Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 203: Dangerous Diplomacy

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

Joseph M. Lenard ~ https://linktr.ee/jlenarddetroit

I have a set of earbuds, and I tried to attach them, and it kind of worked. But then what I do is, so I do, I have two computers here. I've got my recording or my gaming computer that I do this recording on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, mine are wireless, wireless earbuds. So I could wear, so I could wear the wizard hat, right? Yeah, those are better. But I've got a second rig that is my streaming rig for when I do video games.

So I'm recording on my gaming rig right now to keep it simple. And I have a manual switch on my desktop over. Well, I actually can't see it. It's just out of view. That I switch back and forth. It's an A-B switch for my microphone and headphone setup. So that when I go to gaming, I switch it over to the other one. And I can hear the game and I can hear, you know, talk to the, anyway, long story short on that.

If I were to, I would have to switch over completely and permanently to only using earbuds at all times for everything and dial in because I have to change all the settings on each program. Oh, God, it's such a headache. So I'm like, fuck it. I don't wear the hat. But I have a hat. And sometimes I'll bring it inside it over here. Usually when I'm doing interviews with other people so they can see, people go, are you a real wizard? I have the beard and the hat.

What more do you want? Greetings, friends, and welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have our guest Joseph M. Leonard out of Detroit, Michigan. He is an author and the host of the Christitutionalist podcast. And he uses that specifically like Christos. like the Latin version. You can find him. Greek.

My bad. Please correct me any time. I'm happy to be wrong if it gets us where we're going. I do not have a problem with that. Greek and Latin, I get him confused sometimes. There he is.

We might have to play with him. This is, you didn't expect me to prepare. This is barely organized chaos. Well, there you go. You can find him, of course, at josephm.leonard. US and the spelling of that.

The link, of course, will be in the description below. For my part, Would you kindly like, share, and subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers. Here's the thing. You can see I haven't had one for like a month. And suddenly I have an interview every single day this week and most of next week. When it rains, it pours, dreams come in their own time.

But you don't have to be a podcaster or an author. I will talk to anyone. If you are human and you speak English and you have dreams, we can talk. So let's do that thing. I also do video game streams Monday through Friday, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific. that's a, I'm popping up graphics on the screen over there. This episode, uh, brought to you by ABC book 18. I now have 18 currently available works of historical dream literature.

This one is O'Neurochronology volume four, prima reliquorum. I do know that's Latin. Um, it stands for basically the first of what remains. It's, uh, all the kind of leftover stuff I couldn't get into the original three volumes. Uh, this one has three complete books that were shorter, but published as their own books. compressed into one anthology representing, you know, the evolution of dream interpretation

throughout the ages over the last 2000 or so years. So check that out, of course. So it's like the third day after Thanksgiving, the leftovers. Exactly. And you know what? They taste better when you reheat them, put them in a turkey sandwich with some little bit of mayonnaise.

Oh, yeah. That's very good. I like to melt. What is it? We're way off top. That's fine. What is it? Mozilla on on on on that like turkey and chicken in a sandwich oh it's so good and the turkey melt basically oh and then if you grill it oh come on um of course you can find welcome to the welcome to the food show right this is absolutely uh and i didn't eat breakfast this morning how would i feel if i did meet breakfast this morning i would feel like i feel right now a little a little distracted uh little scatterbrained

but as i was saying mad professor style we're getting we're going to come back around to that too we were talking before um okay uh all this and more of course at benjamin the dream wizard dot com including uh downloadable or live streamable mp3's audio only of this very podcast so you may take the wizard with you wherever you wander with or without Wi-Fi i love alliteration also you're going to want to head on over to benjamin the dream wizard dot locals dot com i'm building a community there it's free to join attached to my rumble account that is more than enough out of me let's get back to uh joseph thank you for being here i appreciate your time i appreciate being here Yeah, I'm on locals too.

I'm on 15 plus a social media at J. Leonard, Detroit. What I need to do is standardize my thing on, don't follow me on X. I say all kinds of crazy political stuff you don't want to hear. But it's at Wizard Benjamin. And I need to make that the handle everywhere. Some of them, like I think I'm on, I think I'm even on like deviant art or something as Ben the Dream Wizard, which is like, okay, that's what I could get at the time. So I'm going to go and see if I can change some of those handles at some point.

Try and try and standardize it. There's a try and unify them. Yes, exactly. There's an About Me page with all the listed that are probably out of date at Benjamin Dream Wizard.com. Do you use Link Tree? Link Tree would help with that. Maybe you have a free, right?

That way all the different odd ones that aren't uniform and standard. That way they're all listed. You have the one link tree like I have Jay Leonard Detroit at Link Tree that. goes to all my platforms, including my video ones, including my websites like terror strikes. Info and Josephm. Lunar.

Dot us. Links to my tear strikes trailer. And, you throw all kinds of links in there. Yeah. And that way you have the one. Yeah. That's,

I'm saying that before, too, is like when I have guests on, if they have links to share, I like to make it just one link in the description. so people can just, they know where to go. It's that one thing. So the link trees, yeah. Yeah, in fact, I'm looking up, as we're speaking here now, highlighting so I can put that in the chat.

And let's use my link tree as my one link. Link, tr, e, slash J. Leonard, Detroit. Again, I will put that in the chat. So we can use that as my actual one link. Because it's got all my links. Jay Leonard Detroit. I'm also writing it down. There we go.

Okay. I'm looking for to make sure. Okay. So let me, so it'll be TR.e.e. slash J. Leonard, Detroit. Link, link, link, that's what. Link. Link.

Link. Yeah, link. Well, it's in the description, might as well. I'll get it sorted out. Doing this stuff in real time. I can't, I can't keep up. Yeah. It's going to look like it.

I was okay we were talking earlier so many things earlier so I'm going to get back to vampires in a moment though but before that we was I was saying I wanted to be kind of like the medieval Renfair version of weird album write a bunch of parody songs and uh my first album was going to be entitled thoroughly unprofessional it's just because there's not it's not happening there's no still professionalism I do my best but it doesn't it can't happen it's just impossible yeah I wrote and recorded music in the 70s and 80s but unlike today where anyone and my dad has had a polka band, had a three record deal. I never got a record deal. So unlike today, where anyone could put all their songs up for 99 cents a download, you had to have a record deal then. Oh, yeah, and don't get me start on the AI music thing. I've been making a lot of that myself.

What I've been doing is actually, I don't think I've ever mentioned this on this program before, because it's a relatively new project. I've been working for several months. But what I've been doing is taking all the world's most famous, classic, popular poetry and turning it into AI songs. So we've got like, yeah, EDM, that's not dance music. It's electronic, I call it.

And the Electronica version of The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. We've got, you know, a country version of a song or a poem called The House by the Side of the Road. You know, let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man. Great, great poetry. I've almost worked my way through the entire list of the top 100 most popular. were famous poems and I'm always looking for more. So if you're out there and you've got recommendations,

what's your favorite poem? Let me know. I'll make it, I'll make it into a song. And as long as it's in the public domain, that you can do it. Pre-1920. Pre-1920.

I wanted to do some Maya Angelou, I'm like, well, she's still alive. That's not happening. There's no, she owns the lyrics, so to speak.

That came to my mind too, and I was going to mention her. But yes, exactly. Not in the public domain. And unless you could talk to Maya, You get permission. Probably not.

Probably not going to happen. Although, you know, some of them are so good. I'm discovering genres I didn't even know existed. And I've got music scheduled to release once a week every Friday through February, through the end of February. I think so I've made that much music and it just keeps getting better. And I'm actually going to go back and remaster some of the other ones. This is all about me. Let me go to just just the brief comment.

It's this is why I told you It usually takes about two hours Why? Because I can't shut up But we were talking before about like What is a wizard and the different types and a necromancer and you What was the other kind you'd mentioned? Damn now I can't remember that My point was that

I've forgotten Yeah that's fine It probably doesn't matter, probably wouldn't relevant anyway But the idea that there's a one of my favorite books from Oh God the 90s maybe was it's a series called Philosophy and, Philosophy and South Park, philosophy and baseball, philosophy and the Undead was one of my favorites. And it talks about the metaphors of, of like, you know, what is, what, where did we get the idea of a werewolf and a vampire? And, you know, Warwolf is,

is the idea that's a Jekyll and Hyde type of situation in a way where sometimes in us is a beast waiting to get out. And, you know, there's the whole idea of the, um, the full moon causing a transformation, that is that there's external forces that will release the beast. We certainly do know, we are mostly water, carbon water, you know, but water makes up a majority of our body. So, of course, yes, the moon as it pulls on the tides, affects our human body. But you mentioned metaphors. I don't use them.

I'm far too clever. I use meta sixes. But I'm bum. Not meta fives. We're going straight for six. I'm glad I was able to work in one of my jokes already. Oh, please tell us as many as you can. It's fantastic.

And then that goes to the noted phenomenon of people being a little extra crazy in public on a full moon. And now that's the spiritual side of things would say we're connected to, you know, ethereal forces. Fair enough. Probably true. The psychological side says, well, it's bright out. So there's more activity because people can see. I was going to add that. There's also that. So I love the, I'm all about the yin-yang of stuff.

It's like, let's look at it. Let's look at it from as many different names. I think both have valid factors depending on the person. It's like, you know, conspiracy theories, right? I have a friend, not going to say her name, not going to outer here. But, you know, if you want to set her off, you mentioned 5G. But I'm an old IT guy. So, yes.

Can 5G affect some people? Yes. Does it affect everybody and make them crazy and we're all going to die? Oh my God. Fonckees killing everybody. No. No. Smart meters, right?

Or even the Wuhan hysteria still. The spike proteins. Yes. Some people, because of it. their makeup may be more susceptible to a spike protein problem, but they're not killing everybody. Yeah. Well, then you also get situations where there's a misattributed cause. So the famous example that popped into my head just now was they found an increased risk of certain health complications in people who lived near power lines.

And they're like, they're like, well, wait a minute. Do power does the frequency or some kind of radiation coming from the power lines? Well, what they found out was that. That also correlates to very low-income people. And low-income people tend to have, tend to, because real estate near power lines is not as desirable, so it's cheaper to afford. What is cause and what is circumstance? Yeah. So folks that live a lifestyle where perhaps they're, you know, through default of their own, I'm not saying lifestyle like it's chosen, but, you know, poorer folks who need a cheaper rent that tend to have more health problems, tend to live closer to power lines.

And so you get this faux correlation that isn't exactly a cost. cause as far as we can tell. I'm a few blocks over from electric street in wind out. We have high tension power lines. And indeed, you're not allowed to build real close to those. And yes, there is a degree of radiation

and whatnot and a stray electrical charge. I mean, literally, I can walk. out there with two fluorescent bulbs in my hand, hold them up and they'll light up. Tesla style. No, yeah. No, you don't want to be by those. How much of an effect they will. I don't doubt they might shorten people's lives by a little.

But again, some are more susceptible to, than others. So yeah, it's not going to kill everybody kind of stuff. Yep. Well, just to fit, I came around in my own head to finish the thought of the wearable thing. So with the moon, and we noticed increased activity, ER's police reports, et cetera, that kind of stuff. But that was a phenomenon noted hundreds of years ago, or thousands perhaps. And that's also where we got the word lunatic, the idea that the lunacy, the, that the moon literally drives you crazy. And then that, you know, made its way into psychology in the early days.

