. That I, that I think absolutely. So the way this process works, you just experienced it. I started asking questions and then your mind opens up and you're like,

I don't know why this. feels like something I need to say and we just we go with it so what that did is it fleshed it out a little bit more it seems like the snakes have for you long been or become very iconic of a certain kind of natural danger or at the very least it's like you know when you think of the dark forest or the or the you know whatever uh snakes come to mind and that's fair enough i mean different people have different experiences for you that's that that uh that uh that uh you that uh that uh you know that uh imagery has become invested with a lot of different, a lot of strong emotion. So the idea that it would be the boogeyman of a particular dream, we've solved that mystery.

It's like this, this is a recurring theme from your childhood, but then in general, became a recurring theme in the dreams as well. And fair enough. And it could have been anything. It could have been, you know, like, well, it could have been anything, animal, insect, machine, for some people it's been, you know, parents or broadly speaking authority figures. I mean, it can be a lot of different things can be the, the, the big bad of a dream, dream sequence of that nature.

Yeah. Um, just a fascinating tangent. Just, uh, I used to worry, uh, if, you know, that if we ever had a dangerous snake and I had my cats outside or something that, uh, you know, and then I saw a video where it was like, did you know, cats have a. reaction speed faster than snakes. So even you get a, you get a cobra or whatever,

and he's going to strike, cats can actually dodge after they notice he starts moving. They can then initiate their own motion and get out of the way faster. Now, not 100%. Some cats are lazy. Some cats are unlucky. But the idea of,

and that reminds me of something I watched as a kid, that Ricky Tiki Tiki Tavi. Oh, yeah. Yeah, right. I love that. I was worried so much for the bongus.

And I'm like, mongus have actually the same. advantage the cats have they are faster than the snake that that's why they can kill them well if they weren't they wouldn't be able to kill them at all uh i love that of that idea so you know even snakes even even these big bads have their own natural enemies that uh and then of course you get the birds that come out of the sky and like oh they can't see them coming they get them so snakes are you know as dangerous as they are say but now humans our reaction time is significantly slower you are not going to watch a snake start to strike and dodge before he gets

you we can't we can't move that fast Um, so it looks like, and tell me if this makes sense to you. So the dream seems iconic of all the words we've been using to describe it. You're, you're both, you're sort of safe because you're out of danger. And this is, this is shifting though, because you're on a slide though. So you're, you're, you're at risk of being involuntarily or involuntarily losing safe. and being thrust into danger. And the way it is crystallized in your mind is bolder slope, your own effort to resist the danger and the certain knowledge that if you get thrown in there, you're not going to be able to get out of it without getting hurt somehow. So if we look at that as a broad descriptor of different types of life, situations we might start looking at what were the times in your life that these things came back

and were there situations where you had a legitimate fear of being thrust into a dangerous situation against your will I'm about to get dumped into a pile of snakes because I can't hang on to this the safety of the boulder that keeps me out of reach of danger um hmm that might take some thought I mean sometimes people go wow yes let me tell you the most recent time it happened. That might be one way to do it. Can you broadly, generally identify the last time it happened? Not day and time, but, you know, it was 10 years ago. I was, you know, this year's old. I was living in this place. Yeah, I definitely had the dream as an adult. But I don't recall exactly the timeframe or what was even occurring at the time that I had. I had.

had the dream. It's interesting. Yeah. And you may not have an immediate connection to it. And it sounds like it isn't a dream that comes back often. You know, you said a handful of times, maybe two or three even.

That's enough to be recurring. There's other folks I've talked to where they'll have, oh, I have this dream at least once a week. I'm like, that we need to figure that out for you. That's, that's maybe we can stop that or make it change in some way.

And that's, those are the two results that most people get out of, out of talking to me is if we nail it, either the dream stops completely because we've solved it. It was a mystery. It needed to be solved. We solved it. If it doesn't stop entirely, it will often change because now you have a different understanding of it. Now you've processed that conceptualization. You're like, okay, now that I know what I'm dealing with, I can look at, okay, how do I deal with it? What do I do? What do I bring into the dream with me or what are, what alternatives do I have? with it how do I um you know you'll either find it more there's more rocks than you thought of out there

that you could jump to that'll that'll happen or you figure out oh there was a handhold on this rock that I didn't realize was available to me now that I'm aware and I can not be panicked in the moment and just fighting the slide I can actually look for how do I hang on and it depends on the circumstance do I need to get out of this situation do I need to find a way to stay balanced because danger's all around me and that's just the way it is. I can't stop that. I don't know if any of that brings anything to mind or... Yeah.

