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ARE DREAMS THE TRUE SOURCE OF SPIRITUALITY? · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Well, today on the podcast, Joseph and I had the
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: very great pleasure of speaking with Dr. Kelly Bulkley, who
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: is an enormously prolific writer and researcher about dreams. He
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: is a dream researcher, a psychologist of religion, and the
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: author of numerous books on dreaming. He is also the
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: director of the Sleep and Dream Database, which is a
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: digital archive and search engine designed for open exploration. And
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: we do discuss that on the podcast. And he has
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: a doctorate in religion and psychological studies from the University
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: of Chicago Divinity School. His books are literally too numerous
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: for me to name, but I will be listing them
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: on our book list. So you can look for that
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: in the show notes. And, um, We are discussing today
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: his most recent book, which is called The Spirituality of Dreaming.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: And in today's episode, one of the things we talked
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: about was the importance of the dreamers, how we can
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: all have the capacity for dreaming and even for having
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: big dreams, and how dreams enrich culture and how it
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: can be hard to be a dreamer. So if you're
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: a dreamer, and especially a big dreamer, You might find
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: today's episode especially helpful. We also talked about dreams and technology,
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: some of the exciting things happening with dreams and technology
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: and some of the frightening things. We talked about dreams
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: and death and how dreams often prepare us for death.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: We talked about whether dreams are endangered and we also
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: spoke about the importance of dream sharing and It's a
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: traditional practice in many cultures, and we've gotten away from
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: that in our culture, but maybe there's some modern versions
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: of dream sharing as well. We then talked about a
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: very interesting dream of a young man who had the
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: experience of waking up repeatedly in his dream only to
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: discover that he was still dreaming. So we hope that
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: you'll stay on and join us for that discussion as well.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: So without further ado.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: So we have a wonderful opportunity here to talk with
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: our friend Kelly and something that we haven't announced yet
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: to the listeners that Kelly and Alisa Minyakova, myself and
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: Lisa have been adventuring in putting together a documentary. Alisa
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: had found a number of Russian artists, who had brought
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: forward their dreams. And Lisa and I were invited to
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: participate in part of a documentary that will analyze the
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: dreams and comment on the impact of the war in
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: Ukraine on the larger psyche of Eastern Europe. So it's
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: very exciting for us to have met Kelly through that project, although,
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: of course, we've been aware of his important work in
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: researching dreams and his publications. But it's wonderful to see
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: you again, Kelly.
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's great to see you. Thanks for having me.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, it was such a special weekend. We loved being
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: with you last year.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: So give us a little update about the Russian Dream
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: documentary project. Where is that settling these days?
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the film is basically done. Elisa is still putting
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: some final editing touches, still working a bit with the sound.
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: Part of the way the film has come together is
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: also included some text from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. A
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: vivid dream from that text that's sort of a meta-dream
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: in a Russian cultural context. So, yeah, so we're going
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: to show it at a private gathering here in Oregon
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: in May. Hoping to show it at a conference in...
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: Another one's in June and on from there. Another maybe
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: for some friends and family in New York, podcast listeners. Yeah,
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: we'll make it available.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: And for the listeners, we'll have a link there for
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: you to track this a bit. This is an exciting adventure. Yeah, yeah.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: No, I didn't know about the Dostoevsky dream that that
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: was going to be added, Kelly. But I'll tell you
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: that I've often thought that we should do a podcast
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: episode about Literary and film dreams. And that dream, I
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: know exactly which dream you're talking about. That is at
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: the top of my list. That is so vivid, that
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: dream in Crime and Punishment.
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: That would be a wonderful theme.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: So you are an incredibly prolific researcher and author on dreams.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: And I have just really enjoyed reading your most recent book,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: The Spirituality of Dreaming. it just is terrific. So I'm
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: excited for you to talk with us more about that.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: So tell us a little bit about how this book
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: came about or what you were hoping to do with it.