And then we said, well, we're not. going to misattribute that cause. Maybe we should call it something else. And then they started calling it mania and a bunch. And now the terms keep evolving. One of my favorites is that George Carlin bit about shell shock. We used to call it shell shock. And then we thought that was not kind. So we called it something else. And every time we renamed it, the word got longer, we went from shell shock to post-traumatic stress disorder. Okay. So many words to say, we could have kept shell shock. And they could said, well, you can get shell shock from a lot of things, from abusive relationships, from, from abuse as a child and all that, all that kind of thing.

Right. It doesn't have to be literal military shells. Yeah, yeah. Right. For sure. Well, that was my, okay, that was just finishing my thought because I needed to get it out of my head, like, clearing, like sweeping away the debris so I can see the floor underneath and we can, now we're back to, let's talk about you. I don't know where you want to start. I mean, you got the, did the, did the podcast come first, I would imagine, or did you write a book first? Actually, what came first? Well, long story is growing up. It begins when I was born. Yeah, in the Detroit area, right?

Born and raised here, I don't like the winners. I do choose to stay. Dad and granddad on dad's side had poker bands. My dad, Thaddeus M. Leonard, Ted Leonard Jr., and the Polka Kings, had a three-record deal. I wrote and recorded music in the 70s and 80s. I never got a record deal. But I kept writing. But I was an IT guy.

That was my living. But in 2001, nothing to do with 9-11, even though I have a terrorism book, I got sick, couldn't work anymore. 2004, been on disability since. So writing is more a prominent thing in my life now. So in 2022, terror strikes coming soon to a city near you came out. And then I was on several shows talking about writing and publishing. So I did how to write a book and get it published. Nice.

So that others who are thinking about it or maybe you're not interested in writing, but you're an avid reader. What does an author go through for a book that's on your shelf? to be able to get there. This will help you with that. Very nice. Then, indeed, I started the podcast. I've got the time at home just twice a week.

Let's do a show. So then I had people asking me, well, how do you start a podcast? So then I released podcasting Quick Start Guide. Then, yeah, since I was doing Christitutionalist podcast, I started a constitutionalist politics series of books, talking about our Judeo-Christian foundations, because education is so poor in this nation, people don't know. So I go into those sorts of things. Those are then, of course, non-fiction. And lately, I had the Book of Kennedy Project Carpidium, which is only a novelette, as well as, which is a female.

lead on my shirt, kind of a companion, a short story, a lasting legacy, those came out this year, also a novelette from a male perspective. And then latest is a 99-cent short story called Is E.T. really here? A really short story you can find on Amazon e-books. But it's really weird.

It's based on a really weird dream, which is why I'm here. But I don't want to talk about that. Very cool. Yeah, we'll get to that soon. Yeah, I want to talk about a dream that isn't in one of my books that I can then talk more in detail. So I'm not completely giving away a book, right? For sure. But that ET dream was really weird.

So this is a really weird short story based on a really weird dream. and it's written in a weird fashion also. So if you read this one, don't judge the other books based on this one. There are nothing alike. You know, there is a grand tradition, actually, of authors, having tremendous success. Like the most notable one would probably be Robert Louis Stevenson

of, you know, Treasure Island fame. That... You want a wide variety. Yeah. Well, what he described is, is Brownie. or fairy folk that would come to him in his dreams and tell him stories or act out stories and that he would wake up and go that I'm writing that. And he would just,

and so he'd be dependent on that for his inspiration and gave it great credit. I can't remember which most of my fiction books are from a dream. Nice. Yeah. Nice. I thought about writing my own someday, but I've been thinking about that for almost 30 years. So we'll get around to it someday, maybe.

I got so many other works to publish. I got to finish all the dream books. Oh, I wanted to say, I'm, I'm disappointed you didn't start the show with Dream we were.

I believe you can get me through the knife. Yeah, I used to be able to sing I can't anymore. It's not a bad song, but not my favorite, unfortunately. I do like it, though.

I like the intro. And then, but kind of the rest of it, I thought about a rewriting a parody of that. Yeah, the synthesis. size or dream state kind of.

That's very good stuff. It reminds me of some of the, I really love the electronica genre. So when I'm doing my music, though, I like to vary it. And each poem decides the genre it wants to be. And then I do a bunch of them and I try and arrange them so that I do, there's a little rock and roll, a little electronica, a little country, a little this, that, or the other.

The one that you did about the house, country style wouldn't make a good heavy metal. version. Not really, but then there was another one by this guy where he was talking about the good old ways. And, you know, people today, they live too fast. And, and, uh, they always think new things are better. And they don't respect traditions. And that one seems like a very somber, uh, polemic in a way. And I put that in a, uh, like, Metallica style heavy metal. You know, the good old ways. Yeah. That, that one came out really well. I was super impressed. You know, that reminds me of the Carly Simon song. Yep. These are the good old days. Exactly. Yeah.

And it's funny. You should have did it to the Carly Simon type thing. There's an interesting thing with AI music going on right now where they don't want to let you use any copyrighted. It's like, they won't let you produce parents, unfortunately. They're like, we can't reproduce that. We can sample it in a way of understanding the style and give you that style if that's what you're looking for. There's actually, I'm going to give a one. way a secret here. If you're interested in doing this, you want to produce a song in a particular

style. You use AI to tell you how to program AI. And so what I do is I go to, I go to Grock on X and I say, tell me about the musical elements or qualities of the good old way, good old days. These are the good old days by Carly Simon. And Grock will say it's this type of music with this type of instruments and all the, and it gives me a sentence that I can then say, hey, Suno, give me a song that sounds like this. And it, and it, it hits, it nails the genre. It, it's hard. It's really hard to dial in specifics. So sometimes I've made up to 30 versions of something before I found something I liked.

I hear this all coming out of here. There we go. Anyway, that's stuff about me on that. So you've got an extensive, um, catalog. It sounds like of different, I mean, writers, you know, what a writer does. A writer writes. Uh, when asked how to be a writer, most writers say, write. Right.

Right. Right. So write your thoughts. Right. journal, just start writing. Yeah, that's a short story, a lasting legacy, which was based on

the soundtrack, which you could go to YouTube, Jay Leonard, Detroit, my playlist Project Carpe Diem. This was based on a dream, but I created a music video playlist for it. And from that playlist, this came out of it, a short story, a lasting legacy.

because, yeah, indeed, thoughts for other thoughts, and having written and recorded music, I'm into music. So I listened to that playlist again, and the thoughts for this came out of that. So we'll have a version of this book in a way, but from the male perspective. Very good. And I said that because you mentioned write journals.

Well, a short story, a lasting legacy, is also kind of a weird writing style in that in this book, it's Ryan's journal entries that are used to tell a life and living and get, you know, the good and bad and the ugly of day-to-day life and trying to survive and be a good person, a different way, a different perspective. of this same story, kind of sort of. Very cool. Yeah, and that's also, I always look at the, the history and the evolution of things. I'm fascinated by word origins. Where do they come from? You know, why do we say things in a particular way?

Well, what am I, okay, I'm going to get to another point, but another thing, a fascinating tidbit just occurred to me. So the evolution of word from epic poetry, starting back there. But first, the origin, you may have heard, some of you may have heard the phrase, it's cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. And a lot of people go,

what the what does that mean who we monkeys aren't made of brass what are you talking about like a statue why would the balls freeze off well in the days of ships when ships were the high technology on the seas and you if you had a big ship you were the boss they had cannons and they had cannon balls and they had to have a way of keeping the cannon balls next to the cannon and keeping them all in like a barrel it was hard to get them out they were heavy so what they would do is if you've ever colored eggs on Easter. They have little trays with little plastic trays with little divots. So you can set the egg in there and you can paint it and whatnot. Well, they had a square

brass container that had divots at the bottom. And they would stack cannonballs at a pyramid. And brass, unfortunately, when it got cold, would shrink and the cannonballs would pop out and go all over the deck. So cold enough to, and they called that device the brass monkey. So cold enough to freeze the balls off of brass monkey is when the temperature drops and the brass. shrinks and the cannonballs go all over the deck. So it serves two purposes of saying, okay, this is an indication of temperature, but also

an indication of chaos in some ways. So I love that stuff. But going back to that... Oh, I love wordplay too. Oh, yeah. One of my constitutionalist video exclusives is on origins of language, and I go into parent, P-A-R-E-N-T. but it's derived from P-A-I-R, pair, to a male X, X, X, and X, Y come together to create a child and offspring, and they are, as a pair, that child's parent.

Absolutely. Well, I think that also plays into the idea of wedding, to wed something together. And that's very close to the word weld. it's a well metal and this gets into something like there's a left right dichotomy you know broadly progressive

conservative between understanding how words and communication work. So on the progressive side you get more the words mean anything we want them to mean

because they're social constructs and we make them up and I'm like yeah but words refer to a state of being and you can't just change that state of being inside a word and use the same word. It's not the same word anymore. By warping the meaning of the word,

you like that the Constitution, it's not a living document. It is in that it can be amended. It doesn't mean you get to change it because you feel like you want to redefine, promote the common welfare. They did not mean it does not mean, yeah, yeah, exactly.

And for anyone out there, you've got to go by what it meant when they run. Because they were trying to express a specific idea. They were just putting words on paper randomly. Well regulated meant in good working order or functional or regular. And that's what they called the British. They didn't Paul Revere did not say the British.

The regulars. Yeah, Paul Revere did not say the British are coming. He said the regulars are coming because they were the British regulars, the military. It is regular to wear the uniform to use the same type of musket to follow the commands. But language is gone to hell, you say. It really has. Well, back to the idea. of wedding is like you can only

wed metal to metal. You cannot wed metal to wood. You can bolt wood to metal. That's not wet. That's not making it one piece. And that goes with, you know, there was a time before marriage in human evolutionary history. And some people may not believe the earth is as a

old as I do, but I think the human species goes back at least 350,000 years. And that's when we stopped being animals on the savannah and really became human. for the first time. That's where we, that's the missing link kind of dividing. Anyway, long story short, we had marriage and weddings in a way before the concept of marriage and weddings existed to then describe the behavior that was already happening. And what happens is a male human and a female human come together to create a third new human. And that is the idea of a marriage.

They have been married together in, but permanently for all time. And that's the idea of till death, do us part. You will never not be the parent of that child. Even if the child dies, you will still be the parent. Even if you are no longer anywhere in physical proximity to your spouse, you are still that child's parent for all eternity. I cover that to a degree in a short story, a lasting legacy. Yeah. And so, and so we, this is where the idea of marriage as, as it's currently expressed, well, by the, by the conservative side of things, the people that don't think you can just change words and change meanings willy-nilly because well we feel like it well tell me why that's better if he's i just feel like doing it the other way this anyway but they don't operate on logic a lot of times

um it's just more more vibes um so so the idea that you know marriage being it can in my estimation now this is as political as i get on this show but by definitionally it can only be one man and one woman because they come together and and that's how children are made and you are wed wed to each other permanently by making that child now does that mean some people can't have kids and whatnot, no, but you know, you don't, what does it, legislate to the exception, in a sense, or craft rules to suit the, it's a bad idea to center the margins. You need margins. Yeah.

