Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 215: Triptych Dialogue

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

David Deighton ~ https://www.youtube.com/@triptych-dialogue

They say it's the matrilineal line. So if your mom's dad had thick hair and my grandfather, he had Einstein hair until the day he died. So I got lucky with that one. Another thing, though, was like we were talking about the beard. So this is as long as a group. Beards just hit a certain length and they stop. They don't just keep going. Some people, they do keep going and you can get this easy top out of it.

But I think most beards are a lot of them. They just kind of stop where they're at. It's a stock. And then you also get a weird, the weird striping, like gray, gray, gray. But in between these dark patches, like, what is that? Where does that even come from? Genetics are weird. Greetings, friends, and welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes.

Today, our guest is David Dieton. He's out of Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is a conceptual artist who speaks to strangers about the of politics, a person that some have called a bridger who facilitates conversations using art installations in free speech areas, creator of the Triptic Dialogue Art Project. And of course, you can find that at Triptic Dialogue on YouTube. Link will be in the description below. Let me try and rush through 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 days of the week, sometimes I'll think a Friday off and start. a new game following Monday. This episode is brought to you by my latest book, ABC, book 18, O'Neuro chronology, volume four, prima reliquorum. That's Latin for the first of what remains.

It's all the other stuff I couldn't get into the original trilogy, and then there will be more volumes of that. The anthology grows. You can find all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, including downloadable or live streamable episodes of this very podcast, so you may take the wizard with you, wherever you wander with or without Wi-Fi. And last but not least,

if you'd head on over to Benjamin thedreamwizard.locals.com, it's free to join attached to my Rumble account. I'd love to hear from you there. That's a great place to keep up with what I'm doing and reach out to me if you have a dream to share and that is enough out of me. David, thank you for being here. I appreciate your time.

Thank you. Oh, I can't wait to see where this takes us. I'm pretty busy. I got a lot of stuff going on. I'm also making AI music. And over the last month or two, I've started writing a novel series that I originally conceived as a trilogy

of a kind of a science fiction fantasy crossover and it's actually probably going to turn into about 15 light novels. I've got a lot of irons in the fire. One might say too many, but that's what you get with an absent-minded professor scatterbrain type of thing. I'm like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if I did that? And then I just do it. And it works or it doesn't. But that's the thing. You've got go out and do it. It's true. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Because I've actually had this. Sorry, enough about me. Let's get back to you. You're getting out there and doing it. You're having conversations with people out in the world. I think it's a fantastic thing to do. It reminds me of, so I'm in Portland, Oregon, there's a professor who used to work at the university in downtown Portland, Portland State,

I think, something like that. And his name is Peter Bogosian, and he gets out there and has difficult conversations with people. I don't know if you've heard of him at all. No, I have not, no. I'm entirely in the art world doing art experiments, and I kind of do things on my own and see what my own results are out of it with the interactions they get with other people. But yeah, there's plenty of readings and different people out there for sure. Definitely. Yeah, and I wouldn't, you know, I'm not comparing you to him. I think his methods are different. He's more focused on philosophy and he, I don't know if he invented this or he borrowed it from someone else. I think he borrowed it from someone else or he's using a method

of someone else. It's how to have impossible conversations. I think it's a book some other guy wrote and he's using those things um but there you know there's no reason that you have to follow anyone else's method i like i do the dream interpretation intuitively i think you're you just fell into this intuitively as well that's how you know it's just by experimenting one thing after another you know it goes from like street art and going out and positioning things in unusual places or burying uh artifacts out in the desert with different messages for 100 and 200 years from now to going out to talking to people, to ripping up books with political messages in them and giving them to people and hiding them in public spaces to art installations set up in national

parks, talking to hundreds of different people, asking them non-confrontational political questions, seeing how they can use those in maybe mending relationships they broke up into, you know, they broke up with, and then discovering people's stories, you know, getting out of your bubble. taking the courage to speak out there. It's about exploring the foundations of a really messed up society that we're living in with more and more division. How do you build up that foundation with others

in person, face-to-face, offline without the visual animosity and outrage that's out there? But then, again, they'll go out and experiment one year on Instagram, 365 abstract art videos about Plato's Allegory of the Cave and doing a lot of crazy stuff and going to different extreme political groups and going in and trolling them or asking questions with them and seeing where that goes and coming back and forth experimenting. You never know where it takes you, but after several years, it's true that I found that just actively listening to people

and finding one thing you have in common with them, even if you completely disagree, agree with them, that's your bridge. And it's not a factor opinion. It's an emotion, usually. They're angry about something. You might be angry about the same thing for different reasons. And you just tell them that, you know, you tell them I'm that far leftist or far right or whatever that you've been complaining about. I'm that guy. I'm angry too. Show your humanity. So I go with that. And that just expressed in a lot of different installations that I bring to Yellowstone and Grand Canyon and free speech areas and where it's unexpected, right?

Arts everywhere. To me, that's what we're doing today. We're doing an art performance. Yeah, we are making art. This, I mean, podcasts or art, visual or audio or otherwise, as we were talking maybe a little bit beforehand, our presentation is a work of art as well. I mean, I could be sitting here naked with a bald head.

That would be a certain presenting of myself. And, you know, the best people, I think, are the ones that kind of just fall into, this is what I like. This is what's comfortable for me. And then it's just unique. It's just an outward reflection of their inward state of mind or emotional composition, that kind of thing. Take it a step further. It's not just that we're always in some form of performance or doing, it's not performative. It's the act of, act with intention.

And that is in the, that's the process. You know, we're all creative and sense. but the artistic side of it to me everything is art and politics there's not one you kick a pebble it has it has an effect as well yeah everything everything's connected i'll i'll add a third one there people throw that in for sure i did the third one say everything is art everything is politics and everything is religion it's all about what you believe and what you want and what you feel and communicating that with other people i think it's all the same thing uh i don't know if you consider that or if you draw a distinction i draw as

distinction as spirituality versus religion because of not only the religion, organization, and structure. That's, in a sense, could be limiting to a greater expression of discovering new things. I think if there's a religion to be said, explore your five senses plus one with the mind. And there you have an experience that is all encompassing for the elements and the tools that were given to us. So go with that. There's a lot of expressions. And that's much wider and encompassing. It encompasses all that have access to those tools. We don't have all access to those tools, but if we do, let's use them.

We're in a very acoustic and visual culture, but we're the other ones. When are you associating the word fascism or democracy with the smell? What does fascism smell like to you, right? What does democracy taste like? And just making these associations takes us to new places, brings us down to a moment to be more present and to explore new parts about ourselves or thought processes, maybe to shut out the mind before the ultimate moment of death comes around. Definitely.

I think that's a fair tweet to say spirituality is probably more what I mean by religion. I'm using it as the broad umbrella term for beliefs in that sense. What do you believe? What do you think about? I throw that back in with politics. Yeah. Yeah. I throw that way in politics.

I think that's all the same thing. I think people have a false dichotomy in a way that. politics and religion are separate I think what you do in the world is a reflection of what you believe and so it's kind of all the same things all political wars are religious wars in a sense

it's like well this brings me back around to the commonality what you're saying and then where the differences lie I've long thought and we'll see what you think but I think you'll agree we'll see that you know being human we all have the same human

needs we're all trying to get the same needs met in the broad in the Maslow's hierarchy's type of way We need, you know, food and shelter, and we need belonging, and then we're trying to self-actualize all these things. Where we get into differences is what is the concept of, for you, what it means to satisfy those needs? What does it look like when a need is met?

And then what are the acceptable or unacceptable methods to pursue achieving that concept? So I think more than anything, what people end up divided over is not what human needs are, but how, what it looks like to satisfy them and how to get there. I don't know if that makes sense. Do you or... Yeah, and of course that and the obstacles of language as well and definitions are word and how we each interpret each one of those words.

It's very linear, right? Language is very linear as we sew the words together and align. It's less acoustic coming from all directions, like in a cave with all the echoes coming back and forth or the thump that has no reflection from many walls, because the cave is so vast, we're so small. And I should be a small, wouldn't it? It'd be less of an echo there.

Yeah, it's the words, how they're interpreted. There's a lot of interpretation. Maybe today there'll be some interpretation. Right? Well, no, this feeds right back into, I mean, this is a great conversation to have, too, because we're talking about how the mind works. And my theory of dreams is it's rooted in the biological,

but the heart beats the lungs breathe and the brain, thinks. These organs just do what they do and they do it whether you're awake or asleep. So there's an automatic process that's going on. So my concept of dreams is that that is what our raw stream of consciousness thought process actually looks like in our head before we then try to turn it into language. And then we try to communicate it to other people. So first we're translating our images, symbol, sensations that are, that are, because the brain is the brain across cultures and across languages. So everyone's starting with this core framework of we're thinking in sensations and experiences and imagery and tastes and smells, all the things you were saying.

