Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 211: The Teaching Light

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

John “JR” Rennie ~ https://www.brushfires-digital.com/

I call myself, you know, technologically impaired after the Weird Al Song of Amish Paradise, just because, yeah. And that's funny because I've been using computers and stuff since they were new in the 80s. And still, I'm learning new stuff every day. Becoming my own audio engineer. I don't understand why people get paid a lot of money to do this kind of stuff and be producers. Oh, I will know our ministry has finally made it when I have my own audio video person. There you go. When that happens and I don't have to deal with this stuff anymore, I'd be like, that would be a blessing.

Greetings, friends, and welcome back to another episode of dreamscapes. Today, our guest dreamer is John J.R. Rennie out of Northern Idaho. He is the founder of the Brushfires Ministry. You can find him at Brushfires-digital.com. That link will be in the description. from below. For my part, would you kindly like, share, and subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers. I do video game streams Monday through Friday, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific, most nights of the week. I've got my alarms going off. That's good times. We're doing it

live. This episode brought to you in part by ABC Book 18. Yes, I now have 18 works of historical dream literature. The most recent is another anthology. It is O'Neuro Chronology, volume four prima reliquorum, the first of what remains, because there will be a second and a third more books coming uh you can find all this and more at benjamin the dream wizard dot com including downloadable or live streamable mp3s of this audio only mp3s of this very podcast and if you'd head on over to benjamin the dream wizard dot locals dot com building a community there free to join attached to my rumble account and that is enough out of me uh jr thank you for being here i appreciate your time uh benjamin this is going to be fun this is uh certainly different than all the

other podcast that I attend, and I'm really looking forward to our conversation. Meanwhile, playing fetch with cats, of course. Yeah, great, great to have you here, too. And I always love talking to folks that have a, their own unique perspective. I'll speak to a lot of people who have kind of a spooky woo, you know, astrology side of interpretation of dreams type of thing, or they believe, you know, communications from spirits and whatnot. And that's the thing.

And then there's a more religious interpretations, which there's a long biblical history. I would, I would, I aspire someday to the, to the levels of wizardry of, you know, Joseph and, and other biblical interpreters, but speaking, speaking to, I mean, maybe it's a great place to start, but we'll talk about you and, and you're working whatnot, but a lot of the books I've repackaged and republished. That's what I, what I do with, with the historical dream literature. I take books from 2,000 years ago to, all the way up to, to the 1920s when copyright kicks in. And I put out a modern version of it with additional footnotes and whatnot. A lot of them reference, not just Joseph and who was the other guy?

Daniel. Daniel, yes. Daughter. You okay? Oh, she's probably going to puke or something. That's okay. She'll be all right. Oh, she's loud.

But there was another one. It was the Jacob, Jacob's Ladder. That was another. So you had mentioned that the dreams we're going to talk about for you came with their own understanding. And I think that was the case with Jacob as well. It's kind of he woke up from that dream of the angels ascending and descending the ladder. And it came with its own understanding.

Am I getting that right or was that, was that not the case with him? No, I do believe. I mean, I think the more famous interpreters are Daniel and Joseph because they were immediate for the most part. I think Daniel was like overnight when he was talking with Nebuchadnezzar. And I think with Jacob, it was more about his heritage, about. what was going to be coming through his line that people were going to be able to through time and through his lineage be able to be able to send to God I mean to be able to to be restored with God if you will I think it also I don't know if this is

my own understanding or if I got it from the book I can ever remember sometimes and if it's true it doesn't matter truth is it is what it is but part of part of the understanding and not not to say you're wrong or contradict that at all. But it was also the idea of a two-way communication with God. This angels ascending and descending. It's not going one way or the other. It's not just top down. It's also bottom up in terms of and this works

into, I plan to write a whole other book series somebody called a Wizard's Guide to X, Y, and Z. And one of them is going to be a guide to angels and demons. And the idea that these, as it says, we do not struggle against, you know, the flesh and blood, but against principles and, and principalities here on earth. Exactly. And that, and that as we were talking earlier, you know, what I, what I do, there's, for the folks out there in the audience, we always talk a little beforehand and we miss so much great. I should just throw on a recording from the moment. I should announce to

people and then start explaining things and capture all of it if I can. But, you know, what I do is, is, I would like to, with, sounds grandiose, and maybe it is, but I would like to think what I'm trying to do is open myself up to communication from God in that sense. I'm trying to invite in angels versus demons. And that would be the purpose of writing a book like that is to delineate. Okay. So for each of the holy or each of the seven deadly sins, there are seven holy virtues that match with them, pride, humility, that kind of thing. And that is the nature. That's the principalities. Those are the powers we're dealing with in the world. What we invite into ourselves. We invite in pride, it's going to come.

and it's going to come with a lot of consequences. We invite in humility. We're going to communicate through that spirit or deliver that to other people and act it out in our lives. So that's, I think that was also a powerful connection that I'm going to try and get into the book is that idea of that scene in the Bible saying, you know, you can,

if you are open to it, there is the possibility of these communications. And you're not going to hear voices, probably. Some people have. Lots of people have. But you're going to get ideas. And I think ideas are angels are good ideas and bad ideas.

And you can see their effect. in the world and how they impact other people. I'm going to stop there. I had a whole point, but I think I lost it trying to find the references. Actually, I think you're going down a really good line because we actually teach this in our ministry. So humans, all humans, are born of a triune nature. There's three aspects of us. There's a body, a soul, and a spirit.

The body also is triune in that it has a skeletal muscular system. it has a circulatory system, and it has a nervous system. Your soul is also triune in that it has your intellect, your mind, if you will, as far as the intelligence portion of it, your feelings and your free will. And then the spirit is also triune in that it contains your conscience, your ability to be able to receive inspiration or intuition, and then the open, line of communication to the spirit world. That is how God can talk to you.

If you're a non-believer, that's how the enemy talks to you. We describe those communications through that back channel of the human psyche as either intrusive thoughts when they're coming from the enemy or they are inspirational, intuitive thoughts when they're coming from God. And the thing is, is that most people don't realize they have that back channel open to them. And so they get a thought and they think it's from them and they judge it accordingly and then either act on it or don't. And according to who is talking to them. So not every thought that goes through your head is from you or for you. And the ability to be able to interpret who's

talking to you from the outside, these external voices, if you're a non-believer, then these are things that are going to impact your ability to be able to think, your intellect, and your emotions, ultimately trying to get control of your free will for you to do things that are either bad, evil, or good, positive. And so those are the, and we're all wired. One of the fallacies is that people think that this body that we have is all there is. And that's not the case. We're actually spirit creatures trapped in a human body. I turn 66. I can't do what I used to be able to do at 25. I can't eat like I used to eat when I was 25 and things of that nature. So these are aspects that the human part of us, the physical part of us, is going to go away. And after that,

all it's left is a soul and spirit. Yeah. I've had that impression for a long time. Before I got too deep been to uh cats cats come on stop the uh we have a young male cat who's in his juvenile phase now and whatnot and uh or he's i guess he's fully adult but and he wants to play with our elderly female cat and she's not having it she's like just leave me alone um no i was going to say oh i hate when they interrupt me like that um i've long had the feeling that and i think it's true that we, you know, we were around before we became material or inhabited a material existence and that we will continue afterwards. That it's, you know, it's going purely on like, not just like raw logical statistical

probability, but in a sense, yes, it seems almost impossible that we wouldn't be. If you're just going to go by the, what is the second law of thermodynamics, that energy can either be created nor destroyed. And that's what we've got with our, and a lot of psychology and dream interpretation specifically focuses on that idea of what is consciousness and what does it mean to be conscious versus unconscious or what is the subconscious.