And you mentioned vibes. Yeah. It's like we're, I say Jesus Revolution 2 was well underway. Because we're back to like the 60s, the hippies. If it feels good, do it, right? no logic, no reason, consequences be damned. All about me, me, me, and what do I get? When do I get it?

I want it yesterday. Entitement mentality. Well, we're back to that, and there's pushback again. Well, remember, unless if you were a Bill Ayers or a Bernadine Dorn and some others leftists who then went on to form terrorist organizations that literally, Weather Underground, that literally bombed the capital. Majority of hippies grew up and realized, you know what?

There's got to be more than just me and about me, only about me. Others do matter. And the Jesus Revolution was born of that. We're seeing Jesus Revolution, too, in my opinion. And I go into it in my constitutionalist politics three book. nonfiction, right? Because we're seeing a pushback again on those who once believe me, me, me, me, me, only about me, who cares about it. They're finally awakening as the 60s hippies

did to there's got to be more than this. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think one thing that, so I am a technically an agnostic atheist, deist in a way. I think there's a God. I think He's hands off. I think you made the universe to work. Free will. We were given free will. According to certain rules and good luck to you. And I want you to succeed. But I'm not going to intercede directly necessarily.

So I'm not a Christian, but I went from broadly anti-theist as a child because it just seemed silly and oppressive to growing up and having a better appreciation for the stories and what I lovingly call the mythology of it. I think there's ancient lessons. There's a lot of things we figured out 2,000 years ago. and we wrote it down, we put it in the Bible. It's hard to understand sometimes, and a lot of people get it wrong. But that goes to the idea of we have figured these.

So I'm broadly libertarian. I've been libertarian since I was like 16, 17 years old. And a lot of people say, well, you'll grow out of that eventually. Well, kind of. I have a better appreciation for the conservative side. But there's two things that go along with my brand of libertarianism, which one is, don't pretend bad things are good. Don't do that.

Don't pretend there aren't consequences. The Bible speaks to that. Yeah, exactly. And number two, don't make me responsible for your bad choices. Don't say, don't pretend there's no consequences. And then when you get consequences, try and make it my problem. It's not my problem with you. You can do whatever you want.

Blame everybody else. And the consequences are on you. Don't ask me to fix your shit. I got my own problems. That's my libertarian side of things. I think if people, if we just had real, you know, consequences, not enforced, but natural consequences allowed to occur unmitigated, people would naturally modify their behavior. What it is is we've got a lot of people who want to put themselves in a bad situation and then demand to be saved.

Everybody else bailed out. Yes. Yeah. The other point I was going to make on that is another thing I've come to appreciate about what the Christians figured out was there is a limit. There is a limit is the wrong word. But let me think my way through as I'm talking about it. There's a limit to hedonism. You hit and you grow a tolerance to it.

So you have to get more and more extreme to get. more feeling out of it. There is, and that's a, it's a physical thing that's chasing sex, drugs, chemicals in your brain. However, there is no limit to meaning. You can have infinite meaning and it can be an infinite source of purpose and, and fulfillment in a way that physical hedonism can never be because there is, because meaning is a, it's a psychological phenomenon versus a physical phenomenon.

So if you can just seek meaning and happiness will come, seek, happiness and happiness will always run away. Well, you mentioned atheism. I talk about all the time on my show, Christitutionalist podcast, Penn of Penn and Teller, you know, the comedy magicians. I love them. He's not a atheist that hates all of religious people.

And I mean something very specific by that, but go ahead. Yeah, but yeah, Penn says he doesn't believe in God, but he's got no problem with Moses and the Ten Commandments being on the Scotus building because he recognizes the Judeo-Christian foundations of our country. He's not trying to erase that. And he agrees, thou shalt not steal. You don't get to steal my stuff. I don't get to steal your stuff.

Thou shalt not murder innocence. You don't get to kill me just because you want to. I don't just get to kill you because whether you come at that from a religious point or it's just being a good human side of things, it doesn't matter. Why or how it's sensible law. So he doesn't have a problem with Moses and the Ten Commandments up there because that is where our laws came. I was on with Rick Walker a few months ago on Maverick News in Canada, and he was arguing the atheist thing. I joked with him, well, okay, John Lennon, and what are you going to break into? Imagine there's no religion, right?

It's like, you know, you may have preferred that pen, let's just not kill and steal each other stuff because it's a good personage thing. That may be where you want it to be, but that's not where it came from. You don't get to rewrite history. It's like we mentioned earlier. Constitution is what it is because of what they said it was when they said it. You don't get to rewrite the history now. Just because you would prefer your delusion. Yeah.

I think a lot of atheists, there's different stripes, and I'll explain my, my strike but a lot of if these folks get into if it's in the bible it's wrong or silly and i look at it the way around just because it's in the bible doesn't mean it's wrong just because you know if something let's rephrase that if something is true and correct it is it is true and correct independent of who said it it or where it exists merit on the issue yeah it does not suddenly become wrong because someone wrote it down and put it in a book and that book says things you don't like whatever if it's true it's true and that's that's where i go to the ten commandments it's like that those are just good ideas in general. And you can quibble about a couple of them, whatever. But I wouldn't want to

live in a country that didn't have those as core values. That's, I think that's what makes America great. It makes it a country worth defending and a country worth that everyone wants to live in because other places don't live by those rules. And they are a shingle. The adage, I may not like what you have to say, but I will defend to my death. Your right to say it. I don't have to like John Doe, but if John Doe says water is wet, I don't say, oh, no water isn't wet, because that's what John Doe says. Yeah, because I don't like John Doe, or John Doe did something else ridiculous. That's dumb. That's just plain dumb.

We get that old adageant. I love these. I'm going to, this is another book I have an idea for it. I swear I'm going to write every single one of these before I die. It is a wizard's guide to the aspirational aphorism. And one of them is going to be, you know, a broken clock. is still right twice a day. And that means no matter how dumb or stupid or evil a person is, if he says, look, it's the sunrise.

God damn it, the sunrises every day and he's pointing at the sun in the morning. It's the sunrise. It's not nighttime because he's a murderer. There's no connection between this. If Hitler said it doesn't make it false. We got Godwin's law. It only took 40 minutes. Yeah.

I love it. There you go. Good deal for sure. You're right. An analog clock, but a digital clock that's not true. Yeah, well, so why do I say things? And I've tried to explain this to people and they go, that's impossible. That's stupid.

I mean, number one, they'll say there's no difference between atheism and agnosticism. And I consider them modifiers. And how can you be an atheist and a deist? What the fuck are you talking about? So for me, it's agnostic. I'm not sure. Maybe. I'm open.

Atheist without religion. I don't subscribe to Christianity, Buddhism, any particular religion. But I am broadly a deist in the idea that, as I said, I think there is a god. So agnostic atheist, deist. actually does work as a as a descriptor of where I'm at in that process. Some people say, well, if you're an atheist, you can't believe in any God. No, that would be a Gnostic atheist who says, I know for damn sure there is no God. Agnostic just means, then they'll say, well, how can you be agnostic and deist?

I'm like, because I don't have any other explanation for this stuff. Everything in this physical universe has a physical cause except the creation of the universe itself. Whatever did that, whatever uncaused or they say prime mover or unmoved mover, whatever that is, well, that's God. It's just, it's just, and there's some people say that's the God of the Gaps. Fine. We find God in the gaps all the time. Like, he's there.

Two, two things. As you know, I was on a show, spirits and stories with Donald Dunn recording for early October, airing just before you talking about my latest, based on the dream, is E.T. really here, a really short story, which again, it's really weird and it's really short. or don't judge my other things based on it. It's for those looking for a very non-traditional book. But yeah, I'm that way regarding aliens. Do they exist?

I don't know. I see evidence for. I see evidence. And the other thing is because we're kind of talking philosophical things. And I mentioned that if Hitler says water is what. Well, we can't say anything Hitler said. right that whole idiotic argument and when we get to the dream i'll get into the whole what if you could go back and kill baby hitler thing remind me about that later ethical question less a political question

it's really a dumb one though and i'll explain why it is but uh the sky what color is the sky what color is sky, my friend. When I look at it, I see blue, mostly. Okay. See, now, you gave a good answer. When I look at it, right? The sky is opaque. There is no color. On earth during the day, the sun reflects causing a prism effect off of the majority of the bluish. And again, water is clear, but in large pools, it appears blue. It can appear red. If there's algae, it can appear green, right? So can the sky, depending on the sun or reflection off.

The water can look blue. It can look green if it's about to storm, right? It's opaque. You look up at the night sky. You see the stars because it's opaque. That's the real. color, not blue. But it's only a wrong answer if someone says, it is blue. A definitive, declarative, it is blue. You're wrong. You're a moron. You're, you know, not really. It's not that

you're a moron. It is that you allowed yourself to be indoctrinated into being a parrot. You parrot, it's blue. You didn't really think about it, did you? But now that I'm asking you to think about, if you're on Mars looking up at the sky during the day, do you see blue? Probably you'd be red. It would be red, right? On the ice moons of Saturn, it might appear, God knows what,

but the night sky is the real color opaque. You see what's out there because the sun. Sun isn't causing a prism effect to give you the illusion of blue or green or orange. Yeah, that answer just kind of popped out of me in that form of like, I want to say this is as accurately as possible. And it is, you know, what is my perception? You knew enough. You knew enough that, well, blue is the answer we always give. but you knew enough deep in you subconsciously that obviously he's asking me a trick question

a little bit I thought you were going somewhere with it so I'm going to be a little careful on that one but but also I mean there's also correct answers that vary based on the purpose of the question and yours I felt you were going somewhere so I'm like let me be a little little not circumspect that I wasn't hiding anything but the idea of you know I wouldn't be careful in in my accuracy now if you're talking to a four year old and the four year old says daddy what colors the sky. You say it's blue. You just because that's what they're capable of handling. And then you go a little further down the line and you'd say, well, what is the purpose of the question? If the purpose is to establish a common reference point, we could simply say, do you see

what I see? Yes, it's blue. Done. And we could say blue is fine because that's what I see. Yeah. But also have you thought about it deeper? And then some people do and some people don't. And then if you, but what you don't want to get into those is those situation with people who are gotches of like, nah, it's, it isn't always blue or it is because they're trying to say, you know, use sky is blue or two plus two equals four as a point of saying, like there is objective truth we can say based on our perspective. If you're seeing what I'm seeing and we're looking at the same thing from the same angle at the same time of day,

we're probably going to see the same thing. Now, if you don't, one of us is wrong. Because both of us can't be right. There's a color spectrum. Something's going on here. You've, you know, and I've got a red green colorblindness to a degree, not completely. So it's hard for me to distinguish between certain shades of red. and if they're too close on the spectrum,

I'm like, well, it looks red to me or my wife will go, that's brown. What are you talking about? I'm like, or I'll say it looks brown and she'll say that's red or, you know, I'll say, that looks green. She's like, no, honey, that's blue. I'm like, whatever, I don't. Well, there's that dress?

