Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 206: Echo of Days Gone By

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

Heather Melville ~ https://www.healthyrelationships.info/

That's what I've been doing is trying to talk for a couple of minutes at the beginning and see if there's anything I can put as a beginning to the conversation before the official show begins then launch into the opening graphic and little little theme song thing or whatever. And it's a shhers a bummer that you just started recording now. We said some really good stuff earlier. Greetings friends and welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today our guest dreamer is Heather Melville. She is currently near Tombstone, Arizona.

She is a toxic relationship recovery expert, a former electrical engineer, and now a semi-professional nomad. You can find her at healthy relationships.info. And specifically the link that I'm providing below is to a worksheet, dream again, reclaiming your life after toxic love. And that's, you know, just to say, before I get on it with the rest of the introduction, that's a fantastic thing to do is give people a tool that they can use. So I think that's a fantastic place for people to start also to get to know you. offer. Well, here's one of the tools that you think is beneficial and, uh, and, and I would recommend you check it out. So, uh, for my part, would you kindly like, share and subscribe, tell your friends always need more volunteer dreamers and viewers. Uh, I do video game streams

Monday through Friday, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific, most days of the week, sometimes I'll take a Friday off if a game ends and I'll start the next new game on Monday. Uh, this episode is brought to you in part by ABC book 18. Yes, I have, uh, now 18 currently available works of of historical dream literature. This one, book 18, is entitled O'Neuro Chronology, Volume 4, prima reliquorum, which is Latin for the first of the rest,

the first of what remains. Of course, you can find all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, including downloadable or live-streamable audio-only MP3s of this very podcast, so you may take the Wizard with you, wherever you wander with or without Wi-Fi. And last but not least,

if you'd head on over to Benjamin the Dreamwizard. dot locals.com building a community there. It's free to join attached to my Rumble account. One of the best ways to reach out to me. And that is more than enough out of me. Heather, thank you for being here. I appreciate your time. Thank you, Benjamin. This is already such a treat. I mean, I know we've been talking before and already. I'm like, yep, he and I are both wizards and witches together. Exactly. Well, that's another thing too. So right now I'm doing this series of historical dream literature. And what does that mean? These aren't original works by me. These are famous or meaningful works on dreams, sleep, dreams, dreaming, etc.

published for the last 2,000 years. I've tried to pull the best of it together into a single collection. It's been my own masterclass on dream interpretation. Where did it start? How did it evolve? What is it now? What's our current best understanding? So when I'm done with that project, and I got like three more books to publish, I think,

then I'm going to start on more original works, the first of which is going to be a wizard's guide to ASOP's fables. So, you know, I talk about this all the time. It's coming. It's coming. I swear I'm actually going to write this, but I've got it started. But eventually I want to write a wizard's guide to the art of wizardry. And it'll be, it'll get into that idea of, you know, and I've talked to practitioners, so to speak, you know, if a wizard is prototypically or archetypically male is the female equivalent to which? What is, or is it a sorceress or how do we define these terms and break them down into categories? I don't know if you have an opinion.

I like asking folks and getting them. their perspective. Right. Yeah, that is so interesting. I have always thought, because I mean, you watch all these movies and it's like witches and wizards. Okay, so which is the female version? Is there a sorceress and a sorcerer? And what's the difference between a sorcerer and a wizard? Do they use different elements? Are they like, are they using the power without, are they like Chi masters, sorcerers or Chi masters? They use the weather, whereas wizards, they focus mainly on like Latin spells and stuff like that. It's so interesting to go into that. But I was just going to ask you, when you talk about pulling historical dream interpretations, do you go across cultures as well?

Because I recently read a book, Women Who Run With Wolves? I have heard of it. Yeah. And it really goes into like the Native American Indian interpretations and like where a lot of our dreams come from and like how. And I mean, I focused more on the toxic relationship part of it, but it was very interesting. So I'd love to know if that's where you're pulling as well across multiple cultures. I do as much as I can. A lot of the literature that is out there, and especially the stuff that's in the public domain pre-1920, is Western in a way. And even if it is like in the most recent work, O'Neurochronology Volume 4, Prima Rollo Moro Choirum, the first book or, you know, article that I put in there is from a it's from the royal asiatic society of great britain written in the 18 i want to say

1850s 1830s i can't remember i'm horrible with names and dates and it is a british explorer who went to the middle east and consulted experts and primary sources to then put together a description of okay here's the as they said at the time the muhammedan or the muslim methodology for interpretation of dreams, given these sources, according to these experts. So what I've had trouble, and I'm actively seeking recommendations, what I, what I haven't found or haven't been able to come across is explicitly, here's how Native Americans would interpret dreams. Here's, here's how they did that with it.

What I've, what I've gotten to is that you would take it to the medicine man or the, or the village elder, and it was considered, um, meaningful. there was also a tradition that again in Western they say primitive tribes would largely believe that it was the soul leaving the body to explore the world

and there are documented instances apparently of a medicine man or elder having a dream about what was over the next hill and they went over the next hill and there it was exactly what he dreamed so they're like well of course the soul leaves the body Now, that also, it was consistent with ancient Greek conception that, you know, dreams were sent by the gods, but that they could also represent the soul wandering outside of the body. So it's a lot of these traditions line up, and that's where you get the whole idea of Joseph Campbell's here with a thousand faces is disparate cultures from thousands of miles away come to the same conclusion. It's probably got something to recommend it in their understanding of it.

If we're all coming to the same conclusion about the same things. Yeah, these are universal truths. across them. So I do have a tie-in into our dream, if you want, especially when it comes to the souls leaving the body. So in my previous relationship, it was a toxic relationship. And when I say toxic, you know, what have you? Gaslighting, manipulating, a little bit of physical abuse, emotional abuse, tearing me down constantly. But he was very Christian. So he had had some experiences with the paranormal. But he was the one who showed me this video of a man who talked about that your soul is so pure. So it's in your body, right? But when you imbibe

on some unpure things could be like alcohol or all of these substances that are just deteriorating our body in general, the soul can't be there anymore. It can't be in line with it. So it has to kind of leave. So this gentleman, this video that I saw was he could see souls. So he would go to the bar and he could slowly see all of these souls be tethered out because they've imbibed alcohol and it's not a pure substance. And then what they talk about is when, you know, when people are drunk and they're angry and they say stupid things or it's like you have this idea like they weren't who they normally are. They weren't acting like they normally are. It's because a demon went inside them because now it's an open body for them to jump into. Sure.

Yeah. Crazy, crazy things. So I mean, I go ahead. No, no, go ahead. I was just going to jump, jump in on that because my own perspective on, say, demon possession has changed, on Christianity is changed in general. It used to be more anti-theist like, you know, I don't need no magic, imaginary sky daddy to tell me what to do. And religion has caused a lot of problems in the world. And all of that is true in its own way.

But lately I've come to a greater appreciation of the perspective I now have. And I'm not a, I'm a, not a Christian, you know, largely in an agnostic atheist in a way. And to me, those mean specific things, not anti-theist and not, you know, wow, what is it, not Reddit atheist, wow, we believe in science, but, you know, uncritically, all kinds of different conceptions people have of atheism. But it's, I, I'm not really sure what's going on. And so I don't follow a specific religious tradition. But I have an appreciation for all of them. So I consider like what we get with the Bible and many other, the Bhagavad Gita, many other books,

is collected human wisdom from that region over time. And they wrote it all down. And I think it started as oral traditions at first day, but tell these stories. And then eventually someone said, hey, we could write now. Let's put this on a tablet and make sure other people can read it later. So we don't forget, forget the stories. Okay, that brings us around to the demon possession. I didn't used to believe in that.

But I think it's, this is another book I'm going to write. I swear to God, this is going to happen someday. Wizard's Guide to Angels and Demons and Biblical Apocrypha, probably, because a lot of the conception of that, like, specific names of angels and demons. But there's a,

there's a part in the Bible where it says we, we do not struggle against the world or against men, but against powers and principalities. And I think of ideas as more or concepts, categories. that genre of things as more real than the physical world. Like you'll get, there's a concept of a chair. It is what it does.

It has a back and a seat. It has legs. It has a function. You put your butt in it. So it's what you do when you're not standing. And then there's different varieties that you've got a bench. You got a stool. You got a log.

You can put your buddy. You can sit on the ground. But a chair is a chair. And there's many types of chairs, but they all share the same essence of chairness. And that goes back to, I think it was, I think it was Aristotle or Plato. whoever had the world of forms. And I think people miss... Oh, 10,000 forms.

Oh, gosh. Another book? Yeah, yeah. Or like the world of 10,000 things. I forget who writes that one. I've never heard of that before. But I think intuitively I grasp what you're saying. So it's like all of these discrete objects are not the perfect essence of cheriness,

but they all serve the same purpose and have the same form because of this. So that's what I think of as demons and angels is, you know, we appeal to. to the better angels of our nature in a way that we've poetically described this. This is the perfect time. Come when I'm not writing things. I love it. I'll give you all the love you want. Yeah, this one we call Wookie.

Because she's kind of like Chubaka, her color. She's 20, right? So I think what can happen to people is they get in the grip of bad ideas. And that I think is, you know, and that. So in a way, it's like all evil is demon possession in a sense. Like you're not looking at yourself or the world in the real. right way. And if you did or could, that that's, you know, in a sense, you know, purging the, what do you do when you, um, you have, you know, dysfunctional behaviors? Uh, they used to call it way

back in the day, the demon rum would have possession of people with alcoholism. And now we look at it like, you know, yes, you've got the biological addiction, but you've also got dysfunctional patterns of escaping your problems with alcohol, soothing your emotions. And in a way, you're in the grip of this, this demon possession. You, you, you feel out of control of yourself forced into certain actions or vulnerable to making bad decisions. And in a way, getting sober is a, is a ritual of exorcism of getting that demon out of your body, letting go of wrath, anger. So I love a lot of this.

I talk too much. Sorry, I'm going to throw it back to you. I swear to God. I swear I have a guest and we're actually doing an interview. I'll just stop. Go ahead. That's so interesting, too. And that's kind of what I struggle when.

it comes to religion because I'm I'm not religious by any means I'm spiritual I believe that you know I mean I'm originally a scientist right I'm originally electrical engineer so first law of conservation of energy you know energy is neither created nor destroyed so there's something out here whether it's something we can see touch that connects us all that creates all of this so I don't know what that is you can call it you can call it whatever you want to call it I believe that there is something that connects us all. But it's so interesting and that's what I struggle with when it comes to religion because I feel like we try to use these excuses of there's a demon inside me. So it's not really my fault. I have no control. Where's my accountability? Ah, it's meant to be or God, you know,

wanted me to go through this. And I think there is some level of that, but I also think there is our choice as well. Then we can open the can of worms and go into free will. Oh, yeah. No, well, that's also the way it is. Now, sometimes demons get forced upon us in a way. If you are the victim of trauma, let's say you're abused as a child, you get the scars of someone else's demonic possession. And that leaves you more vulnerable. If we're going with that metaphor, you know, taking it from the purely psychological to adding a spiritual layer to it. But there's one of the best, one of my favorite understandings that I've heard recently is that, you know, what happened with Cain and Abel, just to go with.

I wish I need better. What I need to do is find alternative explanations that are the same story in different works. But this one popped into my head. So, you know, what happened with the Canes sacrifices were rejected as insufficient. And he became wrathful, you know, jealous. And he's like, well, fine, I'll take it out on the person who got the rewards that I feel I should have had. And the way it's described in there is that sin crouched at, Kane's door like a sexually aroused animal and Kane invited it in to have its way with him.

So there is an invitation. You have to make, now you might have to try and purge demons that were pushed on you as, you know, as trauma. But there's always that free will choice of saying, you know, let's say I'm demon possessed and I don't want to be. And I know it's wrong. And it's not my fault. I still have the choice to, I got to cast it out.

I got to make better choices. I can live like this. I can choose to live like this, but I don't have to. And I think that's where the responsibility comes in. And that's a weird thing to say the victim is responsible. That sounds horrible. It doesn't sound nice. Yeah.

Yeah, but it's one of those truths that it doesn't do you any good to deny it. And it's not like you asked for it. That's not the same thing. It's not that you deserved it. It's that you have a responsibility in the process as well. And accepting it is the best thing for you. And then you can do something about it. I mean, you're a powerless victim who can do nothing.

You're going to suffer or you're going to suffer the responsibility of doing something about it. I'm going to stop there. Let's talk more in that context about toxic relationships and how you maybe became headed down this road and what you think you have to offer, that kind of stuff. Oh, yeah. I'm a terrible interviewer. Sorry. The dream that I wanted to discuss that was related to this. Is that the one we're going to do later?

We could do two if you want. This is an alternative one. Because what I don't want you to do is tell me details of the dream before we're going to interpret it. So this is not the one we're going to interpret. This is just one that's related to the topic. Yeah, I think I think let's do that. Let's not interpret this one because it's pretty straightforward after we just talked about how your soul leaves the body because of the kid with, you know, alcohol. But so my ex was military, previous military.

