Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 205: Dreaming God’s Way

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

Ara Trembly ~ https://www.amazon.com/Dreaming-Gods-Way-Ara-Trembly/dp/B0FL8RWYWV

Yeah, I mean, my goal is someday to do minimum of a thousand of these interpretations. And then, only then, will I be a real wizard until then I'm in training. Yeah, now I'm cutting myself a break. I have interpreted a lot of dreams, but I might not have done a thousand yet. I think the math, now this is, this is, I am not a math magician, but I think the math breaks down to one dream a week, 50, 50 a year, technically for 20 years. And I mean, I've got it. I've got 200. This will be episode 205.

So I've only got, you know, 800 to go. And I can get that done 15, 16 years. Greetings, friends. And welcome back to another episode of dreamscapes. Today, we have our friend Era Trembly out of Florida. He is a psychologist or specifically psychotherapist, specializing in hypnotherapy, who also does a lot of work with patients regarding their dreams. So this is a perfect fit.

We get to stump the wizard today with a real professional. His book is Dreaming God's Way, and I'm going to need to look up a link, and it will be in the bio, so I can't refer you to that specifically at the moment. For my part, would you kindly like, share and subscribe to 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. This episode brought to you in part by ABC Book 18. Yes, I now have 18 currently available works of historical dream literature. This one is O'Neuro Chronology Volume 4.

Prima Relicoram, the first of what remains. It collects three entire books that were shorter, but I put them into one volume for you. So it's about 350-ish pages. I keep the price really low. I think it's like 13, 14 bucks, something like that. It's a hell of a deal. I get like a dollar from each book. I just want them out there.

I'm not looking to get rich quick. Of course, I'd like to sell a thousand books a day, but we're getting there. Of course, you can find all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, including downloadable or live streamable version. of this mp3 audio only versions of this very podcast so you may take the wizard with you wherever you wander with or without Wi-Fi. And last but not least, if you'd head on over to Benjamin the Dream Wizard dot locals.com building a community there. It's free to join attached to my Rumble account. And that is enough out of me. Let's get back to ERA. Thank you for being here.

I appreciate your time. Thanks so much for having that. I really appreciate it. Good deal. Well, there's so many different ways I was talking, we always do, you know, behind the scenes. a little pre-recording chat just to establish a comfort level and, you know, lay down a few of the disclaimers and whatnot. We were talking about books. And actually, I had a moment where I thought I should flash up my other book on the screen. And maybe I'll get it and put it here. But it is ABC Book 2. It is called The Mystery of Dreams.

And it is my edited and reformatted version of a preacher's sermon from the 1600s about how to discern divine dreams from delusions sent by the devil. And that is a very explicitly Christian perspective. And just as an entree into talking about your book, what I usually bring to this experience is trying to understand where the person's coming from. Because in my estimation, and you can feel free to confirm or deny, that people's dreams are highly personal and the symbology is highly personal. So if you have an explicitly Christian framework for the way you think about the world, that's going to show up in your dreams.

And I'll just leave it there and let you let you jump in. That's enough out of me. Yeah, no, what you said is absolutely right. It's one of the biggest misconceptions that surround dream interpretation, which is that the same symbol means the same thing for everybody. And people really believe that. And you know as well as I do that there are probably thousands of dream books out there that take that approach.

Oh, if you dream about this, you dream about water, it means spirituality. means this or it means it means that you have to get up and go to the bathroom or whatever it is. So that's one of the biggest mistakes people make. People dreams are, you're absolutely right. They are intensely personal, which is why they are such good tools for helping people in psychotherapy who are trying to work out problems or trying to find new ways of thinking about things because they are so intensely personal. So you are dead on target without a.

I agree with you 100%. And so does Carl Jung, who is one of the greats of all time in dream interpretations. So absolutely. And yeah, you mentioned a frame of reference. So I'm coming from a Christian frame of reference on my book, as you might tip off by dreaming God's way. But it's interesting. But you don't have to be a Christian to be able to interpret your dreams because you just have to know what something means to, what a symbol means to you.

So to somebody like me, if you show me a cross, it means Jesus. But if you show somebody else the cross, it could mean a crossroads. Or it might indicate that, or it could be the Red Cross, or it could be something that doesn't even have the word cross in it. It could be a T. So, again, it's intensely personal. And without knowing, you know, that's why I always say that the best interpreter of a dream is the dreamer himself for herself.

And so that's where I'm coming from, you know, with his book. Absolutely. Yeah. And a lot of the, so in, as I said, I've 18 of these published works and none of them are original works.

I'm getting around to that. Sometime in the next 20 years I'll put out a book that's actually my own words. I plan to do a whole series called a wizard's guide to. And it'll be kind of like, you know, X for dummies or an idiot's guide to Windows or that kind of thing. Yeah, I like it.

Yeah. Well, the first one I'm going to start with is a wizard's guide to Asop's Fables. I think that needs to be discussed more. Like, where do we get? What does it mean to say, oh, you're, that's just sour grapes? Well, that comes from somewhere, and it means something very specific. And a lot of people have heard it and they kind of get it, but like to show the, the psychological and human relative, I'm going off on tangents.

I'm going to bring it back. One of the books I want to do is, you know, a wizard's guide to dream interpretation. And I'll get around. That'll be a wholly original work explaining what I do, assuming someday I ever really understand it. I'm doing most of this on intuition and just, uh, uh, in a highly eclectic style. Whenever we're talking about dreams, it's a work in progress. It certainly is. And I'll probably have to do, well, here's the second edition, all the stuff I left out.

