Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 204: Samsaran Synchronicity

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

Brownell Landrum ~ https://brownelllandrum.com

These cats are always interrupting the show. It's a toss-up whether I prefer them to fight each other in the background where I got to yell at them. And then I sound like I'm mean, you know, put on my bad daddy voice. Like, stop it. Knock it off, you kids. Or I'd rather have them sit on my notes, which is, you know, I can move them. They're not fighting, but they're in the way. I don't know.

I don't know which I prefer, actually. So hopefully they'll just stop entirely. Just take a nap, Bubba. Oh, my goodness. Greetings, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today, our guest dreamer is Brunel Landrum from Parts Unknown, currently in Atlanta. She's a writer and explorer of metaphysical mysteries, author of A Love Story to the Universe.

We'll talk more about that in a minute. Of course, you can find her at braunelandrum.com. Link in the description below if you are curious about the spelling. For my part, would you kindly like, share, and subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers. I do video game streams most days, Monday through Friday, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific. And I always forget the book. This episode brought to you in part by ABC Book 18, O'Neuro Chronology, Volume 4, Prima, Relicorum, the first of what remains collecting three shorter books,

entire books, into one volume for you to supplement the original chronological trivium. that's enough about that. Of course, you can find all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, including downloadable or live streamable episodes of this very podcast so you may take the Wizard with you wherever you wander with or without Wi-Fi.

And if you'd also head on over to Benjamin the Dreamwizard. Dot Locals.com, it's free to join attached to my Rumble account, building a community there, one of the best places to reach out to me if you have a dream to share. And that is enough out of me. We'll get back to Barnell.

Thank you for being here. I appreciate your time. I'm glad to be here. We're going to be going to be going to, We're going to have fun. I think so too. So I am, where do I start with this stuff? I want to give you the my frame of reference so we can we can push the weeds aside and see, see where we're going.

I tend to default to the more scientific physical approach to things. Now, that's just because that's where my specialty is. That's where I'm, that's my wheelhouse. It's where I'm comfortable. So when I'm doing dream interpretations, it is from a drawing psychological connections for people. Now, that doesn't mean I disbelieve. in what I lovingly call the spooky woo or spirit. I think the spiritual realm is in a lot of ways more real than the physical world.

And I stand by that. But I don't understand it as well. So it's hard for me to approach it from that angle. And so it's great to have guests that are like, well, I'm coming at it from a completely different side. So let's supplement my ignorance, you know. So where did you want to start? Do you want to start with your journey of like how you got into this stuff? Where do you want to talk about your book first?

I'll leave it wide open. Well, I mean, I can go with the flow, whatever you want to do. I guess one of the things, just to put in context, the dream that I thought would be most interesting to you and most interesting, hopefully to your listeners, was a dream that was a recurring dream. And it led me to realize that it wasn't just a dream. It was actually what I call a dreamery, which is a dream that's a memory. Ah, good. Nice.

Okay. I love neologisms. Yeah, yeah. It's so funny because I did all this research found. Nobody else used that word, and now people are using that word. So I don't know if it came from me or what, but I know. You're popularizing it, yeah. But what I mean by that is like a past life memory, right?

And that was, it was profound for me because not only because of what I learned from the dream that I'm sure we'll talk about, but also that it led me down this awareness of past lives, reincarnation, the whole concept of it. And, you know, when you talk about the science of it and, you know, kind of science versus belief, the way I look at is like, you don't have to believe in time travel to enjoy back to the future. It's true. Right? Absolutely. And so we can talk about it from a theoretical standpoint or a psychological standpoint. Because when people say, well, I had this memory then, you know, and I think I had this lifetime, I said, whether that's true or not, doesn't matter. It's coming you to for a reason, for a psychological reason, right? And it's coming to you

because there's something for you to learn from that and take into your life. So, I mean, you know, I've met people who were like, oh, I was Marilyn Monroe. No, I was Marilyn Monroe. Oh, I was Marilyn Monroe. And to me, it doesn't matter. Like, I'm not going to try to prove whether one person is or is not or was or was not a certain person. It doesn't matter. if they're having that impression or memory or dream or whatever, it's happening for a reason. And more likely than not, they all have a different perspective of what it meant would have meant to be her and how that's affecting them now. Yeah, definitely. And when I say things like, you know, that I divide it into two and I try and stay in my wheelhouse is that I, as I've described in the past, like if someone came to me and said, Ben, is this particular dream prophetic?

I think it might be. And I would say to them, I don't know. I don't have the ability to decipher this is a prophetic dream versus another dream is not. So it's that humility to say, I know what I don't know. And so if I'm going to tell you I know something or I think something is true, I'm going to, it's because I have an understanding of it's sufficient to make that claim. So, yeah, so that's where. And with recurring dreams, yeah, I do tend to lean in more, more heavily to the cyclical. psychological side of things, will they come back because whatever that dream is speaking to is

unresolved and it needs to be re-examined, like a question you haven't answered yet. So. Yeah, and that question could be this lifetime or another lifetime. Absolutely. And, you know, and that being said, I do think reincarnation is entirely likely. I actually have a very bizarre, and it may be unique and it may not, but a view of the idea of reincarnation. I think we are all the same soul living every life. that ever existed or will exist. It's like, it goes back to kind of the Beatles with I am you and you are me and we are all together. It's, it's in, in my estimation, what is this?

Am I speaking about things I don't understand and have no proof of? Absolutely. This is just what I believe is take this for what you will. But there's only one soul and it's the soul of God and it's in a million pieces, a billion, billion pieces. And it makes up everything around us. And that's why everything you use. do to someone else you are doing to yourself because you either were that person or will be that person in your next go round. So I think we all reincarnate, but we aren't all. We are one.

It's a weird. I think you get what I'm saying. And I don't think I can describe it any better, which is one of the best reasons not to be bad to people because that's you. You will suffer what you are doing to yourself. Or at the very least, if we move on to the afterlife when we all come back together to the universal soul, you're going to experience it then as in, oh, God, what did I do to myself. Why did I do that to myself? Why was I so angry and took it out on other people in that way? Anyway, long rant, I'm not even sure what the topic was anymore. Reincarnation, I generally agree. But how to, how to say specifically, and they do this with dreams, too. It's like, there's been a long history of trying to find the right word to describe what it is. Is it a phantasm?

Is it a reverie? Is it, you know, what are the different types of dreams? Are the communications from from God or the spirits. I think yes, in a way. It's metaphorically true. But that was going somewhere with all that time. I'm just going to stop. Throw it back to you. No, no, no, no.

I think it is important. My first book was called Five Reasons Why Bad Things Happen. And I do get into a little bit and, you know, not more than a few paragraphs, but about dreams and that there are different kinds of dreams, right? And some might just be electrical signals, just reworking themselves as your brain, you know, the neuroplasticity of your brain working itself out through the day or whatever. And some of them I do believe are prophetic. I've had many prophetic dreams.

And I've used the same dream book, dream analysis book for decades. And it's now I can't look up internet on it because it didn't exist. Yeah. But you can look up communication or media of different kinds. Yeah, you could try to make it work. Yeah. And but I, but I do feel. really adamant about the fact that have one dream book that's your dream book because if it's

your super conscious, whether it's your super conscious or subconscious talking to you in your dream, they want to know, like, if they want to get through to you and if they're going to give you the color red and it's a message of something to look for, then you don't want five different books giving you five different definitions of the color red because then they're going to really be confused on what to tell you. That's true. Yeah. I generally recommend against dream books. I did an episode. I used to do a series called the ABCs of Dream Interpretation to go with my book series. And I did one episode where I said, okay, let's take a real example of a gal I talk to and the meaning we determine together constructing it in collaboration as we go, checking for resonance,

etc. Versus what a dream book might have said and which one. gave better advice or a better framing of the situation, a better understanding of the message of the dream. And it turned out that the dream book, well, in my estimation in this one example, anecdotal as it is, would have perhaps led her to make some very serious dysfunctional life choices.

So, so, but that was a random dream book or no, I think I use dreammoods.com or something like that, just whatever, the most popular website that popped up. I tend to, in all of this I'm going to come back around and say I'd love your idea because I never thought of it that way before. But I tend to recommend against it because I don't believe there's always one meaning for all symbols for all people. And that being said, I break that down to there is collective unconscious style of stuff where we experience the world as physically constituted human beings in a particular way.