And then we translated into language, which is often culture bound. And then we try to, and then there's, when you're talking about communication, there's four distinct areas that I've identified where communication can go wrong. It's, um, what I think, what I say, what they hear and then how they process it. any breakdown across that and you're not communicating if you can't translate it into the right words that they don't hear you properly and understand the words you're saying to mean what you're thinking and then turn that into their own thoughts uh anyway that's that's my thought on on just how complicated i'm amazed we can communicate at all there's so many opportunities for

things to just go shit sideways and there's so many aspects that we don't acknowledge in our communication right and especially as we're diving deeper and deeper into these digital devices that We were liking the nonverbal, we're lacking the smells, we're lacking also the whole tactile aspect of it, and things get lost in the translation with the limited tools that we've decided to use with only two, really. For sure. If we use the mind, the mind and visual and acoustic tools that we have at our disposal. I like to explore the other ones.

I was having dinner last night with a group of people, all strangers. A lovely lady decided to once a month she has seven people to come together. And we talk about most the most the artists. So it's an echo chamber of itself, really. And we're going around answering whatever the question was for that evening. It's a bit of ritualized experience. And one of the participants, she just told me it was about smell. It's what she could smell.

Now, there was some pretty strong cheeses on the table that night. So that might have had something to do with it, but it wasn't a question to disgust or anything. It was just that's where her consciousness was with that, not really with the conversation as much as the presence of the smell that we could all appreciate if we were paying attention. Oh, yeah. I think people underestimate or underrate smell as an experience. You know when it's bad. You know when it's different.

You know, when you walk into someone else's house and it does not smell. like your house. Why does your house smell like your house? It's the aggregate of who you are and all the things you do there. How often do you clean the kind of meals you cook, whether you open the windows in the spring or not? What, what's your culture? Yeah. Do you burn incense or do you prefer things neutral as much as possible? Yeah. Lots of different layers on that and cultural. I'm not saying like a culture like on that cheese that's growing. That too. for sure. It may be literally and figuratively.

One might say a French cheese in a French home might smell different than cheese in a Southern Georgia home. Well, that's for sure. I'm French. I grew up in France. I miss my cheeses. That's for sure. These cheeses seem very bland over here. Do like what people call a smelly cheese.

Yeah. That would be my favorite with a glass of red wine. America really leaned hard into the industrial level. including industrially revolutionizing or food into standardized packets. I don't know. I go back and forth on that too. It's like, is it there's pluses and minuses. We lose artisan craftsmanship, we gain efficiency, standardization.

I mean, there's all kinds of things that are good and bad about those things. I would ideally want to make sure of both. I wish we hadn't lost so many artisans making boutique stuff. that's the wrong way to put it, but, you know, really hand-making. Yes, the hand-crafted aspects. Some of us are out there doing it, but we can't run our entire economy on it.

No, it's true. But maybe someday we will, and that would be a very different scene. Well, in a big, I mean, I'm just following my random train of thought here, but I would like to see our manufacturing return to a more local scale as much as possible. Yes.

So there's a bridge between, bridges, as you're saying, um totally local one guy per village artisans and he's the guy that does it the blacksmith or whatever and all the cars are made in one place in Detroit I'm like can we have all the cars made in 50 places in each state so that we've got manufacturing of of things as local as possible but still at an industrial scale and i think we got to find that halfway point between um maximum efficiency and maximum locality in a way I'm not leaving my cars to Dallas, Japan, and China or whatever, and then get my cheeses locally.

How about that? Oh, there you go? No, no, sure. And there's different industries, maybe, that it makes more sense for. To centralize, centralized health care for certain diseases in one place, rather than having 50 different hospitals trying to specialize in something that we could all go to one. But let's leave our cheeses to the artisans. For sure.

Because there's some local culture in that. I'm talking cultures literally there there is well then we've got in Oregon the Tillamook cheese factory and I've been there out on out on the coast um I don't remember where I was going to say Newport but that doesn't sound right um and they actually make and that's the cheese I buy in in the store right here locally um so that's I like that yeah local local cheese for sure local milk from the Tillamook dairy um so a few other things I wanted to get to here so we got that uh that I've been making notes as we go because I can't remember shit um I was okay let me wrap all these three into one uh because I think it makes sense to do so

so I wanted to get into your philosophy of art like what is art to you what is it intended for what do you what are you meant to be accomplishing by doing art quote unquote and how does that bring you to then having these political conversations with people why did you feel like that was the trajectory you wanted to go to and then to bridge that in a way like I'm going to keeps using your own word um there's a guy by the name of darrell Brooks. I don't know if you've heard of him. He is a black man famous for befriending

KKK members and just having conversations with them and eventually having some of those guys leave. Like damn, I know Daryl and he ain't that bad. So maybe I was wrong. So maybe some of that's wrapped. I just wanted to mention that as a thing. So kind of maybe if we go from where

your understanding of what art is brought you to these taboo conversations. Right. So yeah, like a little bit what we were talking about before. So if you see all intentional actions as a artistic expression, and if you see every action and sometimes even non-action as a political action, the two kind of meld together,

that there's nothing that you see, perceive in your surroundings, that is not an action of our, a result of all of our political actions. and hence are artistic expressions everywhere we look. And if you look as you start looking at everything, I just saw a flower drop off of a plant over here. So my interpretation of that now that I see its shadows and how it is, I'm sharing a story, and your listeners are hearing this as well.

And right there, my looking at it, perceiving it and seeing its entire composition shows me other aspects, brings me in places. So if I was using poetry to be words of impermanence and I would use also elements of color and things like that in that perception. It's just a very rich way of seeing the world if you stay in that zone.

It's a very creative space, right? And we can be in that space as we're driving down a car on the freeway as well. And taking in the very limited time we have on this planet. on the other hand hey we're here on this planet and there's some things that are not quite not quite harmonious

there's there's injustice and we tend to want to now you know I'm French so I'm thinking I like some of my words I'm thinking in French translating in English so the so we face

when we see an injustice we want to our politicians the ones that we We've elected to make decisions for us in our elected bodies. We expect them to do certain things, and a lot of people are dissatisfied with them. And we go out and we cast a vote, and very few people cast out and vote in America, far more in France, but that's declining. And that's just one single act. And if that is an artistic act

when you go do that in a conscious manner and put that ballot in that box, what an abstract thing to do, really. Yeah, yeah, you get, you know, if you do it electronically or is it a punch with a chat and all that stuff. You know, that expression is just moment, is very temporary.

And some of us are involved in politics in different manners, maybe from city councils or even our property owner associations or on the school board or the PTA, those are all definite, like what everybody considers to be a political action of sorts. I'd like to bring it a lot further that we can do that at every moment of our day,

well, every moment that we wish to during the day. And one of those is to go, to speak, to talk with your political opponents, People that have very different views, the ones that you're going to be most vulnerable to have a conversation with because of the fear of an argument, of outrage, of a big disagreement, of maybe worse. And so I invite people to have precisely that, to face that growing taboo in America of politics, to go out and talk to people, talk with them, ask them questions. and just listen, be an active listener with all your senses. And let all the triggers that other people say, let them explode without them affecting you as little as possible.

It's an exercise. It takes, it's a practice. It's almost a ritual, if you want. I'll go back maybe to maybe that's where we'll link into religion or something like this, this ritualization. And at that moment, you have an opportunity. to if you're actively, if you're really listening in,

there'll be probably not with that opponent a fact or opinion, but an emotion, an expression of a feeling. And just going to use anger, it's just like the word angry, they feel angry, you feel angry,

maybe for different reasons. And to state that to this person is a way to also show your humanity. Specifically, if you say, you know what, I disagree with everything you said, if that circumstance occurs. I disagree with everything. But I'm angry, too, just like you.

And I'm that person that you oppose. I'm apparently your opponent, but we have that in common. And, you know, I've had hundreds and hundreds of these conversations over the years in public areas from strangers I just encounter. And I never had any violent confrontation of any kind. So I expected them to happen, right, to expose yourself and be vulnerable. Those things could happen. But no, they haven't happened.

And it's an opportunity for the other to, because I see the other as me as us, as this togetherness, to just be able to express something that was very deep. It was buried deep that had no outlet of expression and that has, it's an act of empathy, of compassion to let the other person say all these things. Now, at the beginning, it doesn't feel like that. It just feels like a verbal attack, I got to say. But after a while, you're in this good space, and people just turn around and do the same with others, which kind of blows my mind.