I forgot. You know, because sometimes it's a writer, you just got to write. Just got to put stuff out there. One natural question then would be, so your specialty is psychotherapy, which is a specifically Freudian or Jungian branch. And you find that that aligns fairly well with Christian perspective in the world. Otherwise, you probably would have chosen something else. Yeah.

So psychotherapy, the name does come out of Freudian and Jungian practice, but it really, it's broader now. It's really, it's really kind of what it implies the study of the psyche. You know, it's the study of the psyche and therapy with the psyche. So I would give it a broader interpretation than that. But in terms of my own outlook, yeah, I'm very much coming from a Jungian perspective. And Jung was one of the people who said, hey, you know, the dreamer himself is the best interpreter of the dreams. So, so you and I and Jung agree. I think we were in good company. And you just reminded me, and I thank you for that to actually make my point. I didn't come back. I must have, I must have dementia coming on.

No, my brain's always been horrible. Swiss cheese for brains, the information falls in and got good luck ever finding it. But the point was that across all these different books, there was a consistent theme. And that is that you get, what am I trying to say? Where do dream books come from? Most of them that are published today. they go back to, and this is the first book, this is going to be an episode of me just referencing my own books. I'm sorry about that. We're here to promote you to. ABC book one, the very first one I did. It just looked fascinating. It was the letter of a French knight to a French noble woman in the 1700s-ish explaining his understanding of dream interpretation and giving a dream dictionary. And where he'd drawn that from and where most of them draw that from is referencing older stories. So if a dream was shown in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, fanciful tale or or a recounting of a historical event to have a specific

meaning, then that's what it means for everyone. So it's actually has a historical reference, but lately we found out that just doesn't seem to work very well. It doesn't give the best answers for individuals in their circumstance. Um, and certainly as you were saying with it, with the examples of the cross, I mean, it can mean so many different things to different people. And if I know you're Christian in a cross pops up like, okay, he's thinking about Jesus. He's thinking about sacrifice. These are the questions I get and then I throw them back to you saying,

what do you think about this? What is this what you mean? Does this? And I ask people to listen for or feel, feel for a resonance that kind of zings between their head and their gut going, wait a minute, what you just said that. Let me tell you about that. Right. And hopefully I just ramble up and happen.

Hopefully I just ramble long enough to get you to have your own thoughts on those or feelings on the subject. I'm sure that's similar to your own approach. But just to, um, absolutely. I've spoken with one of the gal who was specifically a, Jungian analyst and she had that very specific framework to it. But it's interesting that, I guess the idea of being a psychoanalyst has become more generic to describe the field. So your approach still is largely eclectic? Yeah, I would say that's true. I mean, it is a

Like, you know, it's funny. There are about 300 different schools of psychotherapy that exist. Wow. And basically all of them, or nearly all of them, have been shown to be equally effective. So, which tells you something. There are a lot of ways to get a cat when it comes to this. So my approach is, yeah, it's the story cats. So my approach is,

is what we call psychodynamic, which basically means it focuses on the unconscious mind and what's coming out of the unconscious mind and the drives that the unconscious mind has and the habits that we form because of our unconscious minds and changing the programming of our unconscious minds if we have to in order to grow and learn and solve problems. Yeah, and I think what you're referencing is what people would,

or maybe the audience doesn't know, but there's a broad category we would call cognitive behavioral therapy. And I think that's what a lot of these schools, and like I said, confirm or deny, I've, I've, I've been out of school a long time. I might be behind the times on some of this stuff. But back of the 90s, they taught us that, um, that, and what it sounds like is that many of these different branches and brands, these specific approaches center around that core of talking people through their problems and then suggesting in the, um, so, so I've got the bachelor's. And so mine's the very basic level that you used to be able to get by on a bachelor's. Not anymore these days, but so identify, what do I, I consider that it gave me the, the proper preparation to understand how to find the right questions.

But then what to do with those afterwards is kind of the master's or PhD level of, of counseling itself so that, okay, now what do we do with that? What are the recommended behavioral approaches or how do we, how do we identify a potential successful path forward that allows people to resolve whatever cognitive distress or distortions they're suffering and then measure that progress. I was going somewhere with that, but I'm just going to stop talking. I completely forgot my point. I'm sure you probably have something to say on that.

Okay. Oh, gosh. So, yeah, it's, you know, the important thing is not to get wound up in, like, what school of a therapy do you follow, you know, because, I can do several different things, and different things work better with different people. And as we talk to people, as I talk to people, I get a feel for what's going to work, what's going to make sense to you. So there are some people who love to talk about their dreams.

They love to talk about their spiritual life, and they love to talk about those things, and they're very open to it. There are other people who want nothing to do with that. They weren't all to be very practical. Oh, give me practical steps. Give me exercises. And I can do that too, all right? So that's more on the CBT cognitive behavioral therapy end,

would be that end. And the end I prefer is the psychodynamic part, which is let's get out what's unconsciously happening for you and why this is happening. So it's going to be, I'm going to do it works for you. I'm going to find out works for you. I'm going to do it works for you, because if all, you know, it's the old thing, you know, if you want to,

if you ask a carpenter what the solution is, he's going to pull out hammer and nails. Okay. And it might not be the solution to your problem. So we've got a lot of tools in the toolbox, let's just say, in the therapeutic toolbox, that can go a lot of different ways. Definitely. And I think that's a fantastic analogy. There's a lot of people, there's a reason a lot of people intuitively understand it.