And that's common to all humans. We all have the same relationship with water or air, different different. elements say because of how our body is put together. We need water to live. Too much water we drown, et cetera. But then again, if you get to get down to like a seashell, this is the example that I use. Okay, for one person, it might be, oh, a sea shell is, is the ocean, okay, or the beach, but why? And if you start getting into a particular person's dream, they'll say, I used to collect seashells with my grandfather. I miss my grandfather. What did he tell me about? What was that lesson he told me on the beach that day? We start, starts getting real personal connections.

Coming at it from the other side, if you actually, as you just said, this is a fantastic idea. I love it. If you're going to use a dream book, do it exactly like you said. The idea that, okay, the next, after you read the book, the next time a seashell shows up, you're going to remember, oh, this is what it means. And that's why that symbol might occur to you now that you have that book as a reference point. So that's right. Because your subconscious knows, if I want to give you a message of, you know, I don't know what a

seashell means. But that's a good example. Seychelles is a good example in terms of I don't know what it means. And if it comes up in my dream, it's going to stand out because I don't dream about seashells. And therefore, if it's a message that I really need to be looking out for, my subconscious or my super conscious, whichever one, you know, is, because I think it could be either. I have a very clear definition of what those differences are.

I'd love to hear those. I was going to ask, but after. Yeah. So I'll get to that in a second. But if it is, whichever one it is, I'm like. For example, a strawberry, sometimes I'll dream about a strawberry. That's just a really weird thing for me to dream about. But when I do, I look at it, I'll remember it, and I'll look it up in my dream book,

and it'll be like, oh, man, that's what it's telling me. There's somebody who, I don't know if this is true about my book. I'd have to look up what the extra message is strawberry. But let's just say a strawberry means there's somebody around you that you shouldn't trust. Right? I wouldn't think that when I'm thinking about a strawberry. So it's such a disconnect consciously that when it comes up, I know it's a message from somewhere that because, and then, and then almost always is, oh, yes, now I know who that person is. Thank you for that warning.

So I don't know if that's prophecy or not, but I do get prophetic message. You know, a lot of times it's my colors. Like, I'll get a dream about a color. And in my particular dream book, for example, gray means your marking time. just waiting for something to happen, you know. And orange, if you dream about orange, it means that something you're expecting will be delayed, right? Last night, I dreamt hot pink, bright, bright, bright, bright pink. Well, I already know, because I'm already so aware of what my colors mean, but it means like an exceptionally great success in something that you're working on.

And so it gives me kind of that motivation. A dark red is unexpected good news. Bright red is warning for anger. So I love all those little things when they come in the dreams that are that are like that, like, okay, I got to be careful not to lose my temper today. You know, that may be something that comes up the day. Yeah, definitely. Now, that just made me think of the idea of if you're going to use a dream book, maybe construct your own and start saying, here's what I've, through self-analysis of my own dreams, here's what I've found a lot of these symbols commonly mean. So when they come back, you can identify them easier. That's fantastic. I would not do that. You would not. Okay. Only because I like the fact that if I'm dreaming out a seashell or a strawberry, I don't know what it means consciously.

And therefore, it can be a way for that subconscious or super conscious to come through. Fair enough. And not me filtering it trying to say, oh, let me dream about a strawberry because that means I'm going to get that call from that guy that I like. Yeah. And you were going to mention subconscious versus super conscious. How do you delineate those? Yeah. I talk about this a lot in my first book.

And actually my current book that I'm writing, it's called The Science of Wishing, which, which is a whole other thing that I'm having fun writing, but is that basically if you think about it and that there's a part of you that existed before you were born and will exist after you die. Okay, and you can call that the soul, the higher self, the super conscious, whatever term you want to use. And that part of you chooses a body and becomes us.

Now, if you believe it's multiple lifetimes, then you can believe it chooses a body multiple times. If you want to believe in one lifetime, that's fine, but it would choose a body and become us. There was a great episode of a podcast called Invisibilia about a little boy. It was called Back when I was older and about a little boy talking about a prior lifetime of his. And he talks about like going to the mommy and daddy store picking out your parents lifetime. Yeah. Really, really cute.

And so you choose that body for that lifetime. And so, and then when you get to come together, that's your conscious. Your subconscious is your body. And when I realized what is your subconscious was your body, that changed everything for me. And, you know, spoiler alert, one of the reasons, five reasons why bad things happens is subconscious sabotage. Oh, yeah. And that's when your body is doing things because it's afraid of something. Like if you want to go for this big success, yeah, but somewhere subconsciously, you might be, yeah, but I don't want to be that busy.

or work that hard or, you know, be public or have these. So you've got to get to know your body. And so I have a, I don't know if you're familiar. Have you ever heard of the religion called the HUNA, H-U-N-A? That sounds familiar, but I couldn't tell you what it means, yeah. I guarantee you've heard of the big Kahuna. Oh, yeah. Well, the Kahuna is the head of the Huna tribe.

Okay, so it's the priest or whatever of the tribe. Well, Hino religion is basically psychology 101. The difference is, because they're very much into the three selves, the difference is that they also actually talk to you about naming each of yourself. So you have a name to your body. And I'm telling you, if there's one thing, if nothing else that happens in this world, if more people could understand that and get to know their body on that first name basis, and the body's going to tell you, you're not going to tell it.

But you can't say, well, I want to name you this. It's going to say, no, it's going to be something you don't expect at all. But then you start really getting to know your body. And I know this is getting off the topic, but it sort of is we've seen dream. Because like last week, I was doing working on something and I realized that my subconscious was blocking it. And I'm having a conversation with her and go, okay, I'm hearing you. You're afraid if this happens, then I'm going to just kind of the example I just used. I'm going to be really, really busy.

And I might stress myself out too much. I might work too hard. I might get too anxious. And therefore, there's a part of me that doesn't want this big opportunity to happen. And so, but I can have a conversation with her going, okay, then if I make a deal with you, that if it happens, I won't do these things, or I will talk to you before I get stressed out, or we will have more fun times to balance it or whatever it is that the body wants. then anyway, that's the,

that it really can change so much. For sure. Yeah. I think that's sometimes, again, I'm seeing a lot of parallels to, to, just in general psychological self-talk,

like you check in, what am I feeling? What am I thinking? What am I afraid of? What do I want out of this scenario? And a lot of these questions, people don't consciously approach in that way. And it comes out in our dreams.

And that's why paying attention to dreams can be very important. It's like it's a, it's a signal or a marker of something that's, it was important. enough for us to think about and remember it in the morning in this visual pattern. I've written down so many notes as we're going. I wanted to go back just a little bit and just touch on the idea of color and dreams. I should have a statistic off the top of my head, but it's actually pretty rare that people

mention colors and dreams. So the idea that, but the ones who do color is very important to them. And it usually means something. Yeah. And so that's its own category of thing. That's the easiest thing for me to get a quick. That's when it hits my, like when I'm dreaming. that's when it hits the conscious.

If I dream about a seashell or a strawberry, I don't know what that means consciously. So that's when I know it's coming from another place. But if I'm dreaming, I'm like, okay, I just woke up in a dream, you know, and I'm, wow, I have this beautiful hot pink. That's a great message. Thank you. I needed that boost today because that means unusually great success or whatever.

For sure. Yeah. And that's one of the easiest things. before we get into the dream, I want to ask you a question because I think, I think this is, every time I've done research on it, it says this doesn't happen, you are really weird and that's just not normal. And I'm like, but it's my normal. I go right into REM sleep. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Well, there's actually, if I were to take a nap right now, there's a good chance I'd have a dream within the next, within the first few minutes and maybe

wake up 10 minutes later and I'm in a dream. I think what you're, experiencing, and one of these days I'm going to write a wizard's guide to dream interpretation, and I'm going to explain the physical side of things as well. So I'm working on theories. It's a theory, but it seems to hold up. There is data that says, okay, we used to think you only dream during REM sleep because they would see people's eyes moving and there was a natural conclusion. Something's happening. We're seeing an external sign. Like when a dog's twitching and barking and running in their sleep, you know, go there must be dreaming, guaranteed. There's a squirrel. They're going for that squirrel. And we get, and what they fast squirrel.

