Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 209: The Weeping Degree

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

Kelly Watt ~ https://www.kellywatt.ca/

um sure lately i've been making um i i've got a i've got a channel under its own name called um you can look it up on uh i can't words today um rumble youtube or on the x platform and the uh the handle is at real a i radio um so i've been taking all the world's greatest or top most famous poetry and turning it into ai songs as if they were lyrics. And I'm actually an interesting thing. I'd love for people to give me submissions of what is your favorite poem or write some originals. I'm cool with that. I mean, the better, the more the better. I love that idea. I just love that idea. I think so that sounds fantastic because, well, you know, poetry is a natural to put with music for one. And it gets it out to more

people. I just think it's great. I heard your talk about that. Yeah. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Well, Greetings, friends, and welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today, our guest dreamer is Kelly Watt from the countryside of Hamilton, Ontario. She is an author whose latest book is entitled The Weeping Degree, which was a finalist for the Wishing Shelf Book Award, and which has also been a bestseller. You can find her at Kelly Watt with two T's, Kellywatt.ca. We get right back to her in two seconds. For my part, would you kindly like, share, and subscribe? Always need more volunteer dreamers and viewers. Tell your friends, of course.

I do video game streams most days of the week, Monday through Friday, 5 p.m. 2, 8 p.m. Pacific time. Sometimes I'll end and take the weekend, you know, end on a Thursday and take the rest of the week off and start a new game on Mondays. This, oh, wait a minute. Kelly's recording. Good. Let me take that off the screen. Approve. There we go. No, that's fine. I forgot to ask you. Oh, by the way, and this is a great chance. Okay, I'm in the middle of my.

Let me do my pitch and then. then I'll say that. So, uh, this episode brought to you in part by ABC book 18. That is my series, augury, bibliomancy and chaos, the ABCs of dream interpretation. Uh, the 18th book is entitled O'Neuro chronology, volume four prima reliquorum. Uh, it's Latin for the, the, the first of what remains, basically, the first of the rest. Um, and of course, you can find all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, including downloadable or live streamable MP3s of this very podcast. So you may take the wizard with you. wherever you wander with or without Wi-Fi.

And if you'd also head on over to Benjamin the Dream Wizard. Dot Locals.com, it's free to join attached to my Rumble account, building a community there. One of the best ways to reach out to me if you have a dream to share. That is more than enough out of me. Kelly, thank you for being here. I appreciate your time. Thank you for having me, Ben.

I'm a big, I love dreams and I've kept a dream journal for years of my life. So I love the concept of this podcast. I'm really excited to talk about dreams. That is fantastic. Yeah. And then speaking of things from, I'm, uh, there's a lot of stuff communicated behind the scenes like, I, I block out two hours to talk to people minimum. I've gone, as I say to folks, as short as 45 minute. Here he is again. Throw. I swear my cat is a reincarnated dog. Go get it. Um, I've gone as short as 45 minutes. I've gone as long as four and a half hours. That is an extreme outlier. No one will be expected. She had like three discrete dream sections and we put them all together in one big episodes. It was like doing three episodes and one. Um, gotcha. Oh, and I tell people also behind the scenes, uh, we know, we talk beforehand. We record. We record. We talk after to make sure people are comfortable.

Nothing ever gets published unless you agree that it's not too personal or embarrassing. Any reason or no reason at all. I was going somewhere with that. Oh, and also I tell folks, you can record this. This belongs to you as much as it does to me. I'm going to make my own edit, which is I basically donate it. I chop off a little in the beginning. I put an intro and an outro.

I throw a commercial in the middle and we're good to go. I'm an editor by trade, I guess, in terms of the publishing of the books, I don't want to do a bunch of video editing. And I used to do clips instead. Forget it. I just want to throw it up there. Live unfiltered. We're just, you know,

two people talking about dreams. But you can do that. You can take the whole video and post it on your website. You can take the, you can cut it up into clips and promote yourself. You can do anything you want with it. So when we meet, say via Zoom,

you can record this as well. And even if I don't end up publishing it, but it's too personal, you have a copy. You can review our discussion. And I consider it all beneficial training for me. So never fear. that you have to give me permission or you wasted your time.

I'd rather not embarrass. This is not the Jerry Springer show. I'm not interested in embarrassing anyone. The Jerry Springer Show. Right? Call back to the 90s. Thank you for that. That's,

I really appreciate that thoughtfulness. Absolutely. Yeah. And I want everyone to know that too because this is a handshake. Sure. So, but okay, that's enough. I'm going to talk a lot about me. I can't help it.

I'm very, very autistic in that way. But we're here to talk primarily about Kelly. So you want to jump. into your book. I mean, what's the, what made you want to write it? What's it about? All that good stuff. Yeah, sure. So here's about this. This is my working on the screen for sure. And you'll see there's a clock on it. So time is a really important theme in the book. And it's a collection of gritty poetry and flash prose, short little flash prose pieces that reads a bit like a

poem war. And it follows the history of a trauma as it transforms through time in healing from a wound to a gift. And the subtitle is called How Astrology saved me from Suicide, The Weeping Degree, How Astrology, Saved Me from Suicide. So many of the little pieces, the poetry and the prose, are inspired by astrological signatures in my own chart. So I'm fascinated by the stars and by prophecy and dreams. And, yeah, so hence, that's why I'm here.

The book is written in three parts. the first part is called the home for little girls the second part is called the Buddha and the pink futon and the third part is called Hands Across the World and so the book

kind of travels from a bleak foster home in a suburb in Canada to a Buddhist monastery in Nepal with Sanskrit chanting and prayers so it travels the globe

and I think of it as a kind of I wrote it as an alchemical roadmap to the Survivor's Journey. So it's kind of a roadmap of how to get out of being stuck. I love that. I'm trying to keep them off my desk so it doesn't. So I'll just throw the hair tie. That's fine.

They just pick up on the great energy, right? They sure do. He's having fun. There you go. It's a little poem war. And I wrote it to give people hope, basically. And dreams do figure. in the book, which is part of the reason why I really resonated with your podcast, because dreams

have been very powerful for me in terms of my own healing and just my own navigation in life. And one of the first things I did in my own healing journey was get interested in meditation, which then becomes an interest in the mind and what's going on with the mind and what's subconscious and why do we have these thoughts and where do these dreams come from and that sort of thing. And when I first gone into therapy, the therapy I did for many years, six years was Jungian therapy, which was all about studying dreams. So I have a dream at the beginning of the book. I don't know if you'd like me to read it or do you have some more questions you wanted to ask? Oh, well, I'm a terrible interviewer. We're just talking. I don't know. I don't know about questions.

I don't prepare for anything. I'm a little bit better off the cuff in terms of that stuff. But I do a couple of comments before we launch. And then I absolutely want to hear. I'll throw it back to you. Um, in, in broad strokes, uh, going back to the very beginning, you know, you're, um, how astrology saved me from, from suicide type of thing. I am, of course, massively in favor of almost anything that saves someone from suicide. Find something you love about the world or that, that interests you. I think interest attention, uh, and specifically meaning are huge. So if you can find those things, uh, one of my favorite little, um, you know, pithy aphorisms is, uh, you can tolerate almost any what if you have.

a why exactly yeah exactly and so astrology is a school of meaning isn't it right it's a sure it's a it's a it's another form or another way of finding meaning and what was powerful about finding astrology for me and i'm not an astrologer i'm no expert i just haven't to have a really close friend who's an astrologer and and you know sometimes i believe when he tells me sometimes i don't but uh often he's been right and one of the things that was really powerful for me is that when i was going through a terrible depression in my life. I went to see him and he looked at my chart and said, well, this is difficult. So he didn't lie. Like, you know, sometimes people would say in the old days, you know, just buck up, you know, just smile and keep going. I mean, sometimes we fall into

a hole and we're just not capable of that. But he basically gave me advice, if you embrace this difficult path you're on, it will bring you gifts in the end. You know, when Persephone goes into the underworld, she's trapped in the underworld therapy. of time, but when she reemerges many years later, she comes with rubies and gifts. And that's the sole journey we're all on, whether you believe in astrology or not. And that was very healing for me. It made me realize, oh, there's some kind of order in the universe, even if I don't understand it.

There is a natural move towards individuation and wholeness. And there's something I'm going to learn. I'm going to get from this if I can survive it. and I just have to, you know, keep following the guiding star, as it were. No, for sure. North. Yeah, yeah. And that was helpful.

There's a lot of people who maybe don't understand depression because I've never been through it. And that's understandable in and of itself. And for those of us who have, and actually, you know, there's two interesting things. One is almost everyone has experienced suicidal ideation in one way. And it is the idea of, oh, my God, I was so embarrassed, I can just die. I would just rather have not existed than be having this physical emotional pain in a way. And no, most people, they're not serious.

They're just trying to describe a feeling. So it's not, there's no intent behind it. Fair enough. But for those who have, it's useful in the same way that it's useful for someone who's recovered from a drug addiction to teach others. They make great drug and alcohol counselors in a way because they can see through some of the bullshit and the excuses. And they can say, look, I did it. Here's how I did it. and let me show you. So one of the things when I worked inpatient psychiatric for 20 years,

sometimes I would say to people, I understand that you're feeling hopeless. You think nothing can ever get better and it's intolerably miserable and you want out. So what I'm going to, what I'm here to do for you is, you know, I know you believe right now that nothing will ever get better. So I'm here to believe it for you until you can. I love that. It's like, you know, it's a cliche, this too shall pass. But the truth is, I had a therapist once say to me, when you feel your worst, the moment when you're at your absolute worst, if you just allow yourself to feel it, you know, feelings aren't facts. That's the moment that it's already started to change. It's already started to change. It's that we resist feeling, you know, the big feelings and we're

frightened that we won't get through them, right? No, for sure. He's going to lay on the keyboard and stop the recording. I've lost one recording that way. I had a cat who passed on several years ago, but he walked on the keyboard and stopped it. A whole 90 minute, hour 45 minute, a great interpretation. The guy was blown away and thanked me profusely and no one will ever see it. It didn't record.

Gone. Oh, no. You'll see me looking down. He's still recording. Okay, thank you. That's probably good for me to be a little paranoid. Go ahead. So I have a question for you, Ben.

So were you, you were working in a, in a hospital setting? Mm-hmm. A psychiatric hospital. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Inpatient psychiatric. So when people say they've seen it all, I mean, yeah, pretty much. Oh, I bet. You do it for 20 years if you run across at least every type of acute psychiatric distress, although it manifests, you know, often it's, you get the broad strokes are very similar between types of illnesses, but then the specifics are different for each person.

But that's, that's part of the training. I think they gave me the idea to step above and say, okay, how does this fit into the paradigm? And then where do we go from there? So I, yeah. Yeah, I did my time in the ward for, uh, yeah. when I was 15 as a result of an attempt. And the thing that disturbed me about it at that time was that a lot of the people were repeat offenders. They kept coming back.

They didn't seem to get better. And so that disturbed me. And I went on an alternative route as a result. But things have changed, of course. You know, there's many more modalities available for people now. There's so much more help. And there's suicide hotlines, right? Which you should tell people about remind them.

Definitely. You can pick up the phone. You can pick up the phone and nobody has to know your name or who you are and it's safe, right? That did not exist when I was a girl, you know, did not exist. Yeah, and I think if you go to my About page on my website, on YouTube and Rumble, it should have the numbers for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill Nami and the suicide hotline. I don't know what the Canadian equivalent is or whether you can reach the American version. We have something called Sasha here in Ontario.

So the Sexual Abuse Center for Hamilton, a Familton or something like that. And they have a hotline. You just Google that name. And there's people 24 hours that you can talk to, which is just wonderful. I mean, I think it's great. That's actually one of the things I started with when I was in college for my psych degree. You had to get practicum hours in practicum just for practice. are you practicing so one of them was a suicide hotline and I would just or at least it was a mental health referral hotlines like hey they gave me a little book and they said if people call in trying to figure out what they need and get them a new number so I did that for a little while and you would just keep a phone they gave you a phone they gave you a phone they gave you a phone I can't remember exactly close enough but I did I did I did that you're back oh wow I don't know if I was using my phone and they routed the number to me or whether they gave me a phone because this was 25 years ago I can't remember exactly close enough but I did I did I did I did that you

know, and then, and then did the inpatient psychiatric thing for a while. So that was, that was fascinating. One thing to mention on that is, you know, we would lovingly, mental health professionals, especially psychiatric hospital, EMTs, nurses, doctors, police, often military. We have a very dark sense of humor. We have to find the humor in dark situations. Otherwise, the alternative is what, it's akin to what I say. I think I made this up.