How do we describe this phenomenon that we're experiencing? And what makes the most sense to me is that what we experience is consciousness is this point of intersection where two lines, or two, you know, two lines crisscross, at dot, that's consciousness where it's, it's the material world, the physical form, and our soul, for lack of a better word. And a lot of people poo these terms, because they're like, oh, that's religion, religion, silly, I don't need a sky daddy. And it's like, it's not like that. It's, I think of these things as, as Jung did,

now, Jung was much more spiritual than Freud. Freud was very, uh, materialistic. And, and, and young was a little more, there's, there's, there's other things we can't explain out here. And there's, but not only that, it's, it's a lot of these mystical or spiritual interpretations or understandings of things, descriptions, storytelling, helps us to understand what it is we're looking at a lot better than in ways that the materialist side can't explain. You know, it just goes, well, we don't know what that is, so it's probably imaginary. That doesn't tell me anything. So from a Christian perspective, if you want to look up what I just laid out for you about

the soul and the spirit, by the way, when the Bible talks about the heart, it's talking about the combined soul and spirit. In fact, in the book of Hebrews, it says that the word of God is so piercing that it separates bone from marrow and soul from spirit. That's how tightly those things are connected. But there is a theologian named Watchman Nie. He's Chinese, I believe, and wrote about the soul and spirit many years ago. And you can just still find his work by doing a simple Google search, but I would recommend if you want to have a Christian perspective on the structure of man, his is really insightful, if you will, and it will make sense. Exactly. And part of my own, part of the reason I have planned this to say book series about

angels and demons and trying to explain them is I'm also thinking through these problems. And it's like once I've found a way to describe it to myself, then I'm ready to try and describe it other people and actually forcing yourself to put it into words as a description to someone else is a very useful tool to understand it, which is one of the reasons it's very beneficial to seek out a dream interpreter in a way, even if it's just speaking with your spouse in the morning saying, hey, I had this dream and it stuck with me all the way through breakfast. I can see it. I can feel it. Let's talk about it. There's something in there that at least I feel like I need to understand or that's got some. We think of it as a message for me as if dreams, the way the

ancient Greeks conceived them dreams were were dream was a god of itself and it was sent by other gods to carry a message on on purpose um but i think a good example that i've used in in the past too and i wanted to pick your brain on this too because i don't a lot of the people i tell this to it's not their specialty or they're not a christian explicitly but one one of the pairings i'm going to discuss is um okay we're going to get we're going to get to that but i'll tell you a little bit of the back the backstory on it. The idea that dreams carry messages, and sometimes the message isn't for you. That happened recently where I, I've been doing an AI music project where I take all the world's greatest and most epic, most famous best poetry. I'm trying to turn it into AI music to expose more

people to it. Like you read a poem on paper, maybe you get it, maybe you don't, maybe, you know, but music, you really feel it, the lyrics. If you turn it into lyrics and it's sung, you go, I get it. Okay. So I got a message for another, content creator. His name is Stix. And it'll be released by now so I can talk about it. I keep these things secret. You never know what the next one's going to be. It is a poem. I want to say by William Blake, but it might be, I might have that wrong. The poem's title is Uriel. And it's about the angel Uriel. And now a lot of these are not, they're apocryphal in a way. They're not in the Bible. A lot of the names of specific demons and angels. I mean, we got Michael and a few others,

but um this poem is about the nature of uriel what what he what his power or principality is and he has a counterpart by the name of stolus and the way i conceive it is you know uriel is the angel of of wisdom and intellect in a way learning the capacity to take in new information synthesize it create understanding out of it that kind of thing and stolis is his counterpart where he's you can appeal to stolus as well for wisdom of a kind information of a kind and the way I conceive it is broad strokes and then I swear I'm going to turn it back to you I talk too much um uriel is like received wisdom from a trusted elder in a way like it's true you don't have to get it but if you follow it and and contemplate it you'll you'll

understand it's it's a training at a technical school to show you how to do a proper weld in a way like that's the spirit of uriel true information communicated accurately etc stolas is a little more school of hard knocks. He's like, oh, you're going to learn, but you're not going to like it. And you will get wisdom from that experience. You will go, wow. And then hopefully you become, you turn away from Stolos and towards Uriel and say, okay, let me tell you what the mistakes I made and how to avoid that so that you don't have to meet Stolos because he's not a nice guy. You're going to learn the hard way. I want to stop there and just throw that out to you as a possible understanding if you have critique of it or if it sounds reasonable. Well, let me just

start with the with the word angel itself sure you may or may not know this but the word angel actually interprets as messenger that is what the word angel means so it does mean messenger and so it's this is information uh there's a famous section in the book of daniel where daniel's praying for something i forget specifically what he's praying for uh and god delays the answer he doesn't get his answer like and Daniel was a famous interpreter of dreams. And Daniel was just wondering what had gone on. I think it went on for a week or two, maybe 20 days. And finally, the angel came, and I'm going to butcher this.

I don't know which angel, but the angel did show up and gave him the interpretation. And his response to Daniel was, God answered your prayer, the moment that that you prayed it. But I was sent to deliver that message to you, and the principality of this region stopped me. It literally prevented the angel from getting to Daniel. It wasn't until Michael, the archangel, the big one, the superpowered angels, came and fought that demon. And by the way, demons are fallen angels. So that's a third of the angels fell. from heaven. You can also find that in the Bible, and they became demons. And so the principality of that region, which would have been probably another art demon, if you will, was preventing this lesser

angel from getting to Daniel with the message until Michael, his counterpart, on the demonic side, was able to go, no, and just sort of kick his butt and get, you know, and allow the message to get through it. So these things are that way, and they do get delayed. Now, it's not as if we're looking at Ying Yang here, you know, from a Christian perspective. Evil is not equivalent to good, but evil does have its impact. It does have its resources and its ability, and a lot of evil is done by people that are inspired to do evil things. It's not that, you know, that they're equal to God in any sense. And so that delay of that message was not something that took God by, but surprised because he knew was going to happen.

He used that delay for his purposes. And so these things, they get a little bit weird. They get weird for people that are believers, and they get weird for people that are nonbelievers. Most Christians, I don't really think, spend a lot of time thinking about angels and demons, and they might be better off if they did. I think so, too, which is part of what I'm trying to do. Like the first book in that series, A Wizard's Guide to X, Y, Z that I want to do is a Wizard's Guide to Aesop's Fables. Let's start with something simple, something we've heard of.

I grew up on those books, and I think a lot of kids today did not. They've never heard of it. They might know slow and steady wins the race because someone said it once, but they don't know the tortoise in the hair. They don't really get it. Or the idea of, you know, why do you say, oh, that's just sour grapes? Well, that comes from the fox and the sour grapes with these understandings of explanations of human behaviors and tendencies.

It was early psychology, basically, way back, you know, before zero, zero AD. But come on, girl. Hey, you know, growling at each other again. So that's what I want to do with a lot of different topics, and specifically with the angels and demons type of thing. And there's, in a way, it's to reframe and conceptualize these things because a lot of people who poo-poo or,

denigrate or dismiss religion out of hand. Or like, again, I got the, well, I don't need no magic sky daddy. I'm like, you probably want a lot of people to believe in magic sky daddy because that's the only thing that keeps them from giving in to bad ideas. But, but also if they had a better understanding of what it really means, that, you know, this, you can say the words, we struggle against powers and principalities, but what does that really mean? And they think of supernatural phenomenon.