Now there's like hundreds and hundreds of people that are. talking to Uncle Bob that they have disagreements with at Thanksgiving dinner and they're having these conversations because they're listening actively listening finding one thing in common and telling Uncle Bob I think you're full of shit but you know what you're frustrated about it I am too and that's the start of a civil non-confrontational conversation it doesn't have to go anywhere it just can be it doesn't have to have nobody has to win anything the win is just the other person being able to express what they had

to say and have some ears of an actual other human person in face to face there to listen to their taboo and it doesn't necessarily have to be politics it would be about religion it be about the environment you can choose any taboo subject that it is but politics is a big one so why not do that one because if you can do that one then you can do anything right and politics kind of subsumes a lot of the other categories too because you have to make either you have to either make or not make public policy decisions about different

things and in each one is a choice as Rush said you know there is even if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice yes and that is an action that's an action too it is an action yeah yeah for people that don't go out and vote they are they are definitely making

a political action maybe that was unintended but they do make a big difference when they go out and vote. But there is things that we could do every day if we have the energy to do so, and if the opportunity arises as well. You've got to put yourself in a situation to be outside of your echo chamber to go into somebody else's echo chamber and to explore it, which is a very cool trip. People that like traveling, they don't have to go far because they can do it right here in their own neighborhoods with people that have different points of view and hear

completely different stuff, completely wild stuff maybe. Oh, they're really. They're really. are people that say that and then and then but then you get always surprised because then you find the humanity in the other and then they find the humanity in you and uh and then that's good right there i'm happy with that water flows oh yeah no for sure and it's i think a lot of it as you're saying comes down to what is your purpose for the engagement with someone else and you know if you come at it from a perspective of i'm here to listen and understand versus i'm here to convince win, dominate, control, you know, I'm here to look good in public or, you know, there's all kinds of motivations that don't serve understanding, connection, those kind of

things. So, you know, there's a lot of channels on the internet that do debates. And this is not one of those shows. I don't argue with people about what they believe. I just ask them and listen. Because really, that's serving my purpose, too. I'm getting to know you a little bit. So when we get to the dream part, I have a little bit of an understanding where you're coming from. And maybe that just, it just trickles in like rain

into my subconscious so that I'm able to then hopefully pull that back out when it comes to making suggestions about the symbols that might appear in your dreams. So that's, that's, and what I say when we transition to the dream thing is my step one, shut up and listen. I'm just going to listen. You're just going to tell me the story that, that's how I do the thing.

So I'm finding a lot of similarities between what you're describing as your communication process out in the world and mine of trying to give people good answers to their own thought process. Yeah, I was going somewhere with that. I think I think that's cool. No, no, no, you're setting, you're setting forth a form, there's just setting forth a ritual, right, that we're going to perform. and with with the participants, even the listeners as well.

And a specific purpose in mind that is not to tell you what you think. I don't know what you think. Self-discovery. It's going to be an element of self-discovery. That's why I said at the beginning, I'm curious to see where this takes us because this is an exchange. It's very similar to the exchange I have with others. It's the discovery of the humanity of others.

and also helping them along the way, you know, that's a, we can, you know, we're bridging. You're going to, I don't know, you're going to bridge something of my unanswered questions. Possibly. Yeah. I mean, that's always the goal. And I can generally, it's something I failed spectacularly once. And this was a question I'm going to ask you, too. So we're here at, almost, well, this will be episode 215, way back in episode 19, like five years ago.

So 200 episodes past that. I couldn't give him, I couldn't, I couldn't wrap my brain around what he was seeing. I couldn't give him anything that he thought made sense. I titled that episode, Going Nowhere, because in the dream, he was strapped into a chair in the middle of a desert, you know, Coliseum, Roman Coliseum style, but there was sand everywhere. And he was going nowhere. And our conversation, trying to figure out why he was in that chair, went nowhere. I couldn't give him anything. Spectacular failure.

It, it doesn't haunt me. It inspires me. I will always think about that. What didn't I consider? What angle was missing? What understanding of this person did I not have that didn't give me a key to unlock anything for him? So what I was going to do with with... I just got to say, that's my dream.

The one you just described, it just happens to be the exact same dream. You are fucking with me. That would be amazing. This would be the single greatest moment of synchronicity in my entire life. That happened. can you imagine that's good you got to give to throw that in there that would be amazing I would track that guy down and we would have a three-way conversation yeah right what is going on here

why are you guys psychically connected or something I'd lean into that spooky loose side of things I'm more than oh yeah but I was going to ask you too so that failure taught me things and I and I reference it a lot so I was going to ask you about the evolution of this so when you start the project you probably had an idea of what you wanted to do or an intuition of I want to do this thing and then it probably evolved over time and how did you how did you start what what mistakes do you think you made in the beginning and then how did it kind of morph into where it is now where you're more comfortable with it maybe you have a bit more of a formula you understand uh you've got the ritual dialed in or was it always has it always been

the same you just do what you do and it's it's the only thing that's been consistent is uh using the same three questions always over the years. It's always, they're not even my questions. They're ones put together by some friends that are linguists and they help me make non-confrontational questions because mine were actually polarizing

some of the wording I was using. So that's the only thing. The rest has just been to experiment to see, to look within oneself and see of course that I was being triggered and I couldn't listen to the other person. I wasn't listening. Every time they said something that I disagreed, but I was like, ah, crap, what am I going to say now?

You know, but I'm not going to say anything. I'm supposed to be here to listen. So then what? You know, it took years for me to get into a position where I could just be there 100%. And now it brings me to places where people are opening up so much that I have people crying. We really lean into it, you know. But we lean into it. I'm not leaning into it with words.

Actually, it's, I'm leaning in maybe nonverbaly. as well. We're getting into a space. And I got to mention a lot of these conversations I do have in an environment that's, I started maybe on the streets. We're a free speech area is in America. They're not that many, right? They're street corners. People are in cars. Forget it. And that's not, there's no conversation happening there. It can be in a mall, a commercial space where people are, because you can't exercise those, you can't have an event like that in a mall and a commercial. space so where does that take you so they brought me to national parks public lands where there's actually areas where it's a where it can happen and so people are much more relaxed in these places

and you know they're they're not in a spirit of competition or running to get somewhere so that that's been important there's been a lot of failures but i never actually i never considered them failures because each one was just a little lesson to adjust and change to try something else, you know, to reach the other person, right? That's the beauty. And quick, it's got to be freaking quick. Like, how do you reach, how does this happen like less than three minutes, right? I don't want to take too much time.

On average, it takes two and a half minutes. We do three questions. They answer the whole thing. At the end, they find one word that brings. the whole thing together and that's one word to answer the whole thing and then uh you know off i off they go with an invitation to do the same with somebody else and uh sometimes they want to keep on talking in that conversation go last an hour or two hours most of the time it's two hours it's two minutes and it's really bizarre and you of course you don't go up to people saying hey do you have two

hours to answer a bunch questions for me they're going to say no i'm in the park with my family but if you go i got three questions usually takes two minutes how do you feel about that and maybe they'll do it maybe they don't yeah yeah it depends yeah that that's true it's always an experimentation of how do you ask yeah how do you ask a question but when you see a pretty weird piece of art where it's not supposed to be there's people that come up and go oh people come up to you like what's what's this you know this is this is a conversation starter and here you are let's right we we all we all need a tool or an excuse to have these type of conversations And to me, the very fact that we're talking about it, the story, my story, your story,

that's the one that the listeners can use to start their own conversation. I heard on this podcast this, and I want to try the same with you. People might be wondering what the three questions are, so I'm just going to throw them out there. I was going to ask, yeah. Yeah, yeah. How would you describe the political system of the United States of America? One. Two, describe your feelings or reactions to the current state of U.S. politics.

And third is kind of a game where you finish the sentence. Hey. Politics. Where do you go? Politics in the United States. And then you finish the sentence. Those are the three. You should probably list those on there.

So other people, if they want to go to it, they could find the questions and be able to use them. Yeah. I could write about the description, too. I didn't write them down. I want to get them, want to listen back to this. Yeah, yeah. But those are great conversation starters. And before I lose it earlier, you were, you were saying, you know, I don't want to consider it a failure.

It's like there's a, some people are dismissive of cliches or platitudes like every obstacle is an opportunity. Hey! No! What's you doing? We got one elderly girl who is on her last legs, honestly. She's having a hard time getting around. He wants to play. and she is not having it

so I got to yell at him and make him leave her alone I show him the you don't want to spray your cats get compressed air they don't hey I'm leaving all that in

this is what I call value added content we get the cats providing drama for us there they are this is I got my room but hitting on the door or the room there for a moment I turned over if anybody was looking at the video

I was turning over like what was that maybe I should get one just so just so bubba here we'll have something to chase around that's not it's a vacuum elderly robot there anyway so I gotta yell at him all the time and then he wants to eat my hands when I'm trying to type in the middle

then I don't get to see this I'm just scratched up everywhere these are all you're not freckles these are cat marks so it is what I did he's got no other boy cat his age to play with so I'm the so you're at wrestles with daddy yeah what are you going to do I was in the middle of six oh

the idea of um hold on I almost I've almost got it. If you remember, tell me, but, um, fuck. The, oh, reframing, uh, failures as opportunities. And, yeah, yeah, yeah, that would, and, you know, it's not a platitude. It's, it's a formula. It's a ritual. It's a way of looking at like, okay, what is the opportunity here to do something different?