And what they found was, if they wake people up, they reported, yes, I was having a dream. They said, problem solved. You dream during REM sleep. Well, they said, I wonder what would happen if we wake people up during non-REM sleep. And it turns out 100% of people woken up during non-REM sleep report, I was dreaming. So my current theory, yeah, my current theory is that we dream nonstop, that there's no difference between our waking stream of consciousness. and the the experience of dreams other than our active attention and distraction of stimulus in the external world.

The way I describe it is the lungs breathe, the heart beats, and the brain thinks. And it doesn't stop until the day we die, until that electrical activity ceases. Which brings me around to another topic I wanted to touch on just briefly was the idea of what the subconscious is. And you mentioned that, you know, it is our. body. There's a physical thing to the and I think that's true. It's like the way the brain works with neurons

and neuronal connections and the strength of connections like why do people have PTSD responses. Well, they have a very low threshold for a very strong response down a particular neural pathway that triggers certain memories and that is

all literally physical. So the way I describe it is everything we've ever experienced, heard, red, seeing, thought, felt, smell, is physically constituted in our brain as a response pathway that has been triggered at least once and new neuronal connections. So the way I describe is, you know, it's the vast pool of everything we have ever experienced since the before birth is it makes up that kind of subconscious area.

So then that gets into the realm of the brain, right? I mean, that's still the body, right? Absolutely. I'm going to totally butcher the number. So please do. good it. But I know that our subconscious is aware of everything that's happening at all times. And our conscious can only handle a certain small percentage of what's happened. So we may sit there and go, I remember seeing your cats in the background, but I completely miss the fact that you've got,

you know, some sort of juice next to you. But the subconscious or the brain is registering all of that at once. We just can't kind of handle all of that at once in our consciousness. Absolutely. We cannot. We cannot attend to literally, everything happening at once. There's too much. And so what they found out, researching into the idea of perception and attention is that we don't really see the world,

we don't really see everything. It's not like we see a picture and that's what we see. It's like we see certain element. We see what's meaningful or important to us in the moment. It's like right now I'm not asking you what the prescription on your glasses are. I completely forgot you were wearing glasses until I was just triggered my brain. Look for an example. Look for an example.

Ah, glasses. I see she's wearing glasses. Or if you'd, you know, shut off the video and said, hey, Ben, what color is my couch? I go, oh, God, I have no idea. Is it red? We talked a lot about red. I'm thinking red. It's not red.

Brownish green. I don't know. Something like that. Yeah, yeah. Because these things are not important. We're having this conversation. And there's probably a million thoughts I had that are tangential to what we're talking about. Don't make for good conversation.

You let them go. You don't, you know, this is that whole meditative experience as well. Yeah, and it's also kind of like, you know, like if you were being, I mean, obviously you're being filmed. I'm being filmed. Like for a movie, there could be somebody off screen. Yeah. Right. There can be somebody sitting over here that you don't even know about that's happening.

But your subconscious might still be able to pick up on that, right? Oh, yeah. And this is like this is all we can see is this part, but there could be all kinds of stuff happening outside of it. For sure. And there's more, there are definitely people like to say, oh, there's no such thing as a six cents. They are way more than six. Let me tell you. Oh, I mean, same.

For sure. One of my favorites is proprioception. And I just love it because you can do the example. It's when you close your eyes and you can touch your nose without. That's why they do that with the drunk, drunk stop things like because when you're drunk, you lose proprioception. You lose your balance. All kinds of different indicators.

But yeah, but there's way more than that. And one of our great senses that doesn't, we register as it as a physical sensation, but as a mental phenomenon, it's intuition. And the way I like to describe it is that intuition is. like a lighthouse on the shore in deep fog. It lets you know there's land over there. You don't know what kind of land. Is there a forest? Is it a swamp? Is it at where are the rocks? Is it shallow? Is it deep? We don't know. We don't even know how tall is lighthouse. What is it pointing at? We don't know. But we know there's something there. Now, is it something we need to see or pay attention

to? That's why I like, you know, doing this in dreams is like these images and symbols, the fact that you remembered it at all means there's something there you probably want to take a look at that you think is beneficial or that you were at least concerned enough about to give it mental energy in your sleep because we don't tend to as we were saying with perception we don't tend to think about or dwell on too many things that are irrelevant and if you think it is uh maybe you're arguing with yourself that's the other thing too i was going to say um you have conversations with yourself carl young did the same thing he had an internal wise old man he called philemon and he would consult him. And he actually wrote, one of his books was just conversations with Philamon.

That's not the title of the book, but it's, I went to my internal wise man and I asked him questions and here's what he said about these different things. And it's, uh, now we tell people maybe, okay, break this down, a slight tangent, but swear to God, I'm coming back. There are some people who you ask them, what do you see in your mind when you envision an apple? And some of them will say a red, bright, shiny apple like you'd put on the teacher's desk or get at the store. I love, or a green apple because I love those. And there are some people who are like, well, I see the picture of an apple like in a child's ABC's book.

And then there are some people who say, I don't see anything. I don't see anything. Right, right. I forget what the plural of this, but there's a term for it too. So maybe connecting this back, maybe there are some people who literally can't have a conversation with themselves because they just can't conceptualize it. We can't see that in their brain enough to process it.

And maybe that's a very low number of people. But if you can, I think it's probably, a fantastic idea. And I've never thought of that either, the idea of naming the three, you know, body, mind and soul in a way, giving them separate names.

I mean, who is Ben? It really, it really helps, especially with the body, because you can, you can just have these conversations. I mean,

one of my favorite stories, and I think I put it in, in that first book, is, you know, a friend of mine was a workaholic, and it was Labor Day weekend. And she was going to, she was going to work all weekend.

And she goes out to get some takeout food, comes out of the restaurant and twists her ankle coming off the curb. So she has to spend the weekend in bed because her ankle hurts someone. And that was a perfect example of subconscious sabotage. Subconscious going, no, we're not going to work. And I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure we don't work. So you need a break. And I'm going to.

But, you know, you can also work with the subconscious and go, you know, hey, I know, I know, I got to get this project done. And if we can get it done by noon, then, I'll give you the afternoon to play and you can do whatever you want. And I mean, every minute of that afternoon, you know, what do you want to do? What do you want to do? And I mean, my body likes exercise. But there was one time I drove all the way to the gym and she was like, no, not today. And I listened to her and I didn't do it that day, you know.

There you go. I took a week off from my normal nightly constitutional. Get them walk around before dinner last week. I don't it didn't feel like it. And now I'm usually pretty lazy and I'm fat. So there's not an excuse necessarily. They should probably have done it anyway. But I just didn't.

And it's okay. I'm okay. You know, maybe I needed a break. I don't know. That's just what I needed. Yeah. It's important to do that.

Um, you mentioned, um, about the PTSD thing. So I'm going to take a tangent. But it's still, I think I consider this within the realm of dreams. And I don't know if you've ever touched on it or you might go, nope, don't want to talk about it. I'll cut that out of the video. Um, but I did this legally. And I would never.

do it non-legally. And I did it medically supervised, so I would never do it any other way. But I went to Barcelona and did DMT, did Bufo. And that was such a, I mean, what it does to your brain, it opens up the neurotransmitters of your brain. So it's helping people with PTSD. It's helping people with Alzheimer's. It's helping people with all kinds of different, you know, addictions. Because it, the possibilities happen so differently. And I also know that coming out of it, with with with with, with, Bufo, it's only a 20 minute thing. Although there is no time when you're there.

Right. So it, you, you, you lose track of the fact that the consciousness of time, but it's, you know it's not like several days. You know you're going to come out of it. It's, it's a,

it's a quick thing. But coming out of it is very much like coming out of a dream. Like if you don't write it down and you don't, because I, I immediately got my notebook and I started taking. in a lot of notes, then you can lose it a lot. But I don't know if you've ever gotten, you know, kind of looked at that because I think there's a lot of similarities. What I'm most familiar with is the, what was some recent research? It was on, I think it was

on chronic anxiety conditions and PTSD and they were doing low dose or microdosing, low dosing or a course of treatments of ecstasy, MDMA or something like that. So, and of course, you know, I'm going to keep all this in, but disclaimer. There's not recommendations. Do follow all laws of your local. Do not do it unless it's legal. I'm not a doctor. I'm just a crazy person who thinks he's a wizard.