And they are in their own way, but they act in the physical world. there's a process and a, um, a, a demonstration or a, I mean, you know, a physical process that goes along with these things, even though, and again, this was early psychology. That's, even though I am in the agnostic non-theists, this is how I conceive of atheist, non-theist side of things, I see books like the Bible and specifically the Bible for, for a lot of reasons, as collected volumes of human wisdom gathered over thousands of years of, of our history. And it just kind of brings it together in these stories that make sense. And the better you can explain them. I don't know if you're a fan or if you've at least heard of him, but Jordan Peterson. And he talks about explaining a lot of

these stories. And I listen to his entire biblical lecture series, probably twice over, just because I'm like, okay, explain the stories. Because he can tell why, what is Snow White and Seven Doors really about? What is Pinocchio really about? Those are some of the great Western, you know, stories. And the Bible's the same way. These are, in my estimation, They're not meant or to be taken literally like this, but that's, if I thought they were, then I would be a Christian, of course. So, you know, your mileage may vary. But the idea that you're meant to, whether or not it ever happened, it remains true.

So there's a difference between something being real and something being true. Something can be true that never happened and something can be false that did happen in a way. You know, so, and then to be a Christian, you say, well, it is both true and real. but I at least appreciate and I would encourage most people to for the idea of grasping the purpose of the stories understand what they really mean you're going to get something from it whether you believe they ever happened or not don't worry about leave that part way off to the side

you can just do the evolutionary psychology understanding and that is sufficient to get the ball rolling in terms of get the message so that's my perspective you probably say well the faith is important too so I'll throw it back to you in terms of learning and understanding getting these messages. Just so people understand, I'm not a theologian. I'm not a pastor, okay?

I am the founder of the Brushfire's Ministry, but I actually come from a very disciplined, reasoned background. I started a software company back in the late 80s that developed business manufacturing accounting software. And so the way I look at my faith is I did not have to leave my intelligence at the door. Some of the most intelligent, well-read, highly intelligent people I know are believers. And Jordan Pearson would be a perfect example of that.

His daughter was just giving a health update because he's going through a really terrible recovery right now. Jordan is a believer. And so you're looking at one of the most Christian, you're looking at one of the most Christian, You're looking at one of the most Christian or one of the most intelligent people that individuals are listening to. And his daughter, you listen to his daughter, she's looking at what's happening to him as a spiritual attack. Those were her words, not mine. So you don't have to leave your intelligence at the door. Here's the point, the bigger point.

Every human being was created for a purpose, for God's purpose. He says, I've created you with this personality, with these. interest, abilities, and values to do good, and not to do good for yourself necessarily, but to do good for others. So we're all sent here with a purpose, just like Christ was sent here for a purpose. And our individual purpose, when we align ourselves with that, and as a believer, we are then empowered by God, we can make a positive difference in this world. So these are things that you find fulfillment and joy and love. and peace when you're doing what it is that God's created you to do. It's not this formulaic,

dogmatic, legalistic, you know, religion. I despise the word religion. I use the word relationship because for me, that's how I look at this. And so when the dreams that we're going to talk about from my experience, which is not normal, many people that I share these dreams with. And most of them have never been shared publicly until this recent book, Sparks, turned into brush fires. Until they actually, you know, have experienced themselves, they're, you know, suspect about these dreams and so forth. So God doesn't talk to every one of his kids through dreams, but he does talk to us in different ways. And he wants us to do the good that we were created to do, whatever that looks like. And if I'm to do something that has a positive impact

in the world, the other individuals that are designed differently shouldn't look at what I'm doing to create good in this world and be jealous of it or envious of it or whatever. They should simply be busy doing what it is that they were created to do. And let God work out the details as to how he how he has that impact through our obedience as opposed to all the other motivations that we can bring into our faith. I'm going to move this keyboard out of the way here. Here she comes.

I wanted to make sure to ask you before because we should probably move on to the dream thing very, very quickly here to make the most of our time. Well, that is why your listeners are listening. It's true. Well, we always, I always like to do a little, you know, promote the guests and talk to the guests first and then get into that.

but I didn't know if you wanted to say any, not final words, but give you a description, like what is Brush Fires Ministries? Well, what's the inspiration behind it? What's it's intended to accomplish? Probably everything you've already been talking about, but you might have a more succinct way of phrasing it. So Brush Fires Ministry is a ministry to help believers understand their God-given calling, and we disciple then through that process so that we let them know what they're, we all understand the concept of the DNA of the body,

it determines your, you know, your gender, your height, and your eye color, and things like that. Well, there is a DNA of your soul. This is what God's placed in you. Things that you're interested in, your abilities, your values, those are not by accident. They were intentional. And they're intentional to be able to accomplish this sort of work that God's created you to do. So we use psychometric assessments in addition to spiritual gift assessments, along with our eight session course, to train Christians how to be able to discover it and then walk it out. We then coach them and disciple them on how to walk it out. That's what the ministry is.

It was formed at the end of 2015, my software company experienced its first and only significant loss. I mean, and it was substantial. And going into January 2016, I recognized that I could no longer sustain the company in that way. And so I cut all expenses. That wasn't going to be enough. And it was like, all right, well, you're going to have to cut your salary. If I didn't do that, my employees would be left without a job. And my clients throughout North America would not have any support. So going into 2016, I had this, all right, all right, I'm going to cut all expenses, including my salary. And so

I started going out there looking for other ways of, you know, providing for my family. And every door was getting slammed in my face. It was like, and this is not the way God's, God's always provided for us in very generous ways. And in May of 2016, I was frustrated. And I said out loud, God, I know you're behind this. What do you want? Because I was really happy with my software company. I was making a six-figure income, you know, and living accordingly. And all that cut in one day was a lot. And so I then spent most of 2016 just searching for God, talking to them, reading devotions, reading my scripture. I did a tremendous amount of writing, short stories, articles, plays, poetry. And at the end of that year, an acquaintance

came up to me and says, hey, I teach this psychometric assessment training program. I think you'd be really good at it. Now, he had no altruistic intention. Okay, he charged a lot of money for this. And here's a guy who just went nine to ten months without a paycheck. And he's one to teach me about, you know, neuroscience type of psychometric assessments. I'm like, yeah, not interested. A, too much money.

And B, it's not going to pay my bills. And so I left that meeting. And when I got back home, I felt this. prompting from the Holy Spirit, do it. And at this point, I've been kind of beaten down for about nine to 10 months. And I go like, all right, God, fine, I'll do it. So I called the guy back, renegotiated at a price for my wife and I had to do it, took the assessments, and all of a sudden I'm beginning to understand it like a programming

language. So I would get these assessment results. I could see it how applied to me. My wife would take the same assessment, and I see how it applied. her and then as other students and people were taking it, I could understand how it was how it was the building blocks of who I saw them to be as their soul, the personality. And so I pursued this for about nine months of training and eventually got this epiphany that God wanted to use these corporate assessments in ministry. And a byproduct of what we do is we create a single

sentence purpose statement, which reveals the calling that God has in your life. And my purpose statement reads like this, I must strategically lead a gifted team to embrace the power of the God give him design for long-term positive results. And God had taught me that joy is the outcome of being obedient to what he's created you to do. So I was like, all right, you want me to do that. All right. I'm a strategically lead. All right. I've been the leader. all my life. Captain on my soccer team, wound up, you know, starting my own business, coach soccer, did all those things. Great. Got that part. Long-term positive results, which is the end of that statement. Okay, that's just good works. It's going to create something good

when it's done. Getting people to embrace their power of their, their God-gim design, all right, you just showed me and taught me the sacrametric assessments. I can see why that was necessary. How am I going to get this to the church? They don't believe, they don't really want to adopt the sort of science in the first place. And they don't want to, and this is like cutting edge. And it was like, all right, I guess I had to write the curriculum. So I sat down after writing poetry and articles and short stories for a year, sat down and wrote their curriculum for their ministry. Now you're going to write a technical manual in a way. Yeah, well, exactly. And the interesting thing about it is I thought, all right, well, where do I start? By the way, as soon as I made that

mental agreement that I would do it, the name of the ministry was just breathed into my mind. You're going to call Brushfire's Ministry. Cool name. But all right, how does that apply? I don't know. But anyway, Benjamin, here's a really weird part of the story. So I was like, where do I start? Now, I had given messages at church, I'd written articles, I read devotions that for whatever reason caught my interest and I would take a photocopy of it and I stored all these things in a folder in my office and I've been doing that for over 20 years or nearly 20 years. So I went down there and I grabbed that folder and I pulled it out and I started reading what I had accumulated and it was like, that's identity, chapter one, that's purpose, chapter two, that's service.