Uh, and no one likes to fail and it's embarrassing, maybe to fail publicly. And it's, um, you know, it, it, it hurts our ego to, to say, um, I'm going to act confidently as if I know what I'm doing and I'm going to be revealed as not knowing what I'm doing. I hate that. I think everybody hates that too, but reframing it as. Yeah, reframing. Yeah, yeah. But just and really internalizing that reframe of like, there are no failures in a way. There are only opportunities to learn a new way or to discover something. It's a, I mean, imagine if we already had all the answers, how boring the world would be. It's like this revelatory process of surprises and let go of that ego a little bit. And you'd just, you know,

get down to that. I tell people in this process, too, if I make a suggestion, and it is way off base, you get no resonance. You're like, no, it doesn't feel right at all. Please tell me. I am happy to be wrong because that also eliminates paths we don't go down. So tell me, I'm full of shit, or tell me I'm on the wrong track. I love that. Great. Not this. Let's go somewhere else. It's like, it's like having it revealed that you're going the wrong way to a destination. I'd rather But no, I'm not trying to get wherever that was going. I just rambled a bunch of stuff. But yeah, well, then you can get excited about, am I going to fail today?

Am I going to, no, am I going to find an opportunity today? Yeah, you just change the word. It's reframing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, of course, you're going to say, ah, failed, but then you got like, wait a second, it's not a failure. Yeah. And then, yeah, you're going to reframe stuff. Yeah, it does.

And the failure's not death. We let her ideas die, so we don't have to. Yep. Mm, right. I like that. Yeah. Oh, me too. I've stole that for me.

Jordan Peterson, something like that. Well, we all steal stuff from somewhere else, but there's nothing new out there. It's just how we reinterpret things. But there are questions. Questions can be new. Let's find some questions to questions. There'll never be answers if we just find questions to the question.

Yep, for sure. Well, I was going to, okay, bring it around to your YouTube channel, Triptic Dialogue. So what you do is you're creating videos. So you're setting up this art installation in a public space and as an open invitation, stop on by and talk to me. And then you post the videos of the conversations. Yeah, it's more like a diary that I put up there.

It's not meant in any way to entertain or anything like that. It's totally wacky. And sometimes, you know, I might have a video of somebody answering the three questions. And then there'll be a video of a plastic bag just going in a circle with the wind over and over. Isn't that a reference back to what, American Beauty? I think, was that the kid that had that was videotaping the plastic bag? It's so beautiful.

Oh, yeah, something like that. Yeah, yeah, sure. Just fight because you can find beauty in a lot of different things. But there's a, yeah, there's a lot of, there's just a lot of weird videos I've taken from around the world during travels that is to take you in a different place because if you're going to concentrate on, a platform like YouTube, which is very visual. If you want to concentrate on the words,

it's best probably to have a video that has nothing to do with the words. So that's happening. There's all the reflections on Plato's Allegory of the Cave. There's me dropping off books with political messages. And then there's big lapses where I don't put anything up. So don't expect anything huge. my my work is in person when I'm with other people okay and it's what we're doing right now I suppose so that that's good too so we're doing we're doing that right now more than the YouTube channel

okay so it isn't actually a an ongoing series where you try to put up a new conversation every week that kind of thing oh no no no a little more random it's very random don't expect it's it's very personal it's very personal but is it because it's online for all to see um yeah it's I certainly don't, I put, it's more of a diary. Okay. And I don't write in my diary very often. Fair enough. But I'd rather act because I find it to be more efficient to talk to people in person

and to have interactions with people in person. And it's helping me tons to learn and experience and hear all these different stories from other people. And we can, I'd rather people who go out and talk to strangers than watch my YouTube videos. Fair enough. Yeah. I was just thinking about that subject, too, is like, I am a, not antisocial, but anti-socialization in a way, type of personality. I'm very much an introvert. And a lot of people don't understand what introvert means is like, Ben, you don't seem very introverted. You have these animated conversations with people and you do the dream thing and you put videos on the internet and what do you mean introverted? Well, it doesn't mean

incapable of socializing. It just means I'd rather not. So the last thing I'm going to do is go to a public park and start a conversation with a stranger I stay home I can go an entire week and talk to nobody but my wife and maybe Her only every other day and we're both happy with that and I would rather not be around people I mean I hate people doesn't mean I'm I'm uncomfortable talking to you a little bit I'm uncomfortable talking to anybody ever that's just me but Very very different approach to this kind of thing like the last thing I'm going to do is go start conversation with strangers but I'm happy to talk to you

you about whatever's on your mind because we're here to do a thing also also got a touch of the tism so i'm like if we have a i'm an activity oriented socializer as long as i'm here to do something and there's a little bit of a structure to it uh the way the way i say it is like uh i'm not just gonna come over and sit on your back porch and have a beer and shoot the shit but if you're building a fence i'll come dig post holes with you that kind of thing like if we're there for a reason and then when that's done i will i will go home and say it was nice hanging out but i'm not going to stay for dinner because then dinner becomes an unstructured social event and like, I don't know what to do with those. I'd rather not be here.

So, you know, Ben, let's be clear. I go out there specifically because it's like an act of voting that I get to do over and over and over. It's an action, it's a political action that we can each do if we feel without power, right? If we feel that we have no political power, that is definitely one that has a huge repercussion. You know, what is it? They say that, you know, one conversation in person equals hundreds if not thousands of comments online so no skip that one speak to one person you're going to make a huge difference and and yeah it's about the action it's not something i want i'm craving to do no because it's it's it's tough it's emotionally draining for sure but it's something that we can all do and it appears when we don't expect it just be ready

and do it. That's the deal. That's the deal. I'm the guy that I'll go off and I'll hike out in the desert. I'll, you know, from morning till night,

by myself, maybe my dog will come with me. Yeah. Yeah. Animals are great. They don't care about awkward silences. They're not looking... And they show me where the animals are.

Yeah, yeah. So that's good. They're not interested in being impressed by you either. You just exist. That's why I love, love animals.

They're just happy. They're just happy to be with it. They just do what they do. And then sometimes you get to yell at them because they're fighting. I'm going to get an air. Can you for sure, but that is interesting too. It's like, so in the course of your conversations with people, you're, you're listening

and hopefully by listening, you're creating a space in them to listen to you as well. So you get to give them, as you said, hey, I disagree with everything you said, possibly. But, you know, here we feel the same about this, that, or the other. And then maybe they can hear your thoughts in a similar, just understanding kind of way. Or do you do, when you do the process, is it more one side? where you listen to let them vent or express for the purpose of getting it out there. How does the, how does the interaction play out? Are they then listening to you?

It really depends on the person and on the moment, right? You might not want to go any further than just letting them say what they have to say. Sure. It's entirely, it's entirely up to you. But it is, if we don't learn to talk to one another, the future is not looking, very good, as far as I can see. So, and that has to be done in person, and it's not going to be with people that we agree with. Of course, you're going to talk to people that you agree with. Good. You know, that's fantastic. You get plenty of that every day. It's your friend group. That's why they're

your friend group, probably. Exactly. And, you know, it's to take a step, a step beyond. And you're not out there to convince them of anything, except possibly to just show that we're, we're all in this together so when people are going out and shoot one another maybe we shouldn't go out and shoot one another maybe we should all band together and this together yeah definitely i like the self-preservation no it is and it's um i'd say it's a form of one of my favorite philosophical concepts enlightened self-interest it's okay to have your own wants and needs and pursue yourself interest but you want to do it in that enlightened manner where it's like i got to live with other people too. And maybe I don't want to do things that hurt them because then they're

going to want to hurt me or then it's going to create a negative environment that I have to live in where all these hurt people are around me doing, you know, trauma-based responsiveness to their environment because of me, big fan of the ripple in a pond type of thing. I try to be personally that ripple in the pond that I'm the guy who's nice to the person that is then hopefully goes home and kisses their wife rather than hits her and then the mother loves. it passes that love onto the child and the child passes it onto the dog instead of kicking the dog so we'll kick the dog phenomenon but in reverse

let's do it everything we can so that when you get to the end of that chain the kids don't kick the dog yeah that's kind of where I'm coming from on a lot of this kind of stuff so yeah yeah that works that works yeah I think you're doing something very similar you're like you're not out there to cause problems now that doesn't mean everything

will go smoothly every time it could backfire it could be get way more contentious than you intended but like the purpose is I would say noble. I think it's a good idea to want to do that kind of thing. So I'm glad someone's doing it while I sit here in my hermit cave

and try and write books. No, I don't know, because you're doing it too. You're doing it too. That's what I'm finding with these podcasts. People are, they're open to conversations. They're building bridges with others. They're sharing their thoughts. They're listening to other people as well.