He was over in Iraq. came back with a lot of PTSD again. Not a reason for why I should have been treated the way I was, but it's definitely like a sign of like, okay, well, that makes sense for the alcoholism. He never really worked through these issues. I like to just on that point, I like to say an explanation is not an excuse.

Right. Understand something is not to excuse responsibility to deal with it. So, yeah, a lot of people get stuck in that where they're like, well, this is what happened. Therefore, I'm not, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, therefore. That's what happened. Therefore is something else. Go ahead.

look like the way you said that. Say it again. An explanation is not an excuse. No, but you said afterwards, the understanding does not. Relieve your responsibility to deal with it in a way. I don't, I will have to play this video that.

I have no idea what I said. That's not. It was like, oh, I got to use that. But, so anyways, and he suffered from night terrors. So you're familiar with night terrors? Yeah, there's a couple different varieties, but go ahead.

So, so with his, is, you know, it stem from the religious part of who he was, but I think also from his PTSD. And they talk about some of the things that many of those people over there in Iraq came back with. Like, they think that they came back with these demonic spirits that were over there because of what they were doing. Very interesting stuff. The gyms of the desert, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

But the one thing they talk about with night terrors is they will transfer. So whoever you're sleeping next to can start having night terrors. I never had night tires. I had a reoccurring. Actually, I had a reoccurring Jurassic Park nightmare. We were talking about that earlier in terms of reading books versus the movies. This is all the good stuff you missed when we were talking before the show. We're bringing it back.

It's funny because I think it's Jurassic Park 4. The newer ones with Chris Pratt. Oh, yeah, yeah. It might be number five. When they come to the homeland and literally whatever that newest dinosaur is is coming up the stairs is in the house, that was my nightmare I used to have recurring. And so then they made the movie and I was like, oh gosh, no, I'm never going to do this.

It's a very common experience. So people will say, oh, well, if you just didn't watch that movie, you wouldn't have that nightmare. Now, that's technically true. You wouldn't have that nightmare. You would still have a nightmare that means the same thing because that icon came from the movie, but it doesn't represent a dinosaur.

No one's afraid of a dinosaur. They don't exist. They haven't existed for millions of years. If they ever did, according to who you asked, I think they did. But it's beside the point. It would just be something else. Something else would be coming up the stairs.

Some other crystallized image representing a terrifying force that you have no hope of physically fighting and maybe not even running away from. If it finds you, it's going to get you and it's going to harm you. So people would say, you know, you can't avoid nightmares necessarily by avoiding scary movies. It isn't quite like that. But go ahead. Sorry. Well, and I will say I am a strong believer is why I don't watch scary movies because

I think you bring it in. I think you can bring it in. Like you make it more of an opportunity for you to dream about this. And I definitely did with paranormal activity. Oh, yeah. Weeks after that one. I couldn't. I can't do it.

No, I remember being a kid and I would have, I think I had a nightmare or I was scared in bed or so I don't know whether it was a nightmare or not, but of the movie Alien and they were the original. Not the aliens, but alien of the little critter being under the bed and coming to get me. And I needed to sleep in my parents' room. I couldn't fall asleep again or at all if I wasn't.

And they're like, we told you that you shouldn't watch this movie. And you insisted. I'm like, I know, just let me get through this one night. And then I didn't have to do it again after that. I was young. I don't know how old I was. 10, 11, something like that. They were probably right.

I shouldn't have watched it. But I, you know, I've, that's another funny thing about me. It's a weird combination. There's the very obedient child who never breaks the rules. We're talking about just the two polar extremes. Um, but then they don't, they're maybe a little too submissive as they go through life, a little not advocating for this. And then there's the other, the other side of the spectrum, which is me is I, I wouldn't listen to nobody for nothing. But you never had to worry that I was going to get taken advantage of later in life because I'm perfectly comfortable telling people to fuck off if I don't like them.

So there's, you know, but that each one has its downsides too. Uh, you know, the, uh, the more submissive or more obedient person has less conflicts with people and has more friends, perhaps. and then the more assertive person, say, has less friends in social contacts, because they're not interested in holding on to them as much. So, I mean, it's positives and negatives to both. Don't be either extreme. That's just what I'm trying to say.

Well, the assertive one might have friends that are much more authentic because they don't hang around for the bullshit. They're not a people pleaser. True, true. But also, and then by the downside, a lower threshold for bullshit as well of like, you know, maybe I should have hung in there a little bit. Maybe that wasn't so bad.

Maybe I didn't need to cut them off. But it's in the past. Done is done. So, and that's some of the things with somebody, the rationalizations we tell ourselves after the fact can be a thing. So, so you were describing your journey into this was your relationship.

And so he came back from the Middle East and there was alcohol problems and metaphor. And he had the possession. Right. He was having those night terrors and then I started getting them. And I had quite a few dreams. I even had one of, if you've ever heard of shadow people.

Yeah. with a drive shadow people. I have seen one at the foot of my bed with the big yellow eyes. And it's like their body is like the squiggly of when the TV no longer had programming and it would just go to the fuzz. Oh, yeah. I've seen that. And so this is why I also don't watch paranormal activity because I've seen things and I'm like, they're out there. I don't, I don't need to, I don't need to pretend that they're out there.

I know there are there. I used to enjoy scary movies more in the past. And now I, how do I phrase this? I don't want to. and I don't want to occupy my mind with thoughts about that. There's enough tragedy in the world. I've become pushing 50. I've become a kind of a weepy old man.

Like human tragedy just cuts me to the core. And I, it doesn't excite you. It doesn't give feeling of joy. I mean, maybe you feel alive when that jolt happens and you get that adrenaline rush when something pops out. But like,

is it really worth that? Yeah, which is weird because I'm doing that sober October thing with the scary games. And I like, I enjoy it and I don't. in a way. And it can stick with you, and especially games that are very difficult and your character dies repeatedly. Now you have real life stress. I have something I physically cannot overcome in the moment and I'm stuck in it. Like, God, do I give up and walk away? Because screw this. Who cares? It's dumb game.

Or do I persevere and try and finish it for the, for the experience? Most of what I'm looking for is a good story. So I'll go with tragic things, scary things. If it's a good story, there's got to be something more to it than just, hey, look at this blood splash everywhere. like not interested don't care not that's just just purely unpleasant um but uh no you were talking about so i mentioned there were two different kinds of uh night terrors and the one we we uh the one clinically or professionally best described as night terrors is the variety where the person suddenly cries out and they're acting it's a form of somnambulism

where, you know, sleepwalking in a way, where they're, they shouldn't be acting out distress of any kind. And it'll stop on its own or it can be calmed down in a variety of ways. And in the morning, they won't remember that that it happened. And that's the, that's the quote unquote technical night terror. The other side where what a lot of people mean is, well, you had a really strong recurring nightmare that wakes you up screaming multiple times a night or, or multiple days in a row or frequently. And that's not it, that's more just an intense nightmare problem than the night terror problem. Um, and, uh, you know, one, one story I heard was that a, um, a person used to sleep in, you know, bunk beds with, with their younger brother and the younger brother

would have night terrors. No triggering event that we, that we, you know, were able to, uh, determine, but what he needed to do was go to the bathroom and he couldn't wake up. And so if this older brother would help his younger brother go to the bathroom, get him back into bed, he would be fine. He would go right back to sleep. And it was, so this,

the distress, so there's many different kinds of distress that can be, it could be biological distress. Right. But I just wanted to throw that out there for edification. So, back to your story, sorry.

I love that. Yeah. So this one particular one, and it's actually on the other side of the night terrors that you were talking about, where I didn't actually remember until he described it to me afterwards. And then the moment he described it,

It was like I saw everything again, you know. So I'm, I'm asleep and I am dreaming of us in our bed in the actual apartment that we're living in. And I see a dark figure standing over him and pouring something into his mouth. And I don't remember screaming, but I guess I was screaming and he had to shake me awake. And he's like, what happened? And I was like, and I told him what happened. And then the next morning, he's like, so are you okay? what happened in your dream?

And I was like, what dream? What happened? And then he related to me. And then it was like that image came back to me of that dark figure pouring something into his mouth. And so I kind of like attribute it. And you could do your own interpretation as well. But I kind of attribute it to like, okay, yeah, every time he drinks alcohol, he becomes

this horrible person. And don't get me wrong, he was also horrible sober. but I mean when he really drank and so it's this dark liquid going into him that his soul can't handle and he becomes this asshole excuse my language it's quite all right I don't I don't censor anything you know I don't tend to curse a lot but but fuck it sometimes it's the only it's the only word that fits um you know I think it has more power if you don't if it's not every other word you say so but it's just a natural tendency sometimes it pops out so no no worries this is not a show made for kids kids can watch it if they want to but I don't want to. But I wouldn't advise it. Yeah, it's not our, it's not our 18, as they say. I'm going to say, now, just to put the pieces together in my mind, was he having similar dreams to that,

some demon pouring things into him? And he didn't get the connection. So he never had a specific one like that. Okay. But he would wake up screaming. And I think it was usually like a reflection of what he experienced in Iraq. I mean, I think that's a natural conclusion.

is unresolved trauma. So the way I phrase these things is that, you know, the heart beats, the lungs breathe, and the brain thinks. And it does that whether we're asleep or awake. So what I conceptualize as dreams is our raw, unfiltered stream of consciousness. And by unfiltered, I mean unfiltered through conscious attention, where we're also attending to the environment. We're choosing thoughts to focus on.

And then we get this mental noise, the stream running in the background. And so I think we dream. from the moment we fall asleep to the moment we wake up, because it's just mental activity during sleep, whether we remember it. And then what we call capital D dreams is, okay, this is the imagery and experience I remember when I wake up.

So that I'm getting all these, all these perspectives and definitions from these 18, currently available works of historical dream literature. Got to self-promote, got to do it. No, because I guarantee you, if you read all these books,

you'll get pretty close to my understanding. And you don't need a back. background in psychology because that just gives me the ability to then do the dream interpretation thing for other people. Like you can do this for yourself with this, you know, I could call my own designed masterclass, so to speak. I should come up with a course. I should start an academy. Like I should start my own Hogwarts. There's so many things you want to do, though. There's so many things. Not enough time of the day. Yeah, I just going to get these books published first and I have all

these video games to play. What are you going to do? Oh, my life is tough. So, and I actually kind of think, I almost think of it from like the engineering, engineer in me is like your brain is this big old computer and you're getting all of this input all day, every day, like 20,000 gigabytes of information that we're not even conscious is coming into us, right? We're just downloading, downloading, downloading. And like our conscious level is only picking up a few things. But then when you power down and, you know, your computer is resetting. It goes down to the hard drive and like brings up all of that input and then like interprets it from there,

which is also kind of, oh, I just, I have a really great tie into the next dream. And I was just going to say, which is also what I think deja vu and premonition dreams are, that you've already, you have all the information and your brain is commuted. It's just it couldn't really like do it so that you're like, ah, yes, I have predicted tomorrow, you know. For sure. That also kind of ties back into what I was talking about, like, what is a wizard versus a witch necessarily, but, but, but the archetype of a wizard, there's two main things they do that seem magical to other people. It is, uh, seeing the future and speaking magic words. And if you understood properly, it isn't conjuring fireballs, although I can actually do that.

I just need a, uh, uh, a magician's device that you hit a little button and it shoots a packet of, of, of gunpowder and, and, and flash paper. you can you can you can you can shoot fireballs we could do that or they do the thing where you you hold the lighter and you like let out some lighter fluid and then open yeah yeah and and of course to anyone who doesn't know what a lighter is that's magic what the hell which reminds me of a great joke too man but maybe i'll get to it afterwards but um but the speaking magic words i think of is is it is communication it is sharing useful information for you to be of of benefit so or or There's evil wizards. And this is the other categories I want to get to.

I conceive of evil wizards as necromancers. They turn other people into their zombie puppets. And they can command armies. And that goes to cult leaders and politicians and all kinds of different, you know, different things. So building a conception in my mind. But the other thing wizards do is see the future. And how do they do that? Is it actual premonitions, I think, in a purely scientific framework?

It is you've been around for a minute. You've seen that done that. you know, the patterns. It's any old guy that said to a young kid, I wouldn't do that. That's a bad idea. Didn't work out for me. Let me learn from my mistakes. That I think is.

You know, now that is combining the essence of, of a wizard is that advice of an older man to a younger man, don't make my same mistakes. I can see your future. Here's the magic words I'm trying to give you to avoid a nasty fate. It's like, you know, anyway,

so that's what I think is going on with that. And I had up, I don't remember. Why I told you that. It was something. Oh, premonition, see in the future. Reminition in the computer, your brain being a computer base. And sometimes we put the pieces together in our dreams and we show ourselves a likely outcome of a given scenario.

And then lo and behold, it comes to pass as such. And that, in my estimation, is as close as I can get to endorsing, differentiating between pure fantasy of dreams and actual mass. magical premonition of the future is to that. Now that said, just because I can't explain it, it doesn't mean it isn't real. And I have real life friends I've talked to who said, Ben,

I had a dream and I knew it was a prophetic dream. And one week later, to the, to the spoken word, to the event, to the tilt of the head, to the everything played out exactly as I saw it. I can't explain that.