I don't know. But, you know, life is a tragic comedy. if you're if you can't laugh at yourself it's just a tragedy so the same thing if you're dealing with tragic circumstance if you can't find some way to boost your mood you don't maintain those people burn out quickly and leave so the rest of us are left behind and we okay all of this to say lovingly we would call some customers frequent flyers uh because they would come back and there's a lot of mental health conditions that are extremely difficult to treat and successfully maintain you know we get someone stabilized and they leave and then multiple different reasons the

stabilization fails and they have to come back. And it happens. It happens with depression, schizophrenia, bipolar. These are very hard, very hard things to, you know, hard on the patient, hard on the family and then eventually, you know, also harm the caregivers too. Yeah. And it's a process, right? It's a long, can be a very long process. I think some of the newer modalities that are coming out now will shorten that process. I don't feel like, I remember at the time that I was going through my own healing with the psychotherapist. And I thought, one day, we will not have to relive all of this. You know, we just will cut to the chase. And that's true. I mean, I have friends who were psychotherapists who are doing all kinds of really cool stuff. EMDR and EFT and all of these

different modalities, which shortened the suffering. But certainly on the hotline, you would have a really world's eye view of the suffering of human, of humankind, right? Exactly. Yeah. My, you know, my hope for customers was always they never need to be. And that they were there is short of a time as possible and that they never came back if possible for good reasons not for the not for the other reasons uh not because they didn't exist anymore that's that was that was tough sometimes i wondered if people were okay out there and i never saw them again and i'm so i said to say to myself i'm going to choose to believe they're okay that that means what we did worked and they and support structures was a big deal i spent a lot of my time um doing um patient education but

with families as well family education and a book there's a book i i would recommend to folks too as well it's it's called i'm not sick i don't need help and it's by a uh a um practicing clinical psychology he did you well this was this book was published more than i think in the 90s years ago um a man by the name of Javier amador and it was based on it was like semi autobiographical a little way of but dealing with his experience with his schizophrenic brother and that quote on the title is is his brother brother who's you know slam the kitchen door on his way out um Because his brother kept telling him, you're, you know, you're sick and I'm just trying to help. He's like, I'm not sick.

I don't need help. And that's what families deal with a lot of love that. No, and once upon a time in psychiatry, they used to think, well, that's just resistance. And you confront and breakthrough resistance. And then you get them to accept that they're, and what we, a major shift, and this is what the book is about is, lately, and it seems to work better and seems to be more true. Lately, we've come to review the inability to see yourself as, as sick. as a symptom itself rather than resistance rather than they're fully capable of logic they just

refuse like no they feel fine they think they're normal because that's their normal experience and you can't really argue so so it shifts from you're not seeing that that's a delusion to i don't see that maybe maybe you're having a sensory experience that i don't have it's using more words to but but it shifts the focus from there's something wrong with you to we see the world differently how's that working for you? Can we do anything about it? Hey, you have what sounds like demons screaming in your ear. That must be miserable. I'm sorry, you're experiencing that. Hey, try this medicine. It should make those voices quieter or go away. Would you like that? You find a bunch of gentler approach, right? Like banging down the world that is built there,

regardless of how you judge that, you know, is a kind of, well, it's violent in some sort of way, right? So you could lead to a breakdown. So I could see why that gentler approach might be more effective. Oh, yeah. And ultimately, one of the reasons I, you know, got out of that was I got tired of being what felt like a mental health prison guard. It was my job to talk to people, but I also had to make sure they didn't leave. Now, I didn't want people wandering into traffic or following through on suicidal thoughts. So it was good, but it was, it was hard.

That's, I'm more of a, hey, don't play with that. You're going to stop. Like, you see, he's trying to do it again, stop my recording. You know, however necessary, it's, it's, it's. a struggle too because like i'm i'm i'm more of a freewheeling let people be what they are you're not hurting anybody don't bother them but um also i would imagine cases where you just got to protect them themselves so and it can be triggering i mean i loved what you said too about the tragic comedy thing i actually have a poem in my book called tragedy becomes comedy on fast forward because i

worked with a director years ago who said that's that was basically his saying you know Tragedy is comedy is tragedy on fast forward. And then you put it to the Benny Hill theme song and it becomes fars, right? There you go. There you go. And I think that's really clever. And finding humor, I know in various groups that I've been, having a dark sense of humor can really save your butt. I mean, I think that, yeah, finding the humor in life is, yes, life-saving, life-changing.

Absolutely. We have to laugh, right? Yeah. And that's one of the biggest. situations. That's one of the biggest symptoms, too, of depression is the idea that they've lost their ability to laugh. Nothing's funny anymore.

And that's a huge, you know, being entertained, amused, having reasons to smile. Even if you're just smiling, say something, you find heartwarming. I mean, just any reason to smile and it's just gone. And it's terrible. That's a very real thing. Yeah. Yeah. I love the book by Norman Cousins, I think it was, who cured himself of cancer by watching

funny videos. You know, he just locked himself in a hotel room and watched funny videos. And I think that contributed the script for Patch Adams or something. something or there was a guy that actually did that too he's like he i think i think maybe the real life doctor that was based on was if i can boost people's well they say this too and it's very very real a lot of our psychological state of state of mind it's repetitive but um it has to do with that so that's why they're they're trying to tell uh you know people struggling with with say cancer and and the possibility of a death sentence is to stay positive is like you know and it's also related

or in a similar category to the idea that people who retire and do nothing, they die a short time after. But if they have continuing purpose, then stay alive, they get up the next morning and do it again. Because I'm not done. And eventually the body fails. But it fails slower if you have that meaning. If you have a reason to get out of bed in the morning instead of just, do I want to watch another TV show today? And I don't really care. Maybe I'll die instead.

That kind of thing. I was going to mention two other things. So you mentioned Young, I want to get to that too, but first I wanted to mention the idea of meditation. And in these books that I've published, so I'm republishing historical dream literature. So the same thing I'm doing with the poetry I do with these books. And these are books going back to the 1600s or I found the record of a sermon of a preacher from, I want to say maybe 1538, but at least 1638. And it was talking about how to tell the difference between divine dreams sent by God and delusions sent by the devil. And he has a whole sermon.

And I made them into a book, ABC Book 2, The Mystery of Dreams, by it now on Amazon. Wow. Wow. Yeah. So there's, but okay, long story. How do you know? Well, you have to read the book. But, I mean, we can do broad strokes on that in a minute.

If you want to take me off topic, we're never coming back. But I just mentioned that to say, so I've got 18. I've got maybe three or four more coming that are, some of which are compilations. Long story short, it's a bit late for that. The ideas I've through this built my own, say, my personal master class in what has been said about dreams and dreaming. And each author approaches it in a little different way and highlights different things. And there's always different sections where, okay, that's not in any other book. And I would have missed it if I didn't read the whole catalog.

um yes but okay i had a point for that too okay states of mind they they've been there's been a long history of trying to you know so go you go back to the greek uh greek days and they thought of dreams as being sent by the gods and and even conceived dream as a god and so oneros where i get the title for onero chronology i think i'm bastardizing greek and latin together in the same set but i made up the word i do what i want uh nobody knows anymore yeah oneros chronos logos o'neurochronology of the study of the evolution of dreams over time is how I conceived that term brilliant I don't think you very I invented a word it's a neologism made up I mean I needed a title for my series no I there's so there's well if I'm just

plug you my books I should plug your once again this is our author Kelly our guest she's an author her name is Kelly Watt and her book is the weeping degrees by her book before you buy mine but then get around but then buy all mine too I have a trilogy called you know or trivium of three anthologies and then this most recent book is going back to that style and compressing basically a long article from the 1800s with two other complete books from the early 1900s, all in one volume for like 15 bucks. So you want three books and one, you buy mine. Wow.

Okay. It's probably so fascinating, though, to see how people's take on dreams. I mean, it would always reflect this society that it's been written in. It surely is. And it would be fascinating to see how it's changed. Oh, yeah. Well, we've gone from, yeah, dreams are sent by the gods to dreams arise from a, a, a moldy piece of cheese you ate before going to bed and disturb the humors and sent vapors to the brain,

all that goes, or almonds. There was, and there's been authors, right? No, there's been authors who credit their work to dreams. One of them was an early gothic horror writer. And another one was Robert Louis Stevenson. He said little brownies would come, little people and act out things. And then he would just write a book based on his dreams. So it's never hurts to pay attention.

Follow your dreams. They know the way is a phrase I love. All of this to say, the evolution and when, so different states of mind, they've been examining that and that shifted philosophically over time. And so it's really in the late 1700s, early 1800s, is that we started to get the conception that there's such a thing as states of mind. And that relates to studies of religious trance, like whirling dervish style, meditation from Eastern disciplines, but also related to daydreaming. I mean, and we have what we call the imagination. And some people don't know the roots of words. The root of imagination is, of course, image.

It is seeing with the mind rather than seeing with the eye. And that's what's largely happening in dreams, except if you're blind, then you have sensations and sounds, but no visuals because you have no reference. Is that, oh, that makes sense. That makes total sense. Another thing I learned from reading the books. Yeah. And one of the, oh, so this most recent.

I love talking about this stuff, though. And I want to reference that these are not my ideas. I'm getting these from other much better, more knowledgeable people, which is what study should be. But there's a, in the most recent book I just published, is a book called children's dreams. And it talks about blind children discussing their dreams. And there's a difference between if they had sight and lost it at a certain point,

or if they never had vision ever since birth. And there is a difference. So our, you know, our dream images, sensations. emotions, experiences are all based on our physical capabilities. And I wonder if our mental state too, because, you know, when I was younger, I used to dream in gray. Oh, yeah. And it was almost like there was an absence of color in my dreams.

And that's common, actually. Most people never mention color when they talk about their dreams. Oh, later on, there was lots of color in my dreams. And I really took that as a sign of health in my own case, like mental health improving, my happiness improving, that things were not black and white. light, you know. Sure. And that may be specifically for you. And that's, that's another thing. Two dreams are so personal that it's, it's more about your state of mind than about the objective laws of how dreams work. I mean, there is categories of how dreams work, which is actually

what I was getting to, too. So meditation, as you mentioned earlier, can allow you to do the same thing as kind of a passive, it can serve a purpose of like a hypnosis. You can put yourself into a trance through meditation, which then quiets the active attention to creating new thoughts and focusing on things. And it just says, let's see what's there. Let's watch the stream as it passes and don't try to row or get into it. Just observe it. And that I think, go ahead.

Go ahead. Just to wrap up on that. I was going to say that relates to accessing the subconscious. But then also as, you know, you probably knew through Youngie therapy, sometimes he would have people come in and they would go, gosh, Doc, I'd love to talk about a dream. I don't have one. He says, let's make one up. You can do artificial dreams that are, you put yourself in a relaxed, meditative state, and he'll say, you know, what do you see? Where are you? What's happening? And you just make up a dream and then you analyze that.

That can be almost as beneficial or equally beneficial. That's everything I wanted to say, I think. I'll throw it back to you. That's great. We might go three and a half hours today. Who knows? We'll see. We might. You know what that reminds me of, that reminds me of Santre, you know, the Jungian, what do they call it? It's this, special practice where you go in as particularly effective with children where you have a series of images, little toys and things, archetypal images, and children come in and create a sand tray. And then the analyst can kind of read the emotional state and the challenges the child is facing by the picture they create in the sand tray, which is a kind of live meditation or, you know,

meditation. But yeah, the meditation I ended in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Nepal called Copan. And so we were doing, I guess you call that, it was actually an introductory course called the Lamrim, which is one of the first courses you do when you're introduced to Buddhism. And they kind of, we were there for 30 days and we were allowed to write letters or listen to radio or watch TV or have any contact with the outside world whatsoever. And no lying, no stealing, no sexual contact of any kind. Kindergarten rules. Yeah.

For sure. We'll go in back to basics. Yeah. Getting rid of all the high-minded stuff. Yeah. And the head is saying, which is like the Jesuit, very similar to something the Jesuits say, you know, where if they have you for one full moon cycle, you know, if they would start on the new moon, go through to the full moon, which, you know, emotions become heightened all the way to the end. And if you could last for those 30 days while keeping these precepts, your mind would be forever changed. and your concept of the mind and of the world would be forever changed.

And I can attest to the fact that that is true. I certainly had an acquaintance with my own mind and what was going on inside myself that I had never had before. And it was mind-blowing. It was a really amazing experience. And one of the things I find with people is they don't realize there are so many different types of meditation. Meditation is this big blanket kind of umbrella.

And there really are, you know, people will say to me, well, I can't meditate. And I think, well, you know, have you tried contemplation? Have you tried a guided meditation? Have you tried? And usually they just try to sit in silence and get frustrated. But there's really so many different kinds. And we were doing, by the end, we were doing, you know, recitation of mantra,

which is a whole other thing altogether and really helps with discursive thoughts. But meditation is, you know, it's been proven to be incredibly powerful for mental health and also longevity. Like now they measure the telomeres, you know, on people's. strands of DNA or whatever and they lengthen after 30 days of meditation so it's it's such an incredible skill it's one of a life it was a lifesaver for me really a life saver for sure yeah well a lot of times when I use the term meditation unless I'm being more specific I use it as a blanket term for a lot of different kinds of altered states of consciousness you know not exactly you not not tripping on shrooms or anything but the idea of you know getting getting out of

active attention to something, although active attention to something can also be a meditative thing. Like there's a state of mind I'll get into sometimes when I'm doing a puzzle. My mind is engaged looking for shapes and colors and pieces, but it's also floating. There's another part of my mind that's just whatever comes through. I just, I'm aware of it, but it comes and goes. And I relate that very closely to a meditative or trance-like state in some ways. You can break yourself out of it and go do something else. But while you're, sometimes your hands or your eyes are busy, your mind is for you to float on other things.