And culturally, we've come to, you know, if you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But if your client is a screw, you need a screwdriver. You're a drill. You're not going to, you know, like, anyway, you get the idea. You've got to match the approach to the person. I've, as I was saying before, I woke up a little earlier than normal. I would basically still be drinking coffee right now if I hadn't gotten up three hours ago.

So my brain's a little like, if I'm not going to give the best analogies. Let me bring it back to your, to your book, though. So you've got dreaming God's way. And what, uh, what does. God have to do with dreams and what is God's way of dreaming? How do you, how do you bring all that together? Okay. Okay. So, I mean, I could just sit here and read the book over the air. Wait, allow me to be more vague. Yes, but that's okay. So, so it's the book starts from the premise that dreams are a gift from God. That, that if God is the, if he's, God is the God of our conscious life, he's also the God of our unconscious life.

It doesn't stop there. And, you know, the evidence for that is in Scripture itself. There are many, many dreams reported in Scripture, and their interpretations are reported, too. And they're usually, the interpretations are usually God's direct interpretations or God is a person like Joseph, the ability to interpret a dream. So, you know, that's, it's obvious that, that God has spoken to people in dreams, and he still does.

Okay, but the problem is in this, in our scientific age, we tend not to pay attention to that because some people have said, yeah, dreams are just kind of the mental garbage, you know. When we have a dream, it's just your mind taking out the garbage and getting rid of it. And, you know, and for some dreams, that might be true. But for most dreams, I don't believe it is. you know, most, most patients who report their dreams to me when we talk about it, realize, oh, this really did have meaning for me.

This really did have something to say to me about what's going on in my mind. But the whole idea is to be, first to be open to that idea, and then to pursue it, then to pursue it, you know, in terms of, okay, so where does this go? And so it's dreaming God's way because it's a biblical approach, because if you look at the way God himself interprets dreams, it's all about symbols. It's all about symbols. And if you look at the way Young interpret streams,

it's all about symbols, okay? So it's all about symbols. And symbols don't, you know, again, symbols don't always mean the same thing, as we were talking about before. But, you know, God knows what symbols mean to you. And so when you hear and you reference this way, when the, when Pharaoh had his dream interpreted, you know, the interpretation made total sense to him

because the symbols were all agrarian things. And Egypt was an agrarian economy. That's what they were. They were a military force too, but they were an agrarian economy. So the agrarian symbols made total sense to him. And this and so Joseph said, well, here's what that means, you know, seven million years, seven good years. He went on and on. And because, and because, and he said, and Because it made sense to him, you know, at no point did Barry say, nah, that that sounds crazy. It couldn't mean that. No, it just made sense to him. And when we had that reaction to the interpretation of a dream, either by ourselves or by somebody else, we know we're on the right path. Absolutely. I think that's a fantastic point of the idea of symbols. And I was writing this down. I'll work backwards. I had two, two thoughts that occurred to me. One of them is that, I mean, basically the purpose of a symbol is to contain.

and express meaning of some kind. I mean, you know, we can have things that are essentially meaningless. I could just throw a bunch of paper clips on the, on the counter. And there they are in on the counter. Does it mean anything?

Is that a symbol? Not exactly. It's an image. Perhaps you can see that they're there, but they don't really say anything unless they accidentally spell out a word and then you probably better listen because that's a miracle. If that happens, let me know.

I for sure. I want to know too. I want to see that. All right. And no AI. Wow, we're getting into a weird, weird space with that stuff with the being, doubting, doubting reality. Like, what is this, is this a photograph?

Is this real? Used to be they, the fingers had too many, hands had too many fingers in the pictures, not anymore. But anyway, so, and symbols or, yeah, symbols can be icons, images. It can be, you know, the cross or one of my favorites, the yin-yang. I love that. I think, in my estimation, I think that, And do I know this for sure?

Do I have any historical evidence to prove this is true? No, I just believe it. I think the yin yang is, has existed since before mankind had language. When we can only represent concepts and symbols. And it just shows, you know, the wholeness of dual, you know, up down, left, right, night, dark, good, evil. But all, but contained as the all. I think it's one of the oldest names for God. when they were trying to conceptualize that symbol.

I don't know if you're a young or old Earth creationist. I think we've been around as humans at least 350,000 years. And there was a time before we could speak, really speak and communicate. But then by the same token, words on a page, words spoken sounds are also symbols. If I say symbol, you get an image and an idea of what a symbol is, what it means. And so we communicate in symbols. That's why I love, I think the concept of memes is more important. than people know. And people think, oh, you mean silly internet cat pictures? Yes, also that. But it's so much more.

Everything we do is a meme. Everything we can be words are memes made of smaller memes called letters. Made of, you know, the concept of a sound we make with our, whether it's, I can go on about that forever. But getting my other point there is you see, you know, dreams are a gift from God. And I think that is literally true. Now, so I'm coming from a, um, um, and this is weird. I have to explain it sometimes. But I am, I am an agnostic a atheist deist in a way so there's a lot there's a lot in there you know i i'm not i'm not sure exactly what's going on i don't follow us for hours about that i know i don't follow a specific theological system but i think there is something you know whatever prime mover out there made all of this and we're living in it that that's how i explained it shorthand um i've come

around to the idea that all revealed truth is communication from god I think that's literally what it is. Whenever you, whenever you understand something, whenever you get it, that moment of getting it is a miracle itself. And I think that's God speaking to us. So I think it's very literally true.