Remember the dress test? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I saw, I saw white, I saw white and gold. That was my color spectrum. Now, some people were saying it's different display, you know, one phone to the next. Are you watching it on your television?

Are you looking on a tablet? Yeah, yeah. Those were factors. Now, you said something important. A kid, what colors, you say blue because it's what they can handle. You don't need to go into the long scientific reality discussion as I gave. They're not going to get it. Right. But that's an important point here. God does not owe us all the answers to what quote. The Bible, and I'll upset some fellow Christians here, is a doctor. Mr. Seuss book. Fair enough. We are all children compared to God. We cannot handle all the information he could give so he doesn't give it all.

Like you, to a child, you give them a Dr. Seuss book. You do not give them terror strikes coming soon to a sitting there. They cannot handle it at age six. Well, and even in that Dr. Seuss book, you get further compressed things where they say, okay, forget everything else. Here's the 10 things you just do this. Just don't worry about anything else. Try not to kill each other.

It's a bad idea or murder. Don't murder each other. Trying not to steal things from each other. And this, my estimation is whether, what does it mean for something to be a message from God? I think we get messages all the time from the universe, God. And if we're paying attention. And I think every revelation of truth, of an eternal truth, especially, is a message from God in that sense. So we get the idea of we watch ourselves evolve for 350,000 years up to today.

And we go, hey, really bad things happen to everybody if we do these things, if we kill each other, if we steal, if we covet our neighbor's stuff. Maybe don't do that. And we will have less suffering in the world. And go ahead. And it's also why we have two Testaments, an Old Testament. And Jesus did not say, in fact, in Matthew 517, he said, I can't, did not come to replace the prophets or the law. I came to fulfill it. He turned the other cheek is a new way compared to an eye for an eye every time.

it doesn't, in context, always apply any race. Eye for an eye as the Old Testament. And as when he returns, from my perspective as a Christian, we'll get yet another testament that tells us more when we can handle more. Yeah, I think that's exactly right because here's another thing that a lot of it's about evolution. And it's not, I'm not talking just evolution of species, but evolution of ideas. People don't very often grasp that there was a time before a specific idea existed. Someone expressed it and people understand it because of that expression at a concrete period in time.

It was, there was a time before people even conceived that slavery could be wrong. It was just the way of the world. And then someone came along and said, maybe we don't want to do that either. and then we all said, yeah, that kind of sucks. Maybe we don't want to do that. So we stopped. But there was a time before that. There was a time before the notion that a population could self-govern, that we could have a democracy.

And this, it was a point I was getting to with that. Oh, but the Old Testament, the new. The Old Testament was the, say, like, you know, version 1.0 of let's get all these ideas together and put them in one book and try and help everyone understand. And then as once that had existed for a period of time, then Jesus comes along and says, let me give you 2.0. Let me give you the next step above. Don't stop doing all those things.

But also people read the Bible wrong in terms of the idea of turning the other cheek. They go, oh, that means you must be absolutely passive at all times. It does not mean Jesus never said always be a sucker. Yeah, yeah. He didn't say that. I think the people who promote and endorse Dormat Christianity of like, you are supposed to aim for being crucified. No, no.

That was his mission. He has not called upon his followers to follow him to the cross in that way. Not literally only figure in his way. Not metaphorically, yes. Put yourself in the crosshairs of your of yourself and your worst problems. Crucify yourself to to rise above your. yourself metaphorically in that way. Remove the log from thine own eye.

Yeah, exactly. Well, the idea, so the idea of turn the other cheek, and this is a great thing to to explain to people too, is that, you know, usually you would hit someone with, with one hand. You'd give them the other cheek and they would have to hit you with the left hand, which was, that was insulting to them. That was something that they, you didn't hit people or if you hit people with your left hand, you didn't hit them. I can't remember which one it was.

But it was the idea, it was also an expression of defiance. It is like, no, I won't stop. You're going to have to. to hit me again, and I still won't stop. But it's also standing down from revenge. It used to be an eye for an eye. It was, you killed my brother. I'm going to kill your brother.

Well, wait a minute. My brother didn't kill anybody. I did. So you can't just punish the innocent. And that's where we still have separate justice. Right. Do not seek revenge, but yes, there is worldly justice. And again, Jesus didn't erase the whole Old Testament.

So Genesis, Leviticus and Numbers. The death penalty still does apply. But not you enacting revenge to gain that eye for an eye and that blood for blood. Justice and revenge, not the same thing. Yep. Yeah. And to that Hitler point, though, before we even get to the dream. Yeah, we're going to move on pretty soon.

Really dumb idea. And here's why, right? The assumption, again, the knee jerked parrot, Yeah, if I had a cat to kill Hitler, I would. Parent response isn't sinking. The assumption is you kill Hitler, you prevent World War II. Wrong answer. Germany was well on track for that due to a myriad of factors, not just Adolf Hitler.

Himmler or Goebbels would have been Zafier if Hitler weren't there. somebody we never heard of yeah right and they wouldn't have made a lot of dumb mistakes during the war Germany and the Nazis could have won the war and more people not less people or zero would have died oh yeah and there were a lot of operations they could have won that were if they didn't invade Russia I think if they'd stayed allies we would have a Nazi Europe 100 percent so many so many things but and and you know who those other guys probably wouldn't have done quite as much much methamphetamine. He was tweaking that guy. Let me tell you, that's a meth psychosis is probably the reason for a lot of his bad mistakes.

But anyway, not to defend or promote it. Yeah, somebody else wouldn't have made those mistakes or would have been a completely different world today. I'd like to switch that question. I like to say, if I could go back in time, I wouldn't kill baby Hitler. I'd try to get him into art school. I would encourage him. I'd say move to America. Let's get out of here. And it's the other way around, really. It wasn't Hitler that made Nazi Germany, it was the zeitgeist of Nazism in Germany that made Hitler, is my estimation of it. And sometimes when the pressures are right, something's going to give. And what you want to do is-

Treaty of Versailles. It was a huge mistake. Put Germany, yes, huge mistake, absolutely. You cannot punish someone into complete compliance and turn them into an ally. We put, it was Wilson's fault for withdrawing from the world. and leaving it up to France entirely. Even Churchill begged it off, or not Churchill, that was World War II, but you know, I mean, the leadership of England wanting to retreat

and let the Treaty of Versailles put in, we had to punish them. But punishing them, right, we learned after World War II, the Marshall Plan. You help your enemy rebuild, you gain a friend. If you keep, no, you're the enemy. We're going to only punish you, right? Spoil the rod, spare the rod, spoil the child. That doesn't mean abuse the child. There has to be punishment, but there also has to be a chance for them to recognize the need

that they were wrong and for redemption. We, France, because of the treaty, set things in motion. if it wasn't Hitler, it would have been Himmler or Goebbels or, as you said, somebody else we don't even know because the conditions were just so set that a Hitler was going to come one way or another out of that way too much, way too far, only stick, no carrot. Yeah, yeah, definitely. No, that never works. I like the, you know, I like what we did with Japan after.

World War II and and because specifically because of that now people are going to say you know during or no no after after uh but you right um because without it we wouldn't have anime and it's perhaps my favorite art form um what we see in anime too and this this feeds back into into that is not just reflections of their past there's there's a fantastic anime that deal with world war two and there's some of the most gut wrenching i can't recommend people because they will break your heart and you may never well and you may never you may never be the same again. Godzilla used the whole atomic era and radiation as the creation of Godzilla. But there was a whole lot of other human nature aspect stories in the whole Godzilla and an overpowering government.

I mean, metaphorical government, natural disasters, anything that humans have to experience that are just completely beyond our ability to control tornadoes, earthquakes, wildfires. But what I was going to mention real quick, then we'll move on to the dream thing, is that there's a trope in anime of the hero defeating a villain of a certain kind. It can't, it's not every villain, but, and by defeating them, that villain says, you got me, what are you going to, what are you going to do? Oh, this one's baby. Yeah. That's the third one. That's the third one. That's the third one.

He defeats and the villain, villain or, you know, and it's usually not someone who's purely evil. They have conflicting goals. And what happens is the, the villain submits and the hero says, look, you can join me. I'm going to offer you forgiveness. You add your power to mine and we're going to go forward. And you know what? As a part of going forward, I'm going to help you work on your goals too. We don't have to be at odds. We can be partners. But. Are the redemption story. Yeah, yes. Back to Christianity. And I think that goes with Japan too. Imagine if we treated Japan like a, like, you know, like shit and just abuse the hell out of it.

If we did on a treaty of Versailles again with both Germany and Japan, we would have been war with them again. Again, they would have already joined China. They wouldn't be our allies. We would be kicked out of the Pacific entirely. I mean, that's, and so I think that's one of my favorite stories. And when it's done really well,

I'll bring a tear to my eye that this guy thinks there's no other way I have to defeat the hero to get to save something I love. And the hero says, look, I'm going to defeat you, but I'm not going to kill you. And if you join me, we're going to protect what you love too. I'm getting a little for clumped right now. I've turned into a damn weepy old man. it's so moved by these stories, especially redemption stuff. All of that kind of is in terror strikes coming soon to a city near you.

Indeed. One last book plug before we get to the dreams. You got to do it. If you're not promoting yourself, you're doing it wrong. Hey, if you don't make sales calls, you don't make sales. Absolutely true. Let me write down, let's do this. You're ready to transition.

We'll do the dream thing. Oh, well, on the last, right, the Neville Chamberlainism, doesn't work. Neither does Treaty of Versaism. And those are important points like we've discussed and they are in the book. But yeah, I want to talk about a dream that this book was based on a dream. This book was based on a dream, as was my latest. Is E.T. really here, a really short story. But the dream I want to talk about, since that way I don't have to give away a book, Well, let me do a brief thing. So for folks who may be new, what we're going to do is I have a process.

I don't understand it very well. It's all very intuitive for me. But what it appears to be in reflecting back on what I've done naturally, step one, I shut up and listen. Our friend is going to tell us about his dream at like a narrative beginning to and I'm going to write down as many details as I can. Then we're going to go back through it and start trying to tie the pieces together, check in on meaning and offer suggestions.

and then at some point in the process we'll get to, you know, phase three, which is we've got somewhat of a coherent narrative and in a theme. And that's how we do, that's how we do dream interpretation, the wizard way, I guess. 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 three.

their nocturnal visions. New DreamScape's episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks exploring the psychological principles which inform our dream experience and much, much more. To join the Wizard as a guest, reach out across more than a dozen social media platforms and through the contact page at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, where you will also find the wizard's growing catalog of historical dream literature available on Amazon, documenting the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past 2,000 years.

That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube and at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com. Okay, I even have notes that I wrote down about this dream, because like I say, most of my dreams turn into books, and I thought I might use this somewhere, but I haven't yet. And that is the recommendation. Write your dreams down as soon as you can because they fade. And you'll forget details. Right. I was thinking, oh, I could tell us, but I'm forgetting.

And that's why I reached for the notes to refresh my own mind. I should have done this before we started recording. But, and it's why I've thought about that. Oh, if we could kill Hitler, we could have avoided World War II thing through to an actual logical, not a feeling's conclusion. Right. Right. Because this dream takes place in 1930s Germany. Both my dad, rest in peace, dad, gone for a long time now.