But why don't I do? So that is the, another dream I had. This one, we don't have to like really dive into the interpretation because it is very much that. I was living in San Diego. I was having a plan to go with my friend hiking a couple days later. And so I'll start off with, you know, those very powerful deja vues where you're like,

oh my God, I don't know why, but I know this, like whatever. And exactly like you said, that tilt of the head reminded me all of this that I've seen this before, but I don't know where I've seen it. This was one of those occasions where it's like, oh, my God, I had this dream two days ago. Like, that's why I know. So we go hiking and we're walking along and there's a big construction on the side of this dirt path. And it hits me. It's like, oh, my God, I've had this.

I had this dream two days ago. We're walking by. And in the dream, I can't see. I'm looking over, but I just can't like, you know, you know how you know what it is. but you actually never like look over and see the image. You just know it's construction, the big yellow, yellow machines. And we walk down. And as we go up this hill, we start talking about premonition and telekinesis and all of these and being a psychic and stuff.

And it's like we had that exact moment. And I realized the reason we started talking about psychic is because I told her, I had this dream. I have already seen this two days ago. And so it was very powerful. Like I have those deja vus all the time. And so the way I rationally explain it all is, you know, oh, well, your brain's a computer. It's monitoring all these patterns.

It's taken in all that information. You just knew it was kind of coming based on your pattern recognition. And so like that one was so powerful. It was like, whoa. It hit me so hard. And that's, that is the biggest indicator. It's like it's not just it's that feeling that comes with it. And so I was going to ask you too, this, this friend that I talked to who had a literal

prophetic dream, he says there is a very distinct, two distinct feelings between the fulfillment of a prophetic dream and the experience of deja vu. Yeah. Now, similar categoriesish, but distinct feelings. Was that your experience as well? Yes, because, well, and I would say it's still very similar, but the premonition dream like you don't know i didn't know that that was coming to fruition you know it was only until it actually happened that it's like oh crap i know like those deja vu moments you're just like i don't know

why but this feels familiar it's those premonition dreams that's just like oh wow i can identify in pinpoint when i have this dream and all of the details about it so i guess there's that differentiation well this goes back to and i'm still investigating but when i first started investigating getting this as a phenomenon. The first thing that occurred to me was like, how close is this to deja vu? Because there's different schools that thought about deja vu. And one of them is, for whatever reason, we get a little hiccup in the brain. It's like for some reason, a circuit of experience triggers twice in rapid succession.

And we get a kind of layered resonance of that experience where, and we call that deja vu. And that would be a purely physical phenomenon. And maybe it is. and maybe it's also spiritual on top of that. But then there's the alternative side of what I've chosen to believe. Why? Who knows?

I just like it. That means I'm in the right place at the right time for whatever reason. That's what I've chosen to believe. And that's interesting. You came to the same conclusion. Yeah. Well, and I also noticed that too when it comes to even just those small coincidences. So like I had a really powerful one last week.

I've been recently thinking of the Lauren Hill killing me softly song. Just for some reason, just been recently thinking about it. love the song. I was thinking about singing it because I do love to sing. And I just been thinking about it, never played it. I have it on my phone. I could easily play it. And all of a sudden,

I walk into Walmart. First song that comes on is Lauren. And it's a popular song, but it's not that popular to be like, oh, this is playing at Walmart every day. I haven't heard it in a long time. If I was thinking about it,

then son, now Carl Jung, that was actually an example of synchronicity. And the way he described it, I think was you're thinking of the money you owe to Mr. Fishburn. And as you're thinking of him and walking down the street right over there is a burnt fish. What the hell just happened? I mean, how do you have missed, you know, and I don't know.

I don't know. That blows my mind. But I think it's absolutely real. And I think it happens all the time. And the more you're aware of it and open to seeing it, the more you'll, you'll see it happen. And I think those are also indicators of being right place, right time. for whatever reason. I've got another one that was super powerful. It was, it happened in March, March of this year. Randomly, my cousin, out of nowhere, had texted me at five in the morning saying,

you know what band I haven't really thought of, but really do enjoy incubus. And I was like, that's funny. Maybe two hours later. And again, I'm seeing this all at the same time kind of thing. I came back to my phone in the morning and saw all the messages. Two hours later, my best friend says, hey, by the way, I broke up with my boyfriend, and so that extra incubus ticket is yours. And I was like, what the, this is great. Then I go to one of my favorite coffee shops because I'll work on my computer there. And the moment I step outside, this girl is playing on her laptop, my favorite incubus song. And I was like, all in one day, I don't know.

Yeah. But I have a, so my theory on these deja vu, and I don't know if it's. true. I don't have evidence. I just like to believe it is the multi multi universe theory. So every time you make a choice, you kind of like split off a universe, right? It's you, the experience you have after making this choice or the life experience you have after making this choice. And that happens, you know, infinite amount of times, right? But a deja vu is where they can come back together. So basically, no matter what decisions you would have made, you're coming back to this exact point and experiencing it no matter what.

That's, I hadn't thought of that. I do think the, okay, if we start from the logical, the logical extension of the given, what did Einstein say, he said, you know, grant me one miracle and I'll explain the universe. I think it was Einstein. Yeah. So if we're going to accept that the universe is infinite,

that means anything that is possible is actual in an alternate dimension that actually alternate dimensions are being created all the time by free will by the choice to, I'm going to turn left, I'm going to turn right. I'm going to go. I'm not going to go. Just everything I'm going to put on my, my left shoe first today for whatever reason. And I have not thought of a convergence type of thing. Yeah. And there may be many circumstances like that where there's a lot of roads. This actually makes a tremendous amount of sense now that I think about it. Your plan is to go to the store. And that is your destination. Now, there's a billion universes. You never make it to the store. You die. You change your mind. Who knows? You're right.

wife says, we already have butter. Why are you going to the store for butter? I thought we need a butter. Or you go to a different store that you didn't need to go to? Exactly. The possibilities are literally infinite. But there's a million universes where you get to the store. And the roots to the store are all over the place.

Now, that would, it would almost suggest deja vu should be more common. But there's also the, what am I trying to say? This is all free, free, I've never thought of this before. I'm trying to put it together in my head as we go. there's probably a million ways to arrive at the store as well and to go through the aisles. So the idea that you're going to hit a convergence is not as common, right? Yeah, because otherwise deja vu would happen all the time. More often than it does.

Right now I'm wondering too is the deja vu. It's got to be something somewhat meaningful in that sense, right? Like it's not, it would not be something so simple as, well, I could have gone to the store in many different ways. It's more of like, more powerful, like had I not gone for engineering or something. Something very life-changing, I would be like the monumental of the deja vu. Yeah. And now that I'm thinking about it, I think I've had, you know, if I say, what is the most common circumstance for you, Ben, under which deja vu happens? I think it's usually what I'm talking to another person.

I don't know why that's the most common type for me. If I just search my memory like, what's the common theme? Not always. Maybe you talk about the same things all the time? That could be. Say again, sorry. You talk about the same subjects and same ideas. Anyone who's listened to all 206 now, 206 episodes of this show will know I repeat a lot of the same things over and over again.

Because I think sometimes people are going to, we standardize and phrase things in a particular way to best express our understanding. And then we're talking to a new person. The audience is not new, but I'm explaining to you, Heather, my understanding of something. And that's why I say, this is how I phrase it or I've come to this understanding of it. So. Right, right, right. Give me one second. I'm going to turn the AC on versus fan.

Oh, please, yes. It's getting a little. Oh, that was super quick. I thought like, well, we got a minute. It's right over there. Yeah, yeah. Even better. That's not even a break.

That's not even a pause, hardly. That's less silence than sometimes I use to try and come up with an answer for things. But we were, um, while we went off on a whole tangent. I keep wanting to bring it back to you, your current profession. So we were telling the story. Eventually in your life, you came to the realization, this is not a healthy relationship for me. I'm going to leave. I mean, I don't know if you want to tell that story or. Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of factors. And it's funny because I, I try to reflect on my own experience so I can help my clients.

And they'll ask me, well, like, what did it take to leave? Well, there's a lot of factors, actually. And the big one is having a space. And like you just said, a space in between where you no longer experiencing their. immediate presence and giving yourself the time to reflect on like, is this what I really like? Is this what I really want? Is this what I see for my future? If I stay in this relationship, what is the next five years you know what like? For me, I had a lot of moments in my life opportunities to do that. One of them was, so I was going back to school for electrical engineering and doing a second bachelor's in this country, not as easy to do. Everybody's like, well, you already have a bachelor's. Well, I can't get a job with the

bachelor's I have. So I'm going back because nobody else, like and now in today, a bachelor's is a high school degree, right? Unfortunately, yeah, used to mean something. Yeah, it used to mean something. And so if you are applying for a job, you have to have a bachelor's in that specific area, and

now they want experience. But it's like, well, how do I get experience until I get the degree? And then you won't hire me unless if I have experience. So, long story short, I'm going back for electrical engineering and my ex at the time was studying as a nurse PA, PA assistant. And he said that when he gets into school, he's going to go live in Germany for six months and

that I have to figure out my own way over there or I'm not coming. And I was like, well, what does that mean for a relationship? We were already six years into the relationship. Like, I'm sorry, we live together. What is this? So I was like, okay, well, I'm going to, I'm going to figure it out. And I figured out I found an electrical engineering internship so I could still continue. I could apply for financial aid because I was broke because, you know, paying for an alcohol. Alcoholism is very expensive. So I went and he did not go. And that was that was tough for him.

But it was an eye opener for me. I gave myself that space to be away from his influence. Also, I always promote this. I always push this that everybody, not even just people coming from a toxic relationship, should travel solo in your life. It doesn't have to be overseas. It doesn't have to be far away. But just the idea of when you step off that plane, that train, that bus, there is nobody there but you to figure out how you're going to get to the hostel,

how you're going to get to your hotel. And I mean, sometimes you show up and the signs are not in English. and you only know like sprekenzy Deutsch? I don't. So can you speak in English? Actually, I lie. I'm learning languages right now. I've been trying to.

I mean, I think it's stupid that us Americans only know one language. But I have theories on that. So I won't divulge into that one. Fair enough. But just that experience alone really started getting me back into my power that I can make decisions. And if they're the wrong ones, I can handle the consequences. I am that powerful. And that's what happens after a toxic relationship.

You don't have faith in yourself that you can handle anything, that you can handle the consequences, that you can even make decisions on what cereal to buy because you're worried that you'll get ridiculed. So that part helped. I did come back to the relationship after the six months. But there was a lot of riff, a lot of riff the entire time. Not that there hadn't been the entire relationship, but this was even more. so because I had stepped into my power. I was a new person. I also got the break of when I applied to school, NAU, Northern Arizona University, was the only one that would accept me for the second

bachelors, which meant I was moving from San Diego to Arizona without him. And it gave me that kind of break. I mean, that's one thing a lot of my clients talk about that, you know, I'm on the lease with him. I can't afford to rent another place at this time. And then, you know, when you're stuck in that environment, you end up taking them back. They, you know, they manipulate you in some way. So I got that chance to have the distance to make decisions and to kind of reflect and realize like, yeah, this isn't, I'd rather be alone than be treated this way. And, you know, we all have that fear of being alone.

And it was like, I got to that point where screw it. I'll be alone. I'll be better treated. I'll go treat myself to a milkshake every. day like yeah i'm not doing this so and that's that's tough that's like i had these opportunities so it's tough for me to relate to my clients like well i you know you've got to find an out where you get the space away from them you get the space from their influence and it gives you that time to reflect oh oh oh i just had a really big deja vu oh yeah right place right time it was your hair your hair

that set it off. Wow. Even my hair is magic. There's a reason I wear it down. I mean, it's the image. You know, you got to have the beard of the hair.

You know, you keep all your secrets in here, you know. Very cool. I think that's very powerful, too. There's a lot of people that, um,

how do we end up in bad relationships? It's not like there weren't warning signs. That's why we talk a lot about red flags and, and try to, you know, again, as I was talking about with the speaking magic, where it's trying to give you,

each other good advice about how to avoid bad situations. But sometimes you get into it because your, um, dysfunctions are compatible and you get drawn together. And, and, and we're, uh, very often repeating patterns from childhood. You know, it's not always that, but, um, and then you get, uh, what we, you know, we call enmeshed, you get a meshed with someone and your, uh, your need for your dependence of code codependence they call, you know, your need for to be dependent on their, them being dysfunctional.

Otherwise, you have to change and improve as well. well. You got to address your own issues. You'll focus on them and being their savior versus focus on yourself. I figured out why we're having this deja vu because I literally just wrote the newsletter about this of another aspect of why we get into these toxic relationships is because we have a toxic relationship with ourselves. We're the ones berating ourselves, talking shit about ourselves, you know, not believing in ourselves, manipulating ourselves into believing that we have no power and we're not in control and you know so we start with that toxic relationship and again like you said

that comes from that could come from childhood wounds that can come from just society that can come from a multitude of things but we don't start out that way we don't start out as like a baby saying that you know all we're fat we're chunky all we do is all we do is shit our pants you know we don't start out that way society molds us but then this is where maintaining that victim mindset is not going to help you move forward. It'll keep you stuck there. It'll keep you stuck to your previous relationship, too, especially if you're focusing on their patterns,

their behaviors, and this is where that narcissistic term comes in. It's great to identify patterns, but does it help you move forward or does it keep you stuck to them? Absolutely. And I think, you know, as much as a lot of this stuff where I start like 15 different sentences

and I can't finish one. I know. Seriously. The concept of validation. We all seek validation in different ways. And usually it's a validation of our self concept. So why do people, where are people drawn to dysfunctional relationships?