God had been writing the entire book through my life for 20 years, and I didn't even have a clue. I literally wrote something in 2013 that says, I want to be part of a church that will show me what my purpose is, and then allow me to be able to do that for other people. I wrote that in 2013 in an article called What is Joy that I completely forgotten about. So these things are in us. when a person comes into their calling, there's something that is confirmed within them. And they go, yeah, this is who I am.

Anyway, I wrote the curriculum, taught the first workshop in 2018, and been doing that ever since. And the software company is still going, but I am still trying to wind it down, thinking next year is the last year for it. Absolutely. Yeah, it was a couple of key points, I think, there. And one of those is that, uh, uh, don't, you know, okay, starting with Jordan Peterson,

he's probably thinking a lot about Job right now. And I'm sure he has in, in the past, and he's talked about that, you know, when he was going through his first kind of breakdown, uh, related to the hospitalization years ago. Um, but that also, you know, then that has happened to me, and I've noticed a pattern as well is that no one changes anything until it's not working for them anymore. Uh, and, and sometimes there are catastrophic crashes. in things that are beyond your control and maybe even sometimes caused by you and maybe there's a part of you that kind of self-sabotages in a way like because sometimes as as they as they i think peterson said in his discussions of uh abraham sometimes god's uh gonna tell you you need to get out of the comfort of your parents tent and go have an adventure you're you're not

fulfilling your full potential or or meeting your purpose and all of that to say uh an aphorism came to mind and i don't know if i invented it or or i'm just rephrasing someone else but the idea that if you chase happiness it will always run away from you if you seek meaning and purpose happiness will chase you i think i think is a way and it doesn't mean you're always going to be happy or there's there's any state of static happiness which can be achieved and maintained but the idea that um you know you're not going to you're not you're not going to get that kind of fulfillment out of just chasing happiness itself it's like happiness is more of a uh it's something that ebbs and flows that you can't grab onto the same way you can grab onto purpose yeah happiness is

something that is based upon circumstances you can sit down and have a really nice meal and within five minutes you've forgotten about that meal it's not sustainable joy is something that comes within there is a section in galatians chapter 5 versus 22 through 23 and i've been challenging a lot of christians with this thought so uh and it's surprising how many have not considered this and so i'll let your audience, consider it. It says, the fruit of the spirits are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Let me say that one more time for your, for your listeners. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Now, when I ask Christians this question, I go, are those human wants? Are they human

needs. It's really hard to get a consensus among humans, especially Christians, because they all have their separate doctrines, it seems like. But when they really consider it, they go, yeah, I need that. It's not simply something I want. I want to love. I want joy. I want peace. And so these are things that God, through His Holy Spirit, gives to his children that are obedient to what it is that he's created. So when you align your purpose, you're, sorry, when you align your free will with God's calling in your life, you're now being obedient to what he created you to do. And what's the benefit? Love, joy, peace, patience. Again, business owner, the company has been around for nearly 40 years now. And I've dealt with all kinds of personalities. I've had to be very strong. I've had to fire

people, all that stuff. I was doing this ministry teaching at a church, and one of our volunteers came up to me. She had purchased a series of our assessments to give to her family so she could understand them better and to be able to relate better to her family. And she asked me to help her interpret these things for her prior to one of the classes. So I sat down and go, sure, Laura, I had no mind doing that. And she goes, you know, I go through the assessment results of these three, four people. And at the very end of it, she looks at me with complete sincerity. She goes, Jerry, you're so gentle and loving and patient. And Benjamin, I thought she'd hit me with a bucket of cold water. You're like, keep going. What's the

rest of the list? No, no, no, no, no. no no not at all i was shocked that another human being looked at me from that perspective i would have never in my corporate world life i would have never described myself as loving gentle and patient i am the opposite of patient you know in my own in my own realm i'm like i've got contracts i got responsibilities this needs to get done now this is what the contract reads and so when she said that to me was like, who is she talking to? Being obedient to what God's created you to do puts that fruit inside of you. So that love, that patience, that gentleness that was in me was because I was being obedient to what God had created me to do. I was aligning my free will with what God had

created me to do. So, and I think a lot of the dreams, in fact, all the dreams, I know, ultimately led to to that well let's do this let's get into the dream thing um so as per my usual process well we're going to do my usual process but we're not going to do my usual process but i always start here first i shut up and listen uh a good advice for almost almost any circumstance uh especially if you want to understand someone else uh then we're going to uh talk about it and see if we can come to an understanding and um this because We spoke a moment ago before, you know, we started recording. JR let me know that these dreams, as it can happen, came to him with the understanding kind of implicit in a way,

or the understanding was delivered with the message. So what I'm going to do is ask him to hold back a little bit on explanation and just kind of tell it like he experienced it. And then we're going to try to stump the wizard is like, how close can I get to offering an understanding that aligns with what he believes? leaves he already knows. And then maybe I can offer something new or a slightly different perspective that's also useful. But I find these very fun as well, not just the folks who come in blank slate and ask me to help them figure it out. But folks who say, I already know kind of what I think this means. Let's see what you got. So, okay, now I'm going to shut up. I'm ready when you are. Benjamin the Dream Wizard wants to help you. Here's the veil of night and shine the light

of understanding upon the mystery of dreams. Every episode of his dreamscapes program features real dreamers, gifted with rare insight into their nocturnal visions. New Dreamscape's episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks, exploring the psychological principles which inform our dream experience, and much, much more. To join The Wizard as a guest, reach out across more than a dozen social media platforms and through the contact page

at benjamin the dream wizard.com where you will also find the wizard's growing catalog of historical dream literature available on Amazon documenting the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past 2,000 years.

That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube and at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com. All right. So just to give you some background, I was saved. I accepted Christ as a 12-year-old boy in a vacation Bible school in Deltona, Florida. But I was surrounded by non-believers. There were no active Christians in my family or in our network or friends. I got baptized at a church at 16, but I was very backslidden at the time, was not really, I went to church. church, oftentimes without any real desire to be there. Got married at 20 and was started in my programming career in that same year, in April that year. So I'm a quote-unquote good guy, nice guy, got morals and so forth, but there is no evidence that you could ever convict me of being a blind.