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I had an opportunity with a publisher of
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: kind of contemporary spiritual type books to write a book
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: kind of on dreams and with nothing more than that,
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: kind of Kelly write something for us about dreams. And
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: as I Sort of reflected on that, one of the
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: first things that came to mind was the story of
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: Joseph in the Bible and in Genesis, the Hebrew Bible, Joseph.
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: And before he has the opportunity to interpret the dreams
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: of the power and the baker and the Pharaoh and such,
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: he has these struggles with his brothers. And at one point,
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: he's approaching his brothers after having shared some dreams they
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: didn't like. And his brothers say, oh, here comes this dreamer.
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: And they grab him and they say a mocking when
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: they throw him in a pit, basically to kill him,
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: to get rid of him. And as they leave, they
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: mock him and say, let's we'll see what happens to
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: his dreams now. You know, and I kind of imagine
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: if they were around today, they'd have their cell phones.
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: They'd be taking selfies. They'd post it like, ha ha,
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: look how clever we are. And as we know, Joseph
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: finds his way out. ends up in Egypt and the
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: story goes on. But that moment of someone being attacked
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: and attempted, you know, trying to be killed because of
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: their dreams really struck me as a vivid, you know, dramatic,
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: but a vivid metaphor of what it can feel like
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: to be a big dreamer in the world and particularly
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: in the contemporary world where Dreams are not highly regarded
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: for the most part. And if you share dreams that
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: don't fit with what people want to hear, you are
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: going to be on the receiving end of some negativity
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: and sometimes strong negativity. So I want to write a
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: book about the people who feel that when their identity
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: as a dreamer appears in public, they feel anxious or concerned.
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: And to me, that's an incredible loss, not just for
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: the individuals, but collectively, because we need big dreamers. And
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: that's really the theme of the book. We need our
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: big dreamers to get in the game because we're in trouble.
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: We need all hands involved.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: What it makes me think of, Kelly, is if we
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: were to think of that Bible story as a dream itself,
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: that there is something inside of us that on one
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: level would like to speak our dreams. And for the listeners,
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: we mean our night dreams, not necessarily the great visions
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: for our lives, but to speak our night dreams. And
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: there can be other parts of the psyche that make
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: us feel anxious or come after us in some way
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: to silence us from bringing our dreams forward. And sometimes
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: that is that internalized ambivalence from the environment around us.
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: I think that when people submit dreams to the podcast
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: and we disseminate a dream, people are very cautious. We
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: hide their identity. People experiencing a part of their living
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: psyche being handled or put into the hands of strangers
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: is a very intense and I think somewhat ambivalent experience.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: So I think internally there are the internal shadow brothers
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: that can sometimes punish us for sharing dreams. Jung said
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: sometimes that when we take something from the unconscious, even
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: as a point of genius, that the gods will make
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: us pay for that. So even the unconscious itself has
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: a kind of ambivalence about this Promethean ambivalence about both
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: giving its gifts, but also exacting a price for that.
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. No, there is a, and I'd, Be interested
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: to hear more from you, you know, thinking about the
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: archetypal depths of the big dreamer, I would say potential
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: in everyone. I don't want to single out big dreamers
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: as sort of a mutant cast or something, but I
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: think it's a latent potential in all of us. In
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: some people, it really manifests in a very vivid and
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: actualized form. often early in childhood. I'll listen for people
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: who say, yeah, I had a lot of nightmares in childhood,
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: or I had a lot of weird dreams as a kid.
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: Not always, but that's often an early sign. And it's
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: often a sign of the suffering and the difficulties of
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: being a small receiver trying to transmit these vast, in
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: a Jungian sense, archetypal energies and contents. That's why Jung
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: was so interested in children's dreams, I think, because they,
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: you know, big dreams in childhood, because they had less
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: adult sort of distraction to enable them to tune into
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: some of these greater depths. So the gifts come with
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: suffering and a cost, just as you suggest. I think
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: that's a really important point. It's not all fun and
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: games to be a big dreamer.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: Kelly, I want to ask you, what is a big dreamer?