Oh, they see me the same way I do. And if your self-concept is bad, negative, you want that reflected to you. Oh, they think I'm a piece of shit too. What a wonderful man. You know,

that kind of thing. But if your self-concept is better. Say again. Is that confirmation bias? Yes. What we believe, we're looking for proof outside to confirm that that belief. How we feel about ourselves.

So yeah, and breaking out of it is very much exactly as you said is, is seeing ourselves differently or developing becoming different. I mean, we may be, what is it? If you tell people and they say, I'm just a worthless piece of shit and I say right now, yes, based on this behavior. Now, that's not a broader self-concept eternal over all time. Right now you're not creating worth or value through your behavior. You're kind of a piece of shit in the terms of you're not acting.

You're not acting right towards other people or you're doing bad things to other people. So there's sometimes you want to. It can be tricky and you want to handle it gently, you know, in therapy. But sometimes you want to be blunt and say things like, you know, if they say, oh, I'm just a worthless piece of shit. That's what I would say for now, maybe. But it doesn't have to be that way. Maybe you do. Maybe you really have, well, thank you.

It's completely free. Maybe you have things you need to work on. Maybe you're not the best person you could be. Maybe you're hurting people and, and you can choose not to. And, uh, you know, it's a bit of a shock value in that too is, sometimes you say things like, let's get you out of that comfort zone. Come on.

Uh, in a safe way. You can come back. I'm not abandoning you. Let's do this. Um, right. So, yeah, that's, that can be too. But so that, that is a very powerful thing too. And that giving yourself the space to change as well to say who it's a, it's a, it's

because I love stories. Stories are so good. Alice in Wonderland, she gets there in the cat, what's the caterpillar? Ask her now that she's shrunk. She got big. Oh, I'm too big. Then she got small. Now she's in a completely, she's in another, she's Isakai.

She's like an anime. She's in another world. And now she's a tiny, experiencing a layer of, of an alternative. She's levels removed from normal. And the caterpillar asks her, who are you? Who are you when you're not at home? Who are you in a different environment? what is the core of you that you're bringing to this no matter where you go.

So getting that space and it looked like you had an idea. I'm going to stop there. Oh, no. It's just, it's funny that you mention it because so I love to read. And I'm always trying to read one to better myself, one to show up best for my clients. But also I've started to realize that I also need a little bit of enjoyment and pleasure. So I've been going back and reading like classic literature and stuff. And so I, for the first time read Alice in Wonderland and then through the looking glass.

there was a line that the caterpillar said and it struck me and I wish I would have written it down but it was something like well you are always something like on the lines of you're always the person you are something like that like you're always the alice that you are and yeah so when you pop that in i was like oh man i was just thinking about that one in some ways i've struggled with the notion of changing the scenery because i think it's a valid truism the idea wherever you go there you are. You bring yourself wherever you go. That's the book I want to read next to. Right. And yeah, then that's, you can expand that concept into a whole book. But, but, but basically the idea is, you know, I've thought about escaping to it. And I use that word specifically because it was,

well, let me change my scenery. Okay. Well, what am I running from? And what am I going to? What's going to be different when I get there if I bring me with me? What if I just change me here? Maybe this is a come, but it would be a better place to be. Then there's the flip side of it where, you're enmeshed in a relationship and you're too occupied with another person's drama and the relationship dynamic, you don't get a chance to reflect on yourself in a little bit of peace and quiet, a little bit of way. What do I do in the morning? What do I have for breakfast when I don't have to worry about what he wants? What do I want? Do I eat breakfast? Do I just have coffee? Do do I make eggs and bacon and he's a pancake guy? I don't have to worry about that. I get to find out

who I really am and what I really want. And then look at, well, does this work? You also got to balance that with the idea of that, you know, in healthy relationship, you take your partner's preferences into account. That's all good. But hopefully they're taking yours into account, too. You're validating the best parts of each other. And we're all broken and dysfunctional in our ways. We're not all abusive towards each other. You know, we have her moments. I've yelled at my wife. She's yelled at me. And it happens. And then I say, I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry. Let's stop yelling. I don't want to, I don't want to yell at you anymore. This sucks. And I talk about with healthy relationships. You're not trying to find.

this perfect relationship where you never argue and everything is rainbows and sunshine because that doesn't exist we take ourselves with us we all have bad days we all have moments you know life isn't just this cakewalk you're going to have ups and downs and you need a partner who you can have those healthy conflicts with and it's all about not necessarily what's said in the conflict but what's said afterwards how do you come back from the conflict absolutely yeah yeah not not not holding a grudge and not reopening past wounds without a purpose in a way of like or holding things against people of like, well, you remember that time you yelled to me. Now you're yelling at me again. Well, I don't do that very often. I try not, I try never to yell. She had like that.

I don't like it. I don't like yelling. You're feeling out of control or feeling angry. But sometimes it happens. And you don't take it too far and you apologize and you reconnect afterwards and say, okay, how do we avoid this? I don't, I don't want to have this conversation over and over again. Something's got to guess. What do you want to do? Let's, let's fight about something. about it. Yeah, yeah. Let's fight over something that actually matters. Like, let's not be picky about little stupid things. And I think that's all part of that, that growth process too. Like that's, I can't recommend, well, if you have a, if you can find a good person, that's, that's the trick, isn't it? But I can't recommend marriage enough because

it's one of those things where it's like, you know, as long as you're not evil towards each other or one partner is taking advantage or just be malicious towards the other, you can navigate those things with the relative certainty. They're going to be there tomorrow. You'll figure it out. Some people say don't go to bed angry. You can't always help that. But don't wake up angry.

Don't continue the conversation. Don't continue the argument making a conversation about what happened and put it to bed in some way. And don't ignore it. Don't shine it on because then it's going to happen again for sure. You change nothing. Nothing's going to change. I love platitudes. It's like another book I'm going to write.

A wizard's guide to the aspirational aphorism, starting with an apple a day keeps the doctor away. We're going to explain that and then all the other way. We do a A through Z. I like that. One of these days I'm going to write that. I get so many ideas. Do you have a note taker so that they can like, you know, combine all of this? These are all of your book ideas.

Well, what I do is I actually, I have a title page type of thing that is going to be standard across multiple different. books and every time I have a new idea, I will go and put the title in there, just like that, and leave it there and save that. And now that's in my, I'm going to get around to it folder. And I'm not ignoring it. That's where I keep all the other books that I've already published as well. That's, that's where they all started. So I've got a system in a way. But some of, am I going to get around to all of it? Probably not. I'll probably, I'll probably let some fall by the wayside. I want to write a sci-fi fantasy novel too someday, but I'm not confident in my ability. I tried to start it 30 years ago and I wasn't ready. Wasn't ready to start.

The next George Lucas, man. Maybe so. And that's what I'm trying to do, you know, which is interesting because I love storytelling. And to me, one of the most disappointing things I'm watching an anime series right now called The Misfit of Demon King Academy. It's on the last six episodes of the final season. And I know why I didn't get a third season. It's not that good.

Fantastic high concept, like a kind of A for efforts, C minus for execution. That's disappointing. I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be that author who's like, oh, that sounds amazing. Oh, that was disappointing. Right. I don't want to be that guy. So until I'm ready.

And that's okay. Take me another 20 years. What the book that felt like that for me. So I read a, I do like fantasy fiction is usually my favorite. I am a woman who does enjoy a sex scene, especially written from a woman's one view. And then throw in some wings and wizards. I'm all about. Nothing wrong with that.

Right? So I did read 50 Shades of Gray. And I read the sequel. as well. I couldn't read the third one. I love the concept. It's great. You know, very stimulating, but the way she wrote it, no offense to her, if she does listen to your podcast, I just thought that, you know, I have a better language, you know, capability than that. I felt like we were using the same words over and over, and I was just like, you lost me. You lost me. Yeah. Oh, that is disappointing. That's, you know, and it's disappointing when the execution is not there.

Yeah, definitely. And I think the difference, between say that and the Twilight series even and the Harry Potter series is, the closer you get to eternal philosophical principles playing out, the hero with a thousand faces mythology, hero's journey mythology playing out over and over again. The closer you cleave to that, the better and more meaningful the story is going to be to a lot of people too. And that's one of the best ways to one of my favorite authors, if you haven't read it,

his name is Terry Goodkind. he lives in the Pacific Northwest somewhere around here. And his novel series is called The Sword of Truth. And the first book is called a wizard's first rule. And each book is almost like he has a philosophical concept he wants to explore. And he tells a story around that idea. And that's the narrative arc of the story is exploring the expression of the idea, how it might play out and what he thinks is the likely conclusion.

And so in the first book, what is the wizard's first? Wizards have each, each book introduces a new wizard's rule. It's fantastic. He, he, uh, Richard is the hero and he's being educated by, uh, the wizard Zedicus Zul Zorander, of course. Um, and, uh, he's told that the wizard's first rule is people will believe something for two reasons. They want it to be true or they are afraid it might be true.

So, you know, it's, uh, you believe what you want to believe, wishful thinking or fearful thinking in terms of, uh, oh, I think this bad thing is likely. I better validate the concept to avoid that outcome. And that's and, and the exploration of it comes down to, well, how do you use that to manipulate people? How do you use that to, uh, for, as a good or evil sorcerer, so to speak? Um, and one, one way is to tell the truth and, and, and, encourage people to believe what is true. And the other way is to play on their fears and, um, and manipulate their, their desires. And

I want this or I'm afraid of that. And that goes back to, it goes all the way back to, uh, Freud's concept of dreams, um, as wishful fulfillment. He's, he's, he's right. And it's bigger than, you know, it's like he's got the core of it. And there's a, another layer, which he's also right, but it's, but it's not quite the same is, uh, dreams can be a lot of different things. But one of them is, I want this outcome or I want to avoid that outcome. And that's a lot of our, and, and I think that comes down to what I think dreams are in terms of thought experiments for problem solving. Let me explore this concept because I want to understand it or I want to avoid a bad outcome or I want to create a good outcome. And speaking of dreams, we're an hour in.

We could probably go four and a half hours on this one. But let's, do you want to transition to the dream thing after your comment? Yeah, I was going to say, if this is who you're holding your standard of you writing your science fantasy fiction book, I can understand why it's daunting and why you haven't written it yet because I think about that. like to have an overall concept and write an entire story touching on that. I'm just like flabbergasted at how I could even implement that. So I'm like, me too.

It's very daunting. And I started twice in the past. And I actually threw away all my notes 20 years ago. Oh, you never throw away notes. I regret everything. It was a terrible idea. I'm recreating a lot of it.

And a lot of it never left my head. I mean, I've got the basic premise. It's been the same forever. And I've got like how the world works and magic and different. different things and it's all in there. But I'm using, so it's daunting and it's a wonderful exemplar to hold up because what I'm figuring to do is 30 seconds, I swear, I'm not going to tell the whole story, but I'm imagining three characters that have three different political

philosophical approaches to the world. One of them, the main, sort of main character being a cybor mercenary from a technological future that ends up in a sci-fi fantasy magic realm. One person he meets is a broadly, you know, feminist, matriarchal society, sorceress type of gal, nature, nature wizard, very leaning into that stereotype. And these are meant to be extreme stereotypes of a certain way of looking at the world. The other character is a paladin or crusader type, a holy knight from a patriarchal religious order and now all three of these people got to come together and save the world how do they how do they get along how do they navigate problem solving with conflicting goals in mind like i don't

like this outcome so i don't want to work with you to achieve it well we have to what's the compromise in a functional way that gets the job done that's the high concept i'm kind of working with and executing it poorly is going to be uh it's very disappointing that was yeah 30 seconds that's my idea um but then also bringing in bringing in different perspectives of um political perspectives in a way. But I think politics, religion, philosophy, I think it's all the same thing. In my estimation, it's all belief systems, all how you understand the world and how you choose to act. So if they run into other people who maybe open their eyes to a third possibility or fourth possibility that no one ever thought of because they needed to meet someone they'd never met before, I always talk about me.

Talk about narcissism. Let's go. Let's talk about your dream. The other thing I was going to mention, too, that I really liked, because this is a coaching concept that just stems in all of coaching certifications is the motivation behind anything we do is either to move closer to pleasure or to move away from pain. So when you were talking about the, you know, like manipulating based on fears or, you know, your pleasurable outcome, it's human life. That's all of all the motivation behind everything we do. And the fantastic thing is he took a basic concept. He phrased it in his own way, a wizard's rule. And the words he chose to express it. I don't think that existed anywhere else.