believer or Christian. So get married, have three kids. 1987 comes along. My wife and I, relationship's fine. I'm working at a, at my employer, and he was a bit of a psychopath. And so I had decided that I was in the process of leaving him, and I was going to join another ex-employee and start a company. and one night our youngest Patrick was crying and my wife's habit of the three kids was to always go get the baby and then she would bring him back to bed and there's the baby in bed and go back to sleep and the baby would stay there well unusually our oldest son Sean cried that night and I know my wife had just gone back to sleep and I was like all right I'm going to take care of Sean and so I go into his room

and just lay down with him in his bed and fell sleep. The dream I had was this. Sean and I are floating in darkness, just complete darkness, and we're within, say, arms reach of one another. And then all of a sudden a bright light separates us like a wall, and I could see Sean floating, away into the darkness and I couldn't get to him and I knew that he was going to be harmed. I knew that his, that something bad was going to happen to him and I was powerless to be able to get

to him because of this bright wall that was separating us. And that's when I woke up and again, I knew the interpretation. I'll let you go. Okay. all right so the um and that's and that's how that's how it works it can be that simple um it doesn't have to be a long detailed explanation that was detailed enough i mean it went on for you know a couple of minutes that's that's how these things go it's a narrative form first i saw this or experienced that and then there's a progression of events and there's a there's a beginning and an end and typically there's uh well i'm i'm absolutely certain uh certain there is a place this dream, what we call a dream started, and there's material before that and there's

material after it. But this was the encapsulated experience. So there may have been a precipitating stream of consciousness that came before that. And there may have been more that followed after it. This is what came out. And that's kind of what we consider a dream. Even though my perspective is, you know, the lungs breathe, the heartbeats, and the brain thinks. And it does it whether we're asleep or awake. And what we're getting in dreams is more of a raw, unfiltered stream of consciousness, which allows us to get these messages from the subconscious. And I think none of that conflicts with the idea of God sending these messages. I think when they say, you know, God is the way the truth and the life, anything you receive that is

true is from God, but like definitionally. So if you have an epiphany, a eureka moment about putting, you put the pieces together, you get the finished picture of the puzzle. That is a communication from god like definitionally um so you know the fact that it dream and i say dreams self select for importance we don't remember 99.999% of everything that happens while we're asleep in our brains we couldn't otherwise we would not be asleep but pieces come out with us and that's that's the important part so if it feels important you remember the details there's something there that your consciousness was like bookmark that you need to come back to it you can let it go you can forget it and then you don't get the benefit of it but if you're listening

you're paying attention and you want to have these experiences, then they'll, I think they'll come to you, except me. I don't, I don't remember my dreams. I sleep so deeply and then there's nothing, nothing comes out. Very rare I even have the experience, oh, I was dreaming. Very rare that that even happens, let alone more rare that, oh, I remember what I saw. And if I do, it's like a chunk of I was standing by the open rear passenger door of a white car. And that's it. What does it mean? I don't know what else happened i don't know how did i get there i don't know uh that's the kind of dreams i remember one image uh otherwise nothing um all right nothing about me uh all of this all of this to say that it can be very simple um so you've got characters in the dream and it could have been anybody

but it was specifically you and your eldest son who actually that night you had gone to comfort him and uh fell asleep in in his bed with him and so right there we're priming the pump in a way for receiving a specific kind of message. You're there's very naturally you're carrying your real world concern for your son into the into the thoughts on your, what's on your mind, so to speak, the content that might be considered at the very least as you're falling asleep. You know, there's a reason I'm here. This is what I'm experiencing is being here with my son.

So, and concern for it as well-being and whatnot. So you imagine, or the image, imagery, which is the root of imagination, comes to you with the idea of you're in this void, in a dark space. And were you, what was your experience of it? You said you referred to it as, you know, I can't read my handwriting, blank something in darkness. We were floating in, we were floating in dark word. Floating in darkness.

And I like to do the counterfactuals. to you were not in a dark room so far as you could conceive. That was that was not the concept you're dealing with. You were not standing on the dark, on a dark plane that felt vast. You were not falling. So it's more like floating in space I would equate it to. Yeah, yeah, but not the sensation, say, of falling necessarily. There wasn't like a pit in your stomach of like, oh, we're dropping.

So there wasn't a descent in that sense. But so there was like a static existence in a void. So you've, in a way, you've cut away any reference to external stuff. You are very narrowly focused. This is me and my son. The, the, what is around you could be anything. But in fact, it is nothing because you're just not showing yourself that. We're in a dark void in a sense.

And you're very close to it within arm's length, which you were in bed. So there's a physical reference there that you might have brought with you. and as you first appeared there when you realized not realized exactly but as you were experiencing where you were and what the circumstances were were having any emotional content or was your son depicted as having any specific reaction to the to the circumstances in the dream no I mean I went to him because he was crying that night but in the dream he was pretty silent through the whole process there was nothing said by him

there was there was nothing there wasn't anything that was spoken within the dream the interpretation when I woke up was was very very clear

got you okay so it's this is going to you know and you didn't have any specific emotional reaction to being in that place at that time. You didn't come into the dream with a specific feeling, so to speak.

No, no, it was, he was crying, you know, like children do at night. And I was, I went into him so that to prevent my wife from getting up to deal with it. And that's an important, it can also be very helpful in that exactly what you're doing right now. What did I bring to this experience? What were my motivations as well?

What was I here to accomplish? And it was definitely to comfort him, but also to relieve your wife of the necessity of that, you stepping up to fill in for, so that she wasn't overburdened. So you're bringing that with you as well. Okay, so you're there to get it. Part of the reason I do this,

and it seems like excruciating detail sometimes. And I've actually gotten better. I'm dialing it in as I go along. I would hope so, or I should just stop now if I'm not improving. You've got you and your son. Hmm. In a way out of context, but in every context.

But you don't know. what's in the dark. And the darkness itself may not be the point. I think it's the absence of distraction. It's the singular focus on the two of you is what it feels like to me. I don't know if that resonates if that's part of it. It's hard to do these sometimes because I don't want you to reveal too much, but I want you to tell me if you don't feel a zing like head to heart of like or head to gut, you know, that this is going somewhere, then I want you to tell me no, that's not it. But without maybe too many spoilers. Did you get the feeling that you were, was the darkness an entity or was it the absence of distraction in a way is what i'm saying not an

entity but uh but its own feature of the dream yeah the the the darkness in itself did not feel evil the it it was the harm that i felt was coming to my son as that light appeared between the two of us and he was floating away gotcha yes my my inability to be able to help him exactly gotcha then that's that's what it felt like to me and i i need to confirm because as i say the answers are not in me if i have a suggestion if i have an inkling of something if i'm getting the wrong inspiration i want to know um because that's how that's how that's how i tell the difference is this coming from is this is my issues or am i working with the you know clients what they what they have to share um yeah i think it's yeah it's to to wipe away distractions and focus

this is just what we're dealing with here is so you're close enough to touch i think that's an important thing you weren't separated further initially you were you were close and probably i'd say in your daily lived experience you felt close to your son you didn't feel distanced from him generally um you know probably uh in everything from you could communicate easily and uh show affection easily and there wasn't uh it wasn't um it isn't a dream well maybe it is i don't want to go there preemptively we'll see i'll just stop there um and suddenly a light occurs and there is a, there is a distinction of the darkness and the light. I mean, sometimes the darkness may

exist to highlight the light to say, look at this, look at how bright this light is in the darkness, but the light definitely represents something because it's separating you. And if we, there's a lot of different ways to, to look at that, but what came to my mind almost immediately was, uh, the biblical verse about Jesus saying, you know, I've come to turn family against each other with, with my words, but not not the proper understanding of that is not I'm here to sow discord but I'm here to say if you follow me you're going to have conflict with people who don't and so there's there's maybe I'll just stop there for two seconds and let you respond because that's what occurred to me and I don't know what shade of meaning attaches to that or if I'm way off and that's just my own thing

so I don't know if there's something there well I mean so again this all happened in 1987 he was three years old so the the ongoing interpretation of that rolls out over time and and because I have three of these and I think the other two are more important what why don't we kind of cut to chase because what you just what you just what you just just said is actually more true today than it was at the time that I had the interpretation. Gotcha. Well, that's also kind of where I was going is because it's not that when your son's three, and I don't think we're going to, to respect your time.