And I'll have some of my best ideas or, you know, I'll come up with a new pithy phrase or something when that's happening. Or I'll remember things that were on my to-do list that I completely forgotten. I'm like, oh, should, I should do that. Let me go write that down before I forget. Now I'll finish this puzzle. There's something crazily, it's kind of odd that we even don't realize it. But nourishing about having your mind engaged, I think that's why people love creating anything.

You know, playing music, you know, running a marathon. writing of any kind, because your mind is in an altered state when you're doing that. And there's a kind of nourishment from that or rejuvenation that you get from that. That's really inspiring. And yeah, exactly. And it's funny, too, that idea that you were talking about where you can do one activity and then give your mind the freedom to kind of float around. I mean, I like walking meditation with that reason because when I go walking, my body's engaged.

It's busy. It's not distracting me. and then I'll have some of my best ideas will come at that time. And solutions to problems, you know, answers to questions, you know, things like that. I mean, it's just kind of amazing, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Definitely. Well, that's one of the best ways to say, you know, as I was saying, access that subconscious,

which is to have your mind not be crowded with other stuff. So if you can narrow your focus to something right in front of you, a lot of people find that easier than sitting still and doing nothing, then the mind gets extra bit. But that again, that could be a challenge, like you went to this place. And that's what I was going to ask you, too, as well. Yeah. Your book is then semi-autobiographical because you went through these different things, at different phases and you wrote poetry about the experience.

That's correct. It's a poemoir, I call it. Yeah. Oh, instead of a grim grimoire, but it's a poem war. It's a grim poem war. There you go. And, yeah, so it is autobiographical in many ways. But there's also, it's also full of, because the first section is about the life of the child and of yours truly.

So there's lots of imagination woven throughout. And yeah, and because it's poetry, of course, you know, I take artistic license in various places. So I initially started working on the book as, well, I had the title, The Weeping Degree. and I was working on it as a nonfiction book about the healing journey, you know, which is kind of a classic, well, now we have lots of books like that. We didn't at the time I started it, but I couldn't get it to work. It just wasn't coming together. I don't know why I kept bringing it out every couple of years.

I don't know a few of projects like that, and then I'd get frustrated and put it away. And the only thing I had was this title, which I really loved. And this is the weeping degree is an astrological term that I just love. And I've got a great reference for you about this. it refers, when you look at an astrological chart, it's like a pie for those who don't really know, right? And it's divided into these various planets and houses. And each house has degrees from 1 to 30. And from 28 to 30 is considered the weeping degree.

And what it means is it's the point where the energy of that house starts to fall apart. You know, like your dreams go awry, you make plans, nobody shows up. Your relationships fall apart. things flounder before the new beginning happens. But the good thing to remember is that the new beginning is about to happen. And this is what has to happen before you have the new. You have to get rid of the oil. And we've just recently, my friend who's the astrologer, Michael Zezis in, he's in Ontario as well,

called me the other day and said, Kelly, Kelly, you've got to realize the weeping degree is happening right now. just a couple of days ago when the peace accord came out in the Middle East the planet Venus the planet of love and friendship and all good things

was in Virgo in the 29th degree so it's not always bad when things fall apart sometimes war falls apart which is a really great thing and there it was he was saying here's an example

of a real positive manifestation of the weeping degree but getting back to the book I just had this title I just loved it because I thought, it's just so relatable. We all have periods of time like that in our lives. You cannot go through life without going through a period of time called the Weeping Degree where things fall apart and you just have to let go.

So I had that title. And when the pandemic came, I was really kind of, you know, like a lot of people, it was such a sad, sad time, you know, watching people die on TV every night, not being able to go anywhere. I have to say as an introvert, I didn't mind not going anywhere. Yeah, same. I just needed it. actually wanted to go less places. I'm like, oh, this is fantastic. I'm not getting in some,

that's what a terrible thing is about COVID years, right? But that was also when I shifted into and started this about 2019, early 2020. Did you? Did you see? Yeah, pivot, right? And I joined up for a series of poetry classes with an American poet named Judith Hill, who teaches in Colorado and San Miguel de Allende. And we had a wonderful time. It was this amazing time. I joined a class called Manuscript Plan. And I said, Judith, I don't have any poems. I haven't written poetry since I was 17. She's like, I don't worry. And because I had that pressure to produce, sure enough, all those stories from that time, the weeping degree, started to come through at that time. And it was, I think, pivoting at that time during the pandemic was really important for a lot of us.

And it was its own kind of looping degree that period of time. So, yeah, that's how the book was born, really. I wrote it during the pandemic in that time. And it felt that it needed that form. You know, it's like sometimes you have to change form. You've been doing something one way for a long time. And creatively, it's good I find for myself anyway. Shake it up, you know, do something different.

So that's how I ended up with this collection of poetry and flash prose. And I love that form now, especially like those tiny little stories. And I actually teach a course on it called Finding Your Epiphany, which I think is really fun for people. Yeah. So anyway, there you go. There you go. Yeah, I was definitely going to ask you about the idea of, okay, so where did that title come from? What does it mean?

That's a great explanation. Yes, yes, yes. I was also going to say it's, I like, and I think it's very true. So this is one of the reasons I like it. The idea of the cyclical nature of things, time events. Yes. You know, they say, you know, history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. but, you know, everything old is new again.

Fashions come back. We're getting back towards bell bottoms probably after 50 years. It's something like that. Oh, no. That kind of well. One shank carpets. Oh, yeah, I'm going to pass on that one. I'm going to keep the hardwood floors or like out in my garage here.

It's just that painted, that concrete paint you put on things and I threw a couple rugs down. Oh, yeah. But that works too for the idea of there's, so we've got the wheel of astrology. Or time. Or time. And my fit, which is a fan. A fantastic series of books you should read much better than the Amazon.

So don't let the Amazon series fool you. The books are amazing. I would read those and not watch the series. Unfortunately, I tried. I'm like, oh, this is so bad. But anyway, long story short. Hey, if you've never read the books and you don't care, watch the Amazon series, whatever. I watched all the Harry Potter movies and never read the books.

I'm getting way off topic. Wheels. Cyclical nature. So there's also the yin yang, which I regard my wizardly interpretation, so to speak. I'm just a crazy guy on the internet who thinks he's a wizard. Take that for what it's worth. But I think that's one of the oldest names for God, in a sense of before we were, when we were pre-verbal, even, when we could make monkey sounds, you know, over way more than 350,000 years ago. I think we had symbols that represented ideas.

And one of them was, you know, there's two sides to things. There's an up and a down night and the day. And we started evolving these ideas. Our ideas evolved as well as our, you know, mental capacities. Long story short on that one. The cyclical nature of things is, so we get phrases like this two shall pass. And that is powerful. And we get it.

Okay, even suffering is temporary. However, the other side of that is this, this two shall pass, but it will probably come again. So it will return. And that's the thing. And they talk about that in astrology. These same themes will reoccur throughout your life with a different manifestation every time. And that's both good and bad. So if you apply it to suffering, realize that suffering is temporary and it will end at some point.

But you're probably going to suffer again because it's what we do. but also with but also and then that the that's the upside the downside in a way or vice versa in both is if you're in a happy moment this will be temporary but you will also be happy again someday so yeah and that's what we we get to mental health stuff we're looking at so people who've lost say say with major depression they've lost that perspective of suffering is generally temporary well because they're for lots of reasons it's more durable and and seemingly permanent You know, it's a part of the definition is it's gone on for a long time. You've been hopeless for a long time.

That's how we know you've got major depression, that kind of thing. So, okay. But yeah, you know, I had a therapist used to say to me, what was it? That, you know, in terms of this, this two will, this two shall pass and things come back and come around. But they don't come around in the exact same form. And it's really helpful. Oh, now I'm remembering exactly what she said.

it's not so much what happens to us. It's what we tell ourselves about what happens to us. That is devastating. And often people, and I know I was this way, I felt that because these, you know, there were basically crazy people in my childhood that I grew up around, that there must be something wrong with me, which is the child's way of viewing things. But actually, that is the nature of the world. There are people in the world who are capable of harm. There are, you know, we will go through a weeping degree. We will lose our innocence. People will take advantage of us.

All of these things befall humankind. We have war. We have all of these things. They're real. We're not imagining any of that. So, but when we blame ourselves for it, when we, when we kind of demonize ourselves, we often stay stuck in that depression because it's like, well, I can't move out into the world because I'm doomed to have this happen again.

Oh, yeah. I'm an easy mark. I'm, you know, I'm whatever. I become terrified of it and isolate, even though you'd want to get out, which is very different for introverts because we're like, no, I'd really rather not have a bunch of friends and see them every day. That's extremely draining. I don't have the mental energy for that.

Thank you very much for the invitation. I'm not coming to the party. That's kind of me. I want to be invited, but I'm not coming. No offense. I don't go to any parties. I don't throw a party for me. I haven't had a birthday party since I was 16.

That was the last one. I'm just like, I just don't care. No, I, I, most, most, this is talking about me again, but most birthdays I'm at work on something, either outside the home or inside the home. And that's just what I do. And no one will ever know what day it is because I just don't, I just don't, I don't want to you know, you throw a surprise party. I will show up and say, thanks everybody and I will leave.

So don't, don't do that. But do you think Zoom is a gift for introverts? I mean, I love it because I love to talk to people. actually, especially if we're talking about something interesting, and it's not just chit-chat. Yeah, I'm not interesting. I love that. I love that. Yeah. How's the weather? But I also like it where we're going to talk for two hours. Never done. Thanks for coming. I don't have to talk to anybody for the rest of the day. And it's not awkward at all. It's just, no, no, no, for sure. And you don't have to leave your house. I get it. Yeah. We'll get back to our, to the discussion of the general,

the cyclical nature of things is, I like, I like a lot of these spiritual traditions and, and and philosophical traditions because they teach things where, where people can go. So, you know, my experience is not abnormal. This is actually normal for the human condition. I'm not bad and wrong. This happens to everybody. And then, okay, yin yang, too. I'm always looking at the balance of opposites, too.

We can also find out, okay, some things are our responsibility in a way. And it's not always fair. You got to figure out what to do about bad situations or you got to correct your own behavior sometimes if it caused a bad situation. Sure. And either which way, I like to tell people it's better. to act as if you are responsible for the bad things that happen to you even when you're not, because that is at least empowering.

You know, there's something, when there's nothing you can do, you're purely a victim and you can be victimized anytime all the time. But if there's at least... I would rephrase that. But you're responsible for, this is kind of like the whole discussion of karma, which, you know, gets people really upset. I don't think of karma as punishment. But I just don't go there.

But the idea that you are responsible for healing that. Sure. So whatever you need to do to heal that, to transform that, to transmute that into a positive, like your defects of character to a strength, that's your work in this life. I think that's my work. So some of us is not fair. Life is not fair. We look around. We can see it is completely unfair.

And some people get a really raw deal in life. It's really true. Many people do not have electricity in their homes right now as we're talking and we're on Zoom. So, yeah, this is real, this is reality. It's not to whitewash that reality. But I see that is my job to heal that because it's not that you get the wound. It's not that the wound itself gives you the gifts. It's the healing of the wound that gives you the gifts.

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that's the jury. And I don't mean to say people should consider themselves at fault or blame themselves. So that's a different shade of meaning. So this goes all the way back to my broadly, I'm like an agnostic atheist-deist-ish. And those all three people go, that doesn't make any damn sense. If I explain it to you, it would, but it doesn't matter. I think, and I think we come around again, I do think we've been here before.

I think our spirit energy is, so reincarnation basically, past lives. And I think we've chosen the life we're living. And people call it karma. It's based on our last life. I think it's we leave whatever this is. and we go back to the great everything and we can kind of reflect on it and say, oh, look at all those things.

Look at all those missed opportunities in that last life. I'm going to give myself another chance to learn what I should have learned because I'm not getting it. Something I'm not understanding. So in a way, I think at the root level of it, we're responsible for having chosen some of our suffering before.

Now, that doesn't mean you deserve it. It doesn't mean you did anything wrong. But I think there's a responsibility. That's kind of what I mean by responsibility. Like we chose to suffer. this way like well i get it i wish i hadn't done that to myself but we kind of did for a reason and that's that's a tough sell to people who've been through horrible things of like you chose this and i don't want to force that on anyone but um your beliefs i hear you yeah yeah and it doesn't

yeah like i said it doesn't mean that a victim is responsible for what someone else did to them they didn't cause it that's not what it is but but also it's that mindset of if there's nothing i could have done then i'm completely helpless if there's something i could have learned or changed, then I'm empowered in the future to not suffer the same way twice. And maybe it's as simple as I put myself in, or I wandered into the wrong situation. I went to a place. And then there's situations where literally a meteor falls out of the sky and you blow up. And what did you do to deserve that?

I know. You can't explain that. You can't explain it. You didn't cause it. Predators exist and you're going to get afflicted. So there's shades of me into the idea of responsibility. It was more of an empowerment thing of like taking it. Okay, what could I do differently next time?