But somehow my dad and I are in 1930s Germany at a banquet where Hitler is there. And we're sitting there between Louise, who is where. a red dress and oh i'm looking here okay i'm not finding the name of her friend maybe i didn't have the name louise seemed to be the more important character here but her friend in a green dress christmas theme was it a christmas banquet i don't know why my mind went there i have no idea right but the topic of politics comes up because, but my dad and I, having traveled back through time for this event, this banquet, knew who and what Hitler was.

Of course, we were there. We had to be careful what we'd say, or we'd have had a bullet in our head then and there, right? So the topic of someone coming to power that people don't really know that much about them. Now, that's analogous to all politics everywhere goes to the Rush, not Limbaugh, the Canadian rock group. Show me, don't tell me, is what I'm thinking. This story is really ultimately about. because, yeah, I don't care.

Like the song says, I don't care what you say. Show me. Don't tell me. I don't care what any politician is saying. Past practice is usually indicative of future performance. But most people do not pay attention. Oh, I like what they're saying. I don't care what they said.

What have they done that shows me what and who they really are? And that is, for whatever reason I'm thinking was in my mind at the time. And my brain came up with this dream. And I further trying to read notes. Louise asked what I thought about Hitler, I wrote down in my notes. And my diplomatic response was, again, I couldn't say what I knew being from the future. I don't really know that much about him. And Louise responds back very smartly and intuitively, I know, right?

didn't want to say until someone else goes there first, what to do with that, you know, I really don't know. But again, it's clear through all time, people are acting on emotion rather than logic. And there's also a kiss involved with Louise somehow for some reason. and then she says something about, oh, the lipstick, am I wearing too much or something? You know, where does the brain come up with these things, right? And why red dress, her friend clearly distinctly in a green dress?

Again, a Christmas connection? It's really weird, but I really believe coming out of that, had that dream and meant to use it in a story because it makes the point. And I have spoken about this dream elsewhere because it does make that point. We need to know more about the people we're voting for, not just what they're saying now. What have they done? Past practice is indicative of future performance. Now, not to contradict that. And this is another thing people love to do, but I'm going to do it anyway. Unless you are an investment entertainer discussing stocks,

then you have to say past performance is not. Because you're not because, now that's just a legal disclaimer though. But yes, patterns tend to repeat unless someone has an epiphany and you really need to see that too. Like, you know, people can change. Not always. Right. Yeah.

But only if they like you said earlier, you don't legislate based on. the exception to the rules. Exactly. There are exceptions in specific context. Well, that's the thing I wanted to do with that aspirational aphorisms book is explain why, you know, okay, we all understand an apple a day, keeps the doctor away, does not mean you throw apples at a doctor to make him stay away from your house. But, and it also doesn't mean that eating apples makes you immune to disease. It just means if you, you know, eat healthy generally as an apple would be. Don't focus on the apple. Focus. What does an apple represent? And this is what I do with the dream interpretation stuff. So what is it?

As I say, represent. As I say, it's a meta six. Right. Exactly. Now, now if six is incomplete,

and biblically and seven, maybe you want to go to meta sevens? I don't know. Just to make it biblically. Six, six, six versus seven, seven seven. Right.

And then again, now I'm over thinking it too. It's like, you might, you might want to say, I can only have meta sixes because I'm humans and we're imperfect. Only God is a meta seven. I don't know.

Maybe. Oh, Something like that. I'll remember that because I've put me in writing many places. This is a joke about I'm too clever for metaphors. I use meta-sixes. In fact... And it is funny you jumped over five.

I would have gone meta-fives. Yeah. Well, I wanted to be exponential, right? And in fact, I think that that joke is either in... It's also Fibonacci, I think, you know, zero and one. One and one is two. One and two is three. or two and three is five.

Nope, it's not Fiminacci. Sorry, never mind. But it's either in the book of Kennedy or a short story of laughing. One or the other, I put the joke. Because even in terror strikes, there's a comic relief chapter because no matter how serious things get, you got to keep a sense of humor, people. Oh, absolutely.

Well, one of my phrases that I'd like to believe I made it up, but life is a tragic comedy. and if you can't laugh at yourself, it's just a tragedy. That's a good one. I want to believe I made that up. I don't know. It's almost Shakespearean, and I like to joke back to, like my name, Joseph M. Leonard. It looks French.

It's not Leonard. It's Leonard without a no. And I have to have the middle initial in there, Joseph M. Leonard, because there is a Joseph Leonard out of South Carolina. Don't want to get confused. Christian, I got to make that distinction. I'm pretty fortunate. They don't appear to be any other Benjamin the Dream Wizards.

I think I'm the only one. Yeah. And if you actually type that in on Google, like, I'm all the top results. Like, yeah. That's why you have 15 different social media. I like the joke. He is not me. I am not he.

And neither of us would be confused for Shakespeare. And so speaking of that, I actually did a few Shakespeare songs. They seem to enjoy being British hip hop. Or one of them I did. I did the, shall I compare thee to a summer's day? That one ended up being a Stevie Wonder style soul, oh, it's so good. Oh, either is that. Shall I compare thee to the summer's day.

That or our Stevie next kind of Fleetwood Macchish would work. I need to do a song in that style because I'm trying to, because rock is a huge genre. And there's different, there's heavy metal. There's, there's all kinds of stuff. But I need to work on Zeppelin Floyd or, or, or, or, You meet Stevie Nix, you know, Aerosmith-S-style. No, Aerosmith is more 80s, but we'll set. Back to Shakespeare and jokes needing to keep a sense of humor.

A Joe original is, to be or not to be, is truly the question. Because if it's to be, I got bingo. Okay, before I forget where we're out here, we're doing the, we're doing the dream thing. So what I like to do is try and get a sense of the low of action across time. And you've given me the setting and then a conversation that happened when you first appear in the dream. The first thing you can remember, you're already sitting at the table in the banquet or did you walk in? No. Yeah.

The dream begins. We're at a table ready to be served with hit or at the head of the table. and me and dad, who was long deceased, Stephen at that point, somehow we had traveled back in time, and we're sitting between Louise and the red dress next to me and the other person in the green dress next to dad. How or why we got there? We don't know. Bam, we're dropped in. Okay.

Now, that's good because initially when you said banquet, I'm thinking what popped into my mind was the layout of a wedding reception where there's a bunch of different tables in a grand hall and a speaker or a podium at the front. This was a more, what popped into my head as you were, as you were describing it is, there's a book out there of Hitler's table talk, which were just his random utterances, his discussion during meals. That might have been subconsciously in there. You know, what if I was at the table? The last supper. But Jesus wasn't at the head of the table. No, no, no, for sure. Um, and that, that gives a very, it's so, so a lot of times helping, helping me see the, the setting, it's a very different type of thing to say be at a, in a grand banquet hall versus a large banquet room, but at one table.

You're at the table. Were there other tables of others around us? I don't know that never came into view. Right. Yeah, for sure. Could have been, maybe, but I didn't see it. It also changes the dynamic a little bit. because if you're at, say,

the wedding reception style of seating arrangement, you could be at a table far from Hitler. He would never hear what you would say. But in this one, anyone who speaks at this table is, he's going to get an earful because he's right there. So you're more in the presence of someone rather than at an event with where they are the speaker

or featured guest. So that's a lot more where you just happen to be in the same room with Churchill or Che or what a Stalin. whatever let me just make the idea of more intimate personal those are not those are not the right words

clearly it was something we had to have been invited so obviously we had to be in the 1930s Nazi rise Germany time prior to background

Polish German and Italian right 50% Polish on dad's side grandpa and grandma both Polish on dad's side grandpa German grandma Salvani Italian on mom's side and I think Chicago has a great tradition of a lot of German and Polish immigrants

Well the city I'm in is Wyandat a southern suburb of Detroit and it's mostly Polack But, yeah, they're German and Italian sections. Yeah, that's where I'm coming from is Scots Polish. So a little Polish little Scottish on both sides. Great. It's good.

I enjoy being. In fact, indeed, you know, immigrants, you know, are, I don't remember who fully in the woodpile escaped Germany, World War Iish time to get out of that hell then. So, I mean, all of that is somehow part, you know, did I have relatives on mom's side, Keeler, right? That wasn't the name. Keeler from Germans from the Kiel German region became Keeler here, right? So did I have relatives that might still been alive in Germany during the Nazi period? possibly no connection, no communication with, but again, German heritage may have had some play and why this dream came up.

Another thing that just occurred to me is you mentioned it offhand, but I think it's relevant. We're sitting down before a meal is served. Now, what does a meal do? It fills you up. What else fills you up knowledge, information? So you're already showing yourself at a state where, and that goes to the next thing. of like, I don't want to say what I think about something I don't understand. I don't want to do.

I can't say. Yeah. Well, recognizing that that's the, that's the most accurate truth. Like saying, I see blue in the sky when I look at it. That's what I see when I look at it. So saying I probably shouldn't. It's the right thing to do not to give an opinion on something I don't understand. That's because, and again, your brain said it in this, in this setting of, we're at a dinner.

Imagine it you're going to eat. You're going to be fed. You're going to intake something. And what you're also describing then in your conversation with Louise is I'm not going to give an opinion on something I have not educated myself on. I think those two concepts are related. So even at that base level of what's the setting and what time in the storyline of the dream. Right. He likes to chase her around.

Yeah. Well, the time in the storyline of the dream is before dinner is served. Yeah. And yeah. And it's in the 30s before. the war begins. And before a lot of his famous speeches that people look at and go, well, that's a little strange.

Maybe we don't want to endorse those ideas. So it's also a social gathering and you're, so there's navigating that, but we have extra elements too, which is time travel. And you came, you went with your father. You didn't bring your mother. You didn't bring your brother.

You didn't have an unknown scientist that ran the machine. So there's something about what, you know, your father represents as a my father who is more Polish than German and Germany and to Poland there I mean is there any connection with that there no they're very well and that's that's a direction we could go to but usually I found that the modifier of people is what they represent not necessarily and it could be ethnically but generally mindset or lessons learned from that person it's how you see

them in relationship to you that that determines why they're in the dream there. So a lot of people would say, well, I learned lessons from my father. Here's a specific lesson. And this is, and we, we nail that down. And that's why that person. Yeah. So what you're not bringing your father as much as what he represents to the table with you in that sense. On the, on this mission. Yeah. It was there was another one where it was someone's mother. And again, it represents for sure the clear think it through don't act again i was me i knew what i knew and if i would have reacted that oh let grab grab that s s officer's gun kill hitler yeah yeah it wouldn't have changed anything now did you have that epiphany of of of killing hitler not changing things you had that

after that dream yeah that might have been as a result of that dream in some ways you know where you're looking like. I think so. So in terms of how you chose to respond to Louise's question specifically, that that careful answer, well, I don't really know. Would you say that is something you got from your father, that approach to understanding or did he set a counter example of like, well, he was way too hasty and mouthing off about things he didn't understand? So I learned to be cautious. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was the opposite. Right. I know. I learned, I think, a lot indeed from dad to try to, Right. Yeah.