He invented that and put it in and wrote a whole book about it. But not only that, he wrote, so this, you was talking about, I can't recommend read the first one. If you like it, you like it. If you don't, you're not going to like the rest of them. But it is typical high fantasy. He also had an amazing imagination for how magic worked in that world and not just how it worked. the standard. Some people are born with it or they or they were imbued with it. And then, but it's how it works, how it's meant to function. And he, uh, there's a, and actually there's a

series called the Legend of the Seeker that was done in a kind of Hercules Zena style 10, 15 years ago. It's a very, it's not the books. The books are dark. The books are brutal in a lot of ways. The books are, you will, you will experience someone's hopelessness and despair as they suffer. And it goes on for pages. And you're like, let me out of this. And that's, that's good writing. It's like, I'm feeling something about this character. Words on a page. I can close it. It's not real. You feel it. So I love that too. So he's got, like, here's one example. The, the, the, the, one of the female leads is a woman in, uh, Alyn, Aelan, Caitlin, something like that. Anyway, I can't remember now. She is, she is a magical creature in a way that she has,

um, she was created by Wizards of the past. Her, her, her, her, bloodline to be what's called a confessor. And her power is, you know, she will be brought in to take the confession of someone accused of a crime. And he, and because of her power, he will only speak the truth. Now, what is her power? Her power is the power of love. She makes him hopelessly in love with her to the point where he can't even conceive of lying to her. That's how she gets the truth out of him. But then it lasts for life. And there's people who've been on trial and they know they're innocent and they say, I will prove it. You get me a confessor. But then they're they're sacrificing. There's a tragedy too. They're proving their innocence by sacrificing their independent thought.

And then they just become, you know, in love to. Zombies. Yeah, yeah. And well, okay, now, countermeasures, how do you, let's say you've got a war of the wizards in the world, how do you defeat that kind of magically created weapon? Because a confessor, her powers are limited to once a day and that it has to restore, but it's permanent. So she can once a day, 365 days, she's got an army of 365 people that are on her side. And that was one way they were in these ancient wizard wars where this is the level of this guy's creativity. They were stealing the enemy soldiers by having confessors convert them forcibly to fight on

their side, right? It's amazing. I want that level of detail. If I can't rise to that, I'd rather not read a book. That's fucking amazing. But then, okay, countermeasures had, I swear I said 10 minutes ago I was going to stop talking about this. How do you defeat that?

Well, you have to send enough men or soldiers, whatever, to get the job done. So the enemy person who stands in opposition to the heroes, he sends out what are called quads. It is four men. And because you know you're going to lose one man to the confessor, because she's going to use her power. You need one man or two men because the confessed, they fight with the fury of a thousand beasts. They will not be stopped. So you need two men to restrain him. and the fourth man can carry through with the assassination.

So you have to send out, he thought all the way through this stuff. How do you defeat that, that power? Well, you have to send four assassins because one is not going to get the job done. She's going to get the drop on him. If she dies,

is the person that fell in love with her released? I don't remember. I think maybe, yes, but I don't remember. It might be permanent. And then they, and then actually, Well, and then what happened to them?

Do they die? Is it like, you know, how geese only they mate for life? So when one of them, when their confessor dies that they're in love with, they die too kind of thing? Or they just are miserable for the rest of them? I think, I think it lasts forever because what I'm remembering, and I could be, this has been like 10 years since I read the series. I think what happens is they go insane and get themselves killed hell bent on revenge. They will, they will charge an army of a thousand men alone to get to the one guy. who did that to her.

If I'm remembering correctly, I think that is the truth. So killing the confessor is no cure. It's permanent, I think, I think. But that's amazing. I need that level of interesting stuff to happen. That's when I'm watching anime, that's the same thing too.

It's like, great high concept poor execution. Like, this could have been so much better. And then to watch some of the animated fight scenes, and it's like, swords clash a few times, and then they stand there talking. And I'm like, show me some action. Show me some combat. I went and saw the,

Demon Slayer movie in the theater. Nonstop, beautiful art of people flying through the air, twisting and turning, creative solutions to, this is my secret power. Aha, this is how I overcome it because I'm the hero. I want to see that over, Norfolk. Show me so that I haven't seen before. Show me something creative and interesting. I'm going to stop talking.

I can do this all day. Let's talk about your dream. So, as per usual, I'm going to shut up and listen. I swear, I'm actually going to shut up. and our friend Heather's going to tell us about her dream like a narrative. Beginning to it in, here's my experience. And then between the two of us, we're going to hopefully put together a meaningful understanding of it. 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 Dreams 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 Dream Wizard.com, where you will also find the wizard's growing catalog of historical dream literature. available on Amazon, documenting the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past 2,000 years. That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube and at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com.

So this one is also along the premonition lines. It's a little bit more sad, I would say. So last, shoot, March of this year, my cousin passed away from cancer. And he's actually married to my cousin, but, you know, once they're in the family, you just call him cousins. And so I've known him since I was six years old, so 30 years ago. And it was hard. I went to see him in December of last year. And it was very hard for me because he reminded me of my grandfather.

And my grandpa was like a second father to me. And when he passed away, we watched him die slowly for months. And it was heartbreaking. I was 17 when he passed. And I just, you know, you see this man who they are. And then they slowly deteriorate. So it was very hard for me to see that. And then so I went, I saw my cousin and he was looking the same.

And I couldn't really talk to him. And it's kind of like when they're in that situation. Like, what do you talk to people who are dying about? How was your day? How are you feeling? You know, like, you know, what do you talk about? Like, what do you think about going to, Germany next year. Oh.

Yeah. Like, so it was very hard. And it was also a reminder of my grandfather. So I kind of regret that I didn't really interact with him. And then sometime in March, I believe it was March 11th. That night, I had a dream. I was, and this might be something you can touch on. I always dream about being back at my grandparents' house or being back at my grandparents' house.

or being back at my dad's condo that I grew up living in. This one was, it felt like a mixture of both. It was like outside in my grandparents' backyard, but also it had the essence of my dad's condo. And that could all be just a motion of how I felt over there. But there's a man sitting in the chair. And he's younger than my grandfather. He's got the essence of my grandfather,

but it's not him. And I feel it like it's my cousin. And I'm crying because I keep saying, I want to give him a hug. I want to give him a hug. This is the last time I'm going to give him a hug. And I, for some reason, couldn't just give him a hug. And I was frustrated in the dream.

And I just couldn't wrap my arms around him. And it was my cousin. But again, like I said, it also had the essence of my grandfather as well. And so I ended that dream being frustrated and never getting to hug him. And the next day we were told he passed away. So it was another one of those premonition dreams, I think. But yeah, that was the dream. So this goes to stuff I can't explain and is not my specialty.

But just to explain that possibility of it, there is a long history of people being visited by deceased. long dead and by the spirit of a relative that was dying to let them know that they had died and that they wouldn't get word for another week because it was old time he you know you sometimes if you lived 100 miles away from someone you got a letter in seven days you didn't get it the next day or you didn't get a phone call um that there's a long history of that kind of thing and if you just take taking a face value that people are not making it up for attention that's a real phenomenon As far as I can tell, it's too widely reported not to be a thing. And now what does that mean?

Is it psychic powers? Is it visitation from spirits? I mean, all of the above? Very well could be. Then again, it can also be not a coincidence exactly, but you knew he was dying. You knew it was coming. And you may have been thinking at that moment or during the day or in the, as you were experiencing a stream of consciousness during sleep, it occurred to you.

I might not be able to say goodbye. I might want to hug him and I can't. So that vision might have come to you in the dream. But if we leave it there, that is an explanation of a kind. But what I do with that kind of thing is there's a reason that matters to you, the concept of being able to say goodbye. You know, because some people, if you weren't close to them or you're a different type of person where closeness is just not a thing for you at all, you wouldn't necessarily be

worried about that because it wouldn't matter. When they die, you're not going to miss anything because there's no strong emotions attached. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're just not attached at all or you're just not that kind of person. I mean, so another person, different, different counterfactual, I like to say. Another person might have said, um, I was afraid I couldn't say or I was a, frustrated that I couldn't say goodbye. For you, it's a physical expression, a hug versus words. Or another person might say, I'll never get to eat that wonderful steak that they made me.

There's something, I appreciate their skill. And that's going to be, my life will be emptier because I miss it. So that's what I, what I would go to in, in terms of, because that's, the only useful thing I can provide is that kind of stuff. Otherwise, we can just say, yeah, you're revisited by his spirit. Thanks for watching. everybody that's not a very interesting episode even though i think it's been a very interesting episode just for march we could just go with an hour worth of our conversation that was i think that's plenty

but well and that's why i kind of feel bad too because like all of my dreams although i will say i do have a continuous dream of of frustration where um so i i grew up surfing i'm not a great surfer by any means but and then i also grew up playing softball and all of the dreams that are the most frustrating are of me, like, trying to catch the wave and I can't seem to see myself stand on the wave. Something happens. And it's like I'm a different view where I can't see it. Or same with softball. And I will say, I will toot my own heart. I was always good at softball. But like somehow, I just can't get the bat around to hit. And it's always this frustrating. And actually, I did, I used to go to acupuncture a lot. And it was more for my back. But then it was.

really turned into spiritual and understanding the energy that's in your body. And I would tell her that I, every night I have frustrating dreams. There's always a dream where I just can't reach something. I can't do something. And I kept saying, I don't know why, but I'm always frustrated in my dreams. And I try to think of the last time I had a pleasant dream where I woke up and I was like, oh, that was lovely. I could stay in bed and continue that dream again, you know?

And I couldn't remember. And she's like, you know what? you're absorbing other people's energy and the way to release that is through the frustration of your dreams. So I started putting rose courts underneath my pillow and I don't have as many frustrating dreams.

Nice. I was going to say, is that still an ongoing phenomenon for you? There's a lot of ways to approach recurring dreams. And the way I've come to understand them through my experience, my research, etc., is that very often in our lives, recur, okay, there's so many different ways to look at it. With most recurring dreams, it's the same

dream. Now, not always, but that's the typical type of recurring dreams. It's the same dream for the same reason. And it's because there's something you haven't understood. And that if we can get pretty close to an understanding, it's going to most often make the dream stop because you don't need it anymore. You don't have to do that. Or it's going to change the nature of the dream. It'll, you'll experience the experience of frustration at the end of it won't be the same. It'll be a reminder of what you used to feel. So sometimes they come back, but, but, but the experience of the dream changes. Um, and one, just one time, this guy had the same recurring dream over and over again. And it had always ended the same at the same place with oddly enough shadow people in this

backyard of this house beating the hell out of him. And that was what we've discovered through our conversation was that they were, they were a barrier. And he was attempting to full, forced his way through the barrier. This is what it felt like to him in the dream and how they responded. So the next dream that he had, and he got back to me a few nights later, like within a week and said, the next time I had that dream, I didn't try to push past them. I just sat there and talked to them and they talked to me. And they told me you're not ready to go beyond this point. And so actually what he experienced as a violent assault was more like, for your own good, we're restraining you from entering this portion of your mind because you're not ready to deal with that

information and he's like blew my mind to completely change the nature of the dream and i'm like keep talking to him ask ask him next time you're in there ask him why what's over there how can i get ready what do i need to do to to prepare myself for the and then when they're i assume you know and this and this is all in his own head this is all his own mental barriers to addressing say types of trauma that that he's that he's going through it and sometimes we're not ready sometimes we're not healthy enough um you don't just wake up one morning and go run a 10 can marathon you work up to it you take walks and then you go for a jog and then you run 1k and maybe a 5k and then eventually you work up to 10k um so yeah because you can hurt yourself and you can hurt yourself

psychologically doing things you're not prepared for as well all of this just just to say about your dreams is that uh um i wanted to get a better understanding of so until recently maybe with the uh with with the change in perspective many of your dreams most of your dreams all of your dreams. Anytime you remember a dream, it was frustration, it was disappointment, it was a lack of a performance ability, so to speak. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And I still have that reoccurring of like me, you know, trying to surf and I, for some reason, not able. And I, I know that's also linked to my capabilities of surfing that I still struggle. Like, I have this muscle memory pattern that I'm trying to break out of. But you just, after telling me the story of the

shadow people with that dream, it makes me think. that so this business that I'm starting as a toxic relationship recovery coach puts me outside of my comfort zone. I mean starting a business in general puts people out of their comfort zone. And it's interesting that I would go back to especially softball, something I was so confident in that I just knew I could do it. And I show up in the dream and I can't and I'm frustrated or I'm not at my height. I'm wondering if that's reflecting in what I deal with every day, trying something new and every day I'm like learning something new of how I'm supposed to do this, how I'm supposed to reach my clients, like marketing all of this stuff. So it's interesting because

they are coming back, right? And they don't happen. Now they don't happen as often. And it's funny because you asked about the Rose courts if it really works. So the full moon just recently happened. And that's the best time to charge the crystals. I don't know if all of this is for sure. Like this is like pseudoscience, right? So. At the very least, I think there's power in ritual. And if it's psychological, so be it. If it works, it works. Yeah, power of belief, right?