If there's anything, that's. that's better than there's nothing life sucks i'm i'm doomed to be a perpetual victim always exactly i think that's horribly destructive so i i like that perspective on things a little better with yeah yeah but i don't want it to be misunderstood as well this is your fault no no no no that's not what i mean i get it i get it i i think i'm somewhere somewhere similar i i am one of the discoveries for myself in writing the book uh was that if these some of these really painful experiences in my early life had not happened. I would not have gone, you know, to India.

I would not have gone on this long journey. I would not have gone seeking. I would not have, it had, it sowed seeds for gifts later on, which is hard to accept. I mean, I find it very hard to accept that I would have accepted this lifetime. But I do believe, too, that we're on a soul journey and that we come back to heal things in the world also. in ourselves and in the world.

And yeah, that can be a really challenging assignment for some, let's say. And it doesn't always make sense to us now. And I don't think it does until we're on the other side and we see things quite differently. But I too believe in reincarnation. And of course, you know, the Buddhists had my mind for 30 days. It made some pretty convincing arguments sometimes in complete silence. And you know why? I think because the unfairness of the world,

distressed me so much as a kid is I think it does for children right like they really see how it's so unfair and that kind of explained it it's like well you're not seeing the whole picture of any human beings trajectory in this life or the life beyond so you can't judge in that way and I think that's great to be relieved of that tendency to judge sometimes we overjudge you know ourselves and others yeah here's another interesting weird theory that I've had for a long time it's like I was pondering the question of you know good and evil and and what you know you have the ancient argument for that of like, if God is all powerful,

how come he couldn't make a world for you? Yes, yes. And can God make a stone that's too heavy from, all these kind of things? And I'm like, why allow suffering? Why create a world like this? And I came to two realizations, as if this is objective truth.

I think it is, but you know, your mileage may vary. I think the world, I think free will couldn't exist. So, okay, this, first you have to answer several questions. Can God make a stone that even he, he can't lift yes but then he can make himself stronger and lift the stone anyway and repeat the process at infinitum so there's there's but uh one piece fell into place when i was reading uh or heard about c s lewis's resolution to that he's like can god do something illogical well

the estimation was god is logic logic logic itself cannot be illogical so god is is the limitless limited in it's both at the same time so So I'm going somewhere with that. So logically, we couldn't have free will in a deterministic universe. So there had to be the allowance for the possibility of evil, which means the allowance for the possibility of natural evils, you're trapped in a forest fire and you can't get out and you die horribly. That's awful.

Act of God, we call it. You know, a tornado throws you into the sky and you come down hard. All of that. Okay, so why would he do that? Why not just exist in the void and not create anything? Why was God compelled to create? And I think our primary job, and this goes back to some biblical stuff, but it's my own formulation as well. I think our primary job rather than seeking the forgiveness of God, which we should in a way, because we've done horrible things to other people, which we all did to ourselves because I think we're all the same soul in a million, billion different bodies over and over again.

So basically the question would be why is God doing this to himself? But the whole point is more than seeking forgiveness, we have to learn to forgive. we have to learn to forgive the act of creation that brought us here to suffer and that means understanding god and i think even god couldn't exist without love i think god needed to feel love needed to love himself and so made himself into all these these entities experiencing and then we're each given the choice are you going to give that love back are you is god going to allow himself to love himself so i i think he could not exist he could not tolerate the loneliness of living in the void alone and made all of this to experience love that only love makes

anything tolerable. And that's my profound rant. That's I, this is, I would totally agree with you. I know what I believe. That's really true. That's great. I love the idea of like, you know, God is having a dream and we're the, we're, we're the players in the dream. Yeah. And is enacting the human, the possibilities of human experience. And we're all playing. the parts. It's a kind of Shakespearean view of the world. In that way, in that way, we're all allowed to, let's say the mass of reincarnated humanity over eternity comes back with the answer. No, this is unforgivable. I think existence itself, I think God would poof out of existence. He would cease to exist. He'd say, this was a mistake.

I'm a mistake and disappear. And so we're asked to validate creation or not. It's up to us. That's a heavy burden. We're getting deep here. Only slightly grandiose on my part. I get to judge God. Not exactly. Not exactly. You know, I went to see a carapra.

Was a chiropractor? Yeah, I think it was a chiropractor many, many years ago. And I told him, you know, my story of my horrendous childhood. And he said, ah, the left hand of God. Oh, yeah. What? What? I was furious.

How did you interpret that or how was it explained to you? Well, then I started Googling it. Actually, this was pre-goo. but I spoke to another friend who started to describe this to me and explain it to me as something that happens in your life to precipitate the soul's journey. And then I had a yoga teacher many years later, Jivasu, and he spoke about this to his students.

And he said, well, in Hinduism, you know, God isn't just light and love and happiness. You also have Shiva, you know, the God of destruction and storms and music. and all of these other things that... Oh, yeah. In the West, we've... Well, we've really polarized them, right? We have God and we have the devil.

You know, we have the two polar opposites, but really God is all of those things. So, yeah, this is the endless mysteries. Well, that's how I conceive it, too, is, you know, within infinity is the possibility of evil and it coalesced in our minds as the iconic, the devil. All the bad things in the world. And I came across another weird thing.

It was from a graphic novel of all things, a comic book. from the 90s called Lucifer, which they made into a series, which wasn't exactly like the comic book, but long story short, said that, you know,

that hell isn't the place the devil went to. It was a place that kind of coagulated around Satan. You know, it's a place he made. Wherever he goes, there it is. So wherever you bring devil energy evil,

you will make hell around you. And that's each of us, in our individual lives. And then carmically, in the grand scheme, we, we suffer as I, as I assume, in the next life based on what we didn't fail to learn in the first life, you know, that kind of thing, or previous life. And, and also in the discrete, concrete, concrete physical sense, we, we suffer to some degree, or to a large degree, based on the bad situations we create through dysfunction,

ignorance, all kinds of different things. but there was a couple of things I was going to say is you talk about the left left hand of God in and the first thing that popped into my I wanted to get your understanding of it first but there's I think it's in the Bible is the Lord giveeth the Lord take it the way left hand right hand but but also um sometimes what he take it the way is the contentment and comfort like uh and one of the one of the stories that was at Abraham he got he got called to adventure when it's like in his 70s or 80s or something he's like hey get out of your company.

life living in your parents' house and go have an adventure so that sometimes the take it the way is is the comfort because no one changes anything until what they're doing is not working anymore. So if you found some discontentment that motivated change, I've got to get out of here. This is even boredom. Bortem is fantastic in some ways because it should be a motivator on board. I need to do something. But sometimes not. Yeah, like in Buddhism, I mean, I had a friend who had a tantric master who made him leave his wife who he adored and leave his little house in England and all of these different things because he felt he was complacent. Yeah.

And I thought, yeah, that's true. We do get like that. We do get like that. I have a poem I want to read you. Yes, an hour later, we're going to get back. I meant to throw it back to the poem, but I didn't write it down. So please, please tell me. No, no, this is part of our theme.

So this is called Sun quintile, Chiron, which is Chiron is the healing planet. God speaks to me in dreams. And this is a poem about the, uh, uh, um, the little girl in the story, of course, who was based on myself, finally leaving the home for little girls, the foster home, which has been a really unhappy place. Long after I have returned home, I have a dream, where the voiceless voice of God speaks to me.

This is the true beginning of your life. Forget everything that happened before. Today, you are reborn. I am only seven years old, and do as I'm told. I will not remember those drizzle gray days for another two decades. Where does it come from, that voiceless voice? How does it speak without making a sound? How does it know my name, know me, my birthday, my destiny, my inner thoughts? The sad songs I sing on the swings at the home for little girls. How does it know the beginnings and endings

of all things and still not protect me. Nice. It sounds like when you were younger, you were also struggling with some of that. And what is the nature of evil? Why do bad things happen to good people? How do I move on from that? You know, I read exactly such a brilliant book.

I forget where I read this, but somewhere, anyway, the point the psychologist was trying to make was that one of the things that happens when people experience violence or any kind of tragedy in their lives is a loss of faith. It's almost always followed by a loss of faith because they have to recreate the order of the universe in their own mind, a world that makes sense to them with this new experience. And that was certainly, you know, my seeker's journey, you know, I couldn't believe in a, I had real issues with the idea of a God who would let, you know, such terrible things happen

in the world. And I needed to find some kind of belief system that could sustain the experiences I was having. So I think it's inevitable that we go on that kind of a journey as a result. So, yeah. And of course, it's a worthwhile journey to go on. And I don't know. I think it's very much a core tenet of what we've discovered in psychology, focusing more on the practical application. Can we prove it side of things? But also has deep roots in religious and spiritual traditions. The idea of the healing journey or getting beyond blockages of bad things, victimization and stuff is transforming pain into progress or purpose.

And the degree to which we're able to heal is the degree to which we can find some way to move forward or find meaning in that experience. isn't and there's and there's a tough it's tough to tease out sometimes because again it gets back to what I was saying earlier about responsibility but the idea of you're not meant to say so a lot of the snarky folks will say oh well if bad things happening is good why don't we just do bad things to everybody no it's not like that it's not like that bad things are going to happen you don't have to please don't make more bad things happen that's not going to help anybody but you look at bad things that happen or struggles that you go through you know difficulties

and if you can't find a way to draw meaning from it, it's just a negative lump of dark, dark energy or whatever. It's sitting inside you festering that does. But you can actually kind of crack it open and say, hey, there's something to be learned from this experience. There's something of value I can take from it. Another way of looking at it is the idea of, you know, every obstacle is an opportunity.

Yes, yes, yes. It's not just random chaos. Yeah, yeah. And if you don't find meaning or, purpose in it, then it is just random chaos. But if you can find something and use that as motivation or meaning or to create some manner of move, use it almost like pushing off the wall into swimming pool. It's like if you can run head for it first into the wall, well, you can't swim that

that may anymore, but you can flip around, put your feet on it and push off it and keep going. I just made that up. I'd love that vision in my head. Yeah, that's a great metaphor. Yeah, yeah. I love that transmuting pain into purpose. I love that. That's exactly it.

That's exactly it's a huge thing. And it's like if you can, yeah, you're stuck, you know, yeah. But if you can, then, and a lot of people do it through, yeah, becoming an advocate for other people that have been through the same thing. Like, well, let me help you heal. Let me, you know, that can be a tremendous purpose. And sometimes it's the easiest purpose for people to find initially just to give them, give them a start. And then they can move on to other things. Well, I'm capable of more.

Maybe I can draw other lessons from this. Maybe I put those lessons aside because I learned them. I'm done. I've incorporated it in, what do they call it? Integrated. Integrated. Yeah. Integrated.

the trauma in a way, which is not to validate the trauma or to endorse it. It's integrating. You know, what is, what does it, what does this mean to me? What were the lessons? What were the lessons I got from this? What, what did I learn about how to survive as a result? What, what skills did I have to develop in myself in order to move on? Yeah, like there's different levels. It's kind of a spiral, right? There's that theory of spiral healing. And there was a period of time in my life where I got involved in activism. I actually went with a group of women to the UN in York to speak on violence against the girl child. And I found myself here in the UN, you know, with like 6,000 people all coming together. And these were all people doing altruistic things for the world. I mean,

I'd never seen such a thing in my life. I was so, I mean, to this day, I get a rush when I say it. I mean, it was just so moving that there were, we see so much bad news on the news that we think the world is full of evil people. But the truth is, it's also full. of ordinary people trying to do the best they can. And here was a group of people who were extraordinary, you know, making an effort to try to make the world a better place. And I found it at a certain period in my own journey, really powerful and healing to pursue that. And then after a while, I found telling my own story, particularly going over the really difficult parts, was just re-triggering and exhausting. And I needed to leave it alone. And, you know,

and then finding a new form, poetry, exploring something, the beauty of language, something completely different is another way of transmuting in a very different way. So poetry is a great way to also to make sense of it. So if you can't understand something, you can't really get past it either. Then again, there's another thing I just thought of that that's a great, a great visualization in a way of what's going on. So if you have a top-down view, sometimes if you, it looks like you're going in circles, but you shift your perspective, you realize it's a spiral.

You're actually going up. We were just looking at it from the wrong perspective. So sometimes we feel stuck, but actually we're, we are making progress, even though it looks like we're going in circles. I love that. That was like, yeah, that was a one hand clapping moment for me. I'm like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That's a great, that's a great image.

That's a good thing to remember. My teacher, Lamayashi in Nepal, he used to say, you know, if ever you're really stuck in something, you kind of have the mouse eye view. You're like the little mouse in the grass, looking up, everything's too big. It's all overwhelming. He said, go climb to the highest point around and lie on your back and just look at the sky. And you want to be lying in a place where all you see is sky and infinite possibility. And then your mind will fill with infinite possibility.

And you'll realize there are other options. Yeah. To what this dilemma I'm facing right now, maybe not in this moment, but maybe in the next moment. And I thought, oh, that's beautiful. That's a beautiful. No, it really is. Well, that's a very, that's a very therapeutic act. Isn't it?