I don't know if we're going to be able to get to the other two. I spend a lot of time on each one. And this is actually, I'm already abbreviating and abbreviated process. We'd spend a lot more time on this than I, uh, than we are right now. But that's, that's actually where I was going with it is the idea of, um, what are you going to, what's going to be on your mind when you're dealing with this issue with you. you're going to be thinking about your relationship with him because that's what

you're there enacting. You're enacting this caretaker role and you know it's going to occur over time and light can also be not only not only a dividing line say of what do they call a liminal

space between light and darkness but but it can also be a the light of you will always be older and wiser you will always be the father and he will always be the son so this always going to be a bit of a division between you. It's always going to be something between you. And what the impression I'm getting, that idea of the dividing thing is not that, not that you're going to, see, this is what I say. The, the Bible verse that I got, or it's, I don't even remember the verse, just the concept that came, came to my mind is that idea of, of difference, of, you know, and not that it's bad in this context, is what I'm trying to say.

It's like there's a difference between my wife and I. Even if we became one flesh in our marriage, we are still separate people. We will never have the physical ability to merge into one entity in that sense. There will always be a division between us and managing that distance to stay close enough to touch, but not enmeshed, but not distant, that kind of thing. So, okay, all of this to say, you're coming to bed with your son to, you know, to comfort him in a moment.

of distress. And that is naturally going to lead you to think a couple of different things. I'm glad I can be here. But man, this is a hassle. I can't wait until he gets older. Oh, wait a minute. He's going to get older. We're probably going to drift apart as he gets older. That's just natural. It happens. There's going to be something that divides us. And again, it's a natural division. It's like your son has to grow up and be and separate himself from you. So you weren't, what you didn't show is the darkness coming between you. You showed the light. So there's actually probably a good separation that's happening there. But with that separation comes the fear that you're not going to,

he's not going to be within reach to save him, that he's actually going to grow up on his own and experience his own struggles. And you're not going to be able to reach him or save him from everything he's going to experience as he's growing up. And I think the, the fact that it's light that separates you is, you could reference the idea of, you know, so close that there's no daylight between between the two in a way that concept may have been on your mind

I'm going to stop there am I going in anything like go the correct direction well yes and no I mean I'll just give you the I'll give you the interpretation let's go let's see how close I got well again you got remember the context this is back

in 1987 so this is a long time ago when I woke up now and at this point time marriage is fine work I was in the process of beginning to start this new business. I don't believe that I actually announced my leaving the company I was working for yet. I don't think that had happened yet, but I was on the cusp of doing that. Also, my wife was about to be diagnosed with a giant cell tumor in her ankle.

That hadn't been discovered yet. and our youngest son, Patrick, the one that cried that night, was going to be diagnosed about six, eight months later with epilepsy. So a big, all these things, and I didn't know this at the time, obviously. Epilepsy features strongly with lights. So what happened was I woke up from that dream, and I was very confident, self-assured individual. I woke up with that dream, shaking.

Okay? I can, for those of you who haven't had a dream from God, this is the way I explained it in the book, Sparks turned into Brushfires. By the way, the book's free. Just go to our site, register, and you'll get the book free because I want people to understand how God wants to talk to you in various ways. But what happened was, I woke up and I was shaking. I knew that God had just spoken to me. There was something that was so, I was so exposed by the message. The way I explained in the book is a dream from God is like in your mind, it's like something has been etched in glass. It doesn't go away. It's there forever. You can recall the feelings. You can recall the motivations. You can recall it all when God's talking to you. And at this point,

he's talking to a son of his who for 15 years has not been serving him or worshiping him or any of that stuff. I was off on his own deal. And when I woke up, I had one clear message. I was literally shaking because I knew God spoke to me. And it was, get your family to church or your son's going to be hurt in a way that you'll never be able to help him. That was the message. I was so completely, I mean, I was crying. I was shaking from that experience. And I was really questioning my sanity. The thing about when you come into God's presence, and all I had was this message afterwards. There was nothing spoken during the dream itself. But because he created you, your soul, your physical body, even your spirit, because he created you, when you come into

his presence, all those things that he created are going to testify against you and go, yeah, yeah, he's unworthy God. Yeah, yeah, he does this. Yeah, yeah. All the things that you're confident in, your intelligence, your power, your authority, whatever, completely stripped away. You are as vulnerable as naked as possible. There is nothing that you can bring into that discussion that's going to allow you to hold your own against God, period. So I woke up and I was shaking to the point where I couldn't even talk to my wife because I didn't know what had happened other than God had just given me this message. So the only thing I could, because I knew if I started talking to her, I would break down and cry and try to explain this madness

because I was thinking, you know, all those things. So this is what I came up with. This is before cell phones. So I grabbed my briefcase that morning. On my way out the door, I yelled over my shoulder, find us a church. We're going this Sunday. Shut the door, got to my car, and left. He's bottom-lined before it, yeah.

Yeah, I could not control myself and be able to have. of that discussion at that time. I was that shaken, and it lasted. She found us the church that we attended and was filled with a bunch of mature Christians. And the interesting thing is that we're attending these Bible studies, and I'm participating in the discussions, and my wife goes, how do you know this stuff? Well, all those years of vacation Bible school and so forth were in me. And so as a byproduct, my wife, wife got saved. All three of our kids have demonstrated statements of faith, whether or not I'm always looking for the evidence. Specifically with our son, Sean, our software company does

well. We move into a much more fluent neighborhood, and this is like four, five years later, where you have a lot of very wealthy people that are doctors and lawyers and so forth and kids that are left unattended. And by fourth and fifth grade, he was exposed to pornography, drugs, and alcohol. We started to see this pattern where he is not able to, has no interest in school. and in seventh grade we started to see the school system fail him where they were socially promoting him. He would have, you know, Ds and Fs going into the progress reports and then magically have a C or D, you know, and we're projecting, looking at this and then with the drugs and alcohol,

we're going, this, his life is going to be destroyed. That being said, my wife then and I, we took we took him out of public school and my wife homeschooled him for about a year and a half. We met people through church that were in the homeschooling environment. So we knew then how to do it. I met my first Christian man that could actually model my life after, and I watched how he dealt with his daughter that was struggling in school behavior-wise and so forth. And so we had the resources. to be able to do this and to be able to make those choices.

Eventually got him into a Christian high school. His life was going really positively. And I won't go into all the details of his story because that's his personal story. But what I will say is that he has fallen away. Now, I do know that he, I do believe in my heart that he is saved, much like his backslidden father was, and that God is eventually going to call him.

But my faith and his perspective in this world right now, after spending way too many hours in Reddit and on YouTube videos on his side, he has fallen away and is not following God at this point. And there is a real division. In fact, he and I had a fight. it was like I got a call out of the blue and I don't want to go into too many details

but he started accusing me of supporting some things and agreeing to some things that are sort of like a narrative that the world is trying to promote about Christians and I had no idea where I was even getting it from because on social media I'm pretty, I walked away from politics a long time go. I do have my beliefs, but I don't go around, you know, banging on other people's heads.

And I haven't talked to him now since then. And he has basically shut us off for about two or three months. So this process is still going on. And his life is not going as well as I think he would like it to go. And I don't know where it's going to lead, but he will eventually probably reach back out to us because he knows we love him and want him to prosper and want him to have a good life. And there's been a couple times where he's asked me to effectively deny my faith and I refuse to do it. I go, no, I believe this with all my heart. I believe that this is true. So that's where we're at. So it's interesting that projection that you have going further because I always looked at that as the answer was when he was in fifth, sixth, and seventh grade. But I do see

that it's an ongoing pattern. My son, I believe, has a very strong calling in children's ministry, specifically junior high high school age ministry. And he's run far away from that. And he's not happy in many ways at this point because of that. And so, I think at some point in time, God's going to get his attention. I just don't know how hard and far he has to fall before, you know, he'll do that. But yeah, that's where that's at. Gotcha. No, it's fascinating.