So we're just talking theoretically here. And personal experiences as well. If you can go do it legally, then and medically supervised, then look into it if it works, right? I mean, I actually asked my therapist. I said, I have this opportunity. And he's like, do it. So, I mean, it was as medically supervised on their end as well as my end. I mean, like, it was, and legal, it's one of the top research centers in the world where I, in Barcelona.

So, but I also know enough about it, like, do not do it. And anything that's remotely illegal, it super, super wrong. Yeah, well, there's all kinds of, I mean, not just getting in trouble with, with the law, but, but the, I would say that's a secondary. That's like even off the table as far as, like, the most concerning things. It's always make sure it's right for you. Make sure that you're getting, you know, the right dose and the right circumstance. circumstances with a medical professional standing by all of these things where I mean there's so many things that can go wrong no I wouldn't just you know go find your local DMT dealer and get a get a

go off the street right yeah and I know you're not there's a horror stories of people not yeah well it's it's really easy to OD on a lot of these things and mess up your brain a little bit permanently so you want to be very careful but yeah but then again that's not conscious it's like it's like matthew perry I mean the idea of doing ketamine in a hot tub is basically suicide Yeah. And we don't even know maybe he was leaning in that direction. Like, well, let's just check out. You're not conscious. So of course you're going to drown. I mean, like it's, it's, it's, it's not a long stretch of a logic. I'm not saying that's what he intended. Yeah. Yeah. Not me either.

Disregard for the, the, the consequences because, um, and he apparently had done it before. So he had to know that, you know, that's not, you just don't want to do it near water. For sure. Um, you know, way it's like passing, you know, holding your breath until you pass out while you're standing on your feet. You can hit your head. You're going to fall down. You're going to hit your head. Don't do that. Don't do that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I believe this for, you know, 30, 30 plus years is it's, it's not typically the drug. It's the set and setting. It's the mindset you bring to it and how you get it done, which includes the dose and the people you're around and all that, all that kind of stuff. So, and there was another thing of, some recent research on microdosing psilocybin mushrooms that had some effect. I don't remember what it was, but it was some, you know, not enough. So you're like, you know, tripping off into La La Land and you can't control your thoughts or behaviors, but enough that it, it, it, it stimulates something in the brain. I can't remember the research on that, but I think it's all fascinating. Yeah, there's some interesting stuff as far as with depression. I, I, I lived in Colorado for many years. And I, and I, and I, my therapist and I talked about it

because it was legal there. And, um, but I, I'm a writer and I like to be creative. And I didn't want anything that could have interfered with that. Um, I get that large. The 20 minutes on the DMT was a whole different thing. Like, you know, that was, it was, it was really powerful. Oh, yeah. I, I have noticed in my personal, uh, personal life that certain, uh, certain substances stimulate creativity and that it can be very hard to pay attention to, to what you're doing in the moment.

Let's say I'm, uh, uh, a person legally distinct for myself is trying to watch an episode of anime. And I, I suddenly have thoughts about this book I want to write. I'll pause it. I got to write them down because I'm not going to remember them. Uh, but I don't want to forget it either. This, uh, interesting, interesting little tidbits. You got to grab it when you can't because those fleeting thoughts just like dreams, though, gone.

You don't write them down. That's right. One thing I did want to make, probably the last thing on my list in terms of like all the stuff you've said. You mentioned the Huna religion and the big Kohuna. I actually did a dream interpretation. And this speaks to my approach to what we're doing here with a guy who was living in Hawaii. And there was some spiritual practice native to the region. And it had to do.

with drums and the drums had different symbols on them representing different aspects of the religion or the way the way it the way it views the world and his dream was about him playing or learning to play a specific drum with a specific symbol on it so right there I'm like okay this would not be relevant to anyone else but to him this is extremely specific and so we talked about what that symbol means how it might relate to his life so uh that that That's what I tend to bring, bring to this. What's the connection? We need a connection.

If there's no connection, it might as well be random. That's the other thing they used to think is, well, it's the humors of the body being out of back when they had that theory. And then they said, well, it's just food. You just ate a bad piece of cheese. There is actually some interesting evidence on eating cheese before bed and that it gives you certain kinds of dreams. But that's all stuff to take into consideration.

It's like if you had a big meal before you went to bed and your stomach is upset or one of the stories in one of the books I've got out. out there, 18 currently available works of historical dream literature. This guy had a very bizarre dream of a giant lobster-looking insect that was attacking his hand. And he woke up and he had a mosquito bite, a tiny little mosquito bite on his hand. So sometimes our physical sensations during sleep get magnified in dreams if they make it through that barrier and then give us a... So sometimes I got to tease that apart too.

I don't tend to work on that too much because anything could happen. You were passed out. Did the blanket come off your feet and your feet were cold? and that's why you dreamed of snow. Maybe. Is that useful? I don't know. But there have been a few instances where I was like,

this sounds like it might be related to a physical cause. And maybe we should focus on that a little bit. And they're like, actually makes sense. Let me tell you something. And then that opened a door to an answer. So I always tell folks, too, none of the answers are in me. I'm not speaking to spirits. I'm not hearing the voice of God.

I'm just, you know, trying to, I'm the guy you invite into your brain to stand behind your shoulder and shine a flashlight around. as we try and look at what's going on. Oh, that's good analogy. Yeah. Thank you. I try. I try.

Well, let me do this. We can do a bit more self-promotion for you or we can jump into the dream thing. I don't know if you wanted to talk about your most recent book or if you wanted to just, yeah, we talked enough. It's up to you. Well, let me, I'll just give you, because I will tell you a dream and we can move on with that. But just that it did, you know, having this dream did lead me to an exploration of reincarnation. And it did lead me to writing, you know, wrote my nonfiction book, the Five Reason's Why book.

And then I got into writing fiction and I started writing reincarnation stories. So, and as I said, you know, you don't have to believe in time travel to enjoy back to the future. You can enjoy that. And my first novels, they're called duet stories. And they're kind of a love story that has past lives in it. A year ago, I launched a trilogy called We Meet Again. that's this epic reincarnation mystery about a famous couple from history who's reincarnated today to a fellow prophecy that'll change the whole. So it's this big kind of Da Vinci Code type of love story.

And this is fascinating that I'm meeting to speak with you now. This is again back to Carl Jung's synchronicity. I am currently in the final chapter seasons of an anime called the Misfit of Demon King Academy. And it very strongly features the idea that well, the demon king sacrificed himself 2,000 years ago to bring peace to the world. And then he reincarnated to see what the world would be like 2,000 years later. And a lot of his friends and allies from that time are now reincarnating as well. And that's a central theme of the entire story. I'm like, wow, that's.

It's great story. Right. Oh, it can be very fun. Yeah, even if you're not, you know, no, you know, into it or not. It's just really fun to like take a, like for me, I present day, then they go back to to the 1930s in Brazil. Then they go back to the 1500s in Austria and England and they meet Shakespeare. Shakespeare, you know, and then they go back to the Black Plague and the Middle Ages. So it's,

it's fun, it's just fun writing and I think it's fun reading. And then I have a book that I just kind of officially relaunched that you mentioned. It's called A Love Story to the Universe. And that's semi-autobiographical. And it's, so, and it gets into a little bit of reincarnation, but it's also very much a kind of a metaphysical journey. And it's also kind of magical, realism and a little bit of humor and fun and playfulness in it. So, um, so anyway, so that all led to kind of, and since that was semi about autobiographical, you know, all of this kind of ties together, right? Um, so the, the dream that I thought might be. Let me, let me, let me, two seconds. I do a little, uh, transitional thing. I mean, I'm not going to say anything, uh, that important. I do

need to write down the timestamp, uh, 39, 30. Um, so, okay, we're moving into the dream. So how does this work? First, I shut up and listen, and that's the first step to most things in life. Our friend's going to tell us the dream, kind of like a narrative style beginning to end, and then we're going to talk about it and see if we can collaboratively build an understanding, because as I say, the answers are not in me. So, officially, I'm ready when you are. Benjamin the Dream Wizard wants to help you. Here's the veil of night and shine the light of understanding upon the mystery of dreams. Every episode of his dreamscapes program features real dreamers gifted with rare insight into their nocturnal visions.