If you believe it with your soul, it has to come true. But so I decided to put my crystals out underneath from my bed outside to charge under the moon. I did it for two days, partly because I forgot. It's okay, crystals charge on their own. You don't have to pay. Yeah, yeah. And they get a little bit of sun, too. You know, they're all stuck, cooped up.

inside here underneath my pillow. So I noticed that those two nights, those two dreams were very frustrating. I don't remember the specific dreams, but I remember I had restless sleep. In fact, Wednesday, I usually go into town and go work out and stuff. Yesterday, I did not because I was so exhausted from lack of sleep and frustrating dreams. I put him on, I put him underneath my pillow last night. I slept right. So I don't know. There can be a power of suggestion type of thing going there. There can be something to the idea of crystals. Crystals have a structure and a resonance and energy to them that I don't think we understand very well. It's hard to measure. And, you know, there's things we can't necessarily measure that

nonetheless may still have an impact on our spiritual self. That then what I think of as our consciousness or personality is this, this intersection of the immaterial, each internal soul energy with the physical body. And then that's where we exist as a being. And then eventually the physical side goes away and the, you know, spiritual side continues on in a different form. But that's fair to say, that's not who, it's not what we are right now forever. You know, there is a, there is a time and a place and a physical incarnation of our, of our bodies. So something along is that's the power of like real consciousness, I think is, and I listen to Dr. Wayne Dyer a lot.

But he says it's the consciousness level is the fusion of those two opposite beliefs, that you are this being the form and you are a formless being at the same time. And it's like the two dichotomies. And actually, that's majority of life is like having, living with this belief, but then also having the contrary belief and having those same beliefs at the same time. Like, how can you do that? And that's where consciousness comes in. Oh yeah, I've had to get used to that.

It's because I'm a very like logical, methodical. I'm very free flowing, go with the flow in the moment, spontaneous, but I'm also very methodically planning because there's, there's a right way and a wrong way to say drive a car. And you should probably do so safely unless you don't want to be in this material world for very long. So you do prepare for some things and I do like things to make sense. And I had to open my mind a little bit to the idea that sometimes in certain circumstances, two contradictory things can both be true at the same time.

And that's, that's the sound of one hand clapping. That's the Zen Cohen shit that's just like, what just happened? That's now that suddenly makes sense and it is completely illogical at the same time. Both polar opposites. And I think that's the totality. I love the Yin Yang thing. Same. Same.

Yeah. I've always lived my life in that sense that we have, there has to be balanced. And that's actually where I first started believing in like this potentiality of like demons. And, well, actually, how I started believing that there has to be. good in this world because there is bad and I've seen the bad. So there has to be good. There's no way we wouldn't exist. If one existed over the other, we would somehow implode, destroy ourselves, or it would be useless. It would be pointless. So like they have to be balanced. And I love, this is where quantum physics is so interesting. And now we're we're bringing this in. But like,

when I think about like, you know, especially from an engineering point, you know, we talked about atoms all day. atoms are everything I know. I know the nucleus. I know those neutrons, those protons, and then electron cloud. And that's why we call it a cloud because it from viewpoint, it looks like a cloud. But really, it's just small little particles moving around so fast that they're creating this energy cloud. So it's like, but we can't see any of this. And a lot of people conceive of it as if it were the line drawings with little circles on paper.

I mean, that's a concept of it. That's not exactly. And the other thing is that there's an. energy field created by the movement, which makes it appear to be solid. But the whole thing is empty. It's mostly made of empty space and moving pieces. So we get this idea of, you know, you can't move through solid matter. Well, we probably can.

We just haven't figured out how. And we can't move through time. Well, we probably can. We just haven't figured out how. And we may never figure it out. But it doesn't mean those things are impossible or seeing the future or psychic powers or all kinds of other stuff that if there's detectable brain activity using physical means, we can see someone hearing a word be spoken and processed in the auditory processing

center, or if we can see someone's brain activities are trying to solve a math problem, there's something going on there beyond electrical impulses. That's, that's what I'm saying too. And it's also something that's ephemeral. It's like, where did it go when it wasn't being thought about anymore? It's not like it doesn't exist anymore. It's just not, yeah, it's just the electron's not in the same place, but it's not really a solid object. That's coming back around.

And energy is neither created nor destroyed, so it must have turned form or something. Yep, yeah, exactly. Well, getting back to your idea of the recurring dreams. So not only does discussing it and kind of understanding it tend to stop the dreams, if the concept has been fully understood or mostly understood, or change the nature of the dreams, very often we get the same symbols because for one reason or another, our brains, latched on to that as a, I call it being crystallized as an iconic representation of a particular kind of thought. And that's usually part of the idea. And very often it's going to be our experiences. So you have an experience of your softball days and an experience of your surfing days,

to whatever degree you're still doing either one of those now. So it isn't, it isn't like, oh, this is about softball. Let's get into, you know, sports metaphors necessarily, or surfing. It isn't necessarily about the board, the ocean, etc. et cetera, it's definitely about that, that experience of things. So you were saying your softball skill was pretty good at the time. You were, you were decent at it. And, and your surfing skill is less. Yes.

In general. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So if we were to generally what I do. And so I listened to the first. We should actually come back to that because I think I, I think there's more we can do with that.

But we can also do the idea of my, my, my process with recurrent. dreams is most people, and it makes perfect sense. They want to tell me about the pattern of dreams. Fair enough. Here's the common elements. I usually have a start with a discrete instance of a specific, I keep making, symbols with my, let's do that, the heart. There we go.

There's a heart for you guys. Okay. Stop talking with my hands like that. There's the, oh, wow, completely forgot what I was saying. The whole experience. What was I just saying? Sorry. You're zooming, you want to zoom in on, you know,

I don't want to see that. That's right. I start with a specific one and we try and tease that apart a little bit. And once we think we've got that one, then it's a lot easier to start seeing those connections of where it repeats across other dreams and noticing the differences. So if you wanted to ditch that other dream and try and do one of these and see, but that all, we were having this trouble before when we were talking about which dream do you want to do is like, what's more important to you? If you think you got a handle on these things a little bit, better, then it's better to focus on the other one that seems a little more confusing. Although that one seemed a little bit straightforward, but I think we can get more out of it. So it's, it's possible to do either one. Well, like, it's hard to just throw it, throw it back at you to say, well, what do you think? I'm trying to give you an idea of, I'm trying to give you tools to help you decide better. What to say about the recurring dreams? If they're significantly distressing and you feel like you haven't nailed down why they recur and

you need to make them stop or change, then we should probably do those. I don't know. I feel like that one would be better, especially because like you said, the other one was very like kind of straightforward. I was feeling frustrated that I felt like I didn't really say goodbye to them. And I do think it's very interesting. And I was wanting you to comment on like the idea of why. why we dream of these particular places over and over again.

Even some of my nightmares come back. I think that was going to be part of the, part of the analysis that we did on that one. So, I mean, we might as well just, let's talk about it. Then we get time. We'll go back with the other ones too. So this is not a common phenomenon.

Most people would report my dreams all take place in different places. So that's, so you're a little unique on that side of things. But there are people who their dreams, and I've spoken to a couple of them, their dreams take place in the same universe, and they know it's the same universe. And even the same city, it's just different places in the same city. So they've got a dream world in a way that they return to and they know it's always the same place.

Which is a wonderful, that sensation of familiarity may be sensation, well, this is my world of dreams. Of course, it's always the same. Maybe that's their understanding of it. But most people, that's not how they dream. Like, well, I was at a carnival. Well, I was flying on an airplane. Well, I was in a boat, you see. It's different every single time.

So for you, you've got this experience of it's almost always located at your grandparents' place or your father's condo, you say, or at least in that area inside the house, outside the house. And even if, like especially, it's funny, because remember, we talked about that Jurassic Park recurring dream that always happened at my dad's condo. But it was never like the exact same thing. It was like, again, the essence of I knew. I knew I was there, but like the stairs were different than they normally are and stuff like that. And it's the same thing with all of these other dreams. It's either at my grandparents' house, there might be something different, but it's still the essence of like, I know I'm at my grandparents' house. That is very interesting.

So how, what is your, you know, waking life experience of those places? Is that where you spent the majority of your life living in one of those two locations? Well, so like when I said, you know, my grandparents, grandparents were basically second parents. I did live with them for a time. And like almost every summer from six to 12, I was with them. We lived in the same city. So we were always over there. Like it was almost like my second house for sure was my grandparents. And then my dad's condo, he had had since I think I was four, well, I think even before that. So and then I moved out when I moved to college and he still had it for a time. So these are like places that my life happened. You know. Yeah, that is, that is very interesting. It's almost thinking, you know, thinking on the fly here, I don't know that I've encountered this very often where it's like,

the majority of dreams are at two specific locations. Those must be very important to you. And you'd probably agree that they are. I mean, but more than most people would agree. They know what exist in my life either. Like my, we sold my grandparents, house, it is not the same I've driven by. And my dad sold his condo years ago.

So I don't even have access to them anymore. I was also going to say, too, those surfing dreams happen at the same surf spot every time. It's not like I'm jumping over to Maui or anything. It's usually my specific surf spots that I grew up surfing in California. So with recurrent dreams specifically designed to explore or produce the. the resonance with the idea or feeling of frustration, that makes a lot more sense that a recurrent dream of a specific type would always be in the same location because,

um, and not always because you say sometimes it's the softball dream, but it's because that surfing is a particular kind of activity. It only takes place on the ocean. And, and because you're having the surfing dream again, having to be at a particular location kind of makes sense. It's the total experience.

here I am back in the same ocean with the same board with the same experience and the same emotional response. That makes a little more sense than no matter what my dream is about, it's at the same location. That's actually fascinating. I don't know that I've ever come across that before in terms of different dreams on different topics, but always in the same location. That's interesting. What do I make of that?

It did have a theory actually just popped in my head. I wonder if like as you're trying to work through whatever, whatever the purpose or feeling behind the dream, you need that safe, comfortable space, that continuous space of your life to explore that, maybe. That is one variety of thing that I was that I was looking for the words for is that it seems to be that kind of a place for you of like, this is, where who I am was primarily formed. Like, more so than other people. Like maybe another person would say, I'm an amalgamation of experiences I had in many different locations. So if I'm going to return to lessons I've learned,

it's going to be returning to who I was at that time to look at that experience again. And we're not always able to identify, you know, you see a house in the desert or whatever. And it's like, oh, yeah, that was that one guy I visited that. one time. Maybe it's not a memory that stands out to you, but it comes back as an image in the dream life, because for whatever reason, that memory got sparked and you're like, well, I'll borrow that house and put that in this dream. But this one, yeah, so, and I noticed when I was saying that, and this is honestly, sometimes I rambled because I like the sound of my voice, but usually it's because I'm just, oh, you got a good. Oh, thank you very much. I'm just, I'm just talking to hopefully

say some magic word that sparks an inspiration. And you like, oh, I had an idea. So as I was mentioning that, you had a thought and I don't know if you remember it you were just looking away like oh yeah I should have stopped there and said wait a minute what do you got no no that was I think that was the thought the maybe me

reoccurring any dream right and like I said I had the Jurassic Park dream at my dad's condo anytime I have frustrating even some of my night terrors that I used to have happened at my grandparents house. So I wonder if it's like that comfort zone to explore whatever that emotion is that I need to explore in that dream. And that says something, you know, powerful about those people in your life, too, is that those are, that is a safe space. It's not the space you were trying to escape from

because there was violence, abuse or whatever going on there. It was, this is where I can safely address these problems because I know, no matter how bad it is, it's not going to be that bad. Because, you know, as a kid, I already survived this environment. But not only that, it was an environment that was, it's not really a better way to describe it, but it was safe to explore ideas there because you weren't going to be punished for being wrong, in essence, you know, in general, or have very bad things happen to you. So it can be, I mean, that makes a lot of sense, especially because it kind of occurred to you, is that, well, let's take this idea back to where I was safe and look at it through that lens

so that I can be at least relatively certain nothing bad is going to happen to me. At least the worst is not going to happen. But then, you know, so that's the wonder though, okay, especially for like that Jurassic Park gene, this, this dinosaur is coming up, up the stairs. That's true. That was recurring too, huh? Yeah. Yeah.