They're reaching more people than a face-to-face conversation one-on-one in a national park in a free speech area. yeah you're doing it too okay i got i'll take i don't take i don't take compliments very well thank you take it take that what it's like it's like don't don't applaud just throw money that's how i am to i'm a weird combination i would like the gesture of being invited to your birthday party i'm not going to come thank you please please invite me and let me say no it's it's okay so that's not awkward if it feels nice oh you want me there no no that's not happening um Anyway, we get myself into a coughing fit.

We've been going for almost an hour. Do you want to transition into the dream thing? We'll do what we're technically here to do. Okay, well, let me write down time. What do we got? Okay, as per my usual process, I'm going to shut up and listen. Our friend David is going to tell me one of the dreams in a recurring sequence. And we're going to then figure that out together, hopefully put together,

I build a collaborative understanding, as I say. And then hopefully we'll be able to link it to the other ones and find out what the common theme is and what might cause a dream like this to recur what's it trying to say. So I'm ready when you are. Let's do it. 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 Dreamscape's program features real Dreamers.

gifted with rare insight into their nocturnal visions. New Dreamscapes episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks exploring the psychological principles which inform our dream experience, and much, much more. To join The Wizard as a guest, reach out across more than a dozen social media platforms, and through the contact page at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, where you will also find the wizard's growing catalog of historical dream literature available on amazon documenting the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past two thousand years that's benjamin the dream wizard on youtube and at benjamin the dream wizard.com but when I wake up I remember the same dream and so much so that I've been looking for the place that is in this dream

and so I think I'm driving up in your area up in the Pacific Northwest very much looks like it. I am driving on the right side of the road. I'm not in New Zealand or something like that. And beautiful forest, you know, temperate rainforest. It's a coastal drive. And I'm driving down, you know, how some, times a road hits close to a beach and then dries back up the other side of the cove

and keeps on going back into the forest. I arrive close to this bay and there's no structures, just the asphalt road, and oh, I want to stop and see what's the reveal of this bay. Is it even a bay? or something like this. So I stop and it's unusually warm for that area

which makes me think I'm more in Southeast Asia. It's a lot more humid than it should be for the vegetation that I'm witnessing. There's nobody really there. There's a very long beach that opens up

at low tide so there must be a very strong tide and there are a few people here and there but to my left there there's some there's an outcrop of rocks so I walk down beyond the outcrop of rocks you climb up above and over and it reveals itself something of a of a mangrove but more in a sandy with yes it's got a it's definitely yeah it's got a sandy it's a sandy shore the house of the outcrop and then the mangrove and it reaches out quite far and it's quite dense in the distance, it becomes quite dense. And it's amazing how the dream is very, very real. There's nothing surreal really about it

except maybe the temperature or that doesn't quite correspond to the environment I'm in. And I find myself wanting to walk into the mangrove and and it's not a mangrove like full of oyster shells and all lists

on its branches it's very it's very welcoming and there's enough space between each tree that you can walk on the sandy bottom and

and then there's water and I walk in the water and the water is warm, very warm. And then I find myself swimming, just enjoying the warm water. And it's just such a beautiful place. Everything's tranquil. It seems like it will last forever. And then I'm not. enormous wave tsunami comes over and submerges me and submerges me and that's it.

Then you wake up? Then I wake up and where is this place? I want to find it. I want to go there. I want to live there. And even knowing that destruction awaits at the end, you know, it's like an ideal place. Like, I want to live there. Not that I want to build a house there to destroy the place, but I just want to, just want to be in this most exquisite place.

Nice. Very nice. We got a lot of fantastic imagery there. Very good narrative. I've worked with a lot less. So we, uh, okay, so the, um, next phase of it is I'm going to, I'm going to go back through with you a little bit to help me kind of see it. And we're going to expand and there's going to be details you didn't know we're there. Uh, that's just kind of how it is. So, um, the first

experience you can recall that kind of starts the sequence in terms of what we would call a, a dream, which, you know, there's a lot of different definitions of what that is. And it, uh, kind of boiling it down most, uh, most past thinkers on the subject. has said it's the sequence that you remember when you wake up because there's more before it and there's more after I think we dream the whole night through but fun fact a lot of people think oh you only dream during REM sleep well you are dreaming during REM sleep and there's the rapid eye movement thing happening and that's its own thing but they started waking up people not under REM and asking them were you dreaming and no matter when they woke people up the people

said yes you be essentially dream the entire night but what we call the dreams what you were able to carry out with you when you wake up most of it we way way too deep we have no it's not near enough the twilight zone of waking up that we can grab it and take it out with us um i'll define that better someday but anyway um so the first um experience of the dream is you're driving down a um coastal road that that appears to be Pacific Northwest um let me let me start writing this out um my questions would be what identified it as Pacific Northwest, what scenery, but then also do you have any memory of the specific type of car or of yourself sitting in the car and what you were looking at?

So there's no memory of what type of car or what, if it's a van or a truck or anything fantastical, but it's the speed at which I'm coming down towards the, the, the, the cove you know which 35 mile per hour windy road the trees are very much uh very like tall um i don't know what type it's not redwood but something you got up there evergreen um like yeah as oh definitely ever there are definitely evergreens i just want to be precise then there's the other kind i can never remember co they're they're evergreens they're they're on my right on the left is is the is the is the is the is the scene

there's the sea I'm up above I'm higher above you know I'm a couple hundred feet above the the shore and then I you know you coast down and towards the cove and I don't know

I don't think there was a parking lot okay yeah there's a lot of places like that where you just kind of pull off by the side of the road there's a little trail you can go to the beach if you want to yeah Yeah, I've actually driven up straight up to the edge. A couple of times down California, went to, I mean, we went to camping at San

Simeon and did the Hearst Castle experience. Oh, 30 years ago, 35, I was young, 40, almost 40, something like that. I'm getting old. Which is good and bad. I mean, you've got to be old to be a real wizard, too. It's all part of it. So we've got the setting. Where does it open?

What's the, essentially, like the state of, mind so it's it's um travel through beautiful scenery it is um you're calm it's very relaxing uh there's no there's no excitement of any kind all even even to the end there's a great tranquility uh when uh when the wave at the end is going to take me gotcha even that isn't scary or or dangerous it wasn't a nightmare you didn't wake up screaming not at all no i think that has a very it's a point it's more of a bummer. It is a bummer. But it's like, oh, well, that's what's happening now, right? Yeah. And very much like, you know, oh, it's a beautiful day when the nuclear bombs go off. But what are you going to do? It is quite a spectacular sight. It's undeniable that, yeah, mushroom clouds. Fascinating. You know, as something to look at, as something to experience, not so much. Unless you're looking for an exit. Yeah, yeah, just one to. Well, that is interesting. There are some experiences that kill you. What an experience.

Not recommended. This is not medical advice. So we can look. I like to look at things in terms of what they are, but also in terms of what they're not, is you didn't put yourself in a city. You didn't put yourself on the mountains. You didn't put yourself in a space station on an alien planet.

You can put yourself at the bottom of the ocean. This is, so there's something about the experience of traveling through beautiful scenery and discovering a natural wonder that you, you want that draws you towards exploration that we've got going on here um let me just kind of then it's maybe a liminal space because it there is some discomfort that's how beautiful it is i like that yeah volunteer anything uh little space i like that yes um so there's how the how the heck yeah this well i haven't seen this up the coast why why is it here and it just

know it in covers one thing after another from one rocky cove a rocky outcrop behind it it's uh where this mangrove that i didn't see of course it's not the california coast anymore right yeah yeah it's uh it's very tropical all of a sudden and um wow yeah i might even say listen just but i you know is that just me in my waking time thinking that it'd be even nice if I had a mask to be able to see all the fish. But I don't know. I'm just saying that because I've had the dream over and over and over. It's like, oh, there's so much to explore.

But then I'm getting into my own personal interpretations of just some perfect sight that's going to be taken away. But I'm appreciating it now. But there's more that I love to explore of it. Absolutely. But it's okay. Yeah. It's fine.

Let it bring it on. I think that is. the direction we're going with this this this idea of um you know what is it that inspires the desire to explore uh natural beauty is something but natural beauty may be a stand in for other motivations uh and then the the discovery process you go through which may be um so there's no uh let's do this you got to go he wants to play he wants to play now you got to go we're going to get this out. Sorry, buddy.

And then he's not wet and then everybody's happy. He's off my notes. I can't believe I never thought of that before. He just doesn't like air. He's blown in his face. That's all it is. But there's a, so there's a, also it's very interesting that you weren't, you started on a hilltop in a way or at least a rise, which suggests to me the idea

of overview where you're like, not only am I, um, The awareness process is looking at the thing, becoming aware of the thing from an elevated perspective. And not looking, looking down on it like, like judgmentally, but, but that, um, it's been revealed to you because of the, of the vantage point. There's something in there about, um, your process of, of discovering things worth discovering or, or pursuing that has, has something. And it may be a very small part in it.