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: Well, a big dreamer at some level is someone whose
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: dreams are rising beyond the everyday concerns of our human
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: existence to look at bigger themes of life and death,
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: good and evil, what's happening with my community, why is
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: there something rather than nothing. In Jung's broad, and he
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: never drew a sharp line, but his general working distinction
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: between little dreams and big dreams, there's sort of a
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: felt distinction. It's like, wow, this dream is really different.
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: I know what my regular dreams are, but this... And
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: this is something I've done a lot of research on,
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: not using the term big dream, but asking people, can
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: you describe your most memorable dream? Or can you describe
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: the most impactful dream of your life? asking just what's
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: the first dream you ever had is often a good
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: way of eliciting reports of what Jung referred to as
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: big dreams. So I would, myself, I'd say over time,
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: I've generated a kind of a sense of big dreams
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: as having, at least manifestly, that we're able to tune
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: into these greater dimensions of disclosure, of revelation, of experience.
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: Often at the edge or maybe beyond the edge of,
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: maybe far beyond the edge of where our conscious understanding
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: may be at the moment we're having the dream.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: And do you think that some of us are big
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: dreamers and others of us are not? Or do you
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: think it's possible that most of us at one point
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: in our life or another have a big dream?
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah. So I'm the belief that we are all dreamers
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: and that this is something that unites us, that gives
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: us supreme dignity and worth. Every single human, I would
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: extend it, all intimate life has had dreaming capacity. So
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: I'm a pantheist at a certain level with regard to
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: dreaming as a capacity that unites us and is within
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: each of us individually to be manifested in unique and
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: unusual and wonderful ways. Some people, and again, there's some nature,
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: there's some nurture, that capacity actualizes more fully, more vividly
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: than other people. I don't challenge people when they say,
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: I never dream at all. I've never had a dream
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: in my life. If I wanted to challenge them, I'd say,
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: I bet you have if we really talked about it.
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: If you went in a sleep laboratory, I bet if
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: we woke you up at different times, we'd get a dream.
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: But I'm not going to force it. But I would
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: say that Virtually everybody at some point or other has
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: had a dream where they're like, yeah, that was kind
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: of a weird dream or that was a, I do
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: remember that, that one. So I think it is a
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: gift that we all have potentially within us and how
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: it comes out sort of is a little bit unpredictable.
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: And that's why when people find themselves a big dream
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: or they realize like, wow, I have a lot of
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: dreams and not everybody else does. It's, it can be
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: a kind of a, surprising and scary self-realization.
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: So Kelly, why do you think that some people dismiss
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: their dreams? Because I'm not sure that people really don't
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: remember them, but I think they dismiss them. So what's
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: your theory about that?
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: At some level, I mean, there's simple things like a
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: busy life, people wake up and have things to do.
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: They turn on the TV, the phone rings, you know,
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: the alarm goes off. I mean, the fact that we,
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: we conventionally awaken ourselves each morning to an alarm, I
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: think is sort of a, you know, anti-dream technology right there.
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: I mean, that is really a way to just kill
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: the dreaming space and, and just launch you into the
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: world of schedules and time and obligations to the outers. Internally,
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: this is where I don't think Freud is wrong about
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: some of this, that what emerges in our dreams can
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: be raw and can be uncomfortable in relation to our
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: waking persona and our waking way of being. And particularly
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: in a society where we've received little or no cultural
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: preparation for the fact that we are dreamers. It's almost
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: like we struggle with sex education. We don't even No,
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: there is such a thing, it seems, as dream education, right?
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: So people just like suddenly they start dreaming. It's like, whoa,
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: what's this? And scary things, it's not unnatural to just
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: not want to deal with it, just kind of push
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: it away.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Or as you point out in your book, people talk
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: all the time about how boring it is to listen
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: to someone else's dreams, right? So either they're scary and
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: we don't want to think about them or the kind
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: of cultural messaging is, oh my God, that's so boring.