That gives a lot of additional context that normally when I'm doing the full process, we have more time, we get in more detail, but also a lot of this gets uncovered or inserted as we go describing the process. Well, let's relate this to what's going on in your life. and whatnot. It can also be difficult dealing with a dream from a long time ago, although that can be better because it gives you some now perspective on it as well. I knew this was important back then, and I see it continuing to play out.

A couple of things. So as you were saying that it's funny, the things I get close to, but I can't express it well. And then the things where it's like, well, I obviously fell short and here's the fullness of it that shows where, you know, deviating from the normal process didn't get the best results. for the course that's exactly right um you use the uh or the pitching wedge on the tea you're not getting very close to the you're not getting very close to the hole um but uh that that intuition i had in the very beginning of being separated by the light in a way and and and and and but also the now that you explain it more the the the uh i don't want to say as above so below in a way but that's

kind of what i'm what i'm looking at and not in kind of the gnostic religious sense and although they weren't wrong about everything. You know, they just had a lot of other weird, weird ideas. But the patterns repeat. So there's the relationship between you as a person and God as the father. Then there's the relationship that mirrors that of you as the father and your son, literally, in this world. And there was, and to varying degree, always will be in some ways a separation between you, the person and God. And then also between the person and their child.

and the idea that as they grow up and you know the further they drift uh what do there's the the phrase you know raise a child well and they won't deviate from the path not necessarily that it's good advice and it's true in in so far as as as that goes but also it's their path to tread and a lot of but then they also throw that stuff out of as like the prodigal son we'll get out there and you're probably going to make some mistakes and hopefully you'll come back and you know that's again that's that's a repeating pattern hopefully god is saying to you hopefully you come back to me i got to let you go i got to let you free will you're going to do your thing and i love you and i hope you i hope you come back that's what i want and then the same with your son uh and that there's only

so much you can do and you're always going to struggle with you know if you do too much you handicap them you enable them and if you do too little you aren't trying and that's not good either and it's like what is that balance and i can imagine you know i i think that's why some of these dreams come in these forms is like it gives you a very simple imagery you can hang on to uh that will that could stay with you for a lifetime but that shows a pattern that repeats and is profound in the moment and is profound 40 years later that kind of thing uh so i think that's part of what was going on there so i absolutely think you're right it's a message from god in that sense it showed you the truth and foreshadowing of the future struggles you were also going to have um and you may have

that about his personality at the time. There may have been some inkling there where you're like, oh boy, based on who he has showed me he is, we're in for a rough road. And you may have been able to not process it fully, not explain it verbally, but encapsulated in this image that stuck with you. I don't know if any of that makes any sense. Well, I don't know at three. He was just a normal boy. And at that point, I hadn't, um, I hadn't, um, I hadn't started. working those long hours that required to get the company going so you know I was still his hero and all that stuff so it was it was to it was something that was challenging yeah I do I do think it's important that I share at least the second dream with your oh sure we can

talk about it we won't have time to fully no interpret them but let's go let's go yeah yeah this one is fairly big and it wound up being very important. Again, if they go to the site brushfire slash digital.com, they'll be able to hear the interpretation because I don't want to give the interpretation here. But this was in 2001. It was April of 2001. So this is before 9-11. That's really important timing. I was very active in the church. I was teaching. I was running men's retreats. We were at the pinnacle of the success of our company, our highest revenues. We just got past Y2K, and that was very lucrative for our company, converting people onto compliance software and so forth. So as far as the world was concerned, April 2001, life was really,

really good. So there was no struggles going on or any of that. So, our son would have been 13 so he would have been maybe in the middle of this struggle our oldest son because that would have been high school maybe he was just coming out of it or perhaps anyway so here's the dream go to sleep and I hadn't had another dream from God up until of that point. So this is whatever. And the dream comes in four panels. It's much more complex than the first one. So the very first panel is I'm walking in this hillside and I've got, I'm walking dogs, so I've got dogs around me. And I look up into the sky and I see these four black dots align in a straight line in front of me. And I'm still.

staring at them while I see that happen. And then as I'm watching them, they split and they go to the four corners of the sky. And they start emanating like a blackness starting from those dots. And it's sort of like if you were to take a pencil and you start to fill in, you know, with the side of the pencil and charcoal it all in. But it's at the four corners and it's going towards the main. eventually it's going to cover up the entire sky, but I didn't see that part. It was simply, I saw the process start.

The second one, again, we're still living in Southern California at this time. The second one is we are, my wife and I are living in a home, and we see these, and the home looks like something out of old Ireland, you know, with a grass, thatched roof and stones on the on the on the you know being built by stones and we see people going by and they're going you know we ask them so what's you know where you're going everybody's going to town there is a ship that's going to take you to God and and it was like what so my wife and I follow them and we go to this area wherever this is and she comes back and says well she got the information which is typically how things work she goes off and

the details and we make a decision together. And she says, we're on the same ship. We're registered to be on the same ship, but we're not able to be housed together. We are on different floors of the ship. And my response to her goes, well, that's stupid. I don't have to go to God. And if he wants me, he knows where I am. And we go back to our house. We don't fall into that. The third frame is we're in that same house and I'm outside and my wife is inside and this woman that comes to the, is coming down this path and comes and starts talking to me and as we're chatting, we're looking at the stones on the wall of the house and they're in flames. It's not that the house is burning, but there's flames coming out of the house. So it's not consuming, but it is flames. She picks up this hose that's by this trellis, and she turns on the hose,

and out of this hose comes this white substance that either conceals or douses the flames so that you don't see it anymore. And the fourth one, fourth frame of that is I would walk into this bookstore with books piled all over the place. And I have this little, I think as a child next to me, comes up to about my knees. And in this bookstore is this Arab looking person where they are, you know, a full turban. And so maybe like a Sikh or an Arab, but turban, beard, and so forth. And we start this conversation where he goes, wow, all these crazy things are going on in the world right now. And he asks me, he goes, do you think it's the end times?

And I start describing him know what the end times are going to look like and some of the manifestations like these flesh-eating hornets or whatever they are of some sort and a couple other things. But in the midst of trying to tell him, all of a sudden, my words are coming out, you know, like Charlie Brown with the teacher,

wow, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. And as I am talking to him, you know, I'm going, wait a minute, why are my words coming out muffled like that? And I'm thinking, that's really, you know, weird. I want to tell him about this, you know,

it's going to look like but it's not happening and all of a sudden i hear a stack of books fall and i look over and he's on the ground and he's looking at me completely terrified completely terrified he's looking at me and he's just in complete fear as he's looking at me and that my reaction at that point is what the heck is wrong with you you know we were just talking i know that was weird with a wah-w-w-w-wah-wah but why are you looking like that and at that point as I'm looking down to him I noticed that the child that was with me is in a in a position like praying and I'm thinking all right well what's wrong with the boy is you know what's wrong with the child is the child scared and as I'm looking down I see that my body is glowing in this bright light

and that's when I woke up. So it was important for you to share that in connection with the first dream without getting too much into the specifics of the interpretation that you want to keep as a surprise for folks that go to your website. Right. They were welcome to do that. And again, the book is free. It doesn't cost you anything to register on our site.

But it's important because I, again, had immediate interpretation. I know what the dream meant. I was at a place in my life, which was like, this is some of the financially and success-wise, one of the best places we had been. And I know what the interpretation was, and I was left with this feeling of, oh, God, why did you give me this dream? What am I supposed to do with this? I'm a business owner who have a software company.