New dreamscapes episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks exploring the psychological principles which inform our dream experience and much, much more. To join the wizard as a guest, reach out across more than a dozen social media platforms, and through the contact page at Benjamin the 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 Dreamwizard.com. So it was a recurring dream, as I said, and there were, you know, a lot of times with recurring dreams, there's this piece and this piece and this piece. And then you kind of start building on how do these pieces all fit together. And I know that I was, and I don't remember which piece started coming together. So I'll just kind of tell you what I know about the whole story at this point.

Yeah, like a narrative. That was a long time ago. This is what I experienced. Well, yeah, when it first came. But I was a teenage boy about 14 years old. I'm pretty sure I was somewhere in Belgium. I've never been to Belgium, so I just have this gut feeling that it was somewhere. And it was maybe 100, 200 years ago, maybe, well, at least, yeah, 150, 200 years ago, maybe more.

I was in some sort of small village. It wasn't in any kind of city environment, but there was a small village. And there was a war going on, and all of the men had gone to war. And I was the oldest male left. I was there to take care of the women and children. And I had a younger brother who was about eight years old at the time. And I thought I was kind of hot stuff, right? I mean, I'm the oldest male, and I thought I was kind of hot stuff.

And I get, and then I get kind of, I think I'm kind of be able to, the enemy comes or something like that. And I get, you know, not really rested. I don't know, but anyway, I get, I get apprehended and they put me in prison. And it was a dungeony dirt type of prison environment, very much subterranean. And I died in prison of starvation. Okay. Writing furiously here. I never have to worry about anyone stealing my notes and deciphering them.

I can barely read the handwriting. That is fantastic. One, what is it? What am I trying to say? One way to look at this is literal reincarnation. And that is the, that is the understanding that you came away from it with. And that may indeed be the correct understanding. That doesn't leave a lot of room for interpretation in some ways because, well, it's just a story that happened rather than it has symbolic meaning. So I would, go ahead. If I can just interrupt for a second. Sure. It did have a lot of extra. that I haven't added to it, but I figured we get there, which is, who was the brother? It might actually, it might actually be better not to tell me too much. Here's, so. Yeah. So I wasn't saying any of that to discount that possibility or to end the conversation.

What I was going to say was, therefore, I'm going to have to look at it as if it's not a literal story of reincarnation and maybe on a little more on the symbolic side, because that's what I can offer. offer, you know, but only because that's the only thing I can offer, you know. And I don't think you're opposed to that, but I wanted to. And, okay, so what do we do when I've had people come to me that they feel like they have a pretty strong understanding of the dream. And I don't discount that at all either.

I think you're probably right. If you've looked at it and you know yourself better than I do, I'm not going to contradict that in any way. But that, that then becomes a fun challenge of stump the wizard. Can I get an understanding that's close to yours through my. method without having too much revealed up front. So, you know, just to add to that, and I'm not going to, I'm not, hopefully this isn't, you know, going to kind of step on, but it is just that, yes, that's a story, but there's meaning in the

story. It's like as a writer, right, and you write a story, there's, there's the, on the surface story, but then there's subtext and there's themes and purposes and messages underneath that, whether it was real or. or whether it's how you normally analyze. That's a fair point. Why that story? Why not a different way? That's all still there, right?

True. And so I'm going to let you take it from there just because, yes, there's more layers to that, whether it really happened or whether it is just the interpretation. So that makes sense? You know, no, no, for sure. And I just didn't want it to, because what I'm going to do is take us in a different direction than the literal reincarnative type of thing. Just because, as I said, it's not my specialty.

I don't know. how to do that. So kind of, we'll see what happens. That's why I like to go into these things blind too. It's like if you included, for anyone out there, if you ever don't include your dream in, don't tell me what it is.

Don't tell me anything about it because I need to do it in the moment. If you give me a lot of lead time and I read it and I think about it, I'm going to start having my own assumptions that will be hard for me to undo. So I'd rather come at it fresh and blind. And that seems to work the best. I've tried it both ways. And I'm like, no, that doesn't work at all.

Okay. Learning, learning too much about it. But, but definitely during the process, don't hold back. Like, if I ask a question or you have an inspiration, add, add to the conversation. You know, I'm not just going to have you sit there quietly while I tell you about your story. So you, the dreams have a narrative in a way that it's almost, what am I trying to say? It's almost a misnomerate. to call it a narrative. It has a sequence of events is what I mean. It starts in a place,

in a setting, and it has things which happen. It has thoughts and feelings or, you know, it has plot twists and all that good stuff. And again, then it comes to a conclusion. So for this one, it starts in this village and it goes through a series of events and it ends with the death in prison. So that then ends the bookends the narrative itself of the dream. So that's what I'd like to go through is okay what are what is this experience itself and then during during it we we construct you know okay what does it mean to have had this experience so if we start at the beginning it's in a um a relatively small village in belgium right and do you remember what you were doing or what you saw or what experiences were happening where you walking around the village and or were you engaged in a

particular activity in the village. When the dream started, you may not have that much recall about if it was a while ago and you didn't write down those details. But when you think of being in that setting, where did it actually start? What were you doing? What's the first thing you can remember about being there in that environment? Yeah. Well, within the context, I know that I had a brother and that he was younger.

And I know that when I died, you know, he was the old, going to be the oldest male. Right. So there's a context of the family life and the situation of the, the, the, the, the, the other men being at war. And then, and then, you know, as they'd say in writing, right, the inciting incidents is the, and the, the enemy comes and captures me. And I do something stupid, you know, I mean, a little too arrogant, a little too self-assured. I think I'm going to, you know, protect the women and children and, and a little, little, um, overconfident on that. For sure. So the first, okay, so there's, I tell folks that I think it's true, because the dream isn't actually happening physically, it's not a tangible event. Seeing a visual in the dream is the same as knowing something.

So you know who you are in the dream. You know what the circumstances are. And it's true of the setting. But sometimes people, and I tease that out a little bit too. It's like, did you see something that showed you. this understanding or was it an innate knowing that came with the experience. So the set and setting of who you were in the dream and what you were doing, that was all not displayed to you, but background information that came with the experience. Yeah, it's really tough. It's like when you're talking about some people can visualize the Apple at different kinds of things. For me, I think when I'm in the dream, I can see it all. But when I wake up, I, it's blurry. Yeah. So it goes to the knowing. Yeah. Where I was getting to that with the action of the dream, the actual narrative of the dream was it starts with the capture.

It starts with some cocky mistake. It starts with, I think, before the enemy gets there. But certainly the big, you know, the big drama happens when they get there. So I knew that, you know, the, you know, the, was enough of a backstory, if you will, to know what the conditions were before. And again, this might have been one dream showed me this piece and another, you know, since it's recurring, you know, that's true. Yeah, you know, and that's the other, that's the other element of it, the recurring nature of it.

How do I approach those? Some folks like to, or their natural inclination is to tell me all the recurring elements. rather than focus. And what I found works better for me is focus on one dream and then look at the recurring elements that may have been the same or different after nailing that one down. I don't know why.

Like I said, someday when I understand what the hell I'm doing, I'm going to write a book about it. So in terms of your actual dream experience, there may have been some events that happened before the enemy arrived, but they don't stand out. as you know as as as distinct things you first I went there and then I did this and I had this

conversation and I played with my brother and um or are there some things you could say that the kind of set up the enemy arrival or did it kind of really the strong impressions a backstory context right because I knew who who I was and what was happening in the village before the enemy arrived so there was definitely a context to that but there wasn't a specific memory of of events No. Necess. Okay. Gotcha.

Gotcha. Yeah. And a lot of times, that's exactly what it is. It's like you, suddenly you're in action and the context comes with the action in a way, oh, this is who I am in this setting. But there was never an experience necessarily of here's my village life for the previous five years or even for the previous five minutes. So the way you described it and that you're trying to get in.

Media, res, they call it in writing, right? What is that? In media res, right? you just come right into the middle of the scene. You know, that's usually how you want to start a book, right? You want to just put that main character right in action. Nicores is the big term for writers.

Like, you know, let's just get right in the heart of action. Unless you're what, a fact story. So unless you're Anne Rice and then you're going to spend literally seven pages describing vines crawling up a wall. Gosh,

love Anne Rice, but man, it was hard to read some of her stuff. So the, um, first thing you remember in the dream as an action as as the action unfolding is the arrival of the enemies or was there were you engaged in some other activity and they interrupted it um i just know that there was a feeling of like i thought i was pretty much pretty hot

stuff you know i felt really responsible and felt like i was i was finally a man at 14 um and had this big responsibility so there was that that kind of set up before before the enemy arrived. Well, that is your sense of self, but I guess maybe I'm asking the same question. You've already answered it. But the idea that the action begins with the arrival of the enemy, that's the first action that takes place. That's the visuals unfolding separate from the knowing that comes with it.