And what I mean is not just the broad idea of, oh, it's a healing thing. Yes, yes, no, it is too. But like a prescription for a therapeutic process that a counselor could give you is that idea. And for that reason, and there would probably be in a lot of people listening to this, the idea of that sounds silly, that won't work. What's the point? but experiencing it when you get there to that moment and you're looking at nothing but sky something hits you that you can't process intellectually you can't see the benefit you're

going to have until you do it and then you go whoa this actually worked I love those experiences that's that's exactly it because at the time I thought hmm I'm not sure about that and I went and did it and I was like wow it's a really amazing experience like you you know it's it was it Yeah. How do you explain some of these things? I mean, it's kind of a mystical experience, right? Sometimes you just got to take a chance and say, well, you know, it's better than doing nothing. Let me try something. You've got to try something. You've got to change something or nothing's going to change. I'm full of platitudes today. Sorry. But I'm actually planning on writing a book one day about the aspirational aphorism because a lot of people get it. You always have the slogans. I call it the slogans. Well, there's sloganeering and there's platitudes. A lot of these are misused in terms of they're dismissive. They're like, oh, here's a, here's a, here's a,

quick response. And I, you know, it's not really simplistic and not really helpful. But there's I think deep meaning in there that often gets overlooked or dismissed out of hand. And one of them, you know, I'm going to start with things as simple as an apple a day keeps a doctor away. Let me start when we open, I'm going to do an A through Z type of thing or whatever. And start with A for Apple. Just like, just like, I'm obsessed with the kind of simplifying ABCs of stuff. But, you know, okay, let me explain this. It doesn't mean, and not to you, but in the book of like, it doesn't mean if you eat an apple, you know, doctors are scared of apples. It doesn't mean you throw the apple with it, all the snarky things people say to dismiss the, the wisdom that are in these simple

phrases, you know, when it's not just a platitude, when it's actually meaningful, it's, pay attention to your health. If you eat right and get exercise, you're going to be sick less often. You don't need a doctor. The doctor's not being kept away. You don't need to see a doctor because you're taking care of yourself an apple. Yes. And we can, we can, and now, and now you've got an image of an apple in your head and like apple equals good health. That's kind of an association we've had anyway. It's fruits. It's good. It's healthy. It's healthy. they eat fruits and nuts and things like that. So I want to go through the book in that.

It's kind of an A through Z type of that. I don't know what I'm going to do through Z. Oh, for Z I'm probably going to do. I just thought of this. If you hear hooves, you think horse is not zebra. That's going to be Z. That's going to be Z. Yeah, yeah.

That's also related to the kiss method. Keep it simple, stupid. It's probably not. It's probably not the unlikely outcome. Unless you're in Africa on the plains, it's unlikely you're going to have North American or European horses. It's probably zebra. So also pay attention to where you're,

at the set and setting is a big time. Oh, you're speaking my language. I love all these little slogan. So I learned it as keep it simple, sweetie. So there you're supposed to speak kindly to yourself, not call yourself stupid. Fair enough. Yes, yes. That's probably for the better.

Yeah. Why don't we do this? Do you feel before we run out of time, do you want to do the dream things? Yeah, I know. Yeah, let's do the dream thing. We're here for a whole thing. We're going to do it. I know.

I also brought another book to plug somebody else's book, not mine, but one of the books that I used for years and years to interpret my own dreams because I kept a dream journal for ages and ages. I find them so fascinating. And this is Robert A. Johnson, inner work. And he's got a four-part process that he has you do for your dreams, which is really kind of fine, I think. So here's this, this is a recent dream. And it was really, could I, could I have two minutes to run to the bathroom again? I drank a lot of coffee. Yeah, should we take a break? Yeah, yeah. Benjamin the Dream Wizard wants to help you. Here's the veil of night. and shine the light of understanding upon the mystery of dreams.

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

The sleeper have awakened. There we are. Hello, here we are. Sorry about that. It was longer than I expect. I got a text from my mom. Had to text her back. So.

Oh, you have to speak to mom. Right. Where are you located, then? I'm in Portland, Oregon. Oh, of course, Portlandia. Good, good times and fun happening locally all the above. Yeah, you got to, you know, at the older I get, I'm pushing 50, the more you realize my parents are not going to be around a whole lot longer but then it's going to go a lot faster than

you think so you get the opportunity call your mom stop this video right now and call your mom just do it but okay oh and here comes here comes bubba here comes your little friend he's a he's a little over a year old i think now year and a half something like that uh so cute tell he's so shiny look at him healthy coat yeah he's gorgeous and he wants to play with our elderly uh female cat who's on her like literally on her last leg's don't work so good anymore um and she's she's not that keen she is not having it all I hear is her going oh sorry that was me that was me I scared him you are going to have to move bubba okay so the the dream thing we're ready the way I uh the way I do this I'll just throw it out there again I have a process when I understand it someday I'll write a book about that

too but so far I explain it as step one shut up and listen and our friend Kelly's going to tell us a dream like a narrative here's what happened here's what I saw and then we're going to we're going to figure it out together so I am ready when you are as soon as I move this guy. There we go. Great. Thanks. I look forward to hearing what your process is, too. It's always exciting. I love processes. Okay, so this stream I had about two weeks ago. I dreamt that my husband and I were traveling somewhere as strange, and during our trip, the world change. You know how it is in dreams? I don't know what that means. We had to get back home. There was some kind of world event or an upheaval, an earthquake.

Someone said to me, the 36-year cycle has ended and the new one has begun. Everything is about to change. And I was standing on a balcony, and I was looking out over a landscape. And the landscape was divided in two. And on the left side, I could see the ocean. And people were walking way slowly from the ocean.

And that's where I thought the climactic event or climate event had happened, and I was afraid. I immediately thought of who gets sound. I think that's how you say it in Thailand. And I thought, oh, my gosh, if I was down there now, I'd get swept away by the tsunami that's about to come, and they're not walking fast enough. It was the one thing that I thought.

And then I looked to the right, and I could see green and woods and trees, and suddenly the image changed. and it was almost like I could see beings from other realms and time was warping and coming towards me so that all time was happening at the same time

I can't really even explain it it was just the most bizarre feeling beings who had been in this place before yeah time warped it was speeding up and slowing down and I could see other dimensions I called to my husband, look at this, it's amazing. Time's not linear, after all.

This was the new reality. And, yeah, what else do I have here? People walking too slowly away from the ocean, yes. And I'm trying to think of what with the final feeling was. It was really a feeling of a mixture of a mixture of a little bit of fear because so much was happening at once, but also awe. It was awe. And that's such an unusual feeling to having a dream. I don't usually have awestruck dreams, I guess. So it's really stayed with me. And in terms of a context, I know Johnson talks about this. I was actually

editing a book that I wrote many, many years ago that I never actually brought out or showed to anyone, and it was about walking the Camino in 2008, which I did to try to get sober, actually. In the path on the right, you know, I said there were these two landscapes, one was the ocean, what was the path, was the Montes de Oka, which was a part of the path that I walked, where the Basque had had one of their last standoffs, and they were slaughtered, you know, like hundreds of them, and it was this very difficult road that, I really struggled upon as I was doing it on the walk and really was struggling internally, right, to keep going and to make it to the top of this massive hill. And that day was like 29 kilometers and it was really, really difficult.

And it was almost like I was reliving that part of the walk on that right-hand landscape. And the other thing that was happening at the time, this is just my regular real life, is that I guess I've been going through. a little bit of a fork in the road feeling of, no, I could focus my work this left-hand way or I could focus my work this right-hand way, I could live this left-hand way, I could live this right-hand way, you know, decisions or forks and questions. Yeah. Okay. Oh, it's fantastic. Love it. I love it. That's great. Thank you. I've been thinking about it ever since. I just can't stop thinking. How many days ago would you say it was?

You said it was relatively recent. Well, my last entrance year was September 26. So this was like the beginning of October, I think. Yeah. Okay. A few weeks ago. Yeah. You'd be amazed how many times I've had people go, you know, I had a dream to share

and I had one last night. Let's do that one instead. So sometimes sometimes the brain will say, hey, don't waste this opportunity. If you got a question, let's let's get it looked at. But then also, you know, even if you, hadn't booked with me by that point. It doesn't matter.

Dreams just come and they tell us things. No, no, I, I hadn't booked with you. Fair enough. Yeah. And it doesn't need to be.

You don't have to wait until you have, you don't have to like schedule an appointment and then wait for a dream to happen. We're not going to do that. You can choose any. I've had people choose stuff from it. Here's a dream out as a teenager, a series of recurring dreams.

And then we look at why they stopped. It may be why they might have come back after a gap. But. Yes. And I love what you're, Former listener said about sleeping on things. Like I used to do that too, where I'd sometimes before I go to sleep, I'll ask the subconscious, you know, a question. Like, how do I deal with this?

And sometimes I get an answer. Sometimes I get another question. For sure. And then I have a very fascinating phenomenon, which happens is that I tend not to remember my dreams. I think that's part of my fascination with dreams. Tell me your dreams. I can't remember mine. Let's talk about that.

But I will go to bed with an open question, uncertain of how I feel about it, what it looks like, what I want to do. do, and I will wake up with an answer in the morning and have no memory that I had a thought process or a dream, although I'm certain I did. Really. I love that. I love that. Yeah. For me, sleep on it is not just give it time. It is also, but it's literally, physically, go to sleep. Sleep on the problem and hopefully an answer. And actually, the books, many of my works of historical dream literature available on Amazon, are replete with stories of that, of people who are the inventors of things.

It was a guy who made up, made some kind of a mechanical device, and he couldn't figure it out in his waking mind, staring it up, you know, the drafting table, went to bed, woke up in the morning,

and he was able to tell the dream and how it revealed to him the answer. And that's all our brains do. It's problem solving. It never stops. It's always processing something. Absolutely. I totally believe in that.

And I've had that with creative projects where, you know, I'm thinking, ah, do I bring in this character? Do I do that? What do I do with him? And I'll wake up in the morning

and it would be like, no, that character's got to go. You know, like, it just be, it'll be so clear. Or you realize some action you wanted them to perform is out of character. And you're like, oh, that's not them at all. They would never do that. No, but it didn't make sense until you had some nocturnal vision that you may or may not remember, which is great.

What we think of his dreams are here's the, here's what I remember. But I think we dream all night long. I think that's been proven by science too. We don't just dream in REM sleep. You wake up someone at any point in the night after they've gone unconscious. They will wake up reporting, oh, I was seeing or thinking. something so yeah a friend of mine calls them downloads sometimes what we're doing is downloads yeah exactly or in a sense great subconscious that too or or in a or uploads from our own subconscious into

consciousness into that yes there's a there's one gal who talks about it as as the uh the twilight between the subconscious and conscious attention and that's where dreams tend to occur is when those two are in some kind of a communication deep enough we can we're asleep but but uh still receiving messages from that place where it's a I think of dreams as more the raw unfiltered stream of consciousness and sometimes we get something useful we can fish out of the stream

in a way I love like analogies and demonstrations like that so it's fantastic you gave me you gave me the additional context too because that is actually important well in terms of when I start doing when we get down to actually doing it which is what we're doing right now and the

discussion around it is also part of the process I can't explain it but I can do it. It's one of those intuitive things. And I got up, you know, one of the viewers of my video games calls, you know, when I'm trying to solve puzzles in a video game, you know, so what is your wizard's intuition saying? Oh, yeah. I can just kind of, let me try some crazy stuff. And oh, look at that. It worked. Wow. I just needed a, you just need to look at a different way, the spiral to the circle way. Anyway, um, but if you told me to explain what I do, I can, I can really only demonstrate it. It's like, so I say as soon as I understand it, I'll write a book about it.

Then I can explain it. But part of it is, a lot of times we'll go through the dream first. and then come back around to, okay, what was happening at that time? You know, then we've primed the pump in a way to say, okay, where are these themes repeated? But we actually now have it a little bit in advance. You know you were pondering the general concept of taking different paths, a fork in the road. And maybe, and certainly the idea that that reference occurred to you is probably significant. So you've done enough pre-analysis and contemplation to pull some themes out and say, well, you know, at the very least, And broad strokes, that's exactly what I was going to say.

There's two, you're looking at two different things. So you're literally at an elevated position. Looking down, we already know that's important to philosophical things you've been told and internalized. So that's why if someone is explicitly Christian, we're going to look at it more through a Christian lens or if they're explicitly Buddhist or whatnot. That's going to inform how their thought process works. So you know you're at an elevated position, which is a great place to evaluate things. You're looking at an ocean and a decision. disaster and you're looking at a forest and beings and the perception of time. So those are going

to be in if we're conceiving it as as a fork between two different paths or at least two different ways of looking at something, two different ways of understanding something. We got something going on there. Long story short on that. We can actually do it in reverse and say, okay, what was happening at the time? Okay, now tell me the dream. And we can see if we can find, find relation to it. I think we can. I think you've already decided in your own mind that there's some connection there. So we'll definitely run with that. what do we got here? Traveling.

Traveling with your husband. So that's the very beginning. And where were you traveling at the time? Did you have a sense of? But actually, we're supposed to go to a wedding in a couple of weeks. So I kind of wondered if it was a premonition in some ways. But I've had. Is it on the coast or in the forest?

It's in Mexico. It's on the ocean. It is on the ocean. Okay. That made of, That may have spurred part of the location reference. Maybe. It could.