Putting you on the spot, I know. No, no, no. It's, it's, it's, it's fascinating. And I've never really, in my mind, linked it to maybe or even thought about maybe what was going on on my life at the, you know, outside of the dream and in my call. conscious state, like what would have been going on that would have potentially triggered that that dream to happen again. Because like I said, it's probably, I mean, it's funny that I even mentioned that dream

because I say funny just because, I mean, even though it's occurred only a handful of times, it's always the same. It's always been the same, and it's always the same amount of fear and the same things happen. Like I'm at the same point of stuck and sliding and then about to get bit, and then I wake up.

But I've never really thought about it and tried to examine what was occurring outside of, or occurring in my own life at the moment or around that time period that may have made me think about that. And it may take, you may have to sleep on it again. And then something will come to you tomorrow. It's almost not fair to folks to put them on the spot like that. And it's okay if something does not immediately leap to mind like, wow, epiphany,

all my questions answered. Sometimes it takes a while. But so this is what I'd like to do is we have the surface layer of imagery. Here's my experience. I try to go up that meta level of how do we describe this experience in more general terms that might apply to anybody. So the idea of being trapped in a place of safety, but losing that safety and you're about to be involuntarily thrust into a dangerous or unpleasant. And our body, our body and our mind interprets danger, very interesting. We, um, why do we have,

why would I have a stage fright? Why would I, why would my body and my voice shake and, and I be short of breath and just all these things like, I'm not in any danger. I'm in front of people who are, they're not going to attack me. I'm not going to have a heart attack and die. I am in absolutely no danger, but I perceive it as danger.

My body responds to it like I just saw a predator. So if I can get to that, that meta level on some of these things where it's like, okay, someone else's experience might have been, I was in a tree and the limb was about to break and below me was a hungry wolves. That might be their experience of the, almost the exact same thing.

like the limb never actually snaps. It just threatens to stick. It's close to snapping and I wake up. And every time the dream is the same. And it doesn't pick up where it left off. The limb doesn't then snap and I fall. It's like so we start looking at and this is what you would reflect on after we're done. And maybe it'll come to you or maybe it won't.

You never know. These things are hit and miss sometimes. But you start looking at that, you know, what are situations in my life where I really felt threatened? What do I consider an actual threat, you know, to my to my lifestyle? as we were saying earlier to to my financial well-being, to my health. It can be a physical threat. It can be an emotional threat.

You know, it could be, I don't want to get fired. I don't want to be in a car crash or I don't want my wife to leave me. All different types of danger that could be a pit of snakes all around you and losing the safety of this rock involuntarily, this sliding off. I'm in a position where I'm under threat, where, where, where something is about, I'm about to be involuntarily. And that's a big factor too. It's like, I'm afraid this is about to happen to me against my wishes and against my best efforts to stop it. Like, I'm even aware that a slide is taking place.

And I can't seem to get a grip. And then so we use it. Dreams love idioms and expressions, colloquialisms, and wordplay puns. So we look at that situation. We would tell someone who's out of control, hey, you're heading for. trouble get a grip get a grip on yourself in this case get a grip get a better grip on the rock there's no grip to be had you're you're trying to hold yourself back and your best efforts are just not and and even in real life you might have avoided the danger you might have found a way to get a

better grip you might have or your dream could end up being in retrospect prophetic to the point where you'd say uh if you can remember the incident or whatever you'd go yeah i fell into the pit of snakes and I got bit. I didn't want to. It just kind of happened. I fought against it. I did my best and it wasn't enough. Those things happened. So I don't know if any of that rambling brought anything to mind. It doesn't have to. Yeah, no. I'm going to. Yeah, I'm curious about reflecting on and see if I could, yeah, relate any of that to. But yeah, I, it is just fascinating. Like, what, what is what happens in my mind that it recurs again. Yeah.

Well, and that's the last thing I was going to say too. And then what's kind of wrap it up because I think we've got as much as we can out of it. We squeezed it dry. One of the biggest things would be if this dream comes back. Now that we get an idea of kind of what the imagery and the experience seem to be saying, if this dream comes back, you go, wait a minute.