So like why would I allow, especially in a place that I felt safe? Why would I allow something where I wouldn't feel safe? in that. What just occurred to me is that, so if we can broaden that up meta, meta style, you're in a place that would typically be safe, that has been historically safe, that you rely on to be a safe place, and something happened in your waking life where, oh, no, even in the safest of places, maybe some danger can get in once in a while. I'm not completely safe anywhere. That might be the concept of going on with that one. or what is it so if we were to do that dream specifically there would probably be something related to in my life i had what i thought was a safe environment suddenly invaded by something dangerous and it's

still here so this dream keeps coming back to say this dinosaur on the stairs this is a dinosaur on the stairs are you paying attention look at this dinosaur it's coming it's coming for you you got to do something about this so even the safest of places and that would be um probably involving a betrayal of trust where you thought you were safe and suddenly you were the world got flipped and you're like oh i'm not safe at all when i say all those words does something come to your mind about specific scenarios and why that dream might have been happening well i mean uh so obviously like i said in in understanding my clients where they've been through i also do a lot of self-reflection as well. And I kind of rooted back to the type of behaviors I was exhibiting, which led me to that

toxic relationship. And one of them was a fear of abandonment. And I was like, wow, where does that come from? Oh, right. This is nothing against my parents. I love them very much. I have very wonderful relationships with both of them. And I have grown with both of them as well, being an adult with them, but both of them have left at one point. Now, not saying like left and we're like, screw this. I don't want to be a parent. They just both moved away at some point. And as a little kid, I didn't understand that. So, and it wasn't for long periods of time, right? Mom was gone for six months. Dad was gone for a year. I still, I visited them. I talked to them on the phone all the time, but these were the key times when I like also hung out with my grandparents. And so like, again,

I don't blame them, especially now as I'm engaging in the idea of potentially having my own kids, I can understand like, oh, man, you know, I went from not being a person to now I'm a parent and that's all I am. Like, so I never, I don't blame them anymore, but I know that that still sits there of the fear of being left, the fear of not being enough and that would push somebody to leave. And I still am working on it, right? I don't know if that's something I will ever get over. It'll be just something that I work through like a mantra. I tell myself like, hey, doesn't matter. I've already proven to myself that I can be fine on my own, even if people leave.

And people will leave because we're all going to die at some point. Yeah, yeah. Just hopefully when we're old and we've had the experience, that's the hope. But it's funny, we all had this unrealistic idea that for some reason, we're the one person that's not going to die. that's how we're this not going to lose anyone where we're the exception like everything will always be as it is right now which may be part of what you're going through so the more you kind of explained to me about what happened to you with these periods um in your life i mean

number one the idea that to experience abandonment you don't have to be abandoned there's just an absence and even if it's justifiable and you can look back on it and go well sometimes parents got to move for work and they didn't want to take me out of school and everything so this parent went over there, or maybe there was a divorce, and it's not your fault, and now they're living separately. But whatever the cause, the effect is the same. There were two parents in the house, and now one of them's not. And there's an emptiness. There's a hole left by this person that you would wake up and see him every day. You would say, you know, you would argue with them. You would laugh with them. All the, all the experience, gone, just completely gone. And that's,

depending on how young you are, and even if you're a little older sometimes, that's, It can be devastating depending on how you're close you are to someone or how much a part of your daily life they represented. Even if you weren't in constant interaction, their presence was always there in one way or another. And then their absence is glaring. It's like turning off a light switch. There was light and now there's not. And that darkness feels oppressive. I'd be interested to see how that would be handled today.

So my parents have been divorced since I was six months old. So basically both of my parents were single parents because like I was. It's been three days with them, three days with them. But when my mom moved away, so I was full time with my dad. And that was at the time before 9-11 when, and this is why I think I love to travel because I got on a plane by myself when I was six years old to travel from California to Florida. That was the thing.

They would have an adult drop you off. You would be monitored by the staff and an adult would pick you up on the other side on a company minors. And they could walk you all the way through to the terminal. like I literally said goodbye to dad at the gate. The flight attendant took me to my seat. And then I got off and mom was right there waiting for me. Obviously, you kids who are as old as 25, have no idea what life was like before that.

I mean, I was born in the 70s. So I knew world before the internet, before cell phones, before all this stuff, before the TSA, before 9-11, before that stuff. And it was a different world. It was a different world. And that's where I would wonder, too, like something experiencing like that, would have been different if we had FaceTime where I could literally see and talk to my parent every, well, every day. And like, I don't have a lot of memories of both of those times. I don't know if that's me blocking it out or, you know, as you get older, you have way more memories that overlap

on it. But I don't know how often I called them. I know I visited both times, both parents at different places. So I just would be curious if that experience happened today. And if we had the capabilities of FaceTime, would I still feel that same emotion? Well, for all the problems with social media and technology, it's tremendous tools for maintaining connection. Sometimes too much connection, but they are connection tools. And the other thing, too, is that as a kid, you probably wouldn't have the understanding, oh, I miss my parent. It is important that a child have their parent in their life. We're not thinking like that. We may not even acknowledge. knowledge to ourselves. I miss them, but their absences felt. It's one of those things where it's just like, so I'm thinking about the other, the other thing. So it's two, two things that came into my mind with, with this, considering the totality of your circumstances. One is that you're describing what was unstable in some ways or, or absences, stressful circumstances, but an otherwise generally stable and predictable world between,

these two households. This was the experience of your childhood. And it was good for what it was. And you're appreciative of it. And you think fondly of it. It isn't like, oh my God, I never want to think of that place again. I had the most horrible experiences of my life. That's actually probably one of the best times of your life where before you had the

worries about, oh, yeah, I should probably spend more time with my parents because I'm going to miss them. They'll be gone someday. So that then led. me on to the other thing is that you're probably returning. There's a good chance that part of what you're experiencing is, I want to say unresolved trauma. That's way too vague, but that you haven't fully made sense of that experience. And so you're returning to that environment to process everything through that lens because you haven't, what am I trying to say? It's crazy to say you've been studying

studying abroad for months at a time. Well, I wonder if I've been writing it off, understanding the perspective of my parents, but fighting not to feel how it was for me as that six or nine-year-old. That's what I was going towards the idea that there's still childhood experiences you haven't fully processed.

But then I was trying to tease that apart from the idea that this is one of those logically contradictory type of thing. things. It was, it was your experience. It was the safe and stable place of your childhood. And it wasn't that stable at all. And the experience of absence was was permeating through it. So you get a lot of, you may be referencing everything you experience in your entire life since then. Through that, let's go back and look at it. What did what does it look like from my most basic understanding of the world itself? This is how the world is. Never forget this is what the world is. This is what it

looks like. This is not, but my aviat to that is that that isn't the typical experience of most people. We all had a childhood. We all had a childhood home. And why, why is it for you that you need to see that or show yourself that or reference everything through that lens? And that may not be an answer you can give off the topic. Oh, I know, right? Let me tell you. But I think, I think that's a direction to look in your future musings is like, what are you hanging on to there? And part of it is just what you said of coming to terms with the idealized version of it in in in in in in your um rose-coated glasses view of your childhood but then also letting yourself feel the negative sides of it too and and what would young would say you know accepting your shadow side in a way all the all the

all the all the all the great things about you that might have also come out of that that no one wants to acknowledge but if you can't uh you either acknowledge the shadow or it controls you from the shadows in that way. I don't know. This is, and I don't have a lot of answers on that, but hopefully I'm setting up a beacon to say, there's something over there.

There's like a, there's a lighthouse in the fog. There's something you need to see in that area. And that's why you keep showing it to yourself. I wonder if it's something to do with like, resilience in the sense of. If that's what came to mind. And also,

and also, so something that I, I'm also still trying. to teach clients as well. And this is something later down the road. But, you know, regret can really eat away at you, right? And especially experiencing a toxic relationship for eight years. And when you start to understand your culpability in there, like you could have walked away. I mean, granted there are a lot of neurological things happening that prevented you from walking away, but there was always still, always still a choice, you know, no matter how hard it was.

but there's that regret of I just wasted eight years of my life. I wasted eight years of my youth. My 20s were gone because I spent it with somebody who made me feel caged. But I come back and I'm like, well, if I had not gone through that experience, would I be who I am now? Would I be where I am now? And I love who I am. I always will have things to work on as everybody will. But for the most part, I love who I am.

I love my fiance. I love the fact that I live in an RV. And would I have gotten to this point if I had not gotten through that experience? Would I be able to be a toxic relationship recovery coach if I hadn't been through it? And so I'm wondering, too, if I maybe overshadow the experience with this optimistic view. Like, for instance, I don't ever really view my parents' divorces. a bad thing. I almost think of it as a good thing because now I have a relationship with both of my parents as like beyond being just their child because each time it was just me and them.

Like it was me and mom or it was me and dad and I had their sole divided, undivided attention. It was on me. And because they were divorced, they were able to do that. And then also be a person who didn't have a child for three days. So like I have all these benefits. these ideas that because I went through all of these things, I'm resilient, I'm stronger, I'm the person I've become, but am I overshadowing the pain that I felt by being so optimistic and I'm pushing that down. Yeah, very well could be. So what am I trying to do with all this? And I try to, so we go through the dreams and we talk about them and we try and get an understanding of that experience. And then I also like to try and specifically tie it back to,

okay, what's the precipitating event in a way? What were you experiencing that made it necessary to have this dream to understand that experience? And then sometimes in there, that also gives a path forward. So what I think, and then specifically with recurring dreams, if we really did touch on something important, the experience of that, the proof is in the pudding. The experience of the dreams will change or cease in the future. What if you never dream of,

your childhood home again because you don't need to because we've figured something out. And I would say that's maybe that'll never happen. And I can't guarantee that it will. I can't even guarantee we're on the right track. But I think these great conversations that inspire more questions that answers are. So how will you know we've hit upon something or that you've done enough soul searching? What do they call it? Internal work.

Self-reflection. Self-reflection, yeah. So if I, if I am correct about where you need to lose. look for answers and you do the work to explore that sufficiently and come to some understanding that works for you. Maybe different for me and we're both right. But then you should see the nature of these dreams change. Maybe you'll start having fewer dreams that need to be set in that location for whatever

reason. Or you'll have the same amount of dreams, but the experience of it will be different. So I would be very interested. to hear back from you about, you know, give it, give it a few months and just say, hey, based on our conversation, I did, uh, I did the work as they say. And yeah, my dreams have changed. Let me tell you how. Because that's, that's part of it. Even if we get to the end of this, and I say this to all, all my guess is we get to the end of this and this is all way too personal and you want me to delete it. It's gone. No questions asked. I'd, I'd rather not release an episode than

embarrass someone or release personal information. Um, but what I get to take away from this is, the training, the experience. Here's my thought process on how this, what it looks like to me. Here's the advice I gave ish. I don't give advice. Don't, don't fall. I'm a crazy guy in the internet who thinks he's a wizard. Don't, don't listen to me. But we all, right? But if I give you ideas worth considering and they bear fruit, I want to know that because I'll do it again. Otherwise, if it didn't work at all, I'm like, well, I was wrong. I'm going to, let me focus on something else. I'll try a different tag. I want to change and improve and grow. That's why, that's why the random or arbitrary

thousand dreams. I think by a thousand dreams I'll have a pretty good handle on what I'm doing. I hope. I don't know though because now there's so much variation in a thousand dreams. Each person is different. I think you would in order to understand you would have to focus on like one person and all of the air. Well that's also what I'm

doing is not just because I don't charge money but it's not counseling and therapy because we if this were an ongoing relationship, therapeutic relationship. You come to see me once a week. We talk for an hour. We could explore these things. And then what you would do is you would come back next week and you'd say, how's your dreams? Are they different? Are they changed? What conclusions did you come to based on reflection? Let's talk about whether you think those are likely, just possibilities or tough things that you don't want to admit, but kind of seem grudgingly like they might be true. And we talk about why that

makes you uncomfortable. Why not accept it? And why not be blaze about it? Why do you have any emotions about anything at all? If we had that kind of ongoing relationship, we could track, track one thing. But hopefully I'm getting that experience. Maybe I need to go for 10,000. The problem is it'll take me 20 years to hit 1,000 dreams. I don't have 200 years to hit 10,000, unless I'm going to do like five a day. We don't know.

We don't know yet. Well, maybe, maybe. It's good. Keep alive. That's true. There's some people who say that if you are under a certain age today, you will most likely live for hundreds of years, you know, that we're going to figure that out. I'm not sure I believe in or if that's wishful thinking.

They're afraid they're going to die so they believe anything. There's a fun statistic out there that allows me to take a little bit of pressure off of myself, being a 36-year-old who does still want to have kids and doesn't think I'm having them until I'm 40 at least. And, you know, so I sit there and I put all this pressure on myself and I'm like, oh my God, I'm geriatric already. This is bad. But then I look at myself in the mirror, I'm like, I feel like I'm 25. So, but anyways, there was a statistic that went around on Instagram.

I don't know if it's true. But it said if you have a kid after 33, you are three times as likely to live to 90. If you have a kid after 40, you are four times as likely to live to 100. Wow. So I wonder if there's a, I wonder if there's a factor of I'm not allowing myself to die yet because I got work to do. This kid is not done being raised. even if they're 40 years old at that point, they still need me. And maybe if you're younger, they're like, they're old enough.

They're in their 60s. I can let go. It's like people who retire if they don't have a purpose. They don't have something they're doing. They just kind of go, you know, what does it matter? I don't wake up tomorrow. And then eventually they die pretty quickly. Yeah.

It's crazy. I don't know if you ever watched on Netflix, the Life at 100. No, I've seen that one. So they went across all across the world where they have those blue zones where people typically live above 100. and they were trying to understand because one's in Japan, one's in Costa Rica, one is in like on Sardinia, in the island in Italy. And then some are there's even there's two in the U.S., unfortunately we'll have two.

One's up in Maine and the other one I think is down in Utah. Mormons must be doing something, right? Maybe it's no soda. That's what it is. No soda. But they were trying to understand the commonalities. Like these are all different places. Sorry, the light's changing on me.