It may not be revelatory or anything, but sometimes you step back, step up a level. I love meta-analysis of things. If I go to that level, I usually get a better understanding of where I'm at. And just like you get a better understanding, the lay of the land when you're looking down from a height. But you have to then descend into the thing you're going to explore, which you're down there. And what you've got is there's no parking lot. I think that does matter as well from the angle of, you're finding. something that is not already a well-trodden path.

This is actually a discovery. Now, you're not the first there. So you're recognizing other people have probably discovered this first, and you show yourself that too. There's people on the beach. Not a lot, a few, but they're there. It's not like this is, you're the first one.

You're not breaking new ground, but you've discovered maybe something that not many people know about that is worth looking into. And so you go through the motions of that. You're like, you could have driven by. This could be a completely different dream. And then that would be lamenting maybe lost opportunities in the past.

But this one's more, it looks more about the process of explaining to yourself why you think something's worth investigating. You're drawn to it, allegory analogy to natural beauty. You've got this vantage point. You're seeing what's worth exploring. And then you commit to it. I'm going to park. I'm going to get out.

I'm going to walk on to the beach. And you walk through this. It's stopped me any time. if this is, you're like, I don't feel any of this. No, that's good. No, this is good. So far, so good. Just one thing is, the dream has happened before this like triptic dialogue project of the last six years.

Okay. So it's not, but I've had it since. Not specifically rated, but I can, I can see that there would be. Those are other relationships happening there. Oh, yeah. But maybe it's in expectations of things to, maybe, yeah, it's part of a, of a, of, my expectations of things to come yeah and we might and we might relate it to to to that trip to dialogue project but not necessarily it might be it might be something even more

foundational to your right world yeah that's what also informs other projects so and we're just walking through the the the visual imagery so you've got um uh the people no people and i'm happier and you realize that there's uh what is it so you you notice there's something worth exploring you get there you take the action to pursue it when you get there's there's an unfolding then as well of well other people been here before fair enough uh nothing new one of the signs we were saying is standing on the shoulders of giants um thankful that other people have done the work so i get a washing machine and a computer and i don't have to invent them from scratch thank god um but when you get there too you're like the beach it turns out what you couldn't see from even

that vantage what you couldn't see it until you got in there on the the ground on foot, it's bigger than it looked. It's bigger than you assumed it would be. And not only that, there are interesting features like rocky outcroppings. And there's a, even during the process of exploration, you're going to figure out the lay of the land. You're going to see maybe it's bigger than you thought it was. And you're going to find additional mysteries.

What is beyond that point? You have to choose. You have to find something where, again, layers within layers, find something worth exploring, and then take the action to go the extra step inside the project to find more things worth exploring. And what you get to is another thing of beauty that could not be seen from the road. Until you'd walk down this path,

figuratively, literally in the dream, that's then when you get to the mangrove. And at that point, rather than Pacific Northwest, it starts to feel more Southeast Asia. So there's, um, What is it? There's maybe, these are the wrong words, but correct me after I get it wrong. Setting something in America, but then the experience of it being Southeast Asian is there's maybe an American spirit of exploration or, that's not the right word, but there's an American perspective, perhaps.

And then, but when you get there, the experience of the hidden part of it, your mind goes to, well, this is more like the Southeast Asian maybe mindset or perspective on this something. There's something different between the process of discovery and the experience of what has been discovered. And maybe you have a more philosophical understanding of that that is rooted in Southeast Asian philosophy or a Buddhist perspective or something like that. I don't know if I'm explaining something that makes sense. If you can put it into better words. Yeah, no, but yeah, okay, you know, possibly

in one culture revealing other cultures and subcultures that are unexpected warm, welcoming that mangrove I kind of would like to see what's beneath the water

it's shallow because I know also by snorkeling and mangroves I just love seeing the juvenile fish and all these different things and small shrimp and everything that are inside

of these nurseries but it doesn't bother me too much that I don't have a mask to see it the water's super clear and there's very little

you know there's no waves which is crazy because it's all calmed by the mangroves and it's absolutely flat no birds interestingly enough

yeah something you didn't really notice until reflecting on the dream yeah like right now I suppose I don't remember any birds in it there's a concept Freud said we need to be wary of it the very least which is called secondary elaboration where people think about their dreams and start uh and they're taking it somewhere else and you never know I mean how much of the dream you told me you know a few minutes ago and that we're talking about which is influenced by the how much might have been added later because you've thought about it since then we'll never know and sometimes secondary elaboration isn't a bad thing it's like

you also think of additional things like that well interesting there were no birds so that wasn't necessary necessary element you were very focused on the ground not the trees so it was the roots the the connection with the ocean the little fish the the idea of wanting to get below the surface so a lot of these these these things seem to be leaning into that theme of exploration and discovery of like you know you get to the beach you get around the rock you find the mangroves and now want to see what's underneath that and uh so that that that resonates with me because that's that that that's uh that's that's uh that's what people say of me however i please pretty certain in the dream that i'm uh i'm not upset that people are there because i know i can take off and it's quite

large there's room enough for everyone uh but i don't want to be there with them you know i want my own space on this beautiful area. Yeah. It's not that I'm bummed out because it's big enough. It would be bummed out if it was out of tour bus that

tons of people taking pictures and there were trashed and all this stuff. There's none of that. It's idyllic. No trash. Calm. Not a bug to bite you.

Yeah. I want to go swimming in that right now. Oh. So there might be an element of... I'm going to Columbia in a couple weeks. Oh, this all ties in. And I'm not, I know I'm not going to find it there either. But you'll keep looking. It'll be like, you know, maybe someday, maybe some. And that's a great thing, too. You may never be able to, if we are conceptualizing this broadly as your

desire for exploration and discovery, you'll never scratch that edge. There's always another corner to turn around. And you'll be on your deathbed going, you should have traveled more. And you've traveled every day as much as you possibly could financially and realistic. statistically. Yeah, yeah, you're going, oh, there's so much more to explore. Now, I would say the good news is you're on to one of the most amazing things to explore. What comes next? So, yeah, you leave this place behind. And I don't think death is the end. So, but that's, you know, up to individuals to say. I think, I think that, and that exploration is like cosmic. You get to see. Oh, you mean the one with the, answering the tsunami wave or something like this? Well, I mean, in real life, like when we die, I think afterwards, we go on to probably the great an adventure that makes this look like nothing like

why did I why was I trying to hang out of that so hard not that it isn't worthwhile we're not that it isn't meaningful overall but we're going to look at it and go wow I just I spent way too much time worrying about shit that didn't matter oh my God what was I thinking I think we're

I think we're going to have that that's my opinion that's spiritual perspective right I know exactly I hope so I'm going to cross my finger How certain am I? And void in nothingness. Yeah. Well, which also has its... That would be good, too.

That also has its own appeal. There is no suffering in void. Non-existence? I mean, that is absolutely nothing to be afraid of. There's no possibility of any negative experiences. So... Or even of experiencing anything. Exactly.

There's just... Or nothing. Yeah, just quiet to sleep. No, not even the experience of sleep. Yeah, but I'm looking for this place, Ben. Where is it? I was going to say I'll keep an eye out here in the Pacific Northwest where a beach the beach that leads to mangrove.

I just said to add that this dream is so recurring that I've I've looked actually looked for it. I went to New Zealand looking for this thing. Yeah. I'm expecting, I know, I went to New Zealand expecting to find an element. I knew I wouldn't all come together, but I was expecting to find that space. And every day I was like, oh, you know, this could be. to yeah because this might be today yeah well my my thought might be that rather than a physical

location it is a it is an experience and you're looking for that experience and you may be able to find it somewhere but i i don't know that it's a you're going to find that beach those rocks that mangrove i don't i think it represents a a state of being a state of mind experience more than anything that's that's what it feels like to me i could be wrong Man, I am digging it right now because it's more liberating like I'm making associations with my current project because it's so transformative. I have no, I don't have the anger. I'm not triggered by people's comments the way I used to be.