Even if it's unconscious. And it's more important if it is unconscious. just like, what is happening in my life right now that makes me feel threatened? That makes me, what am I perceiving as a danger that I'm unknowingly or involuntarily sliding into? And maybe I can do something to stop it. That's one of the best things, you know, sometimes it's satisfying to have the mystery solved, but it's often more useful to have the, the imagery understood so that if, especially with recurring dreams, if it comes back, it can point you to, I better pay attention.

I better take a second look at my environment and make sure I feel stable. And so anytime you feel maybe unstable, it may come back as like you're at risk of tripping and falling in a sense into danger if you're not more careful or if you don't take some precautions. And then that can have that real life practical application of helping us avoid trouble. I think that's part of what dreams do as well. So problem solving and a part part of as we were talking earlier that negotiating with. the future for the best possible outcome. Part of that is avoiding pitfalls with snakes. It reminds me that game pitfall from the Atari.

Oh, I'm that old. Oh, my gosh. It's so funny, brother. I just was just on Sunday. I was with our grandson, one of our grandsons. And I was, I don't really have games on my phone, but he wanted to see if I had any and I thought for some reason I thought a pitfall. And so is that still out there?

So we found it and we were we were trying to play it on my phone. It was one of my favorite games from Atari. Oh yeah, Frogger Pitfall, Missile Command, Space Invaders, Centipede. I played them all. Defender. Oh, that was a great one. Yeah. One of them that was, no, no, no, that's exactly what I was thinking of.

Defender. It's the one where you're flying. It's always sideways and then you're trying to shoot the aliens before they can get the people. Or if they grab the people, you've got to try and shoot them. Yeah. That's, that was an amazing game. I love that. Yeah.

Well, do you feel we've gotten as much as we can out of analyzing this experience? I think so. I think so, too. I'd like to leave it if you have more questions. It's fascinating to kind of go through and think about because in my mind, I always just thought it was just this thing that was, this experience was a kid. That was the only reason it was triggering me to, but then when it has occurred. Yeah, I'm kind of, I'm really intrigued by. looking at what what may be happening in my life that when it comes up again for sure definitely and and compare

this feeling now uh in retrospect to the feeling you had earlier when when i asked do you have any dream any dream doesn't matter and probably what you were feeling at that moment was like this is i'm really not showing up to this game this is this is insignificant this has nothing to do with anything but it's a dream he asked for a dream i gave him a dream we made something out of it there's something there's some there's always something there even if it feels insignificant even if you think it's not enough i don't know i think some people are really fearful as like i don't have anything important to say or share about or this dream that wasn't i was on a rock there were snakes what do you want no no no every dream is fascinating and it has some connection to your life to your feelings to how you

perceive the world believe me if you have a dream it's enough we can make an episode so don't hesitate hate to reach out. Well, okay. Yeah, I always like to end like that. Do you think, do you feel satisfied with the process?

I do. Yeah. If you have more questions, I'm always willing to hang in there, but it's, uh, at some point, like I think we,

I think we exhausted it. So it's, it's all good. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Good deal. I'm glad, uh, yeah,

most people, I think, come out of it with someone going like, wow, that was more than I expected. Uh, nice. That means I did. I actually did something. Um, okay.

Well, we'll, we'll wrap it up there. And by way of parting, I will say this has been our friend Dean Taylor from Salt Lake City, Utah. He is a speaker and a coach part of the, now I can't read. And it's too dark in here. John Maxwell certified leadership team teaching leaders who are often career fathers, how to align with their core values and lead with greater clarity and confidence.

I can take a few lessons and how to speak with greater clarity and confidence. You can find you can find him at Offers.dean taylorofficial.com link in the description Of course you don't have to worry about trying to spell that out For my part would you kindly like share and subscribe Always need more volunteer dreamers reach out anytime I do video games Most days Monday through Friday 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific This episode is brought to you in part by ABC book 14

Dreams in Homer and Greek Tragedy. Fascinating work heavily footnoted just for you guys for the audience for the readers. I took all the footnotes that were like multiple pages long and I put them at the end. So you don't have to try and read through is this text or is this footnote flipping from page to page. Just the short ones are in the main in the main text. So anyway, all this and more at benjamin the dream wizard.com including downloadable MP3s of this very podcast. Also if you'd head on over to benjamin the dream wizard dot locals.com building a community there. It's attached to my Rumble account. Free to join. That is, that is all I got to say.

Dean, once again, thank you for being here. I appreciate it. This has been fun and fascinating. Thank you, Benjamin. I appreciate it. Awesome. And everybody out there, thank you for watching. We'll see you next time.