Honesty. I will say I'm honest to a fault, but there's honesty and understanding certain situations that I think learn from dad. You have to at times be diplomatic. Like when the wife asks, do these teens make my ass look big? Right. Do you say yes, dear? No, your fat ass makes those jeans look horrible. No.

You don't say that. That's different from being honest when you really need to be as opposed to little white lies or being diplomatic or in this case, recognizing I'm in a room full of people who are going to put a bullet in my head if I say what I do know. That's a survival instinct then there at that point. Oh, yeah, definitely. So that's good. I think the way you're describing your father's, you know, honesty, a respectable honesty, the idea of just telling the truth. It doesn't have to be the whole truth all the time, regardless of circumstances. But that's the modifier based on understanding and diplomacy.

I told the truth in that, I told the truth in that me and they implying everyone in this room doesn't really know. that much about him yet. Exactly. No, that's good. So what you brought is, you know, in a diplomatic honesty.

You brought diplomatic honesty with you to the table, literally in the body of your father. That's, that, and that's where dreaming would just come. Why, why your dad?

I think we figured that out. I think that's, I mean, if it makes sense to you, there should be a little bit of a zan connection. Not, not my mother, as you said,

or not my sister. I have a sibling. And it could have been anyone. If it was your sister, it would be a different approach She would bring you something else. Yeah. Yeah.

Like I said, not the scientist who invented the time machine, which would have been natural to be like, I want to go back too. It's my machine. But you brought your dad. So you're on a mission to observe a scenario. What we do is we do thought experiments in our head. And a lot of times we can ask ourselves a question and get an answer in a dream. I do that all the time. I don't remember the dream, but I wake up with an answer in the morning.

I just, it just works. So there's got to be something going on during sleep. Which is why I write my dreams down. Yeah, exactly. But then there's the... At least most of them. There's the interaction with Louise and what she represents too. So the interaction was...

Okay, so let me slow down a little bit too. So you are sitting next to your father and the two women are on either side. You're closest to Louise in the red dress. Your father's closest to the gal in the green dress. She doesn't say much or anything. But we're all, yeah, we're all kind of having a conversation. amidst the four of us, but yeah, it's mainly me and Louise doing the talking. Yeah.

The other two are just kind of there for whatever reason. Yeah, well, then there's also, so it wasn't, there's a reason you didn't put the woman in the green dress next to Louise on the other side of her. And there's a reason you put her next to your father instead of the other way around, all of that kind of stuff too. So your father doesn't really talk, the woman in the green dress doesn't really talk. there's so your father is between you and this woman. I want to focus on that just for a minute, maybe put it to bed a little bit so we can then focus on the Louise side of things. What would she be sitting next to him for?

Now, which end of the, so if we're looking at it like, well, we're in the middleish of the table. You're in the middle of a long, long table. More people that way. Which side is. Hitler is down towards the other person. side for whatever reason, not closest. Not closest to you.

Well, they'd be equidistant in a way. He'd be equidistant either way at either end. There are more people next to, between Louise and that end of the table, there are more people between the green dress and Hitler that way. That's what I was looking for is the order of the people. So Louise is furthest. How we got in the middle of the table? no idea.

Well, that's interesting too, because there's a... But we're the center of focus in this dream, obviously. Center of the focus, but, and also the golden mean of the table, you're in the middle. You're not, you haven't made a decision. You're not on the far end away from him. You're not sitting next to him. You're in the middle. And this doesn't mean you're open to Hitler's ideas.

It's not about Hitler at all, actually. Right. What it is? Yeah, yeah, I don't want people to get the wrong idea. I actually did another dream where a guy was talking about how he, Right. We don't want Oh, my guy, he's I know, he's admitted to being

German heritage. He must be a Nazi. Well, this guy, he's got a bald head. He must be a neo-Natzy. Well, the other guy I talked to. Leukemia. Leukemia made my hair come out. Well, no, the other guy was talking about observing, observing a group of Nazi soldiers, and they seem to be a very tight, a loyal family unit type of way.

And his thing was, I don't want to be a Nazi. What I want is what they have. I want their group cohesion, loyalty. So it wasn't, it was, it was an example. These metaphors are not about the thing that they are most of the time. Right. So in this sense, that's, so, you know, so in the middle, in a sense of like, and what you're expressing is also in the middle of like, well, I haven't made up my mind.

I don't have enough information. I don't know what's going on at this point in time. Well, again, having been back in time, I did know. You did know. It's what you're not expressing. I could not say. I could not say it. So what you had to do was put yourself in the middle. You had to put yourself in the position of, well, I don't know.

Because you're not going to say I hate him. You can't. And you're not going to say, I love him because you don't. That's a lie. So you had to tell the truth. Because you had to tell the truth. So even where we place ourselves physically in a dream can have that, can have that interesting meaning to it. So I wanted to, so furthest away is Louise.

And that's the person you're talking. to because I think from you know from speaking with you I can say confidently as I just said you're not going to agree with them because because you don't so you put yourself in the middle but the person you're talking to is leaning away and you're having this interaction with her of like how do I negotiate a social situation where telling the wrong shade of the truth is going to get me into trouble but also right because there's likely an SS officer behind me absolutely may not hear but somebody's listening and And all the other people at the table, if they love him and they're like, oh, he's disloyal or he's, he's going to turn against you or something like that. Or I came back in time, but I'm not going to kill Hitler. Like, okay, he's crazy. Yeah, I have been dragged out of that room one way or another and dad with me, right? So in a way, it's not just survival, but dad's here with me. I've got to protect dad.

That's another good reason to have them there. So there's layers to that as well. It's your father because you also love him. and you need to protect him. But you would also, maybe you would want to go on an adventure with them. You know, who's got your back better than your dad in that sense? Yeah, there are many layers to this onion. Oh, no, no, no, for sure.

Where I'm going with that is, so the placement can also be significant in this. Your dad didn't say much, but he sat between you and the source of discussion, the topic of discussion, the focus in a way. And further away from him was a woman that didn't say anything. she could in a way represent the unknown so mitigating between the unknown and you is is the approach or perspective you learned from your father and then you and then in a flow chart kind of way you then become the person implementing okay what do i do when i'm when things are unknown i'm trying to be diplomatic but not lie here's another one this yeah and and that is that uh

this is wookie wookie again right i forgot his name and she is elderly at the She's been on her last legs for like a year. And she just wants one more can of wet food every night. Yeah. That's what she lives for. Okay. Yeah, we'll just let her sit. Beautiful fur, baby.

All over the paper. Yeah, she is. And she, uh, my wife and I used to say she doesn't know how to cat. Like she did not know how to just relax and let us love her. So if we try and pick her up, she freaks out. But she would come, she comes to get love in her own, in her own way, in her own time. Yeah. She has never been, never allowed this much affection in, like.

the 15 years we've had her, uh, almost. So that's okay. Now she, she's like, fucking I'm old. Pet me. She's finally learning how to cat. So, so then what you're doing is you're taking,

uh, given, I'm in a dangerous situation. There's a lot of unknown. Possibilities here. I'm going to mitigate this social circumstance through, through, um, honesty combined with diplomacy. And then you put you in the dream, put that into practice with a social interaction with this woman.

And what she, so if I just refresh my memory a little bit, she asks, what do you think? So, so she's representing the, the question posed that you're going to have to use your, what you've gained and what you brought with you to answer in the best way possible to stay out of trouble, because there's stakes, their stakes involved. And you say, I don't know much about him,

which, wow, that's a fantastic dodge. I mean, that's, that is, speaking of anime, that is Japanese anime

levels of honesty where, uh, it wasn't a lie. I didn't lie about anything. I, I don't know personally, right?

I don't know him personally, right? I don't know. His inner thought. He loves dogs. I could tell you that. Right. Right. He loved,

you know, everybody, everybody has one redeeming. quality. He loves evil. He hates a whole lot of people, but he loves evil. Didn't like the Jews, but he loved dogs. I mean, nobody's perfect. I hate to do this, but you've seen me sucking on a lot of brisk tea. Oh, do you want to take a party break? Let me do that too. I'm going to write down a new time. Do you want to at least five, maybe ten minutes? We'll come back and finish it up. All right. Sounds good.

Wonderful. Now you can stew on it and bit. Only a little. I'm going to try not to lose my train of thought. That's good. Wish me luck. So, okay, I'll be right back to you. Boba girl, I got to go. I got to go. She's taking my socks off. I'm sweaty. Hey, kitty, kitty, kitty. Hi, baby. Hi, walking. How you doing, walking?

Oh, baby girl. I almost sat on you. I got you I got you okay fortunately the only cat I've ever sat on was Bubba twice and he moves he moves he moves out of my way pretty quickly

he's like but she does I'm terrified now well he taught me that lesson don't don't sit on the cats um okay 130 to 1 38 sorry to keep you waiting I got lost in thought out there I'm like thinking about I don't even know what it just gone I just go off in my head

um okay picking up where we left off. So we're talking to Louise. And then there's everything that happens in dreams is sequential. It is one event leads to another. Definitely cause and effect type of thing. And it's following a particular kind of thought process. It's like, here's your scenario. Here's where you're right. Well, there's the circumstances. Well, the meal is never actually served as far as I know. Because then all of a sudden, the kiss, one would suggest I'm obviously that that would be a conclusion of the night and going to say goodbye. Why does- Happen at the table or a new setting?

At the table, I don't remember if you're still sitting there or again, standing perhaps suggesting it's over and we're about to leave. And Louise asked me, is it the-so she kissed me and says, lipstick too much and my also again diplomatic response no I dare say just the right amount why every as I'm like

you know I know I know I got lipstick on my cheek now so she kisses you on the cheek not on the mouth yeah okay right and that's interesting too so you didn't kiss her on the cheek you didn't kiss her on the cheek you didn't kiss on the lips, she kissed you. So there's, there's symbolism in, in a kiss, there's an intimacy to it. It's, um, uh, it can be,

it's an expression of emotion. It can be, uh, given as a, as a, a reward in some ways. Um, I'm thinking of all the different different kinds of ways to, to express that. But that is also good to know. So that's why I ask questions like, where and when, how did this happen? Possibly post meal, possibly going to leave. exiting the scenario. Right. So the event, the circumstances has ended. Where did the meal go?

Yeah, yeah. But a dream can be sequential, but have gaps. Absolutely. And that's a gap. And is there something deeper in the fact that that is a gap? It could very well be. But also, when there are gaps, it's very, very often like a movie, it's a fade-to-black scene change.

And you're just somewhere else, or a hard cut, you know, times and generally what it's going to mean is there's no purpose there's it was it was irrelevant to the meal was irrelevant in a way eating the meal watching yourself eat the meal that wasn't that wasn't the point of why you were there was something else so you know if the meal was the point there would be an elaborate eating sequence it would they served seven courses here's what they were that would that would be something else but this was getting to the conclusion or a summary in essence of the experience is what I'm feeling. And well, Hitler was a vegan.

Oh, yeah, he's had a banquet and goes back to your right. He like other world leaders would have banquet settings to be in the presence of. But yeah, him being a vegan, I'm getting the clear impression that, this was an actual, you know, elaborate meal, even though I didn't see the meal. Sure. And then when that fits with the theme, too, of like, you know, a politician trying to impress the fancy meal, it's like, you know, it wasn't McDonald's or whatever, which would be an acronym. That would be interesting if it was. Right.