Yes, but I would say that a big part of the recurring part of the dream was, and maybe going back to build earlier, you know, because it's. again, it repeated, it was the dying of starvation. I mean, that was the thing that kept coming back and kept coming back. And then I was like, where was I? Oh, I got this memory. Oh, well, what happened before that? I got this memory.

So where were you at and what were you doing when the enemy appeared? How did they appear? Were you in a house in the field? Did they come over the wall or outside? Yeah, it was definitely all outside. It was a very rural, you know, area. Do you have a sense it was a particular kind of just, you know, random grassy place, or was it a corn, oh, not corn, but a wheat field type of thing?

It was not agriculture. Not crops. More of a wild space. Yeah. I mean, it might have, it was probably some sort of path of trail, road or something, dirt road. So you might have been traveling somewhere and they sprung upon you during, uh, no, I think it was the other way around. They were traveling in and I might have tried to spring on them. I don't know.

Okay. I know I could have gone in and hit. and or even tried to hide and I was, you know, my arrogance. Okay. That's great. That's great extra details. Like if I just shut up for a second, sometimes things poppy and you're like, yeah, I could have hidden, but I chose not to. I know I chose not to.

That, okay, now we're starting out. So what I'm trying to do is see what you saw in a way as best I can. I'm not going to. It was just, okay. So by the time people see this, this was two weeks ago. But yesterday, I just did a dream interpretation with a guy. And it involved the seating arrangement at a table. And I'm like, okay, where were you in relation to the head of the table?

Who was closest to that person? Who was in between you and the person closest to them? And then what was this other person? So I had to really see that lineup of people. And that ended up being important in terms of distance from a concept and uncertainty, like being placed in the center of a table. You weren't at the opposite end, but you weren't sitting next to the guy who was throwing the dinner. You were in the middle.

and actually the conversation that took place was, I'm not sure what to say about this person. Everything lined up with that, so seeing the seating arrangement that ended up being so. So I'm seeing my own version of the idea of a trail and maybe an open field, wild space in general, an approaching enemy and this overconfidence that said, I can, I'm a man now,

I can protect these people. I can win this fight. I'm going to jump in probably foolishly and tackle something that I'm not that I'm not ready for. And then you described it as, you know, and arrogance. And I think that's fascinating to her because we, you know, just didn't brought this. So I like to go from the specifics to what is the meta concepts involved. And there's putting yourself between the people you love and date. And there's the, the, the, poor judgment not to know what danger you can't handle.

Maybe you should have run to the village and said, the enemy's coming, get the hell out. And running away would have been the better option. And it all comes down to that moment of, I believe I can take this, therefore choosing not to conceal myself. And that crosses over into a lot of different areas of life, of like, it's putting yourself out there. Hey, look at me. I'm ready to be seen in a way. I'm ready to take on this challenge. And these are all my thoughts that I'm having as you're telling, as you're telling this story.

And then, you know, it's always up to the, to the dreamer to say, you know, that makes sense. That feels right for the circumstance. But always please contradict me. Say, no, I don't think that's it. And we'll look at a different angle. You know, I'm always happy to be wrong if it gets us where we're going. How did you choose to interact with those. people in the dream. Did you step out on the road and say, ha ha, or did you jump out from behind a tree?

Was it an ambush? I don't remember. I don't remember the detail on that. How you were captured or defeated. I think it happened really fast, you know. That can be its own dream experience, too, of like, I don't know if most folks out there are you specifically, but sometimes you'll, you'll think you're up to a task or, let's say, specifically you're in a fight with someone all of a sudden you got knocked on your ass and you're like what just happened well something happened but you couldn't you can't really process it fast enough so um yeah kind of the out of left field kind of thing you're like wait about before you know it you're on your ass yeah i'm just writing down the concept of like a sudden immediate defeat um without it's understanding yeah because it wasn't um you know i don't i don't remember getting hurt i just remember getting captured and imprisoned And any visuals, images, experience of, you know, being tied up and frog marched out, what happened to the village during that time?

Were you just whisked away and you never know what happened to the people? I was definitely whisked away and didn't have any access to information. But there's a knowing that it, that came after, you know, the dream or, you know, after all the kind of analysis of it, that it was very overwhelming for the brother. This is interesting too, because they're an enemy. You are presuming yourself to protect the village,

and it impacted the brother, but there's no, it didn't come with the knowing that the village was destroyed, all the women and children murdered, everything set on fire. Nothing like that happened, as far as you know. I don't actually even get the impression that anything happened to them, just me.

Okay. But I don't, you know, I don't necessarily have context for that. Well, sure. That's not my memory. Yeah, yeah. And this is interesting too. It's like I like to do the counterfactuals in a way because it's like what is not there? What are you not seeing?

And what you didn't see is the consequences to the village. And you got the impression that isn't even what this was about. So there's an interesting thing. What might that suggest? It might add an extra layer to this idea of the cockiness of like not only was, did you overestimate your ability, you pick the wrong battle because the consequences were, you weren't even defending something that needed to be protected. It was like, so it's a cockiness of picking the wrong battle as well.

Right. I would think that's true. Yeah, something like that. Something, something like that. After this, so kind of a vague image sequence of the incident of the enemy soldiers, choosing to fight, not really knowing how you get defeated, but definitely knowing you get captured. What's the next visual or narrative experience that happened?

It was just being in the prison suddenly? Or was there anything else in between? I don't remember anything between. I just remember being, you know, in that dungeony dirt hole of a prison. And that's interesting, too, because so a lot of. of people's image of a dungeon is stone walls and manacles on the walls. And, you know, because we've seen a lot of media representations of these things and the narrow little window with the bars and it's cold and or hot in the summer. But for you, that's actually

a more historically accurate idea. If they would just dig a pit and throw you in it, you know, or that kind of a thing. It's a lot of a more. Yeah, I definitely felt underground as opposed to in a hole that had opening to the area, I felt underground. Like I was, there was a, there was a, I don't know, roof or ceiling isn't the right word, but certainly, you know, I was underground. That's what I was. That's just what it was. They would just dig a hole in, yeah, or underground.

But then why, why put a bunch of stone in there? Or maybe they didn't have the ability to do. Maybe this is a makeshift camp prison as they're invading. or something and they just need a place to hold people. So I would say that that lends more credibility the historical accuracy side of things. That's probably more of what it would have been like. Was there any experience of the passage of time

in that place or it was almost like, I'm in a hole and I'm dead? No, there was definitely the dying of starvation, so that took time. Okay, there was an experience of passing time during starvation. Yeah, I mean, at some point you kind of lose your consciousness of time, right, if you're starving. But there was definitely a time that doesn't happen overnight.

No, no, for sure. Now, was it? And there was a feeling, definitely a feeling of my body shrinking, you know. Okay. Interesting there too. So not a lot, not strong impressions of the village and when your life there, not strong impressions of the combat with the soldiers, however brief, not strong impressions of of of being taken to a place with you know whisked away um you know you counterfactually

you could have had a uh long extended sequence of marching for days in in with your hands tied and being dragged behind a horse none of that it so really the elements we've got are this the the scenario of of the confrontation and the experience of the consequences so we've got two main main things going on there. And it's interesting. It could have just been, oh, yeah, I ended up in a hole and I died of starvation and there was no experiment. But you actually drag it out of like, I am actively dying. You're like, you're really getting into the, what would this feel like type of realm? And I can, I could feel myself shrinking away. And there was a definitely a concept of the passage of time, which is, which is interesting. Because dreams, as, as we just displayed, it's a

fade to black and you're somewhere else. A sudden scene cut. So it doesn't show you things that aren't important in that sense. So there's something important about experiencing the full consequences of this is where I ended up due to my mistake and that the consequences specifically were starving. So there's a, and what is it, so we're getting into what does it mean to take in nutrition or sustenance and what are the effects of being deprived of that? And we're looking metaphorically on that. And I'm thinking it doesn't really have to do with food unless you were struggling with weight loss at the time specifically. I, I, you know, had, you know, had it. issues struggling with weight in my life.