So what do I do in my process is I try to open myself up to the spirit of being beneficial to the other person through really listening and critically thinking and feedbacking and all kinds of great stuff. So hopefully what you're getting from me is at least my best attempt to let the Spirit of God speak through me without claiming I speak for God or hear the voice of God. I'm trying to do what Joseph did, but humbly without claiming, without putting the technical or dream code on myself and saying, look at me.

But I'm trying to, I'm trying to imitate that example as best I can. I'll stop there. You probably have some thoughts. No, that's, and we're not so different in that. Obviously, I am coming from a place of belief, but I'm really trying to do the same thing that you are. I'm using the methods, but I'm using the methods that God taught me by looking at dreams. By looking at like, well, you know, how did he connect things up?

And, you know, if you look at it, if you look at the interpretations, they're always about those symbols. And there was about what the symbols meant to the dreamer, not to Joseph, not to anybody else. And so that's what we're trying to do with dream interpretation. And, you know, it's interesting that young of all, all people should say, you know, only the dreamer is the best interpreter of dreams because Jung interpreted so many dreams, right? So he said that, but on the other side, he's interpreting

many dreams. So there's that kind of duality that kind of trips us up. You know, if we think about it, it's like, wait a minute, you're not the dreamer. How do you know? And that's why, and I don't know which your method is, but that's why my method is, I ask a lot of questions. I, you know, a lot of times, if these are people who are in therapy with me, so I'll know what certain things mean to them or I'll have a feeling for it. But other times, especially if they're in new to therapy or, you know, I don't know them that well, I'll have to ask, well, you know, what does that suggest you? What is that similar to the cross-suggesting? What does this suggest to you? Or what meaning does that have? Or, you know, if they, you know, a lot of

times they'll bring up a name. I'll say, is that somebody in your real life or it's, or somebody that, or just a name that came in the dream? And so what does that name mean to you? Are there associations? Are there people other, this wasn't that person, but could they be that person? Do they have aspects of that person? There are a lot of questions that can be asked. And that's why, you know, we're not going to do it in 10 minutes with a dream interpretation. That's true. It's very true. It's just not going to happen. I actually had an episode, years ago when I was testing out the water. So I'm on YouTube.

I'm on Rumble and whatnot. I have a bunch of different social media. So to go along with the ABC books, I had a series of videos on my channel, which was the ABCs of Dream Interpretation, where I started what are my influences? What do I mean by I'm a wizard? You know, that kind of thing.

For me, it's the archetypal Jungian with Gandalf Socrates. I mean, truly the wise old man. I'm trying to become that. It's aspirational more than claiming. a grandiosity. But, you know, one thing I say to people is, is, you know, the answers are not in me. And that, that humility has got to be there, too. I mean, I'm putting myself forward as offering.

I describe it as I'm the guy you, you invite me into your head to stand behind your shoulder with a flashlight and look around going, do you see what I see? What if we look at it from over here? And I think that's 90% of psychology, too. But I like that. I like that. That's a good metaphor. Thank you. Yeah.

And then coming from that perspective. is also reminding me to remain humble. Like, I'm not telling you what your dreams mean. I can't. I can help you discover it if I'm, if I have the proper inspiration, which is hit and miss sometimes. You know,

we don't always bring our best selves to everything because we just can't. You know, maybe we're tired or woke up too early. But, you know, speaking of that. Well, it's true.

Speaking of that, so I want to respect your time limit. I know you got to get out of here soon. And I want to do a demonstration of my style. of dream interpretation. Are you ready to switch over? Certainly. So the way this works, I mean, basically, as far as I can understand my process, I'm going to, number one, shut up and listen. Our friend, Aria's going to tell me about his dream, like a narrative,

and then we're going to talk about it and see if we can construct meaning collaboratively. So I am ready when you are. Benjamin the dream wizard wants to help you. Here's the veil of night and shine the light of understanding upon the mystery of dreams. Every episode of his dreamscapes program features real dreamers gifted with rare insight into their nocturnal visions. New 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 DreamWizard.com, where you will also find the wizard's growing catalog of historical dream literature available on Amazon, documenting the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past 2,000 years. That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube and at Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell you a dream that's in my book,

and it's my dream. Okay. Okay. and I'm going to leave out the parts where I'm doing interpretation. So you will not be swayed by those. Because obviously I'm going to interpret my own dreams. I love these. They're called, you know, Stump the Wizard.

Can I get an explanation that makes sense to you that is close to what you got? But it's really not that. But it's really not that. And let me be clear. You know, I think I'm the best interpreter of my dreams. And I think you're the best interpreter of your dreams. But sometimes people can tell me things. something like you when I relate a dream,

tell me things that I hadn't thought of. Hopefully. But then I think, oh, yeah, that could be true too. That also could be true. And in a way that doesn't negate anything else. It's just another layer of understanding. Dreams can be very complex and they can be saying things on more than one level. So having that kind of input is really valuable, you know.