Maybe. It could. Yeah. Yeah. That could be it too. Now, what I want to know, if you go to this wedding and there's a tsunami and you're at a beat and you're standing on a balcony and you're like, oh, my God, this is my dream? I want to hear back from you because I can't, no, if you were to ask me right now, is this, Ben, is this going to happen? I can't tell you.

I have no idea. If it does happen, I want to know because that's, that's ridiculous. That's amazing. Uh, and I've had, you know, before not, yeah, before 9-11, there were all kinds of people having all kinds of dreams. Before the sinking of the Titanic, there's reports of wives waking up and telling their husband do not go on this trip and he stayed home in the boat sink. Whoa.

Now maybe she just had a dream fearing a boat would sink. Sure, but it did. And coincidence, who knows. Uh, I, I stay out of that half, not because I don't believe in it. I think it's entirely real. I call it, you know, lovingly call it the spooky who side. I'm just not an expert in that. I can do the psychological analysis, the symbolic stuff related to your personal life, your

thought process. I try and stay in my lane in that sense. But I love that other stuff. And I want to know. I want to tell everybody, it's real. This happened. I don't know what it is, but it's fantastic. It's fascinating.

It's funny how I was talking to myself about that in the dream, you know, like this reminds me a little bit of Fouquet and why are the people walking so slowly? Like, they should be running. Yeah. And for sure, direct reference to the idea of, um, From your vantage point, and we were going to get there, but we'll just throw it in now. From your vantage point, you're able to see better and understand better than the people who are about to be afflicted by this circumstance. And you're referencing this, okay, this is like another natural disaster that I've seen, which makes sense.

We use these, the dream pulls up references and puts them in there on purpose to say, okay, imagine this is what's happening. It is a tsunami like Foucat. They are going to be in danger. And at that point, you've got people who are in a way, the way I would phrase it, and you always check in with yourself. If you get a little, you know, zing from the head to the heart or whatever or gut that says, whoa, that makes sense. It's people too close to the problem.

They don't have the right distance from it to see what's about to happen. But you do. But then there's also you're kind of helpless to. Yes, because I can see way of. them ocean they can't see that and you could scream at the top of your lungs and they're just too far to hear you um and they may they may even see the problem but they don't realize they need to move faster they're not responding to it properly there's something about that um so that was more the feeling that was more of the feeling what you just said there yeah yeah they were walking away they knew

enough to walk away but they didn't realize how serious it was yeah the problem is more serious than they saw so the idea of trying to communicate to so the idea of trying to communicate to someone And on one half of this is unable to communicate to someone how serious their condition is give them good advice to get them out of it, which a lot of what you're doing in writing and poetry is trying to communicate thoughts and feelings and perspectives. And poetry especially trying to evoke an emotion from someone. Here's what it felt like to have these thoughts or to see what I saw. Speaking of Edgar Allan Poe earlier, another one I did was his poem about Annabelle Lee trying to describe his feeling of grief and loss. because there's the, I think it's a historical fact you lost a young woman he was in love with when he was very young and it just wrecked him for life. He's never been, and he writes,

wasn't it his sister? I thought it was his sister. Maybe it was. I'm, I'm not a, uh, po-historic. He was, yes, he was totally devastated and never recovered from it. I do remember that story. Well, then we get the, some of the greatest works of art ever, which is very interesting, the suffering of artists, that kind of thing is sometimes you have to suffer greatly to make great art, but, uh, well, I put that in a, um, in a blues riff, uh, talk about about the story of Annabelle, you know. Oh, I want to hear that. Oh, you know, yeah, it's at Real AI Radio on YouTube, Rumble.

Okay. And I'll check it out. On X. The handle on X. I opened a new completely separate channel for that one. Long story short on that. So the inability to communicate the seriousness of the situation to people. Yeah, yeah, for showing that.

That was actually where I was going with that. It was the idea is, you know, each poem decides kind of what it wants to be. Well, this was a sad poem about loss. That's the blues, man. suffering i'm suffering here and so you really to hear it sung it's powerful but so you got that but all right so actually getting to the dream with lots of different elements but i like to go through it a little bit in order just to just to see it as well as i can so in the very beginning the first thing you told me about the dream is that you were traveling now there's two different ways you

experienced that one is I had a knowing that I was on a trip with my husband that I was traveling with him somewhere or did you actually appear in scenery acting out the travel before you got to the balcony or is is the balcony actually the beginning scene in the context of the balcony is I was on a trip with my husband yeah I really it started on the balcony standing on the balcony and yeah that's who it was What I mean is that's, it's good to know because I'm trying to see it. And it could have been either way. It could have been, well, actually, we first started in the car.

And then we arrived at the hotel and went to the balcony. But that's not it. I don't remember that. I don't remember that. It was more like he was on the balcony with me and then he was in the back room. And, you know, like you see something. And I'm talking to him. I'm telling him in the background.

But really, I'm alone on the balcony watching this unfold. but the world is changing around us. Something has happened. Big things are happening and the world is changing around us. It's not described as what has changed, but not only that, we can see this, I can see, you can't see,

but I can see this physical change happening in front of us too. And the way I described this to people is they're in dreams, because none of it is physically happening, there is no difference between I saw this and I know this. They're both essentially the same experience. sometimes the knowing comes from the seeing we we in that what that means is you watch something occur and then you you have an understanding of what it means that it occurred so the knowing comes after sometimes the knowing just exists it's kind of like we're telling a story of like

so I was on the balcony with my husband and this was during the time when another friend was breaking up and we give ourselves in in a way the context so I was talking to my husband about breakups that kind of a thing and what you're explaining to him is change and on one side you've got this you know the so you got the sense you are speaking out loud you gave me quotes in a way and dreams are funny like that sometimes we don't hear ourselves say things we just say them and it's it's not the hearing of saying it it's this is what i communicated to this person who was with me as i said essentially the same thing whether you heard we also have a difficulty in dreams of reading text if you ever have a dream where you were reading a book or a newspaper or signs

outside a building very often you won't go i didn't see text but i knew what it said i knew what it meant yeah yeah it's like things are known and things are known it's like the voiceless voices of god in the yes right absolutely there's no voice but you know what it's saying yeah we say god's message and we get messages so to speak in silence in absolute silence yeah it's not words that's well that's not words well that's the thing too is like okay so again it's weird to say some of these things i think God talks to me. I don't hear the voice of God, but what do I mean by that? I open myself up to the Holy Spirit of being beneficial to you in this process. And with the ideas I get regarding connections that I then communicate, I think that's just me being a channel through which

hopefully that ultimate great spirit of beneficence of being helpful comes through and speaks. And I'm not hearing voices. I don't hear voices. Nothing against you if you do. That's just not my process you know no spirits no no no holy booming then this is god here's what you should say none of that none of that i think that's if you're having that just take a breath with something's wrong but anyway so i think when they say god speaks it's not words but you get it you get it yeah that's what i meant too there were two different quotes and i i was writing as fast as i could and then i can't read my own handwriting half the time something i wrote some some change some someone said to me that someone said to you yeah someone said to me the 36 year cycle has

ended and the new one has begun everything's everything changed i was looking out over the oh oh on the right side it was marshland i forgot that part okay well that's why i go back through it again as i missed half what you said honestly i ride as fast as i can but it's uh i'm only oh i was speaking quickly no no that's okay and then well i also didn't interrupt until you slow down you tell the story and we're going to go through it again so if i miss something this is this is where it comes back and also um it gets expanded i ask you a question you take a look in your own memory of that experience and you go oh yeah this was also happening you never mentioned it but you get it you that comes back to as we're discussing it yeah like i said at the beginning the world

on our trip the world changed and we had to get back home what did that have to do with like i don't know what that is for sure and that's a great place to start too so you're you're traveling you're going from one place to another and travels uh without go and dream dictionary about it there's broad things you're traveling is well you weren't stationary you we were moving from one place to another and we move metaphorically in a lot of different ways and change is a movement from one state to another you know physically i went from utah to colorado but also from a state of a state of uh rest to a state of running there's a change it's travel is very very very big to do with going from one place to another are usually in our minds and our thoughts and sometimes physically.

And I've been having a lot of these traveling dreams. So this is a theme. Okay. Yeah. Good. And you are in motion. And when you have a, when you have not yet arrived at a destination, you are actively amidst travel.

Travel is what's happening before you were. And that can happen in your mind in terms of trying to make a decision. Before you have reached a conclusion and chosen a path, so to speak. You're traveling before you even choose a path. It's a fantastic way to look at it, too. But, you know, a destination is stationary. The journey is, is the motion. So the travel is the decision-making process in a way.

And you're looking at this fork in the road. And it's not just maybe one fork. Maybe there's multiple branches and each branch has multiple branches and we're off in permutation land, which that's exactly how everything works. But, yeah. But what you're bringing with you also is, your husband. Now, he doesn't say or do anything necessarily. He's in the dream. It's kind of like he's in the other room. He was there with me on the trip, but he's in the

other room. He's not seeing what I'm seeing. And metaphorically, too, important people in our lives are always with us in a way, even after they passed on. They still, and it's not, not the, literally their spirit is in us, that that kind of spooky woo thing, but what they mean to us, who we understand them to be, what they might expect from us, what the relationship with them that we want to preserve. So I would guess you probably talk things through with your husband. He's someone you would go to to say, hear my thoughts, help me make a decision or figure things out.

So you've brought that representation with you as someone to listen. What does it mean to listen to your thoughts? Sometimes you've got to speak out loud to formulate your own thoughts. They're in your head and they're all squirly And then we put them into language Let me try to express this Which is why you would Encourage people maybe to write out ideas

Like try and try and write it out like you're explaining it to someone Well you brought him with you so you could just talk to him And make it simple But it also It represents probably as I was saying That you value his perspective That you think there's a point in telling him To settle your own mind and you might get some good feedback

So he's definitely something you want And just his presence You didn't pick someone else You didn't pick a random stranger. You didn't pick your sister. You didn't, you know, pick an ER doctor or whatever. There was no one else I recognized in the dream. And I didn't actually see him exactly.

Yeah. And that's another great way. I think that's another confirmation too is because he's not actually physically standing on the balcony with you, but you know he's there and you know he can hear you. So you've, as you brought this representation of this important person you would rely on for feedback and to hear your thoughts sorted through verbally to be present. And that's kind of easy, in a way a prop in a sense. But it's the same thing as saying, I love this example too,

is why I tell people not to rely too much on dream dictionaries, unless you build your own of your own dream symbols. Here's what these things have meant in the past, though that might be good. But if you, you know, have a dream dictionary entry about seashells and seashells represent the ocean and the ocean represent, okay, maybe for you. but if you start thinking seashell and you go,

I used to collect seashells on the beach with my grandfather. Why am I thinking of my grandfather? He told me this thing and that relates to my life. We got a story. You know, that kind of a thing. The seashell really was a stand-in for remember your grandfather. Remember the times with him. Remember what he said.

That relates to something else. And so we get that chain of thought. So sometimes if your husband did speak to you and gave you a certain answer, that might have been, again, do it with a counterfactual. He didn't. but that might have been relevant to saying well here's what I think he would say and that's important to consider but at the very least I've got a sounding board and what else is a husband or a spouse in general is someone else who cares about me enough to listen and has my best interests at heart and I'm also need to think about them in making my choices he's with me on this he's even if he isn't the one that has to decide he's still going to be affected by my decision all of this why is your husband there one one thing. We got all this great stuff.

And then again, if it's amazing. Yeah, it was almost like I was going to tell him these things I was seeing or something, you know, like, and you may have been communicating with him without words. And you may have,

you know, at the very least you're speaking out loud. I think it was for his benefit to let him know. Here's what I see. And you may also be thinking about how do I explain myself to my husband? How do I make what I'm experiencing comprehensible to him? How do I explain this scene? Well,

let me explain it to myself through this vision. because whatever you decide it's going to affect him he's got to live with you so he wouldn't want you to do anything harmful to yourself or or or to him and I don't know what to make of and you we're going to figure it out together with the idea of a 36 year cycle did something is that a reference to something specific for it is because there is um it's funny okay so I spoke to an astrologer who told me this there is this 36 year cycle ending and it's ending in my also in my own chart so I was told that piece of information and I guess it just popped that's a download it just popped into the dream sure yeah absolutely you know and it's kind of like

the dream is warning that well not it's not warning as a negative it's just saying it's like the old world has ended and this new world is coming that's what feels like the message not just me personally but in general too i mean we feel that don't we that things are crumbling and transforming before our very eyes in sometimes positive sometimes disruptive ways so that was the feeling in the dream like um yeah yeah no for sure and in just in broad terms i mean humans understand that change happens nothing stays the same forever so why would you you know why this imagery or this knowing or speaking in the dream is basically prompting you to, so if we think of it as a thought experiment, you're setting up the conditionals. Okay, you're at, you're on a vantage point.