And so I definitely felt like there was a connection there. Okay. There might be. Like why, why was I maybe holding on to weight that I, you know, that I could. I said that as a throwaway counterfactual,

not thinking I was going to get a hit on that. Yeah, that was really honestly the first impression of the dream was, am I getting a message of why it's been hard for me to, to keep my weight under control? I having conversations with myself have come to the conclusion that I am lazy and I do not like to move. I do not enjoy exercise and I really like food. Those are my struggles.

There's no mystery as to the cause for me. Yeah. There is. I mean, honestly, I don't eat that much and I do exercise a lot. So it's a struggle for me. No, for sure. That would be like maddening because it's literally a calorie deficit issue. It's food.

Now you have to eat healthy food and then all that goods and plenty of proteins. And I do. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, but it's like calories in, calories out. And if you're like, I'm doing the thing and it's not working, what the hell is happening. At that point, I'd be like, let's go get your levels checked with the doctor, with thyroid or whatever. And I did. Yeah.

And yeah, well, there you go. Exactly. Yeah. Because sometimes it's like, really, it's not your fault. And God, thank God when you figure that out, right? Yeah, it's not as much just basic math as people think. Let's just put it that way. No, that's true.

Fair enough. Fair enough. But, yeah, for the vast majority of people, yeah, if you don't, like me, if you don't move and you eat too much, you're going to get it's no surprise what are you doing well you're making a choice is what is what i did and uh i'm trying to walk more and eat less now so yeah i've gone through i was in the best i'll just throw this out there's in the best shape of my life probably 20 years ago but i had to work out about four hours a day to maintain it and i god i couldn't do it two hours in the morning and two hours at night i took uh went to the gym and i did martial arts classes and man i was in great

shape and I was miserable. I hated it. You know, martial arts was the least objectionable physical activity I could do. I tried a lot. I never, never enjoyed sports. I don't really enjoy walking or running for the sake of it. So I'm like, well, I'll go to a class and I'll distract myself with learning techniques and just sweat. Yeah, I do 90 minutes on the elliptical every day. Well, there you go. And you know what? That's a movie. You just put on a movie and walk on the Right, because I watch a lot of videos or read or listen to music or whatever. Exactly. Audio books.

That's what I did at the gym. It goes real fast. Yeah, yeah. No, that's good. And I, yeah, I make no excuses. It is what it is for me. Okay, so that is actually something there too. But I was also thinking, maybe we'll just explore a little bit more.

There's other challenges we think we're up to in life and they may be picking the wrong battle. And then we'll see the consequences being deprived of something important to us to the point of death. and you know and it's not physical death it's the death of of that part of ourself maybe so there might be something else in there um i don't know now this this is where we might might get to the idea of the reoccurring elements of the dream itself it was the death that was always the same circumstances that led to it were often different or how did it was it the same recurring dream every time or did it vary because some people get literally exactly the same dream every time yeah i mean i don't think

was any necessarily varying, but I think different aspects of it had different parts of the dream. Like there might be a dream that was more about the capture and there might be a dream that were more about the dungeon and the life in there than more dreams about the dying and the starving. So different elements, but I don't remember variations of the dream now. Gotcha. Okay. The only thing that's a variation was whether there was somebody else that I could talk to in the prison and sometimes it felt like there was and sometimes it felt like there wasn't i didn't even think of that

like was there in reality um uh you know that it might have been that sometimes there was somebody to talk to and sometimes there wasn't somebody to talk to right yeah and and the at what this is the other thing to the brother and i know you've you've mentioned it a couple of times so i don't want to completely forget that because apparently it is important because it keeps coming back up as as as something you want to express. When did the knowing about the impact on the brother happened? Was it during the starvation part? Was it after you died? Like sometimes we have an experience of, and then I died and I was looking at myself dead. And then this happened. Um, I don't know if it was like during, well, first of all, during the dream or during the, um, the recollection of the dream, right,

was of whether there's a reflection on what happened could have happened. because I know or I believe that it was a past life and now I know who that brother was, then I know the relationship of me with that person that was my brother and therefore there are going to be interpretations that go beyond that now that I know that that are beyond what I experienced just during the dream. Sure. Because of that, if that makes sense. It does.

Yeah. Yeah. And that, this is again separating out different things that I can address and can address. So yeah. If there's if there's a specific dream experience of oh and I got a glimpse into the after effect. So after I died, it's like what do you mean after you died? You're dead in the dream. But after the dream, I was then able to see my brother grow up in the village and here's what happened to him. That's one kind of a thing, which would be, you know, because sometimes we are an impersonal observer. Sometimes we're looking out of our own eyes. Sometimes we're third person.

Sometimes we're somewhere else watching someone who's completely different and we're not at all. We're just watching a scene in our dreams. It's not as, not as common as first person experience, so to speak. But that separate that out from, okay, if this was a real person, then you're able to put it together. So this is less something that happened to the dream and more and not even know what Freud called secondary elaboration where as you tell the dream, you kind of invent new elements that weren't there before. It happens. But yeah, this is actually historical research. Well, anytime if you're dreaming and even if you're looking at your normal way of looking at it and you say, okay, you had a brother, who was the brother, right? I'm just saying I know it was the brother from a past life, but it could be a, it could be a projection of somebody that I know. Sure. That is just interpretation from that, you know. Yeah. And if you're getting almost an epilogue scene of the after effects of the brother, then that also means something in relation to the whole experience. It's like there's a reason you needed to show that also to yourself.

Yes, definitely. But it seems like you didn't necessarily in the dream. You just, you knew that you had a brother in the dream. And that spurred, um, real life, uh,

investigation external to the dream world. And that's right. Like again, if it wasn't a past life, but I know that person that was my brother, that was playing that role in the dream, then how does that affect how I am now with that person? Right.

Oh yeah. For sure. Um, so it seems like we haven't really hit on an alternative, uh, what am I trying to say? Um, we've got the, the, the, the possibility that it's related to the weight loss thing, uh, which, which for a lot of us is an ongoing struggle in terms of a recurrence. It's a recurring theme in our life. So why not a recurring theme in our dreams? Um, but I'm not sure how to shoehorn that a little bit into the idea of, okay, so why a confrontation with an end? Um, um, but I'm not sure how to shoehorn that a little bit into the idea of, okay, so why a confrontation with an. that overwhelms you. Okay, if we look at it that way, approaching the concept of weight loss improperly thinking you have it all figured out, but the enemy, which is the failure to lose weight or the gaining of weight or food or whatever it is that might be the enemy in that circumstance, you find yourself ultimately overconfident and quickly defeated upon contact.

And then so I'm trying to, I'm trying to, trying to put together the narrative of then how that connects to the idea of wasting away in the prison. I mean, that gave us the clue. Usually the idea of starvation, it's a bad thing. In general, I would say I thought that's controversial, yes. And so that's why I look at, well, it isn't really about the starvation itself. So I'm trying to look for something, some other connection that it may be exactly the food-related thing. This goes into a lot of areas of our life. We approach things. We think we're prepared for.

We're not. We get quickly defeated. And then there's consequences. The consequences is a deprivation. You know, whatever we thought we would win or gain by voluntarily engaging that, we are ultimately denied in defeat. So I guess the question I'm asking is, and normally when I have folks to say, okay, when this dream, one, we usually have one specific dream.

When this happened, what was going on in your life around that time? Let's talk about that. Because why would this be on your mind? Why would, but with a requirement? recurring dream, it's usually a recurring theme that comes back in your life. Oh, no, here's another situation like this again. Let me dream about it and express my anxiety that way or search for an answer. Usually I think dreams are mostly thought experiments intended to be problem solving. And they keep coming back as we just haven't, as I said earlier, we haven't figured it out.

In your retrospectively looking back at these occurrences, have you noticed you were going through specific things at the times they were happening. Did you notice correlations to life events or challenges, you know? And it's usually stuff that's important to you. As an author, maybe you were struggling with finishing a book or getting it published. Well, it was, yeah. All I know is that the person that was my brother, I didn't meet until years after I had the had the first dream of this referring dream.

So it wasn't somebody that I, you know, it was like, but when I met him, there was a recognition. I mean, I'm not like, oh, you're the person for my dream, but just more like there's something there, right? Some sort of, and, and, you know, in my language, I'd say soul connection or whatever, but there's some sort of contract or some sort of message or some sort of like, oh, okay, I was told you'd come and now you're here. So I don't know if that answers your question, but I'm not even sure what my question was.