And my wife's really good at that. I'll tell her my dreams. And first she'll and now she'll say, well, how are you interpret? And I'll say, no, no, no, you tell me what you think first. Don't let me taint the poison the well or anything. Yeah, yeah. Yes, then I'll tell you. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. For sure, for sure. So let me read this dream, leaving out the interpretive parts, and you can let me know what you think. All right. So in a stream, I was in a kind of a banquet hall that had a bar at one end. I immediately realized that I was dreaming. So this is a lucid dream.

I know I'm dreaming. Okay. And I started to head towards the exit when I realized that since I was in a dream, I could simply walk through the walls to get outside. I had seen long ago in an episode of the television version of Superman, when the Man of Steel actually did walk through walls using his super concentration without breaking through them. So I did likewise.

I walked in the dream, I walked without any problem. I started walking through the wall and walked all the way outside. Once outside, I decided I'm going to walk back through the walls to get inside again to that banquet hall. So I found myself walking through the walls at will. But at one point, I was stopped by something inside the wall, not being able to go any further. This is the point where doubt arose in my mind about my ability to walk through solid walls. Perhaps there was a bit of encouragement by my unconscious mind telling me it was impossible to walk through walls. I thought of all these things, but then I thought for a moment and a solution occurred to me.

I simply stepped around the obstacle that was in front of me and moved right on into the interior of the banquet hall. I felt very relieved, very capable, and I woke up. Okay. There were two words used at the end. Relieved and capable. Capable. That's right. Fantastic.

And that's how you do it. I tell people, you know, as the dreamer, you can't do this wrong. All the pressures on me to make an entertaining episode to host the show to give you something useful. But that is, it's always fantastic when people have a relatively succinct narrative. Here's what happened. Here's where it took place. Here's the sequence of events. And here's where it ended.

And we can we go from there. So we've got, um, okay, I adjust my approach to the time limit. And, uh, if we had longer, I would dwell longer and expand more on different things. And I have done that in the past when we've got a little bit shorter time. I try to cut to the chase more. And so it ends up feeling a bit rush, but hopefully we get to some of the same, some of the same places. So we've got set and setting of a, of, uh, of, of a banquet hall.

There's a bar in the end. So if we were to just do this real quickly, I mean, does a banquet hall stand out to you as meaning anything in particular? What kind of a place is and what happens there, that kind of thing? A banquet hall, you know, so. So from my own experience, I've done a lot of public speaking in banquet halls. Okay. I don't do as much as I used to, but I still do it. And it was that kind of place.

I should mention, I didn't mention here in my book, but I should mention to you. There was nobody else in the hall, just me. Okay. Empty banquet hole. That's interesting. So this is where I adjust my method. So that says to me, or the inspiration I get from considering your understanding of that idea is you're typically in a place where you would perform for others, but there's no one

there. You are performing for no one but yourself. This is a message to yourself. is how I would see that. Does the bar being at the end mean anything to you specifically the idea of a bar being there? Or I guess what I'm asking is if we try and tease out the meaning, do you have a special relationship with alcohol, if you tried to quit? Is it something you make sure you don't do before you speak?

Is it just a typical feature of the banquet hall that identifies them in the right place? Okay. So yeah, it's a typical feature. Yeah, I don't have any strong alcohol associations. nobody i don't have any alcoholics in the family none of that stuff going on so but that's a great question well that that's a question i would ask if somebody told me this thing so because it it's uh it wasn't um it wasn't a corral where you would drop off kids to to uh while you go shopping you know it was it was it was very specifically a bar so but it just says okay i'm i've been

in this is the kind of place i've been in before this is a typical feature uh i probably could have asked you have a stage or raised dais did it have tables or chairs or chairs arranged just so but I don't so the setting I think that's in my estimation it would be yeah a message to self versus or a you're performing for yourself you're at you're not considering how others see you you're considering how you see yourself is is what I would get out of that if I like that um and here's where it gets a little tricky to this lucid idea now I have uh ABC book six studies and dreams by Mrs. Mary Arnold Forster is one of the early works I can find that discusses lucid dreaming. She talks about her own experience as a lucid dreamer

before the term existed. So this was way before that. I have two thoughts on that subject. One is it may be an absolutely real phenomenon and probably is where you can be semi-conscious in dreams because we can have daydreams. We can be semi-conscious and still be surprised by our own imagination. So there's nothing impossible about lucid dreaming. However, we are in an impossible situation in what we say differential diagnosis. How do you know you weren't just having the dream experience that you were conscious in a dream, but even that was part of the dream? No one knows, really. And it may not matter in this sense, but.

And that's a, yes, that's a great question because for me, I don't have them often. I've had, you know, a few in my life maybe. but what happens is when I do have them, though, the thought comes to my mind, hey, I'm dreaming. I can do anything I want. I have just. I can fly. I can go through walls. As we're doing here, I can do anything I want.

That's the thought that occurs to me. I'm dreaming. This is a dream. It's not real. Oh, yeah. And why do so many lucid dreams have to do with flying is because, I mean, that's probably the number one things humans would like to be able to do. We would like to be able to sort the air, break the earthly bonds, get, you know, defeat gravity, all the sense of freedom. I just want to fly just want

swoop at high speed through the air. I love that idea. And that was actually the one lucid dream as far as I can tell that I've ever had in my life with very, very brief. There's a cul-de-sac with a bit of an extended road, just a few hundred feet to a busy intersection. And I had that thought, residential neighborhood suburban. Oh, if this is a dream, I can fly. And so I start flapping my arms like their wings and slowly, almost like swimming through water, I raise to a certain height. I come down before the intersection.