You've got your, your, your, your, your most reliable counsel with you to bounce ideas off of, you're going to view this scene. And we're during a period of, so it's, um, it is kind of the establishing facts that tell you what you're about to see in context. So what you're about to see is okay change is happening here's questions here's here's um or observations of of theoretical outcomes perhaps or here's how you conceptualize the two maybe main different kinds of change you think could result from but either way change is happening the change happening isn't like well change might happen no it is happening and very well could have been different it could have been you know nothing has to change you could have had that experience

of like change will happen if you choose it it's like no change is coming in one way some in this sense because you're on the horns of a dilemma it's not how do we how do we phrase that some some things are self-chosen but they're not avoidable in a way of like whoever you know who you are means that a decision has to be made it can't be ignored and it isn't that you couldn't choose not to you could ignore everything including your own wishes hopes desires and just say well I won't allow anything to change. That's a choice you can make. You can choose not to allow change in some ways.

But there's something about you. It's like, something's got to give. And when it does, there will be two different worlds, perhaps. And that's the bare minimum. There's probably many other possible worlds connected to that in a sense of like possible futures you could create based on different choices. But in this one, you're like, well, here's the two horns of the dilemma in a way. And here's how I'm conceptualizing those.

I think that's where we're at on that stuff. And again, if I mention stuff and you go, I don't, I don't know, that doesn't feel right. Please tell me, because I rattle a lot of doorknobes. If they don't come open, it's actually, I'd rather be wrong than have you puff up my ego by saying, oh, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, uh, no, actually, you're inspiring. You're inspiring me to think of different elements in the dream that I hadn't thought of before. I think it helps to have just a second person. It doesn't have to be a dream wizard, so to speak.

Yes. Well, one of the things I realize is it seemed like the. thing happening on the left were um it's funny i thought of that as family or um although i did not recognize anyone but family ordinary people and then on the right it was kind of this alternate reality like uh a new reality um where you know i could see these beings from other other It's like time. I could see the past and I could see. It's like the past and the future were rushing towards me at once.

It was really. That's interesting. It's like if you're going to split something into two, you would think they would be, and maybe they are and maybe we should look for that and I think I think we will, but intimately related to two outcomes of the same thing. And they, in the sense, they might actually be two different things, two different perspectives. maybe you need to consider both because you looked at one, looked at the other,

and you didn't really come to a decision as much as being left. Having an inspiration and intellectually, time isn't linear and the fear and awe type of thing happening at the same time. When you say the people on the beach were family, they were a family, but not your family. You didn't recognize them necessarily. Or did you feel like actually they're your family? You just didn't know them.

Yeah, yeah. the ladder. Okay. And there's an interesting thing going on there. The first thing that occurred to my mind is perhaps a broader view of how you view humanity. Even people I don't know are still my family. I care about them. Obviously, you don't want them to get hit by the tsunami. You wish they were taking it more seriously. I wish they were walking faster. Yeah. Oh, God, they're going to get hurt and you don't want that. It wasn't indifference. It wasn't bad things happen. Looks like it's going to happen to them. Oh, well. It was very much a caring for people you didn't know. But it was also like I, because I said to myself, oh, if I was down there with them, I would have been hit by this, I would get

hit by the tsunami. So I'm fortunate that I was up here at this moment because something else might have happened. And it's almost like if I choose the right-hand reality, it's something, it's some other, it's some other experience I haven't even had yet. Do you know what I mean? Sure. I can't really even describe it. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it's sort of like, this is like the global multi-dimensional world and this is the ordinary world or the family world. I don't know what I'm explaining it really. Sure.

And there is a, that's a wonderful. So it doesn't have to have one meaning. It can be, and very often it is stacked layers of meaning nested inside each other and overlapping Venn diagrams. If this was real Yonge in therapy, we would spend weeks, months, possibly analyzing this one dream and all. in minute detail and pull out as much as we could from it. Instead, we get two hours to chat. And I try and shortcut the process and give you as much as I can. And then sometimes I had too much coffee.

You know, I was going to mention earlier, what is too much coffee? I had a second cup and it spun me up. I usually have one cut myself off, but I had a second one. It's your sensitive. This is great, though, Ben.

I mean, I love, I'm glad you're enjoying you. It's very nice of you to do it. Yeah, it should be an entertaining, enjoyable process as well as informative, hopefully. That's the idea. Well, you realize, too, how holographic dreams

are like they really do they don't often i find it's funny because i went back to read some of my interpretations of my dreams and i feel at the time when i'm reading the interpretation i'm like the mouse looking up you and i'm missing the holographic wholeness of it and sometimes that's hard to actually put into words no it is yeah and the the idea of the dreams when we're awake we look back on them and they seem so ethereal and and uh mysterious and When we're in them, they feel completely real. We don't question, oh, I'm flying. Of course I'm flying.

Why wouldn't I be flying? Flying is, I do that all the time. It doesn't even, there's a complete lack of shock or amazement at the most impossible physical circumstances. You know, I was in, I was a hundred years ago and then it was today. And in the dream. Yeah. And opposites can be together, you know, like this, like I was thinking at the time, well, wouldn't the tsunami affect the marshland and the Montes de Oka? this walking hill that I'm going to do or I did and now I'm seeing it again and that was an

answer though that was those two things can exist at the same time and maybe it wouldn't maybe there's something about that land that you knew it was safe from the tsunami and that's actually where I was getting to now so why split things off you're looking at in one sense you know from this perspective and there's a real danger there I did want to ask did you have the sense that if you were on the beach, you could walk fast enough to get away because you take it seriously or you were going to get hit also no matter what you did. There was actually no escape from the tsunami. You just wish they were even trying to get away. Yeah, I wish that they were walking faster. And, but in some, as I said, like, they didn't feel like my family. So I didn't

feel personally, you know, distraught. And it wasn't certain they were going to die. But I, like it wasn't the stakes weren't that high somehow but at the same time I had this feeling like a premonition like something could have happened to me if I had been down there with them that it was better that I was up here and that I needed kind of to look to the right you know like yeah and I think the secrets of that as well you saw the the beach the family the tsunami you had those thoughts and feelings first and then look to the other side I think there's a connection between those. So what, what occurred to me, suggestion-wise, is there's an emotional distance we place ourselves, not just emotional, but that's a good way of conceiving it. We put ourselves at an

emotional distance from certain problems and consider it intellectually from a higher mental state. And I think sometimes we do that to avoid being personally invested. Like, they're people, and I care about people. And they're a family, and that's tragic. And I don't want bad things to happen. But I'm actually, and you had that feeling of like, God, I'm glad I'm not in the middle of that because then I would be hit by this. Then the bad thing would happen to me. So, but you've placed yourself a little aloof in a way outside the fish bowl. And sometimes we do that as a protective measure of like, well, let me look at the concept of tragedy rather than personally feeling and experiencing my own tragedy. You're rationalizing in a way.

Yeah. Like I considered that maybe it was like a death permission in a way. Like, you know, like something could happen and this is my soul seeing it from some other. Like, I consider it all of those things, right? Like, yeah, that's really interesting. Well, also, so there's placing yourself at a distance emotionally, but there's also the reality that if we have, if we have higher insight or whatever, if we are able to get outside of ourselves and look at the broad strokes of situations, we do have the ability to avoid certain. tragedy because we can see it coming. And so it's not always good to be too close to the problem, as I was saying earlier, just as much as sometimes it's not good to be too far away from

it, because then you're holding yourself aloof from living. And we can do that to keep ourselves from suffering, but then we're also not really, sometimes you want to go to the beach because it's fun. And if you never go to the beach, you'll never get hit by a tsunami, but you're also, you never get to go to the beach. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think there's multiple layers. Yeah, and it's interesting because the right side, the right side is, was referencing this spiritual walk, right this walk that I took a long time ago um that seems important too somehow no no for sure and that's why the sequence of events is usually it's a stream of consciousness thought experiment one piece connected to the next in in order which is why I like to go through it in order with people so

first you maybe are recognizing your tendency or ability to take a higher view on things that might go wrong, a bad thing that might happen to someone in a way that you can sympathize whether that could have been me or I have been in that situation before. I've been at risk of a tsunami because it was in the wrong place, wrong time or whatever. And having that realization, then your attention, it's not like you knew both things were there exactly, but having that realization then, well, what's on the other, what's the other half of this view that I need to take in? Now it's this demanding physical. And it may have been, part of it may have been because I'm able to take this this perspective on things it's allowed me to then also engage in this other spiritual

work where i've where i'm able to stay away from maybe some of the worst consequences of mistakes and but there's a new there's another challenge or or opportunity over here and and you're you're conceptualizing it or showing it to yourself in the form of something physically demanding and that was also you know mentally demanding in terms of determination fortitude am I going to persist against obstacles and you did so you're showing yourself the place where you engaged in a struggle and won so there's there's also two dichotomies here's bad things that happen and chosen struggles you conquered um yeah because at first it's like oh my gosh like what is that why is time moving and why can I see people from the past and why am I seeing this place I walked so long ago

like I my mind was kind of like what's so weird and then another part of me was like oh Oh, but, yeah, but it seems overwhelming, but I did do it. I did walk to the top of Montes de Oka. You're right. I had forgotten that part. Yeah, and then I think validating that experience or the lessons drawn from that experience in some ways, but also that that experience gave you something, some benefit from it. And what you then go on to do is not only are you turning your head to look at the other side of things, what is what is the alternative or what is the other side.

You conceptualize it as a specific thing you did in the real world and then you give it attributes that I think are related to that, something you learned or took away from that experience. And you're showing that to yourself in the way of beings from other realms. And then the experience of time itself warping, coming at you, speeding up and slowing down. There's probably a reference to, they say time flies when you're having fun. Well, time also flies when you are distracted or invested in something. You lose the concept of actively watching the clock tick. And then there's watching the clock tick. They say, you know, watch pot never boils.

Well, it does. water data data did that experiment in star trek he said i've i've tried watching the clock and not watching watching the pot and not watching the pot and it always boils in the same amount of time and picard picard said to him try turning off your internal chronometer try not watching the clock don't time it and then tell me what your perception is and and uh data was like hmm interesting and all of a sudden the the whistle the whistle of the boiling water goes off and he's surprised because he wasn't paying attention he wasn't watching the clock anymore so our perception of is very related to attention.

And our perception of time can be, we focus on time more when we're in pain. If you're struggling with something, it seems to last forever. You break your leg and God, you're in a cast for months. Like climbing a hill. Like a huge hill.

Climbing a huge hill. It could have taken you the same time physically as it did if you were enjoying it versus not. So what did you, if we're looking at it from the idea of what did I draw away, what lessons did I learn from that spirit? spiritual experience of engaging in that struggle, voluntarily conquering it. Well, you know, it's interesting that you asked that because that was the day that I met

my spiritual friends on that walk and I ended up walking with them for most of the walk. That was the day. And it was the worst day. Like there was a hailstorm. It was like it was crazy. All these weird things happened. Yeah. And it felt karmic, I guess, you know, like, for sure.

Whoa. This is a challenge. This is really going to be something. It's going to take everything I have. And at the same time, you know, we met all these wonderful people at the end and had this amazing experience. So yeah. There's an interesting analogy there to the concept of beings from another realm. And that's sometimes you can meet people who live a completely different life and you learn things from them. And it's as if they are beings and they are literally physically beings, human beings who live in another realm. They live a completely different life. life in another place, experiencing things completely different from you. So it seems like there may be a bit of a connection with the idea of not only, you know, when I went there, I met, and you called them your spiritual friend. So you actually had a connection with these people that represented their unique perspective on the world. And you found actually I have things in common. We have, not only things in common the way we look at the world, but also seeking answers and they probably shared their own unique perspective, gave their own unique insights to you, then you're like, you see, that's what I'm talking about.

I get it. And I've never thought of it that way at the same time. Yes. So that may literally represent them. Now, in the dream, what, you say you met beings from another realm. Do they have a shape or form or just a concept that they were present? Well, it was like you could see through them. It's like I could see the people who had walked on this land before.

Like, I remember saying. to Alan, when we were doing the walk, you know, I was so creeped out in that place. And I thought, it's the ghosts of all those dead Basque soldiers are getting to me. I don't know. This is a creepy place, right? But at the top of it was this, like, amazing, beautiful church. And it was the simplest church on the Camino. Like, it was completely, there was none of this filigree gold, none of that, stolen from the minds, none of that.

It was plain, simple, beautiful in a little retreat, like this little retreat. And we met these wonderful people and we all went out to dinner. And I walked with several of those people for the rest of the walk or most of the walk. So, yeah, I felt like I met kindred spirits. You know, kindred spirit. Yeah. So, but when I was looking down, when I was from the balcony, it was like I could see people from the past, like from other times, walking the same walk.

Okay. Like the other, ooh, now I'm getting a rush. Please. Kind of like there's a saying, they're called the Santa Ana's, that in magical Galithia in Spain, they believe that if you see the ghost of a pilgrim walking at night, because so many pilgrims walk these roads for hundreds and hundreds of years and they died, right? Many of them died along the way.

And they believe, I guess, that the ghosts, these ghosts wander. and if you see one passing over this particular bridge at night, you have to carry his burden for 30 days. This is something that someone told me. It's a kind of magical thing. And so I thought, now, in speaking to you, I did not think of it at the time. All I knew was that it was like I was seeing people from the past,

but almost like pilgrims from the past. But they weren't climbing the hill. They were coming towards me. And I could see them. And they were like transparent. They were like transparent. And I was like, wow, like this is. I thought there were people from now and then I realized, no, that's the past.