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I did a survey. Some of the research
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: I do involves commissioning surveys and asking large average groups,
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: you know, average groups of people what they think about things,
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: dreams and such. And yeah, a question asking, do you
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: agree or disagree with the statement? I find it boring
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: when people talk about their dreams. Fully a quarter of
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: Americans say they are just completely bored when, uh, you know,
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: someone brings up a dream, you know, and others are like, yeah,
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: I don't really care. And about a quarter are interested.
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: So there are the quarter who are psyched and, and, and,
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: and yeah, tell me more, but, but there are a
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: quarter who like, you are wasting my time. Like, what
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: are you, what are you, what are you saying? Again,
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: I don't, I'm not a missionary. I don't challenge people
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: on this, but I would say in this context that
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: That's a self-revealing comment itself, that if you find dreams boring,
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: if I were your analyst, I would have several questions
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: to ask and follow up to that.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: Well, it makes me think about your comment about the
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: lack of general education about the value of dreams or
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: even a theory of what they could mean. And I
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: think in general, it's hard for people to love things
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: that they don't know much about. So sometimes if I
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: go to a concert with a friend of mine who's
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: a professional musician, what he's able to hear in a
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: symphony just dwarfs the ridiculous tiny things that I might
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: pick up. And consequently, it's a little more interesting to
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: hear him narrate what he's hearing than myself because of
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: the incredible nuance and amount of information that he can
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: pick up from that. So similarly, I take your point
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: of people perhaps enhancing or discovering they have an interest
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: by knowing a little bit more.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: You know, Joseph, I love your analogy, and I want
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: to just extend it a little bit because it's one
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: thing to go hear this piece of music and be like, oh,
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: the maestro took that pianissimo too slow or something, or
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: the rallentando didn't really work there. But when we hear
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: a piece of music, we have an emotional reaction. And
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: I think that even if you don't understand dreams, they
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: can really impact us deeply just on an emotional level.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: And we recognize hopefully the mystery in them. So I
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: think we can get drawn in just as we might
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: get drawn into listening to a piece of music, even
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: if we don't understand it.
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, I mean, in a way, those are two
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: strikes against dreams in many people's views. One that they
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: are so emotional and in a world, you know, still
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: quite enlightenment oriented where our powers of reasoning are considered
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: our supreme abilities, unruly emotionality is a threat. And so dreams,
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: you know, are, I think, suspect in many people's eyes
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: because of the emotionality, even though there's enormous information in
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: our emotions. And this isn't just in dreams, but generally.
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: So that's kind of a, that's an outmoded enlightenment view,
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: but nevertheless, it, it, it hangs around and adds to
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: the bias I think against dreaming. And then, you know, you, you,
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: you cite the mystery around, well, I'll, I'll extend on
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: what I, what I think I hear you saying, which
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: is ultimately we don't know where our dreams come from. Uh,
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: and that, uh, that combined with their weird emotionality and
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: the bizarre imagery, it adds up to kind of an
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: affront to a sovereign rational ego. It's like, what is
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: all this going on in there that I'm not controlling,
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: that I'm not aware of, that I'm not responsible for? No, no, no.
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: I don't accept it. Thus, the drama, you know, begins and,
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: you know, you get the Goya etching, you know, and
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: the sleeper reason produces monsters, right? That that if you
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: push that self-alienation far enough, you know, you will provoke
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: a response. But the general discomfort people feel in this society,
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: at least about dreams, I think stems actually somewhat from
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: their weirdness, their emotionality. Now, salvation in some ways could
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: come from more attention to things like art. You know, Joseph,
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: you bring up music and you guys probably have your
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: own views on this. I mean, my sense is that when,
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: when I'm talking with someone about a dream, we're exploring it.