I wake up. Nothing else to the dream. And that's one of the few, one of the one, literally like one of the five dreams I remember in my lifetime. Yes. But the one lucid dream I had was about flying. So or at least, or at least I had the dream experience that I'm dreaming, which honestly, That's a thought you can consider.

For those types of dreams. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So that one might be, so if we were to assign it a purpose for being in the dream, having that thought, it's, what am I trying to get around to? The idea that you have the realization of agency in a way, I can take action and modify the course of events. I can do impossible things. Sure.

Okay. You know, another thing that it didn't occur to me in this dream, but when I've had other dreams like this is that, oh, you know, and I have a whole chapter in my book about whether the dream world is a different world and from this world. But, oh, this is a dream world. Let me talk to some of these people who are in the dream world and see what they have to say. Just ask them, yeah.

And so sometimes I'll do that. I have done that on occasion, but that was not this dream. I don't want to get inside track. No, no, no, for sure, for sure. So, yeah, just, if we were to assign a meaning to, let's say it was not actually lucid dream and you just had the thought of lucid dreaming and what it means, it means you're able to attempt things that would not normally be humanly possible in the most of physical, real world.

So you could tell yourself a story or enact a behavior that has additional symbolic meaning and it didn't have to comport with reality. So you can just, you can do wild thought experiments. I can do anything I want. This is a dream. Let's go with it. Right. So you were heading towards the exit.

Did you have any idea of why you would be leaving? I mean, you didn't head towards the stage. You didn't head towards the bar. You didn't take a seat at a table. Uh-huh. Okay. So remember, I wasn't headed toward the exit. I was walking through the wall.

Would you were? Maybe I wrote down as I headed towards the exit. I had the thought I could walk through walls. Did I get that right? It's right. No, no, you're right here. It's right here in front of me. So I did head toward the exit, but then I read that that's when I realized I was in a dream.

And I said, why bother with the exit? I'll just walk through the wall. And no strong impression of why you were leaving. Was it connected to it being empty? No. Okay. No, it wasn't like I have to get out of here. It wasn't like, you know, I need to go do something or it wasn't any of that.

There was no urgency to it. It was just, all right. I'm going to, I'm going to walk around and explore. Okay. And then I thought, well, why even bother with the doors? just walk outside. For sure. In that case, you know, if there's no strong feelings around it, it's kind of a toss, a throwaway event, I might lean towards the idea that it was, um, almost a, uh, like a plot device, a gimmick of, okay, thought experiment style. Let's say I'm leaving.

Let's make that what I'm doing. And then within that context, I can say, okay, how do I leave? I don't have to leave by the door. I'm in a dream. I can do the impossible. Let's walk through walls. Yes. So it may not have any additional, maybe the plot device in a sense. A lot of that pops up. What we got here?

It is very interesting that you, for me, in my dream, the reference I might have made is to an X-Man character from the X-Man comics called Kitty Pride. She could make her body intangible and walk through walls. But for you,

has she been in any of those movies? I remember. I think I remember somebody like that. Yeah. She was, and I think one of the things was she fell through the floor. She got embarrassed and, and it triggered.

And she threw right through the floor and landed on Wolverine's bed, I think. And he's like, you can't be here. Because she was like 16 and he's like 102. I think that was an additional connotation of like, I don't care how you got here. This is not happening. Which Wolverine is,

as much as he's an asshole. He's a really good guy. So, yeah. Anyway, but for you, the reference was Superman. And I would say maybe,

I have also a memory of Superman. He started out as just someone really strong who could leap tall buildings in a single bound. Flying laser eyes, invulnerability to bullets. That all came later. And also they kept adding new powers. And one of them was he could vibrate his body so rapidly

that the molecules slid through solid objects. They didn't stick around with that. It was like he's already overpowered. They only did that once in the series. But it stuck with me. It really stuck with that. This is completely off topic. But when you're thinking of writing stories and the problem with that is you introduce something like that.

And then later you have to explain why he doesn't use it to solve other problems. You get a power creep. Exactly. Which is terrible. So there, I mean, there's a book for one or both of us to write right there. Oh, because sure. How many examples of that can we find, you know? And it's really, it's really quite funny.

And one of the things that I saw, I actually watched a Superman episode a little while. ago. And it's one of the early episodes where, you know, he's Clark Kent and his mother is making his suit out of the blanket he was wrapped in when he came from Krypton. Okay. And I thought, and the mother says, don't worry about this. Nothing can harm it. Nothing can tear it. Nothing can shred it. And I said, well, then how did you get the needle into the suit to sew it all together? How did you do that? Well, they answered that question. We could go on and on with those. You saw me laughing before you even said it out, because I know that they've had to do things like using his own hair from his head as as sewing thread or something. They've explained that away and other, because other people have had that thought.