I care about things just as much as I used to. But at least I'm acting on them, exploring and finding really amazing things in all the people I'm speaking to, even though it's very different. although in my dream it's an all very comfortable place I want to be in in a very comfortable conversation and I'm not looking for comfortable conversations when I'm interacting with strangers so I don't know there's something in there

but the exploration and discovery like that yeah and then thanks that this is good I like this so we've got low tide long beach scattered people rock outcropping feels very real And I, so what does it mean to have a feeling in a dream is like, uh, in some ways, even the most fantastical things can feel real. I mean, uh, it's a feature of dreams that we don't

question flying or, or magic or unicorns, anything that we know doesn't exist in the real world, but it feels real there. But I think the real feeling is the idea that that feeling itself would stand out to you um what it what what occurred the thought that occurs to me is that whatever this represents you know you have a certainty that it is a real thing so that's what i'm saying is that uh rather than a place it's like a real feeling it's a real state of mind or being that you know can be accomplished is is where i'm leading if we take it out of the physical and put it just in the conceptual um i i think that that might be something around that idea,

that it wasn't surreal. You didn't look at it and go, oh, this is too good to be true. You said, no, this is true. This can be found, whatever this is. And that could be, you know, hearing it from you and talking about it, you know, it helps because, yes, I have been, I actually actively looked for this place.

but it's there's no reason for it to to exist but conceptually it does and by acknowledging that that's very liberating

yeah so you don't blow your savings on planes around the world when when what you're looking for what you seek is within grasshopper I love that I love that shit Yoda style anyway that that's good too because like okay maybe this thing exists in a lot more places than just one

it actually expands the range of where you can find it even though it is a very specific type of thing which we might dial in a little bit thinking of like why a mangrove maybe that leads into the eastern philosophical concepts involved in what it means what this place means or what it represents but also maybe it's a nursery aspect of it I see I see it more as that the fish. Yeah, just because it's the, it's like the mothering tree to smaller, to other species. Yeah. You know, and they're, well, this is me thinking after the dream, they're, they're probably not going to die from, from the tsunami wave, the way I will. There'll be destruction and they're not going to, they're not going to be eradicated.

And even in the dream, too, you didn't have fear. You don't describe the experience of dying. I mean, after the dream, we look back. and go, oh, if a tsunami hit me, I'd drown. But in the dream, I don't think it's really water killing you. I don't, that didn't, that doesn't jump out to me as a likely idea. But so you've got the, um, beauty of the mangrove in general. You've got the nursery aspect of you're very focused on down, the roots.

What's underneath and, and the little, little fish being nursed. And, um, but also you described that it's not so tightly packed. You could actually walk among it. So there's a, um, There's an aspect of, what is it not? It's not impenetrable. It's not something you can only see from the outside. It's something you can walk into and in a way become a part of.

You can go closer to the thing you want to experience or walk into the beauty and get a better look. And then maybe even a subsequent dream someday, you will go snorkeling underneath that and be like, Jesus. But before you can walk in, that's when the tsunami comes. Like you're still on the edge of it, having this experience of seeing. what's in front of you or do you actually walk in um i'm walking in i'm i'm swimming within it okay i've spent quite a bit of the dream is all of that time just okay just being completely uh emerged enjoying the water uh it seems like it's gonna last forever that's right you did go swimming

i hadn't got to that part of my notes yeah i'm i'm in it i'm in it i wrote down beautiful tranquil but that eternal was an uh an interpretation of another word you use sorry. And then after it happens, it doesn't, it doesn't cut it necessarily short. I've been, you know, I stay in that water for, yeah, yeah, longer than me getting to the area with the mangrove and getting it. Most of it is me just going through the mangrove here and there. Actually, if I, in some dreams, there's no, you know, I'm far beyond the rocky outcrops.

I don't even see where they are. I'm just surrounded by all of this. It was just very, very cool, you know. And it's not very deep either. You can stand up if you need to. But it's just such a nice body temperature water. It's so tranquil and feels so good. That's saltwater making you float like that.

Ooh, yeah. Feels good. Very cool. Yeah. I don't even know how I see the, I don't even know how I can see the tsunami wave. It's not like he comes with any, with any sound or anything it just

yeah it just takes over I don't hear any crushing of the of the mangrove there's no violence in it dread or anything it just happens it's just like there's kind of like an oh shit okay oh well and then just like as it's happening kind of but not like

what gotcha it's like what am I going to do now like there's no there's not a there's not a freaking chance I'm getting out of this one it's coming so just take it on because this is and there's no waking up with like a struggle like I'm in it and I might make it to the rock and hold on to the rock and get out and I'm okay or not okay or get crushed on to the shore it just that's it you know the thought that occurs to me there is um um because of how you describe it and because of what it is there's a force of nature to it's a tsunami and nature dictates a lot of things uh including beginnings and endings and endings so So if we look at the tsunami as an unfortunate end, an inevitable end to a positive experience, and we all go through those cycles, nothing good lasts forever, no matter how excited you are about a new discovery, there comes a point where it's been explored as fully as you can

for the moment, or you've run out of time for the day, or you've got other things you have to do, conflict the interests, there's always, there's always an involuntary end to a good time. that we, you know, every vacation to Disneyland, you got to go home at some point. Nothing good lasts forever, no matter how good it is. So I'm thinking the tsunami is more like that. It's like the, an involuntary end to a good time. I'm going to stop there.

We're using a lot of words. That's good. It's like the impermanence of it. Yeah. Yeah. It's the inevitable. How do you say in English? Inevitable, inevitable?

Inevitability. yeah that's it that's it we add so many damn syllables the words it's the same word it's the same word I know in French but I don't know in English yeah yeah but it's like the I'm amazed I can hear it's gonna come I know that word I'm a little smattering of a bunch of different languages

I'm still trying to learn English honestly it's pretty complicated there's so many I'll get it right one day yeah and that's what I see it is like oh bummer it's over yeah we get back we get our we get our experiences bounded by things beyond our control so yeah because i don't think the you don't get the sense that you're going to die that it's

going to destroy uh the the mangrove it's you know like uh um that you that it's going to hurt the fish in any way so this is all about you know like oh well i wish the good time didn't have to end but it does the tsunamis here it's the the natural boundary is has reached and i'll have to explore it again next time so if we if we think of this as uh i wouldn't be surprised that you would have recurring dreams with this imagery because you I think you're a lot like me in terms of exploration and discovery of like there's always something else. There's always another thing. And really what the structure of the dream would say perhaps is you don't have a hard time finding new things you're interested in exploring.

But once you get in there, you spend a long time and oh, I'm in the thing again. I'm doing the experience. And it's over again. I'll have to look for another one. And probably repeat that and repeat that process. I don't know if that makes sense to you or if you think bringing in other elements from the recurring dreams and how they're different might be worthwhile to explore you mean as the this like another recurring dream that seems similar to that in a sense yeah now that we've kind of explored this one and then how are the other one similar or different and what might that say about okay well let me do this first um this particular dream did it occur at a specific time well of course it did time time and time and

place in your life what was going on around then how long ago was it uh what were the project you were in the middle of just finished or uh contemplating well i kind of know what happened i know i had it before i went to new zealand and that happened uh yeah i heard of the uh of trump winning the first uh his first term while i was in new zealand so whenever that happened okay so it happened before that 2016 i think yeah so that was this specific dream yeah that's this specific dream happened before that because it was before i went to new zealand okay and then it's happened since then as well and it's very very similar i've had dreams that are somewhat i i can see similarities in its feeling right so um any other dreams where it's

specifically you discover a beach and then the mangroves that that pattern is repeated i've had that i've had yeah i've had that before yeah okay ends up with the mangrove how many uh how many uh over what period of time would you say um starting when and extended i'd say like five years five years maybe three or four times three or four times for me like yeah whoever i never get the same dream again so bizarre okay so so this um this one specifically started the sequence or was in the middle of the sequence or this one is in the beginning of the sequence and you then that's the very first that i've got more as the years went by similarly yeah okay yeah so I think so if you look at the other ones that did happen subsequently, and we were to apply

that lens of this is about your love of discovery and the experience of it and the naturally short-term nature of how you're able to engage with new discoveries, does that seem to apply to the other ones? Or is there some fundamental difference that maybe we haven't quite dialed in yet that that would be repeating? You know, it's very much, it's the, no, I guess it's the same, it's the same dream. The same feeling, maybe different elements. The same feeling, the different, maybe me arriving in the car might be, might be different. You know, I just remembered very vividly once and then woke up at other times thinking,

I think I had that same dream again, but without being able to remember the details as to say, did the car doing this um but i've had other dreams that that are very they're quite different in the scenario but that had a similar feeling of tranquility that it seemed very vivid that i should find that i should find this place and i will find you know i will be at peace there definitely yeah so if that's um wow i was i going to say wow i lost it i started pet the cat and i'm like no i can think of just petting the cat and just listening to you it's my thought my own thoughts disappeared that's one thing too is like uh this being a show and a performance in a way is like i gotta have something to say is it you know you do you don't want to just sit and watch

people stare at each other so but sometimes i run out of things to say uh so we've got what so what do you think about that analysis do you think it's well okay the analysis for The analysis to me is very much, is like I said earlier, it's liberating because it's not a geographical location that I have to search out and explore and keep on traveling to find. It is one that that's been with me all the time

and that is that I can find peace within my exploration, of what the outcome in the end will be, such as a termination of life, it doesn't matter. It's the journey and being submerged and comfortable in that space and not being afraid of it being taken away or not having had the opportunity to share.