What am I supposed to do with this? prior to this book, and so it was nearly 25 years ago at this point, I had shared that dream with about 30 people, period, in 25 years. I spent the next five years trying to figure out why God gave me the dream. I knew what it meant. I had no idea why. It wasn't until he called me into the ministry of, of brush fires that I then was able to put one and one together, that I could then see,

all right, I needed to have this understanding of what's coming so that I understood the urgency of the ministry that God is calling me to. It took me a while to figure, put those pieces together, and now it makes sense. And the book, Sparks Turned Into Brush Fires, is my sixth book. It's not on Amazon yet. It's going to final editing. But once I got it at a ready state, I wanted it to be available for anybody to be able to get to. And the edited version, once I get it back from my editor, will be also available for free on our website, or you can buy it on Amazon. But I wanted people to understand why it was important. And when God prompted me to write this book, which is a faith-based chronology or autobiography of my life, I was like, yeah, I don't really want to share that.

I don't want people to think I'm a complete loony. I don't want them to, you know, to look at me. And there was a couple other things that we were going to share in the book that are very, very personal. And I don't want to share that. And it was kind of funny because we had this discussion. And it was like, yeah, I don't want to do that. And then the thought props in my head. Yeah, wasn't that the answer when I told you to study the psychometric assessments back in 2016? Yeah. Then the question, follow-up question, how'd that work out for you? It changed my life. All right, God, I'll write the book. So I don't know, Benjamin, what he intends with this book. I think the timing that it happened so long ago, I met with my pastor that morning.

and he actually wrote in the in the final release he wrote a testimony about that day and so forth as an endorsement to the book so there is evidence third party evidence of course with my wife and he encouraged me at that time to journal the dream so that I had it clear written down because it's so complex yeah and so I journaled for about nine months that, you know, that, the dream, and then what went on for about nine months afterwards. I stopped the journal right after 9-11. It was like, oh, this is what God just showed me, and this is what just happened in our country. Oh, it's going to get ugly. So that's all in there. And what I share in the book is,

cut and paste directly from that journal it's exactly what i felt it's exactly what i interpreted it's exactly what he shared and maybe i don't know maybe it's your listeners that are the reason why he had me to write this book i don't know um all i know is that he made it very clear what he wanted me to share in the book and um and how he wants to talk to all of his kids and we're all children you know yeah definitely that's that is fascinating i think there's always something to be learned if you if you pay attention and you mentioned something uh which i think is very important if you want to remember your dreams write them down there's no substitute for getting it on paper and the the process of trying to compose your thoughts in that way and write them down often is

like speaking them to another person you're speaking them to the page uh a lot of benefits to writing things out and uh you'll find that the the details expand as well because like you'll have an idea of a sequence of three events and you're like well wait a minute between each description of the sequence there's actually like 10 separate things that happened in in the meantime or involving that first element second element third element and you get that out and it helps to flesh it out as well so even if a dream sticks with you and you think the recall is vivid and even if you remember it 10 years later there's uh it's always best to write these things down if you hope to remember it as accurately as

possible because then you can you can also compare your memory later with well that's not what I wrote down wait a minute what happened there and then Freud warned about that to this idea of secondary elaboration we try to explain things in fuller detail and it's not actually what happened because we're telling the story long after the fact and we didn't write it down and uh you don't want to add too many things or change things because then you start thinking your interpretation was part of the dream when it's an explanation it's like a self self fulfilling prophecy, you are reinterpreting it as you go. So having that hard copy from back in 2001 was really important. Interesting thing, so when I was putting it into the book and rereading it

and so forth, it still brought me to tears. Twenty-some years later, it brought me to tears. I could re-feel all those emotions of what happened. And it was, Yeah, these things don't wane with time when you get a dream from God. It's like he's talking to you and he's, I mean, the first time I was backslidden. Now he's talking to me at the height of my success and I'm actively involved in the church and I get this other dream. And the other two dreams are also documented in the book that came much later. but yeah

if you do have something like it write it down because it does it matters especially when you feel like it's an important message from from your father absolutely yeah and even if you're not

religious particularly spiritual it can just be whatever core of you understands the truth trying to speak out as well which I think that's synonymous with God as well so if it feels important it probably is and you should probably pay attention to it and give it some thought, give it some thought, which is one of the, one of the broader messages of the show I'm doing here is like, why do I do these things? Well, I don't think

it's, you know, what do the New Yorkers say? It's not for nothing. It's, uh, there's a reason behind this. It's, I think, I think it has, uh, value and purpose behind it. So go ahead. Oh, you froze. Oh, that's lovely. Right. Right as we're about to wrap it up. I'm sure fix it. Yeah. There, you're back. Yeah. wait a minute it looks like our internet it just says it's unstable are we good still i can hear you now you froze for 10 seconds please continue yeah so i would hope that if there are other people that are listening that have had dreams of this sort of nature that they would not feel like they are alone i mean it shook my core because again you have this very rational logic-based um

leader personality that is having this dream. And it shook me. It's like, yeah, none of this made logical sense. None of this was something that I was searching for or looking for. It was like here. Now deal with it. And I think it happens a lot more than we think it does, but we don't have a resource to be able to go to to talk about it. When I met with my pastor that morning in 2001, It was, you know, I was still shaking when I spoke with him. He told me, because I've never had a dream from God. So I don't know what it is, but I can tell that this was real for you. And so he addressed it from that perspective.

I had the ability to be able to talk to somebody that morning. I think a lot of people, especially in the day that we live in right now, are going to have these sort of dreams. and they need people like you, or maybe, you know, if they want to reach out to us, if they think it's of a faith-based, you know, whatever. Because if they just keep it to themselves and don't act on it, I think they're going to miss the whole point of having that dream. And so I, you know, I applaud what you're doing.

I hope your listeners, you know, take advantage of your, you know, your interpretation services so that they can actually have, have somebody to talk to because i'm glad i did wonderful well thank you that's that is actually the highest compliment i think anyone can give me is this was not a waste of time absolutely but speaking of time i know you're short on it i don't want to run you up against your own clock so we'll we'll wrap it up here i think um once again this has been our friend uh john jr r rennie out of Northern Idaho. He is the founder of the brush fires ministry. You can find him at brush fires dash digital.com. It's also kind of partly on the screen right down there. But also there's a currently

a free book on there. It's, oh my goodness, sparks turn into brush fires, which is a, I love an analogy. So the better the mental imagery, you know, the board sticks with you, which I think is why dreams are so powerful. It's that encapsulating ideas in these vivid, vivid images. um okay and uh for my part would you kindly like share and subscribe tell your friends always need more volunteer dreamers i do video game streams monday through friday 5 p.m 2 8 p.m pacific most days of the week um this episode brought to you in part by abccc book 18 o'neuro chronology volume 4 primout reliquorum why why am i stumbling over that i don't know the second time i say the first time i get through it just fine the second time i stumble over the words um you can find all this and more at

Benjamin the dreamwizard.com, including audio MP3s of this very podcast. And if you'd head on over to Benjamin the dreamwizard. Dot Locals.com building a community there, free to join attached to my Rumble account, one of the best ways to reach out to me if you have a dream to share. And the last thing to say is, J.R., thank you for being here. It's been a fun and fascinating conversation. Yeah, Benjamin. Keep in touch.

I think there's more to this than just some kind of chance connection on a podcast. So if you have, you know, anything that you would like to share with me in the future, feel free to give me a call and send out a word. And again, I encourage people to go to our site, find out about our ministry, read the book. And God does talk to you. He's talking to people all the time. And that dream may be his way of reaching out to you. Especially if you have just stumbled across this podcast.

You've never heard it before. And now you're hearing this from this guy. Maybe there's a message in there for you. Who knows how these synchronicities occur, but you should probably pay attention to it. The last thing to say then is, of course, thank you for watching, and we hope to see you next time.