I'm a little bit of, I'm not a Superman historian, but so there's two, two layers possibly that, that occur to me in the, in the Superman thing. And one is superhuman ability. Hey, who's, what's the, what's the strongest icon in your mind, Superman? And also that ability to walk through walls. When you think of walking through walls, that's what popped into your head. but also he is he has been accused of being a goody two shoes a boy scout you know he's a little too good he's a little too perfect a little too virtuous so he's also an icon for in my uh understanding

approaching problems in a virtuous manner like living up to that ideal in a way so what you're doing is you're not destroying the way and that's specifically what you said too is like not punching through the wall which is a destructive act but sliding through and and i think selecting Superman might have been part of that in terms of how you either do see yourself or aspire to to be like someone who is virtuous and using abilities in a way that is not destructive, but still amazing. I think there's something in there by choosing Superman as the representation of that, where the ability comes from or the inspiration for it. And that may be a little bit of a side note, but I like to also show people of like how their self-concept, you could aspire to

be worse things than Superman, you know, even if it feels of a true, vainglorious, but still, wouldn't we all in, in terms of also being a good person, you know, having with great power comes great responsibility. That's why all of our heroes are like powerful and they struggle with how do I use this properly? How do I not abuse it? Superman could have become a tyrant. And in alternate versions, they go, well, let's look at what happened if he did. Yes.

So, okay, moving on from that, though. Yes. And it's also interesting that you phrased it as an ability deployed through, quote, unquote, super concentration. So there's probably also a part of yourself where it's like, well, my superpower in the real world is my mind, is my ability to concentrate and accomplish. Absolutely correct. Yes. That's part of what you got to. Well, you don't have to tell me.

But. Well, hey, I'm a psychologist. Of course. Right. It just fits in that. Actually, I got that from considering. who you are. And, you know, if your skills were more musically inclined or something, maybe it was an internal metronome, we would go with that instead. Well,

well, I'm a musician too. So we might actually do. Right on me. That's in there. So you demonstrate the ability to do so to yourself. You're like, hey, let's do this. I, I successfully walked out. Well, just for just for kicks, let's walk back in and out. I'm in. I'm out. And so you're just having fun with the process. And somewhere along, line, you hit a snag. Wait a minute. Something's blocking my way. So I'd say this is a pretty, what are we doing in dreams?

We're following a thought experiment and what would occur to us in the, what am I trying to say? We get the understanding that we're capable of something and how to put it into effect. And we realize if you're, we've got enough wisdom on the subject, you're going to hit a snag at some point. You're going to find that there's. at least one out of a million instances where it doesn't work. Okay, now what do I do?

Okay, what if, what if I, what if my skills fail me in this moment? And you, you pause for a moment. You're like, okay, I'm going to stop and think about this. If you can't overcome a problem, you go around it. And so you're like, I found a solution. Maybe, maybe that's all. And it worked. It's like, so again, I think this is a self-concept style.

You're telling yourself, you know, if I put my mind to it, Not only can I walk through walls, but if that doesn't work, I can figure it out. And some people might, you know, some people get really hung up on humility, almost a faux humility to the point of not, in a dysfunctional way, not accepting that they have agency, that they have the ability to affect the world through their own focused attention and energy. So I always like to show people in their dreams where they think well of themselves. And I think that's what I think that's part of what this says is, you know, you didn't end the dream saying, and I got stuck and I didn't know what to do and dream over. It was, oh, I figured it out. What are we doing here? And what, so this is what I was saying about thought experiments is one thought triggers the next.

It takes you to the next logical step of whatever it was. So the resolution of that was feeling relieved and capable. And it is a relief. when we go, uh-oh, I have a problem. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I got it. And it works.

We figure it out. And leaving you out with that feeling of relief. They got it figured it out and capable. Looks like I really can do this. You know, my, uh, I didn't show myself that I completely like bottom line doubt my ability. I have general confidence in my competence, uh, which is how I would, how I would phrase that. So, I mean, uh, yeah. Now, now the next step for me, we've got all, we've got all that.

that, and I know we're coming up on a, wanting to, wanted to round out the show, Relief and Capable. That's okay. When did this dream happen? That's also part of tying it into real life. So that's a great question because it happened while I was writing this book. Ooh. Okay.

Yeah. Well, that's usually I promise not to give away. Not to give away my interpretation of it. But that's a great question to ask. Yes. Thank you. that's what I usually try to do is and I do it this now why do I do it this way I don't know it just intuitively I just trust my gut when it goes so I we do the dream let's talk about the dream let's nail down some of the symbols afterwards let's look back and go when did this happen when I was right and normally when I ask people when very often they'll give me a date but very often and then I'll go to the next step of okay what was happening at that time you you shortcut yeah yeah yeah I'm just helping you out there you know no absolutely that's that's fantastic that's exactly what I was going to do um So if we put it in that context, you were likely not struggling, but focusing, super concentrating in a way of doing the impossible, telling people how to dream God's way, which sounds really like grandiose.

I mean, even when you think about it, like, well, I'm going to tell people how to do it. But then you asked yourself, am I capable of this, of this task? Do I have the superpowers necessary to express this thing accurately? and your conclusion, I think, was, you know, I think I do. I think I can do this. And you did. And you proved it in a way retroactively. This was a prophetic dream in a sense.

And, you know, I want to stop there. And I want to have you tell me how close I got to your understanding, whether I added something new. It's my favorite part. So, yeah. Yeah. You know, I think you're right. I think you understand what's going on, which is the biggest.

compliment I could give me. Well, thank you. So, you know, putting it in, you know, if I were talking to this about somebody, well, this is a wall. So what are walls mean to you? Well, to me, walls mean confinement. Okay. So, you know, at first, you know, my ability to walk through walls, it was, it was like, okay,

the way I, the way, the way I overcome this confinement, this intellectual, will find it, or just can find it on the road to getting to where I'm going, is I just ignore it. Okay. And that works for a while. You know, when I first walk through the walls, that, you know, I concentrate and I get through it. But at some point, I hit some obstacle, some sticking point. Okay. And in this case, and it's all about, I didn't hit that point until I started doubting that I could do this.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. So it was the doubt that was the sticking point. The doubt that was the sticking point. And, you know, walking around the doubt was like, okay, well, there's doubts. You know, there's always going to be some doubts. But I know where I'm going. And by the way, you know, there are other ways to go than right through this obstacle.