It's fun of tranquility. of course if you feel that tranquility he's like well that sounds great i want to find that place i want to be in that i know i'd love to live there forever yeah right i think i think that's good that's good too it's like if if that i mean if you came away from this entire experience with nothing but a little bit of a sense of relief that wow okay this place actually isn't that hard to find i find it all the time i can't stay there forever when i do find it but i will find it again it's cyclical it'll it will come back. I will find it again. I'll be there. I will have that bliss again and it'll fade and I'll find it again. That's that's also very freeing too. It's adjusting your

expectations as well. It takes a lot of pressure off. You don't have to find it. It's not gone forever. You can't stay there forever, but it comes back. That's that should also be freeing too. It's like now you can just do what you do. And the natural, the way you naturally travel through the world and in this car sense is you're going to you're the guy who's driving over the hill and sees what's below and goes I'm going to go check that out and you do and that's where you find it so following that urge will probably lead you to that tranquil place more often I think maybe if you look back to your life you'll find that that's exactly what it what has happened and you're like that's what's saying that happen more often right

it just feels more liberating to know that that's a state of mind and And to be submerged in that living, to have that as a living dream. I mean, what else can I possibly want from a tranquil dream as to know that I can take it into the consciousness and take it with me? Take it with you everywhere you go. My hikes, yeah, for even a short moment. Dang, I mean, you know, that's perfect. Very cool.

I didn't have that before. So thank you for that. Very cool. I appreciate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't, I don't do. I don't know that's throwing it to you, really. I mean, I appreciate it.

No, I actually, I live for that. I just don't want to get all for clumped on the, on the air. Okay. I'm going to cry. He goes like you had your tissues. A little bit. I know. It's okay.

Okay. So, wrapping it up just in general is now that we've talked about it, you've had this experience with me here today, you've had these thoughts. You've had your own epiphanies on it based on me, just throwing out random stuff that seems to make sense. It would not surprise me if this dream comes back very soon. And it has an additional flavor based on what we've talked about. today. And I'd be interested to hear back from me. So generally, like, if dreams are recurring dreams come back because we still need to understand something, this is my understanding, that we haven't figured out yet. We haven't wrapped our brains around a concept,

or we haven't figured out a solution to a problem, and it keeps popping up. But the other thing is that some recurring dreams come back because the situation that inspired it is also cyclical. you will you will experience whatever inspired that dream again and it may remind you of the dream you know and this so you had only had a five year period that was 10 years ago where this was happened well it was five years ago or it stopped five years ago so maybe maybe you found out maybe you found something that solved the dream for you that that put it into a perspective even if it was subconscious so it made it unnecessary for the dream to come back so a lot of times when I've been talking to people, if we hit upon the right theme and gave it the right shape

and understanding, the recurring dreams stop entirely or they change. So they'd already stopped for you. They may come back and they may be different moving forward. They may, sometimes if they do come back, they will come back as, all right, now you're ready for part two. And there was a part two beyond the tsunami for you, perhaps, perhaps. And you might get to see what that is. now that we've kind of feels like we figured it out, I guess. So I'll hope for that for you too. Thank you. That'll be neat.

That'll be neat. Yeah. It's always possible. And maybe I just planted a seed. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I didn't mean to do that. But that's,

I just have ideas and I throw up there. But then all the stories that we have, all the encounters that we have, they're kind of planting the seed. Oh, for sure. And for the processing during our dreams. Yeah. But then I always think of dreams as being an area to process.

the events of the day and unresolved issues. And I was wondering, why does this one really stand out? You know, why does this one? So it's interesting that I never even thought it's almost superstitious in a way that I attributed an actual location. Like there's a message between that subconscious, that dream and something in the conscious world

that's awaiting for me. And that's like magic right there. isn't it like going inside and i and i guess i wasn't acknowledging that i actually took that as as uh as comes my like own personal truth yeah for sure and i don't need to take that from you if you find that place please take a picture take a picture of it let me know i because i don't know if i have cell phone reception i don't know i'll try i don't dismiss the spooky woo side of things i just don't understand it so i leave that off the table in terms of my analysis but that is entirely possible. But I also like the idea of looking at it through this other way. And

there's another way to bring that together as well is that the feeling you had was that this was a real place. And that's that's true. I think conceptual concepts and states of mind are also real places. They're just not physical places. It is a place. It's a place. We have to get into the root of the word place and what it actually means. And I don't have that all the definition in It doesn't have the physicality of it, but it has all the, it has the other elements that constitute that place. But atoms and molecules and arranged in a specific order, it's, but I, and that's part of my say, spiritual or religious ideas that I think, you know, what angels and demons are

essentially good and bad ideas. And I use that. And then those are very real. I mean, like, the concept of up and down in a way is more real than, and this is where I get to like the, Plato's allegory of the cave. I don't know if it was Aristotle or Plato, but had the world of forms the essence of chairness the perfect chair or exists somewhere in the ether not as an object but as the concept of what a chair is this is a chair that is a cow they are not the same

thing that essence the form of it is what he was getting at and so uh i was going somewhere with that too damn but it's like the form of space because uh oh yeah angels and demons i'll come beauty talks about beauty as well and that's a yeah and it's a pure concept space i guess I think concepts are as real as physical objects because the concepts order the universe. We see that order in the physical universe, but it's the meta concept that tells the universe what to be, how to work. So this is why I get with angels and demons. So there's an angel by the name of Uriel, and this is kind of apocryphal outside of the

Bible. You're not going to find a lot of the stuff in there, but, and a demon by the name of Stolus. And they both will grant you knowledge or wisdom if you. summon them. And the way I've boiled that down, I'm going to write a book. I've got so many book ideas. I'll finish the sci-fi fantasy series first, but one of these days I want to do a wizard's guide angels and demons. So if you summon the demon stolus, he will give you wisdom and knowledge. You will learn the hard way, the school of hard knocks by making a whole lot of mistakes and suffering and coming out wiser on the other side. And that's why it's the demonic thing.

There's like unnecessary suffering involved. And he'll give you all that you want and you'll learn a whole lot of stuff. If you call out to an invite, Uriel, it is more the spirit of received wisdom and understanding, learning from the mistakes of others, listening to your elders who've been there, done that, and maybe have some wise things to say it's doing your own research.

It is acting wisely and carefully in the world. It's the two different paths you can walk to get to the same destination. One, you're going to, you're going to suffer a lot more unnecessarily than the other. So there's a kind of yin yang wholeness.

to the idea of these counterpart angels like good ideas, bad ideas. But conceptually, you can see that exists. There are two paths you can walk to the same understanding. You're going to suffer a lot less doing it one way than the other. And that's how I conceptualize angels and demons. That's why I say they are very real. They don't have a physical form.

They don't, but bad ideas demons can possess you as well. We talk about like the demon rum, the alcoholism, the addiction type of thing. That is its own kind of demon. You've got this, you're carrying this, the suffering and this bad, wrong, dysfunctional. way of acting in the world. I'm going to stop there. Now I'm just ranting about my personal philosophy. That's why I say angels and demons are real.

People look at me like, what are you talking about? I'm like, well, I'm just a crazy guy on the internet who thinks he's a wizard. So you take that with a grain of salt. Well, okay, if you think we've gotten as much as we can out of this and you're satisfied with the answer, maybe we'll wrap it up. Okay, sounds good to me. Now I got to move the cat. I'm very good.

Oh, that's very good. I'm sorry, you got to move. Well, I appreciate that. It's always nice when I can kind of give people something worthwhile and maybe even just surprise them a little bit like, wow, I never thought of that. I didn't see it coming. No, no, I didn't see that coming. I didn't know.

I didn't know that. So, no, I'm going to interpret that with some other dreams that are kind of similar with that same feeling. It's liberating. That's really what I meant by liberating. That is very nice. Yeah. I would hope people come out of these experiences, you know, with feeling that it was worthwhile

because they gained something useful or it helped settle a disturbing feeling. into something more tranquil, as you were looking for it, for sure. I'll be looking for it. It's already there. Yeah, exactly. It is inside. That's what they say. The Eastern Mystics, they'll say it's inside of you already.

You just have to find it. Yes, wherever you go, there you are. Home. Okay, by way of closing out the show, let's say this has been our friend David Deaton from Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is a conceptual artist who speaks to strangers about the taboo of politics, a bridger who facilitates conversations using art installations in free speech areas, a creator of the Triptic Dialogue Art Project.

You can find it on YouTube. And 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 days of the week. This episode specifically brought to you in part by ABC Book 18, O'Neurochronogia, Volume 4, Prima, Relicorum. You can find all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com. And if you'd head on over to Benjamin the Dreamwizard.

Dot locals.com, free to join attached to my Rumble account. And that is, that's the housekeeping. David, thank you for being here. Fascinating conversation. Thank you, man. This is great. Very cool. And the only thing left to say is everybody out there.

Thank you for watching. And we hope to see you next time. Thank you.