It wasn't Trump in the White House. That reminds me, too, of another joke. Feeding people McDonald's burgers, right? Which is, which is its own kind of like, hey, we're not getting too fancy here. That's funny. I love that. But also the idea that, oh, no, the joke I heard that it just came back to my mind was, you know, you thought Hitler was evil, but did you know he was also a vegan? Just because people get sick of hearing vegans preach and, anyway.

Yeah. Really holier than that type of stuff. That's odd humor. You know, you have cats. I have cats. But do you know anyone who has Labrador puppies for sale? I want to, I want to buy one so I can name it meth, so I can have a meth lab. Very cool.

I've heard some other jokes about that about the, you know, chocolate lab, golden lab, and then there was, and meth lab. There you go. It must be it. Okay. So this, this interaction takes place afterwards. You don't have a firm sense of where exactly. It was standing at the table or, or standing or sitting still at the table.

about to be excused. I don't know. It wasn't on the porch outside waiting to put it in a car or that kind of thing. It was in that same room for sure. Definitely. But the exact specific details are fleeting. Yes, then the dream came to an end. For sure.

Yeah, yeah. So this is definitely, as we were saying, the summary or conclusion, I mean, what, what's the bottom lining it in a way? And the, the conversational. the brief interaction verbally is focused on lipstick. So she gives you the kiss. There's a purpose for the kiss. The interaction, though, is then, is the lipstick too much?

No, what she said? Lipstick too much. Just, you know, in her flirtatious way, probably. And I can imagine that. And you say, I dare say just the right amount. So there's a bit of a tongue-in-cheek proper gentleman response. I love that, I love that too. But what does lipstick represent?

It is an enhancement in a way, but it is. is also a concealment. It's, it's a display. It is, it is put there for a purpose to, to, to be seen.

Nazis and propaganda. Everything was a display. That kind of, yes. But also our behavior is a display in a way, like what we choose to talk about or not talk about how we answer questions. So if someone asks you a question and you give a cautious, a diplomatically honest answer,

you are yourself wearing a sort of lipstick, a sort of display. And you're having. Now, because of the way my OCD brain works, now I have the who's eminence front in my head. Right, right? Well, sure. Yeah, yeah. And that's the whole idea of, what is it, people who are, what is the word for it?

It's a P word. It's not preposterous. It means to put on a display in a way pre-pre-pro-p-p-p-preaming? Preening, not preening. I'm thinking facade. That's not an eword, though. It's like a facade. It's people who pretense.

Pretentious. Oh, there we go. Yes. That's where we get that word from is, and you can tell us. What were you saying, you know, he's pretentious. Oh, he's fake. Look at that guy. He's putting on a front.

He's an eminence front. As you said, that just made me think of it. So, but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It can be, you know, the concept of a display. You're going to give a display, no matter what answer you give. Even if you refuse not too. decide you still have made a choice going back to rush. Even if you say nothing, standing there in silence is its own type of display.

So, so in the dream, you're connecting with her at the table. You're leaning away from the bad thing. You're as distance from it as you can be while still giving the appearance of being in the middle for your own safety because it's what you need to do to survive the circumstance. But really, you're telling yourself, I'm leaning away from this, towards this woman who appreciates, who's a representation of appreciating the diplomatic honesty approach.

She found that acceptable, charming and chanting. So this is where I was going with the idea of a kiss being a reward. It can be, you know, you save the princess and she gives you a kiss because thank you for saving me. So thank you in some ways.

But it's also a validation of I like what you did. I like who you are in this scenario. And she composed as opposed to lips as a, a distinction as you had already mentioned. Yeah, lips would have been more romantic, rather less, it's a different message. Definitely, definitely.

So it's more come onish. Yeah, even though there's flirtatiousness in this, there's not an absolute hey. Yeah, really coming on strong now. And also that she was moved to it. So there's a response being evoked from this icon in the dream. and what she appreciated was, I think what I wrote down was, I know, right, I didn't want to say unless someone else goes first, something of that nature.

So she's representing this idea of validating your approach and gives additional validation at the end. And what the icon of validation is asking you is, have I given the proper validation? Are you sure, is the lipstick too much? is the appearance we've both put on appropriate to this circumstance and you self-reflecting, I would say, speaking to your own sense of validating your choice

saying, I think we did okay. I think we gave it just the right amount. I think it wasn't too much. It was neither more nor less. It was right in the middle, right where it was supposed to be. And that's why people get the golden mean idea. Now, somebody else in this audience when I think of all these two are completely full of shit.

I think it means right. Yeah. No, this is for you. Dreams can ever be wrong in that sense of like, this is what you thought. You could have thought something wrong, but this is what you were thinking. But in the dream, you're thinking, I think I made the right decision. And let me represent that by my sense of valid. You're having a little conversation with yourself in a dream.

It's, you know, am I doing the right thing? Let me test the waters. Let me run a thought experiment. You check in with yourself and go, you know, did I do the right thing? And the answer you give yourself is, Yes, kiss on the cheek. And, but then you second guess it in a way and say, well, if I look at it again, do I really think so? And then you answer yourself as yourself saying, I think we did okay.

I think we did just the right amount. And this is where I was going with the golden mean is, the golden mean is very rarely 50, 50. It's almost never exactly in the middle because it's going to lean one way or another. It's going to be what is right for that circumstance. It's going to be the, you know, and that's why he didn't say, you know, the golden 50%. It's because it doesn't mean that, right? And so it can be less or more. It's based on the circumstances.

And then the dream ends. And you've had the conversation with yourself of it. So the next interesting thing to do is to say, now that we've looked at this and kind of seen it from the, in a way, 30,000 foot level of like looking down, seeing all the pieces on the risk board in a sense. When did this dream happen? A few years ago, actually. Yeah. And I've been debating, and part of it might have been the thought of I would have been already since terror strikes coming soon to a city new EU came out in 2020. I'd been debating since not a sequel, but like a director's, you know, a DVD, you get a movie director's cut.

I've been debating whether or not to do an expanded version because I don't go into cyber attacks, even though I'm former IT. A second edition, yeah. Yeah, electrical grid attacks. And I was debating then after the dream, well, maybe I need to do that because this story needs to come in the form of a dream of the lead character Martin and hashing out that dream. Yeah, and that's a lot of times dreams can serve this purpose and we'll find that that that's where I was going to. was like, okay, identify the time. Now, what was going on with you at that time? What questions were you trying to answer for yourself? And a lot of times what will happen is we won't even have the ability to formulate the question coherently until we get it into the dream state. And the dream state shows us a bizarre image that we may never understand or we can talk about it and get an idea. And that helps to crystallize the question that we then go on to answer. So sometimes dreams don't have an answer. They have a question. We're trying to find the question. And we're trying to find the question. And we're trying to find the question. Right. And the question might have been... You could see above my head, principles, not personalities.

I didn't ask you about that the whole time, and I could just never remember to work it in. I mean, that factors into everything I think about say and do. Principles, not personalities, right? I think we had covered it before. It doesn't matter if John Doe says it. Is it a reality, a truth, or a delusion, or not? If it's reality, I don't disagree with. with it just because I don't like John Doe or I don't agree with it if it's wrong just because I do like John Doe. So I mean, all those things factor into everything in my life. For sure. Yeah, no, that's a great thing too. Because you can't, well, you can't. And a lot of people do. So you can't have principles or can't not have principles. I think everyone has, has some.

They may change. They may be situational. But there's definitely a, well, having a principle of whatever gets me by at this moment is still a good principle. It's not a good philosophy, but a lot of politicians have that, right? That's why they'll say one thing, one week and completely the opposite. The next week, next week, their principle is whatever gets me power. Yeah. So if we think of this in the dream in the context of trying to crystallize the question around should I write another book. So it's been several years since that. It may, Maybe you haven't determined an answer yet of like, how should I approach this? Or what would you say might be the reason for a delay in a second edition? Because a lot of times I put things off until I have a plan in mind. You know, and the plan takes a while. Well, the lesson is a whole bunch of other dreams and other books to write. This is true.

See, that's one thing I've been wanting to do with my own books, too, is like, okay. I was talking about the AI, AI music at Real AI Radio on, on, Rumble and YouTube and on X. I want to start doing remasters, but I haven't finished writing new songs yet. And I've got new songs already set up to release through. Yeah. So the remasters are in a wait a while. I got notes for books all over the place.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, exactly. And the other flip side of it, too, is I want to do a remastered. I already been there, done that. Do I really want to revisit? Yeah. One thing I haven't done is, so I've got 18 books of historical dream litter. And they are reproductions of books pre.

1920 because I'm trying to create my own masterclass in a way of everything it's ever been written on dreams and dream interpretation and make sure I cover all the bases. Am I approaching this with full knowledge? So I'm trying to get through all those books. I haven't finished yet. Eventually I want to go back and do a second edition where I do some more collected volumes and put them in hardcover. I haven't done any hardcover. And expound on thoughts can change and evolve too over time so you add, you can include some of previous and expounder in how to write a book and get published, hints, tips, and techniques. I talk about that. People who have podcasts can put episodes transcribed into text, make that a chapter, then add additional thoughts

since that podcast aired. And you've got a ready-made book. And that's great. Google does that too, or YouTube. You just go and download the transcript and you got a chapter. Damn. This is the podcast. This is what I say. And since you deal in music too, I'm betting you would love. I won an award in 1984 for a radio play.

I wrote. I'm in Detroit across the river. C.J.O.M. 89X Canadian alternative station. They have a, here's the song of the week, like a radio play intro. That week it was Billy Idol, eyes without a face. So I wrote The Adventures of Detective Idol, IDLE, so it wouldn't be the same as IDOL Billy Idol. And I won that week.

And indeed, they then put it into, you know, radio, 1930s radio play style and put it on air and then followed it up with the song. If you go to Terror Strikes. Dot Info slash Billy Idol, I bet you would appreciate that radio play because it's kind of like what you're doing, right?

Taking old, I did it the other way around. I took an existing song and made it into a radio play. You're taking poetry and making him into songs. But there's a cemetery there. No, for sure. And then it goes,

I have more ideas than I will ever act upon. But one, one that came to me was, so one of the Shakespeare sonnets or whatever I adapted was all the world's the stage, all the men and women, merely players. And they have their entrances and exits. And what it goes on. That's in these books, too. I mean, there's a reason these things are famous. They speak to, but here's where it goes. A lot of people don't know where it goes from there.

It says, you know, and each man has seven ages. And here's what they are. And it talks about the schoolboy and et cetera. etc. It goes through the life of a man and describing how he changes over time. I thought that would make a great opening number for a musical. And then

the musical would go on to use other songs I've written using other poetry. Each song would be sung by a different character in the play based on those seven ages of men. And it also goes back to Rush. They have it in what

song? I don't remember. All the world is staged and we, we, are merely players, performers and portrayers, each and other's audience just like the gilded stage. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's why indeed it's in one of these books, I forget which, but about life and living. Right? Yes, please. One's a female perspective.