I'll just go around the obstacle. It was kind of a, it was a childlike solution, but it was the right solution. So often the solutions we get from our unconscious mind, are childlike, but they're right. They're like, oh, why didn't I think of that? I'll just go around it. Okay. And, you know, so I didn't, I didn't get any thought to, well, what was it there?

Why couldn't I walk through that? No, that wasn't what I was worried about. I'm like, can I get by this? Yeah, I just stuff around it. And, hey, I'm home free. I got it. So I think your, you know, your sense of the dream is, it's very good. And it's real, for me, it was about problem solving.

It was about problem solving. And, you know, what to do one. And I would, I had, there were certain parts of the book I was having difficulty with, especially as the chapter on the dream world, which I think is what was going on. And it would have been a great question too if I thought of it. Yeah. And I stopped. Yeah, I stopped.

I was stopped because, you know, and you kind of alluded to this. The logical mind says, no, this can't be possible. All right. But the unconscious mind says, hey, but it is. You know, all things are possible in a dream. Okay. And how do I, how do I, how do I, how do I explain the coexistence of those two without sounding ridiculous? Okay.

So it was, it was quite challenging. But then I realize, no, I'll just step around this. I'll just say, no, here they are. They both exist. I don't have to explain why it can both exist, you know? Like God explain that. They do. God created us.

He created it this way. That's the way we're going. That's, I'm just describing what I see. So, so yeah, that's, you know, I thought, I really, I liked what you had to say about, you know, the way I view myself, you know, and, and, and I like that you asked about how I felt relieved. I felt relieved and capable. Capable was really the key word there because for a while I felt incapable of going on with this. Even though I knew what I wanted to do, I felt I was not capable because I couldn't find the way. way. I couldn't find the way in my mind. I couldn't find the way. Logically, I couldn't find the way, you know, the way I just couldn't find it. But then it was like, oh, no, it's really simple. You know, you leave that. I can't know everything. I'm going to leave that as an unanswered question. That's an obstacle. I'm going to go around it. I'm going to keep going.

The cat's distracting me. Sorry, he's clon up my thigh. He wants me to throw his. I swear he's like a dog reincarnated in cats, but he wants to play fetch. He will grab my hair tight. and bring it back and I'll throw it again. Oh, yeah. Never had a cat like that before. I know he's not the first thing. No, cats love to imitate dogs sometimes just until you, you say, oh, you're going to do things for me like fetch, and then they just ignore you. Yeah. They will never sit on command.

That's not happening. No, not going to happen. What do you think you are? I will bite your hand. Get that finger out of my face. Exactly correct. Yes. And I think that's great, too, of like, the simplicity of the solution, too, is, you know, sometimes the higher minded we get, we think that.

the complicated solution is better, or it has to be complicated to be true. It could just be as simple as go around, go around, keep it simple. That's, I think that's fantastic too, that, that simple resolution to that idea. So, well, if you think we got everything we can out of discussing the dream for now, we'll, we'll wrap up the show. Yes, I think so. I think so. And thank you. Thank you.

That's, you know, thanks for paying attention and paying attention to what's important, because that's really, if you're going to do what you do, since we both do the same thing. Yeah. It's important to do that. So, so like, as I said, that's really the highest compliment I can pay you. And I really appreciate that. I mean, it's, as much as I am, let's see, how do I describe this?

I generally am someone who, I don't give a fuck what you think of me. That's fine. But in this context of your professional, you've been practicing this for, you're, you know, in a sense, if I may self-aggrandize myself a little bit, appear in a realm of a discipline. And to have someone say, I think you're doing okay. I, that means a lot. Yeah. I'm almost, you know, sometimes I get a little for clamped.

And I'm like, you know, don't, don't, don't applaud. Just throw money. I got to think. I get very uncomfortable with compliments. So I, but I, I'm trying to learn to accept them better and express my own appreciation for that. So it's okay. You know, though, listen, the insults will come.

So you might as well take the compliments. That's true. No, that. Thank you for that. That's, that's, that's, that's, that is true. Take it. Take what you can get. If someone's always punching you.

the person who hugs you is very important. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, let's do this by way of wrapping up. This has been our guest dreamer era Trembly out of Florida. He's a psychologist or specifically psychotherapist, specializing in hypnotherapy. Also does a lot of work with patients on their dreams.

His book is Dreaming God's Way. Link will be in the description below. Briefly, 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 of the days of the week. This episode brought to you by ABC Book 18, O'Neuro Chronology, Volume 4, Prima, Relicorum, the first of what remains. You can find all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, of course. And if you'd head on over to Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com, it's free to join attached to my Rumble account. I'd love to have you there. And one of the great places to reach out to me if you want to be a guest.

Once again, ERA, thank you for being here. And thank you for your kind, kind of, kind of words. Thank you so much for having it was really enjoyable. And everybody out there, thank you for listening. I hope you see you next time.