Sometimes I just. What was going on in my life? And I was just saying. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, there was definitely, you know, for most of my life, a struggle with not just weight, but judgment on weight from my mother and stuff like that, which is, of course, a very common thing for a lot of it. But so that was certainly part of it. It was like dying of starvation.

you know, is there, because there's some talk about people, genetic memory, right? I'm talking about past life memory, but there could be a genetic memory in your body where if you came from, your ancestry had, you know, plague or something like that in your history, then that can state genetic memory. Right. For sure. Right. So it's kind of that kind of thing.

So that was the thing that was in my mind was thinking, oh, can this explain why my body wants to naturally hold on to wait because it's afraid of starving. Absolutely. That's, I think that's a fantastic connection there too. If we went down, you know, if we focused it on that one and said that seems to make the most sense. And that, you know, periodically through your life, it just comes back of like, do I feel like I'm too heavy again today.

God, I'm going to have that dream again. I think that is a good connection. That does that, I think that helps me understand a little better like what would be the connection. So you're confronting, confronting this problem again that you, feel chronically inadequate to to successfully handle. And then the downside of it is this may be a, whether psychological or genetic in some ways, fear of starvation in general and the body hanging on to.

I think that that's a wonderful meaning to. We could probably just go, eh, that's the best we can do. That seems like a reasonable understanding that might or might not be true. I don't know why I trust my intuition in that sense. I feel there's something else going on in terms of relationships with that. I have no evidence of that. Yeah, the other thing that I think that you're grasping for that's there is the oppression. In what ways?

And I actually ended up meeting specifically. Well, from the enemy that captured. Yes, yes. And so, and I actually met the person who had been my, or at least in my, mine, my world, that would have been my oppressor, my jailer. Oh. And, and there was the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, let's just the brother, but the, the, let's get into that.

So you've, you've, you've, you've helped me, more than, if you will, but you've helped me be, by holding back a little bit so I could try to give you the best I could, but I think I've run out of stuff to give. So let's talk about that too. I mean, who was the brother and, and what did you find out? Who was the captor? How do we, what's the rest of the story? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, the brother is a man that I met. I found out many, many years later that I had a sole contract with him, which I didn't even know what that was. But we kept recircling back to each other. And he is about the same number of years younger, just as the brother was. So it was kind of interesting in that aspect. And his life is one where he is going through a very similar, or his whole life has been very similar in that he's the heir to this big kind of. of empire and he's ill-equipped to handle it. Yeah, that's a second layer of it too.

Like if we just took it as a dream, so to speak, the older brother who wasn't up to the task, the younger brother really isn't. So if that that bulwark fell by the wayside, it's like, you're going to dump it all on this, what, eight-year-old kid, he's really not ready for it. And I think he's going through similar. I think this lifetime has been a very similar kind of, you know, where his head situation. And I think that I had a contract with him to help him on that level.

And so that, I think there's that dynamic there. And then the oppressor or the enemy or whatever you want to call it, the prison person. I also think it was a woman, I know in this lifetime. and I'm pretty, at least the way I play it out of my mind, again, this is all my own interpretation, but I think that she was that, and she actually helped me in this lifetime. She came in this lifetime and gave me some help when I needed it. She still kind of treated me that way a little bit, like I'm your oppressor, but she helped me. And she actually let me live.

I was going through kind of a homeless time, and she let me live in her basement. Yeah, which was really pretty fun. And but it felt like it's more like she was like, okay, I got to do this to clean up my karma, but I'm not necessarily going to like doing it. Yeah. Is the way I felt in that. And but it's interesting because I should feel like so thankful that she gave me a place when I needed one. But it wasn't that kind of like I'm doing it to be nice.

It was more like I'm, I'm checking that box and paying off that karma because I shouldn't have done what I did to you before. Very interesting. So, so that's kind of the way I interpret it. now. No, that's a great understanding too of like and to have this experience come to you in your sleep and multiple times. And then to have that spur you to pay attention in the real world and look for connections

and then to actually find them. Wow. Yeah. That's crazy. And it's all really real. And that was, I mean, 18 years later or something. Yeah. 20 years later than the first time is I had that dream.

So. Yeah. Well, and then also to. go to circle back almost almost to the very beginning when you're saying, you know, that people have reported choosing this life that they're experiencing. And I have had that feeling for a long time. Like when, when, uh, when I was tempted to blame, say, my, my parents were being born when I'm an angsty teenager and God, it's place and everything sucks. Why was it? I had, I always had the strong feeling that it was my fault, that I chose this, that I decided to come here

and experience this. And for, for what I, I still do. I still, I still think that that, That's kind of what we do. So there's a good chance that, you know, whatever you're, carmick style, whatever you're going through, say the little brother who's, why would he keep coming back and experiencing that role? Whatever lesson he's trying to get out of it, he hasn't. Now, is it to let go and say, you know what? I don't have to have this responsibility.

I can just say, I don't want to be your heir. I'm done. I'm out. I don't want this. Maybe that's the lesson and he can move on. Or maybe it is, I haven't figured out how to win yet. So I got to keep coming back until I learn how to become the, person who can be the competent heir.

I don't know. That's his lesson. You know, that's his life. I'm not, I'm not asking you to comment on it necessarily, but that's a fascinating conversation on why, why we choose to suffer some of the things we do.

Why, why would, knowing you're going to go through all these bad things, why would you choose that life? Like, there's got to be a reason. There's got to be someone supposed to get out of it. I mean, I wrote a book on the reason.

You know, people say everything happens for a reason. Yeah. I was like, I literally wrote the book on it. There you go. And, but it does, you know, I mean,

it, all I'll say is that, there is some really good research that says that believing that it happened for a reason makes you happier. It's true. No, I think it is, you know,

other than well, because if it's just, if the universe is just random and evil and then you become nihilistic and then you really suffer, I think. So it's, and I, you're powerless.

At least if you, if you believe it happened for a reason, then you've got some agency. And if you believe you chose it. Yeah, definitely. It's like, well,

I put myself in this situation for good or ill. You know, you can blame anyone for me. Yeah. And you don't have to necessarily take it as self-blame. but you can go, okay, I sign up for this. What do I need to learn so I can move through it and make past it? Yeah, yeah.

And there's, what was that saying? It's like people can tolerate any what if they have a why. Yes. I love that. And I'm all about the why. If you read any of my books, it's like there's a, there's a recurring theme of if you get to the why, you can get to the healing. You can get to the next level. Exactly.

And just for me, the idea that, you know, I've been very tempted throughout my life to not believe in in everything happens for a reason. And because I got it all conflated with predestination. I'm like, that's, I mean, that's not the same thing. That's a whole, that's all a different kettle of fish. But, but the idea that, um, me, I was going somewhere with that meaning predestination. Um, damn. I was just saying it makes you happier because you have some agency. I think that's where we were.

Yeah. Agency. I know I had a whole thing and it just, I think it's just gone. Maybe that's my, uh, brain saying, uh, you're done. You don't need it. Don't worry about it. Yeah. That's good enough.

Well, if you think we've explored the topic of your dream as much as we're able in this time, we're heading up for an hour and a half and I want to respect your time and get you out of here at a reasonable, at a reasonable pace. So we'll wrap it up if you're good. I'm good. Okay. I'm going to just take a quick sip. So dry. Hmm.

My mouth. Okay. Well, let's do this then. By way of wrapping it up, this has been our guest dreamer, Brownell Landrum, from parts unknown, currently residing in Atlanta. she's a writer and explorer of metaphysical mysteries author of a love story to the universe you can find her at brownell landrum dot com link in the description below very quickly 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 days of the week we're currently in sober October watch me play all the scariest games with no liquid courage i regret everything uh this episode of to you in part by ABC book 18,

Oneiro Chronology, Volume 4, Prima Reloquorum, the first of what remains. You can find all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com. And if you'd had it on over to Benjamin the Dream Wizard.orgals.com, it's free to join attached to my Rumble account.

Love to hear from you there. That is enough out of me. Once again, Brunel, thank you for being here. I appreciate your time. It was a fascinating discussion. I enjoyed it too. Thanks so much. Good deal.

Let everybody out there. Thank you for listening. See you next time.