That's okay. That might be better. Yeah. But so they were all. all these different factors and they realized one is purpose. These people who live above 100 have purpose. The other one was gardening. There's something about your connection with the earth,

along with the fact that you know what you're eating because you're growing at yourself kind of thing. Probably parasites. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, it might be like, what do I know? Yeah, exactly. And then there was like community as well, but purpose was the big one, right?

If you don't have a purpose, what is the point? Yeah. Absolutely. Well, it's like if you don't have purpose, what's the point of doing anything ever? Why get out of bed the morning? What are you doing? Right. If you're just working to put food on the table so that you don't die. I mean, you can only keep that up for so long. If there's nothing you want, if there's nothing that inspires you, nothing you're trying to accomplish it.

Whatever it is. Just almost anything. Almost anything will do. Just don't make it a bad thing. Just don't do, just don't have a purpose to hurt somebody. That's not a good thing to live for. You could go ahead and stop eating if you purposes to eat. I can't say that. If your purpose is to hurt somebody. Can I give that? I am not a doctor.

This is not medical advice. But I think we could probably, well, we could probably talk about this and so much more for longer and longer. We're heading up, but we've got about two hours. It always goes longer than people think, especially if we get on a roll. But I'm going to let you go here pretty soon. I think we've done the best we can with the material we had for the moment. And I think it gives you a little bit of an area to focus your attention or, or thought on and let it, let it percolate in the background as you're doing other things.

Like, yeah, what about that? You know, but this, like I said, this has been a fascinating. It's not often, a lot of dreams are straightforward. We just tell a story and we talk about it and it's all good. And then sometimes I get thrown a curveball and like, I like that. I want to see something I've never seen before or at least something unusual enough that I go, I don't know what to do with this. Now I've got a whole brand new door open to me of like, like, I didn't used to be like that.

I used to be like if there was any hint of incompetence, if I was unable to rise to the challenge, I hated it more than anything in the world and it made me feel horrible and I never wanted to do it again. And now I'm more like, I kind of live for that. I can't live. Oh, show me something I've never seen before. What is this? What is this? Now I'm excited by it.

I love it. That's change. It's funny that you're talking about this because I'm reading, currently reading the book, Learned Optimism by Dr. Martin's. The opposite of learned helplessness, of course. Yeah, yeah, because he does a study to show how we can actually learn helplessness and leads to pessimism, which then ultimately leads to depression, or is a factor of depression, can be. But he talks about this idea that how we explain events that happen in our life.

Are they pervasive? Are they basically, it's the entire of my life, this bad thing is just going to affect all of my life? Is it permanent? will I never, ever, ever again know something or is it personal? And so that's what I was going to say with you is instead of taking these moments of incompetence, as you said, or just not knowing something, you took them personally. We're like, oh, I'm so horrible. Now you've switched your idea into believing, oh, this is a challenge for me.

It's not because I'm not worthy or I'm not good enough. It's to expand me, to make me more. Or it's not personal at all. It's just something I didn't know. because I'm not God and I'm not omnipotent. Absolutely. And that gets me back to these aphorisms too. And everyone's got there, but we'll get to that in a moment.

But every obstacle is an opportunity. That idea of like you've been frustrated by, this speaks to you as well, the idea of we're going to encounter frustrations. There's going to be things we want and we can't have. Maybe we got to accept it. Maybe we've got to work harder. Maybe we've got to change something. We've got to change our mind.

But I didn't understand that very. very well. And I used to have, and this is what a lot of people do. It's a certain kind of person that does it, where they go, oh, yeah, well, not, not always, like, you're right, but the general idea. Every, yes, sometimes an obstacle will kill you. You're right. You win. Can you get back to the point? Go ahead. That's like the one, the one I can't stand is, oh, well, easier said than done. Well, so is absolutely everything. Unless if for some reason your mouth is sewn shut, then yes, literally,

everything, but come on. Like, yep. No, exactly. Well, that's why explaining the aspiration because I've, because there's so many people who I think they miss the point of, of these things. They get, they get derailed into the,

and maybe some people are just contrarian and they're like arguing on the internet, fair enough. But if you put out things that are, and I used to, also this is my personal journey. I used to be a lot more like that of where like, I didn't like platitudes. I didn't like things good.

I thought they were superficial and they're just things people say. And then I started thinking, well, actually, if you understand them properly, they really do mean something specific that should be useful to most people. That's why we keep using the same phrases over and over again to the point that they become platitudes. Well, you don't want to use them in an empty, in an empty manner. You want to use them specifically when the situation demands and someone's ready to listen.

Well, and that's the one, the one that always got me that now as an adult has really hit me even harder is if you believe it, you can do it. Whatever you believe you, you know, you can do. And it's like, you know, your parents tell you that and you're just like, yeah, whatever. But it's like if you focus on it so much and you believe it and you practice it every single day, then it has to happen. The odds of it not happening are much lower. So it's like that platitude now speaks to me more as an adult than it did when they were obviously perhaps saying it meaninglessly empty. But, you know, some people don't know what to say. They know the idea that it's been encapsulated in that.

phrase, but they don't explain it very well or they're telling someone who's not ready to hear it. Sometimes I think there's better ways to say some of those things, but there aren't ways that are easily memorable and pithy like that, where you get it in like three words or what easier said than four words. But also, sometimes those phrases can be an epiphany as well where it's like, wait a minute, everything is literally easier said than done. And that's not a contradiction of, that's not showing why it's meaningless. That's showing why it's powerful.

It's one thing to just say I'm going to do something. It's another thing to do it. Action speak louder than words. That kind of thing. And those go together. Those two different. There's so many plans. There's so many of these aspirisms.

Go ahead. Right. I had one. And I didn't realize too because in high school, one of my principals would say on the intercom, right, probably before we started doing video daily announcements. But he would say, okay. and have a great day or not. The choice is yours.

And we would start making fun of them as high school, you know, kids do. We'd be like, uh, every day. But one day at him, he was like, oh, my God, it is my choice. I can choose to focus on all these negative things and just go into this wormhole of negativity and have this awful day. Or I can choose to say that 10 seconds doesn't rule the rest of my day, you know? True, true. And then you get that, as I was saying, the contrary, and people who go,

No, what if something really, really bad happens and someone dies? I'm like, yeah, the exception is going to happen. But most, mostly your attitude, the attitude you bring to something is going to determine your experience of it. And it just, just like, put a pin in this or bring a full circle. Like, yeah, my attitude changed towards the, what, it really hit me, I don't know, a couple of years back when I was doing interviews on other people's shows. They're like, oh, you're a wizard guy with the dreams. Come on my show and talk about your book. and stuff. And they would ask me, what's your favorite dream? And the one that always came to mind

was episode 19 titled Going Nowhere. And it was an example of a complete failure. I could give him nothing. We couldn't figure out any of the symbols and where they connected to in his real life, where they came from, complete failure. And they're like, and then I think one guest was like, why would you mention a failure? What does that mean to you? And I'm like, probably because like that's a mystery. Why did I fail? What did I do wrong? What could I have done differently?

What was I lacking at the time that could have changed things? That's down, you know, so I've gone, I've pushing 50. And finally, I'm at a point in my life where failures are the most interesting things because I figured out how to succeed. I haven't figured out how to fail properly yet, which is a weird, weird thing to say. But now that's where I'm focusing a lot of my energy. And then in another platitude, you learn more from failure than from success. Literally, you might not understand it at all. But if you fail, you got to figure that shit out because there's something,

there's something to learn there. Otherwise, you would have succeeded if you already knew it already. So anyway. That ties into my quick little CTA, you know, talking about dreaming again, especially after a toxic relationship. And it's funny, too, that you mentioned that like the outlier that, okay, well, even if you have a bad like even if it's a good day and somebody dies well that's the exception it's the same thing with a toxic relationship too right there were good moments those good moments are what kept me staying

those good moments are what i idolized and believing that this is a great relationship but it wasn't and so i have this worksheet for people that are coming out of it and are feeling lost and are like i don't even know what my favorite food is anymore i don't even know what i envision for the future and part of that comes in dreaming again. And so I've got that worksheet. It's on your, it's on your little click, click area for people to try out.

Link in the description below. Yes. Yeah. And for this one, it is metaphorically how, learning how to aspire again, learning how to have hope for the future and want things.

Because there's a, it could have been literally learning how to dream again, which like, like how to have pleasant dreams. Who knows where you were going with that, but it, but it is more,

along the lines of the allowing yourself to dream of the future, to fantasize about to feel that you would deserve good things and then look at what that might what shape that might take and then allowing yourself to put the effort

and energy into pursuing it. That's a huge thing, especially when a relationship fails and you have to accept what was partly my fault because I didn't read the warning signs, I let it go on too long, I enabled it through my own bad behavior. the parts of me that I don't work on or fix made that more likely to occur. That's rough stuff to look at it and go, this bad thing happened.

And I'm at least partly to blame. It's terrible. Good news, bad news. Yeah, you're partly to blame. Good news. You can do something about it. You don't have to let it. If it was a pure accident of a meteor fell out of the sky, wrong place, wrong time.

Nothing you could do. You're dead. But if there's something you can do, you don't have to go through. that again. That's one of the biggest things of accepting responsibility without victim blaming, so to speak. We don't want to go there. It's not, it's not all your fault, a little bit over here in some ways. Just, just what you can control. But we'll probably, we'll probably leave it there. You feel like we've, we've had a good conversation. You're ready to wrap it out. Honestly, I always enjoy the, the conversation. And when I have people that it's like, man, we could just

go back to another hour. Yeah. That's the best. That's the best. I was also going to say, too, other thing is when it comes to dreaming is, I forget who it is. If it's Oscar Wilde or somebody says that everything is created twice, first in the mind and then in reality. Yeah. And I think accidentally I borrowed that and transformed it into the idea that every piece of science fact was once science fiction. Yeah. And that's, I mean, when I think of the Motorola Razor and the communicators on Star Trek from the 1960s, wow. Yeah, when you first, you had to do you, to imagine what if we could get to the moon. Okay, well, how? Rockets. Wonderful. And that was, I read a fascinating, okay, last thing, I swear to God. There's a fat, fat anthology of sci-fi from the

1930s, 40s, 50s in that, in that area. It's like some of the earliest, most famous works of science fiction short stories. One of them was a, like a research paper of science fact. Here's the history of rockets. And it went from, you know, the idea of a, they used to have bows and arrows that would be rocket propelled and that was in China and they had that's where fireworks came from well you couldn't have a solid fuel to get to the moon it was going to be too heavy so they'd figure out how to do a liquid fuel and uh there was a whole scientific development with fascinating read i'd never thought about it yeah someone had to invent rockets the technology just didn't exist and then one day it did and now we're like oh yeah we go to the moon we go to space all the time

and it's a hundred years ago they had no concept this was even possible but someone was thinking about it. Someone was right and, you know, Jules was Jules Verne, uh, Journey to the Moon or whoever did that one. Yeah. Yeah. Things. Okay. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's actually, we could, like I said, we could go on forever. So, um, that's how you know, our chemistry is great that we could just go. It's good. We'll have you, have you back, you know, certainly it. And, uh, and please do. I'm, I'm very serious. Keep me, if you feel like it, no pressure. Uh, if you forget about me entirely, no skin off my teeth. I wish you the best. Um, if that happens, people just get busy. The experience stays with you, the benefits of,

the benefits of it, but the person fades away. That's, that's perfectly fine. I'm not here to, I'm not here for me. I was going to say something. No, it's going. That never mind. Not, not, not important at all. So, okay, let's do this.

Let's actually wrap it up instead of talking about wrapping it up. This has been our guest dreamer, Heather Melville, uh, currently near, uh, Tombstone, Arizona. Uh, she's a toxic relationship recovery expert, a former electrical engineer and now a semi-professional nomad living that, uh, that, uh, that, trailer life. You can find her work at healthy relationships. Dot info.

And what is specifically linked below is at that, at that web address is the, the full link is for the worksheet. Dream again, reclaiming your life after toxic love. I would imagine a great place to start for a lot of folks who are even thinking, what would it look like if I thought my relationship was toxic? And I, you know, I'm not allowing myself to think I could have something better.

So, of course, that link is in the description below. For my part, would you kindly like, share, and subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers. I do video game streams Monday through Friday, most days of the week, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific. This episode brought to you specifically by ABC Book 18, O'Neuro Chronology, Volume 4, prima reliquorum, the first of what remains. And, of course, you can find all this and more at Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com, including downloadable MP3s of this very podcast.

And if you would also head on over to Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, building a community there, free to join, attached to my Rumble account. And the last thing to say is, Heather, thank you for being here. I've enjoyed talking to you. Thank you, Benjamin. Likewise, this was fun. Did we work? Where were we working? I think it's crazy to think that this is work.

It's in that general, like employment, like a, like a, what do they call it, gainful employment? It's not the word. Anyway, it feels like play. And that's ideally. Hopefully you can make a living just doing something that you find endlessly fascinating and entertain. One of those platitudes. If you love what you do, never work a day. In your life.

I know. They're all true. You look at it like, damn it, it's true again. So, okay, the very last thing to say is everybody out there. Thank you for watching. And we hope to see you next time. Take care.