I'm seeing the people from the past, like the spirits of the past and what they're doing. And it's happening now, like the future and the past are happening simultaneously. For sure. Yeah. It was wild. Yeah. You got a little, a little visceral feeling. Yeah, no, no.

So that's interesting. They would say if you see the pilgrim, the ghost of a pilgrim, you're going to carry their burden. And so it's in a way, it's a, no, maybe that's not a bad thing, but it's, it's definitely an unexpected supernatural in a way phenomenon that's going to affect you and you're going to carry it with you afterwards. So there's, there's that portion of it. That idea, that concept comes into your dream, but you don't show them going up the hill. You show them coming back.

This is, the spiritual beings or beings from other realms you're seeing are returning from the journey. And so if you, if we connect those two ideas, if instead of being afflicted by the, their burden in a way you're maybe looking forward and saying i will be like them at some point i will be the one coming coming down from the mountain after having received what they gained by making this journey a way of looking at yourself like again validating the idea of this was worth it for for a specific reason and not only that it's as if i am meeting the people on the way down as if i'm on the way while i'm on the way up and that's give go ahead

Yeah, that's totally right on. Get a moment. I did, yeah. I realized it was kind of like I could choose this happy, easy beach life over here, but I might get hit with the tsunami. Or I could take this harder road and walk up this road. But I would, you know, meet these kindred spirits and time would disappear. And I would, and that's interesting because on the walk time did disappear, right? Yeah, you said it was warping and flow.

There was at least the perception, at least the experience that time could be perceived in different ways. And you showed yourself that by the feeling of it. Oh, look, it's faster. It's slower. And also crossing time. And ideas crossed time is like if we learn something today that we'd never heard of before. But the first guy that said it was 2,000 years ago, as if he's talking to us from 2,000 years in the pastime. Yes, it was almost like all the gifts of these pilgrims who had gone before.

I didn't think of those pilgrims before, but maybe that's what they were, these beings. were available now. And that was part of the, like, new change. Yeah. And there's two ways to do. They can inspire you to have the same experience and you will come away with it with some benefit or they can communicate the benefit of the experience and you can take that with you without the trip.

Although probably in this context, you're thinking, well, I'm traveling somewhere. I'm contemplating, engaging in a struggle. I need to know that it's worth it. And the way you just phrased that of a, the beach life seems easy, but that way, in a way, you're conceptualizing it has. It has dangerous. It has its own dangers. Climbing the mountain has dangers. Sometimes pilgrims die. So you're showing yourself these beings that. But rather than showing yourself the people that failed who didn't make it any further than the bridge, therefore you have to carry their burden for them. They're actually showing you. Look, it's possible. It's possible to succeed. I came back from it. You can too. And you had the concept that they were. And then that caused you to see the warping of the nature of time. But then also you're like, oh, wait a minute. Time's not linear. And it was always it was like oh i've always been told this and now i'm actually experiencing it yeah i never got it before i know they'd say that and you know but i don't really know what that

feels like but now i was feeling it because it's one thing yeah it's one thing to be told the truth it's another to experience and go oh my god that's what that means yeah but then and then all of that added up to that moment when you're like just dumbstruck in fear and awe at the same time and a lot of times um what am i i say a lot of times a lot of times i say that too much i got my verbal tics too uh and they change like over i'll do that for like 10 episodes and i'll have a new verbal tick so watch watch them all of course and find my verbal tics and tell me that's that's pretty funny um okay but uh well not just you like everybody but you don't have to watch me already did i appreciate it but but go ahead um but we are this is so interesting you're really finding lots of things

in the dream that i hadn't realized well thank you that's a this is my uh little um autistic brain explosions, that just makes me think things. And then I just say the things that I think and people go, yes or nope, and then that's the meaning, or it isn't. But, but you got to, the way I describe it, I'm the guy, I don't hear the voice of God. I don't talk to spirits. I don't, I don't have any magic powers, really, you know, you know, I can conjure fireball, but I need a mechanical device, but or, or a glass of whiskey, it's fireball.

Anyway, what I'm, what I'm trying to do is, uh, what I'm trying to do is, uh, I'm the guy you invite into your brain to stand behind your shoulder with a flashlight going, do you see what I see? What if we look at it from over here? That's my analogy for it. None of the answers are in me. That's why I tell people you can't do this wrong. It's up.

Pressures on me to come up with useful suggestions or ideas that might be a connection, might not. Do you see what I see? No, no. Okay, let's move on. Move on. It doesn't matter. So what I was going to say, the very last thing is you spoke of fear and on. And a lot of times we have a tremendous fear of things when we're awestruck.

Something is we've lost the. The true meaning of awe and awe, I think it's something that's so big. It blows our mind and that generates a thing of fear. And then we also, sometimes when we're in fear, what is it? So it works both ways. It's we are, we can be awestruck because we're afraid or afraid because we're awestruck. So the original meaning of, yeah, it was something that was so big.

It's almost, it's awesome. And we think of that as the slang version. of it of like wow he just did up you know a bunny hop on his bicycle even when your kids oh it's awesome it's kind of diluted down i mean awesome is like standing at the grand canyon going this i i don't know how this exists this this happened over millions of year water flowing for millions of years i i can't conceive the scale so there's i think there's two sides of it you know you're you're yeah when i think about when i think of awesome like i think of my grandmother you know my I had a little Scottish grandmother used to, you know, on the one hand, she believed in the little

people. And on the other hand, you know, she would read me the New Testament or the Old Testament stories. And she would, I remember telling me the story about how people would shake when the angels would appear to them. And I think, why would you shake when the angels appear to you? Aren't they kind of the good guys? And she would be like, well, they were in awe. Yeah.

What's the first thing most angels say, be not afraid because you're terrified by something so much more powerful than you are and it's just like is this thing going to kill me it's like a kitten he doesn't know you're trying to pick him up because you want to cuddle him he just thinks this thing is huge it could eat me in one bite and then they get used to it eventually but in the beginning you're you're a mystery and a yeah they don't know how to process it yeah awesome in all of an awe is you know just uh yeah study study the roots of words if you know to talk to the audience there i think i i have a sense of it now is kind of like making a decision between to like almost a lifestyle thing like almost a kind of question of a path to take and this secondary

path has its challenges it has its fears and its demands but it comes with this um it's almost like if you embrace that which is unknown um you will be transmuted by this awe Like things will appear, the time will disappear. You will see the pilgrim's returning. You will, yeah, it feels a little bit like that. And definitely, you've got both things at the same time. Like, just because you're afraid doesn't mean it's the one scene. It's not bad.

Yeah, the calm beach is not inherently fearful to look at. That's beautiful. It's a beach. It's wonderful. I love the beach. But there may be something to fear there that you don't see. But just because you're afraid of something doesn't mean it isn't also beneficial. so you may be whatever this this um path for forking path in your life is going to be whether

you're trying to evaluate your own abilities and whether it's worth it uh in some ways like if it's if it's uh if you're not up to the task it doesn't matter whether it's worth it but if you are up to the task is it worth attempting am i going to get something out of it and you're like it seems like choosing to take on a heavier burden or or struggle towards something meaningful, you're like, I think I will be blown away by how amazing it is, even though it seems terrifying to attempt. There's some resistance to it. And I don't know if you want to get any more specific about what you're thinking of and what

the path is or if that's a surprise for another day when you're done with the project. I don't want to get, you know, I'm not trying to get people to open up more than they need to. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if I can put it into words yet, but it's really like, yeah. Yeah, what it's telling me, the lesson from the dream feels like what it's telling me is take the road, take the path, whenever you get to the fork in the road and you can't decide, you know, the left or the right, take the path that, that's not easiest, don't necessarily. take the path that's easiest um but that which comes with this awe i don't know that's that's really you know that um and where you'll find kindred spirits yeah and and i think you're also validating the idea that you can succeed on that path because you're showing yourself a place you've been

that was a struggle but you conquered it even though it felt like was this a horrible mistake in the middle of it. And probably wording yourself, don't be surprised if your fear is validated. Yeah, this was harder than I thought. But you still have that kind of confidence in yourself that, look, I'm going to get through this too. Sometimes we go through things where we're like, damn, I screwed up and I learned something from it. And I call those, it's another goddamn growth experience. Okay. It's good for me. But man, was that unpleasant. I love that. I love that thing, too, where the old Chinese story, I tell it different every time, but the farmer and the horse and you know a farmer's um horse has a foal and his neighbor comes by and says oh that's that's good

news and uh oh i love this story yeah yeah yeah and then the farmer says perhaps well then it turns out the next day the little foal kicks his son and the leg breaks his leg the farmer comes over and says oh that's terrible terrible news and the farmer says perhaps uh and then uh the uh and then a military recruitment press gang comes through town and they're taking all the able-bodied men but his son has a broken leg so they don't take him and the neighbor says that's very fortunate the farmer says perhaps i i don't know what's going to happen next let's see what happens i love that too so sometimes in the middle of something it's hard to know what the end result's going to be but i that's that that that's my read the broader read on this thing is you know you have a decent

a decent assessment of your own abilities and the nature of the the choice in front of you and you're actually looking at it you know i don't have to take the difficult path but it'll probably be rewarding. And that's probably what I think I should do. Um, so that's, that's, yeah, if that makes sense to you. Yeah. Yeah, that's absolutely yeah. That's great. That's great. That was really helpful. Oh, thank you. Isn't it, isn't it amazing? We go through these things. We get this description. I don't know what the hell. This means like, neither do I. Let's figure it out. Oh, I couldn't stop thinking about it though. It just has stayed in my mind and, uh, yeah, it's probably because you, that was very helpful. You haven't pulled the trigger, but you're probably going

to now, in terms of moving forward on whatever the project may be, whatever you're thinking of attempting, or you're giving yourself permission to seek a new project that will be challenging. Maybe that's it more than anything. If you don't have a concrete, then you're already considering. Yeah, I do have a big project. And sometimes I think if, yeah, sometimes I'm frightened by the size of it or, you know, what I'm taking on. So this is telling me not, not really to be, yeah, don't worry about that, really. You know, it's like, Like, I really wasn't very well prepared. I'm not a particularly athletic person.

I have asthma, you know. I couldn't walk hills, but I managed to do it. Yeah. And, you know, probably think of that experience, too. How did you get through it? What was the, when you had doubts, when you had struggles, when it was painful, sometimes you probably sat down and took a break. Remember to schedule breaks in this, you know, give yourself some time off.

Absolutely. You know, don't work 24 hours a day to the detriment of sleep and health. but also Absolutely. There were so many lessons I can tell you, Ben. There were so many lessons I learned on that walk

about myself. And you probably learned them to use them now. If we go with the scripting, everything happens for a reason type of thing. I think so, yeah. Or at the very least.

And remembering, I think that's why I was working on that book again is to try and remember what were the things I learned from that that sustained me. What were the gifts

of the road in a way? You know, like. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Awesome. Well, I'm very glad that it felt like it was an enjoyable experience, number one. And number two, that it ended up being something relevant and meaningful. That's a, that's, I, it doesn't get me better for me.

Otherwise, I feel like I, otherwise I feel like I wasted your time. Well, thanks for helping me train poorly. That's the best I could do. Not at all, not at all. I knew we'd find something interesting to talk about. And I felt that this dream, this dream really. deserved, it makes such a big difference to have, you know, a pair of trained eyes to look at it because there were things that I felt in the dream that I didn't realize that I felt that I didn't say until you started asking me these questions and saying, well, there's a fork in the road and what about this and what about these people? And do you know them and do you not know

them? And you know, all of that stuff. And then it starts to become clear, right? It starts to become clear. Awesome. The real mystery to me is I couldn't tell you how to do what I do. When I figure that out, how do you ask the right questions? I have no idea. Where does this come? That's why I can only say, it's probably God. It's, you know, if anything, it is that spirit of, spirit of beneficence. I hope so.

Yeah, it speaks to me about dreams. Well, let's do this. We'll wrap it up and get you out of here. This has been our friend Kelly Watt from the countryside of Hamilton around Ontario. She is an author whose latest book is entitled The Weeping Degree. She was a finalist for the Wishing Shelf Book Award and has been a bestseller in the past. find more about that and her at Kellywatt.ca.

Link is, of course, in the description below. A little bit of dry mouth. Yes. We're going to hit this. Yeah, go ahead. Please go to my website and sign up for my newsletter. I have all kinds of goodies there.

And, yeah, a lot of fun stuff, including my penthouse goldfish videos, which I think you would appreciate. Very nice. And also Instagram, I'm at Kelly Watt author. If you'd like to follow me, I'd really enjoy that. And then, of course, Kelly with two L's and Watt with two T's.

Kelly Watt authored at Kelly Watt author on Instagram. For my part, would you kindly like, share, and subscribe? Always need more volunteer dreamers. I do video game streams Monday through Friday, most days, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific. This episode was brought to you in part by ABC Book 18, O'Neuro Chronology, volume four, prima reliquorum, the first of what remains. You can find all this and more at Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com. And if you'd head on over to Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com.

locals.com building a community there attached to my Rumble account for you to join. Kelly, once again, great talk. Thank you for being here. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much, Benjamin. This has just been cosmic, really fun. Wonderful. And everybody out there, thank you for listening. Hope to see you next time. Thank you.