The book of Kennedy Project Carpidium, the other, a short story, Elastic Legacy, both written very differently, like a short story is based on. journal entries, Ryan's journal entries. But they're both about life and living and indeed. And back to eminence front, right? People who put on fronts. I call them the mass holes, right? Masses of asses who are miserable and they want everybody else to be miserable, but at times they put on an eminence front. So yeah, all these things tie together in the work we do. Well, then, and hearkening back as the, because I love harken. People don't use that enough.

To our biblical discussion earlier, why not covet your neighbor stuff? Because a lot of times it makes you resentful. And what if you're not capable of accomplishing what they have because you don't have the skills? Then you become the person that wants to take from another to knock them down a peg so they're on your level. The world. The communism versus biblical community. You can make the short grass grow, but you can cut the tall grass and God help you through the tall grass. They will cut you down.

that's yeah that's not good it so it all it all ties together um do you think we've understood the dream well enough to uh to wrap it up or do you have more questions or elements you wanted to focus on i i think indeed we've covered round i think you're seeing it more or less as i see the dream also but again someone else might also be saying well those two are full of shit. Hell does he know. Yeah. It really means this.

Oh, yeah. One thing I don't do is put myself forward as a final authority. Here's what I, this is, like with the sky is, this is what I see. Right. You didn't do the disclaimer. Yep. Go ahead and give that, right? You're not a legal professional.

Right. This is not counseling therapy. I do not offer any license service. We are just two people talking about dreams. Exactly. I probably should say that. I should make a, make a disclaimer real to put at the beginning,

but I don't think people know. When you're talking about dreams, it's like, I tell people too, it's like, I'm not the expert, you are. I'm just the guy you invite

into your head to, to look around, standing over your shoulders, shining a flashlight in the dark saying, do you see what I see? If you don't, or I'm completely wrong, I don't care.

It's not, yeah. I'm not, I'm not that I don't care about getting the right answer for you, but I'm not invested in me being right. The answers are not in me. I call myself a wizard, but I don't talk to spirits.

I don't have any magic powers. I'm just some guy who wants to be useful. It helps, helpful, beneficial. And I say that all the time. I have health issues, right? I'm on disability. It's why I've got time to be able to write books and do a podcast twice a week. But I say that whenever I'm right, anecdotal evidence, I've got a piece about vitamin C on before

it's news.com, right? I'm not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. right your your mileage may vary oh yeah yeah that's me too i say you know i am not a doctor i'm just a crazy guy on the internet who thinks he's a wizard so you got a good i've got a meme that i share a lot that says i'm not a no at all i just play one on the internet exactly yep yep well people what are people listening for they're listening for say something validation usually yeah but also say something interesting i don't want to be bored to entertain me so you know, not that people are just being, but then again,

that's another shade of, you can be entertaining without being a liar, just like you can be diplomatic without being a liar. You know, you could just, and if I, and if I don't know something, that's if I say, I rattle a lot of doorknobs, they don't come open. I've got two shows on gray areas. Yeah, yeah, and they're big,

there are black and white things and there are great things. It's not always black and white, up down, left, right, liberal conservative, there are gray areas. Oh, yeah, definitely. Well, if you think we, uh, um, covered the bases as much as, oh, the last thing I was going to say is just in terms of me not being an expert is I'm okay with alternative explanations. Maybe someone else see something differently. So if you can do these, chime in on the comments. Comment below, like, share,

and subscribe, of course. You know, if you want to get a second opinion, please do. If you want to talk to someone else who says they talk to spirits, none of my business. I'm not going to tell you not to do that. It's not what I do. You got to go to them for that. But the idea that someone else might see something different and that can also be useful. That's fantastic. Yeah. You can do this for yourselves. Literally turned down a show earlier today.

I got an email, right? Oh, I'd love to talk to you. And at the end, I'll give you a tarot reading. Now, I'll pass. That's their gimmick. That's interesting. Let's do a tarot reading at the end. Right.

That can be entertaining. I have had tarot readings before. They're fun and interesting. And, you know, as a Christian, oh, Where of the devil? How dare anybody? No, please. I've talked to psychics before my ex-wife was heavy into that.

Oh, I forget her. Phyllis somebody now? Or Sylvia somebody. That was a famous psychic. She was into that. I love the show medium. Do you remember that one? For Patricia Arquette.

I love that show. One of my favorites. One of my favorites was The Mentalist. I don't know if you remember that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just complete con artist, but turned his mind towards solving crimes and did a great. I love that, that, I love the anti-hero of that. He's doing it for his own personal reasons.

He's not really, but you find along the way, okay, he does care about people. We'll go a little bit further. He doesn't want to hurt anybody, really. He has changed. That's great character arc for that show. If you haven't seen it, I'd never heard of that actor before. Has one of my favorite actresses in it playing opposite him, the gal from Firefighter. I can never remember her name.

But anyway, I think if you, the, the court is on from Firefly, you'll know, you'll know who that is. I just, just briefly, I had a terror reading once. This was back when I was, you know, 30 years ago, 25 years ago, I was looking at traveling to different Renaissance fairs doing my medieval music. This was back when I was, I was going to do that. And I got a terror reading. And the question I asked was, will I be successful?

And the answer we came down to was with the cards, she said, yes. if you do it, but you're not sure you want to. And I'm like, damn, you're right. And I decided not to. I decided to go a different direction. And so we'll never know. Maybe that reading was accurate. They can help you work through things.

A lot of it is like archetypal focusing. Yes. Yeah. Yes. It gives you a topic for discussion. I mean, psychic readings are often indeed. They ask you questions usually first. And they, right.

Well, we've got the discussion during, which is, you know, a lot of people say, not a lot of people, I've had comments saying, dream interpretation is fake, you know what you're doing, I'm like, it's just psychology. We're just talking about, here's what you saw in your own mind, here's what it means for you. Here's connections we can draw. You agree or you don't. No skin off my teeth. I'm just here to help. If you get something out of it, I'm happy. And I'm not charging you any money.

You know, I'm not taking cash from people to do this. I will. I will take your cash to do this privately, but you got to believe that it's real. I'm not trying to scam anybody. Yeah. And it's weird that taro came up during this because before the show, I was going through some paperwork on the side table and I came across this post it. I got to be careful not to give the phone number out there,

but Dina, who I haven't seen an age of she, Dina and Carla were more friends with my ex-wife and she kind of got them in the divorce, so to speak, right? I haven't, Dina was one who was into the tarot things, and I loved the reading she gave me. It was great, and it, you know, it seemed incident, coincidentally, kind of accurate, and the death card came up. And I told her, well, that doesn't surprise me because I died in a car crash when I was young, but I was brought back. Those things can have a lot of different meanings. The death card can just be the end of one thing in the beginning of something new.

It's a lot of a lot of interpretation goes into it. And it is a lot of psychology. Now you're talking chapter one of the book of Kennedy Project Carpidium. Chapter one literally is never an ending just a new beginning. It's true. And I think even literal death is the same. I really believe that. That's why I don't think death is the end.

Just like first was in the beginning. Yeah, I came across that post it. And I moved it over to this. table saying, I'm going to try to reach out to her. I got the number. If it's the same number or not, I don't know, but I'm going to try to reach out and say, hey, I'm thinking of you because I came across this. How have you been? It's interesting how the universe works. I'm a big believer in Carl Jung's approach on synchronicity. Things that line up in space and time and share referential meaning to each other.

There's something there and you should probably pay attention. You don't have to be religious to believe in karma. One of my favorite albums is Karma from Rick Springfield and he's got a song on there called Karma in which he says

every little bit of love I give to another. You know what I believe? It comes back to me. Right? And that's a heavy theme in a couple of my latest books, right? Put out good, you'll likely get good back. And the old adage, show me your friends, I'll show you your future. Surround yourself with narrative wells. You're likely to get in trouble. Surround yourself with good people. You're likely to do good things.

Oh, yeah. And that feeds into or evokes thoughts about the admonition in and say witchcraft of if you seek to do black magic, whatever you, whatever harm you attempt to do to someone we visited back on you sevenfold. So be damn sure you want that revenge or you want to hurt that person that badly because you're going to suffer for it. And, you know, specifically in the moment, does it, you know, psychic powers and witchcraft spells? I don't think it works like that. But I think there is magic in the world.

I think what we did here today is magic. There's spellcasting in our, in our discussion, our descriptions. But, you know, certainly the idea of if you seek to do harm, you're going to create a world around you carmically where harm comes back even more because now you put evil out in the world you get evil back. Don't, don't do that. And it's the same if you help someone. It takes, what was it? I held the door for someone and I, and I, the other day. And they said, thank you. And it looked like they had a scowl on their face before that. And afterwards, they were slightly less miserable. Just, just for, and you know, they're going to go, they're going to

go, they're going to have a pleasant interaction with the cashier instead of being angry. They had to wait so long. My cashier's going to go home, have a pleasant interaction with their sister. Their sister's going to have a pleasant interaction with someone else. All because I took three seconds to hold the door and made someone's day better. I think that's how the world works. I go into that in the book, Kennedy Project Carpe Diem. You share a smile.

They may have been in a bad mood. They may fake a smile back, but guess what? That makes both your days better. And I like, do you remember the old pantine shampoo commercial? They tell two friends. They tell two friends. Exponential. You put that smile out

and it exponentially grows. And what if someone was having such a bad day they were considering suicide? You might have saved their life. Then they don't. Their child then

they have the next year goes on to cure cancer. Yeah. What role did that little smile play, the butterfly. I was going to say butterfly thing. Yep. And in conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, that is how you save the world.

You learned it here first. But let's go ahead and wrap up. I think we're hitting both of our time. Speaking of the store, I've got to get to the store with my wife today. Let's do this. This has been our friend Joseph M. Leonard from Detroit, Michigan. He is an author and the host of the Christitutionalist podcast. You can find him at Linktree at J. Leonard, Detroit.

that link will be in the description below. I'll try and do this fast. For my part, would you kindly like, share, and subscribe? Always need more volunteer dreamers. I do video game streams Monday through Friday, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific, most nights of the week. I forgot to say I'm currently in sober October. I am playing all of the scariest spooky season games I can find without the benefit of liquid courage. Please come and mock me as I shriek like a tiny child.

That is, as I said, Monday through Friday, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific on this very channel. This episode brought to you by ABC Book 18, O'Neuro Crotology, Volume 4, Prima, reliquorum. You can find all this and more at Benjamin thedreamwizard.com. Also head on over to Benjamin thedreamwizard.com and become a member there, free to join attached to my Rumble account. That is the housekeeping. Joseph, thank you for being here. It's been a great time. I got one last thing since you said you want to run to the store. I, Every time there's a local store called Jerry's Market by me, you know, one of those, been there since the late 1800s, you know, those corner stores like you don't see nowadays, right? Only had they been there forever.

But whenever I run in the Keep a Sense of Humor thing, I go and run into people and they're selling moms outside the store, right? So whenever I run into anyone out there, I say, I'm tired of this sex discrimination. Why only mums? No dads. But I'm bum. And on that, I think that's a perfect note to end on. Once again, we should thank Joseph for being here and everyone out there in the audience. Thank you for listening.

We hope to see you next time. Take care. Take care. God bless.