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: It's a lot more like appreciating a work of art
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: than it is trying to solve a math equation. The,
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: the kinds of things that we do when we explore art,
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: when we reflect on our feelings and our, our responses, it's, it's, they're,
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: they're kindred, kindred processes. It feels like so. A little
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: more art might help with a little more dream interpretation.
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: Well, I found myself thinking about our metaphor about the
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: story of Joseph and this dichotomy between the dreamer, which
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: everyone has a part of us that dreams, and then
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: the brothers that are either envious or anxious or irritated,
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: and that this tremendous hostility can build up until... the
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: dreamer is thrown into the pit. And we have seen clinically,
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: people who are alienated from their dreams are more vulnerable
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: to depression, for instance, being cast into a pit. That
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: if the ego in its supremacy is constantly harassing the
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: unconscious or constantly at odds with the intrinsic nature of
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: the self, that sooner or later, the self's going to
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: pick them up and throw them into a depression or
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: the pit of an anxiety or some other kind of
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: symptom that then forces the ego into this inquiry of
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: what is going on inside of me in order to
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: get oneself out of the pit. And then as the
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: story goes on a bit, there is a helpful stranger
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: who sees Joseph and helps him get out of the pit.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: So if we think of that at The story is
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: one dream that when there's this hostility towards the dreamer,
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: that we are very much at risk for becoming symptomatic.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: And when the attitude changes to being helpful toward the
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: dreamer or wanting to recover the dreamer from the pit,
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: then all kinds of things are possible afterwards. And I
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: think the modern psyche is displayed in some ways in
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: that metaphor.
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Joseph, like there's so many dimensions
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: and I think helpful lessons right now about some of
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: this because that hostility in part, I think comes from
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: Joseph almost being a little naive.
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: You know, when you tell your brothers you had a
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: dream of, you know, the stars and the sun and
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: the moon bowing down to you, like, have you not
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: heard of like Cain and Abel? Have you not heard
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: of like, you know... And he saw, like, you know,
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: the brothers, like, really get into it if, like, you know, like,
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: be careful. Like, you can have the dream. And this is,
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: I think, part of the contemporary, you know, things to
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: reflect on. How do we share our dreams? What is
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: the most, where can our dream sharing and bringing dreams
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: into the world be most effective? Where might it provoke
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: a backlash? Where might it, we might think we're doing good,
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: And like, whoops, that was not the right context. So
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: Joseph learns the hard way, you know, it's a story.
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: And so it's part of his journey, his initiation as
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: a dreamer, I suppose. But that's part of it too,
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: like that hostility. Well, yeah, you got to be careful
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: with some of these big truths.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: And our own ambivalence about being confronted by the self,
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: which is part of what dreams are.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: So moving just a little bit into dream sharing, which
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: of course is in that story, Joseph does share his dreams,
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: and it's both what gets him into trouble, but also
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: what eventually kind of paradoxically leads him on the road
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: to his destiny is that he shared these dreams. You
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: speak about this in the book, and it's not something
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: that I think I had tuned into before, but the
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: fact that most cultures around the world have some practice
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: for sharing dreams to to solve problems as part of
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: group rituals. And of course, you mentioned the work of
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: Jeremy Taylor, which I love his book too. And he
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: had this wonderful practice of dream sharing, these dream groups.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: And you've run dream groups as well. And by the way,
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: we have dream groups as part of dream school. And
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: people in general find that tremendously powerful. So dream sharing,
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: and I want to link it back to your idea
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: about how we need big dreamers. Because I think that dreams,
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: and we think about this as Jungians, right? That dreams
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: contain information and wisdom for us. They're a part of
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: how the psyche self-regulates. The dreams are going to tap
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: us on the shoulder each night and say, hey, you're
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: not paying attention to this over here or look at
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: what you're doing here and they'll show us where we're
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: out of balance. But dreams also, I think not only
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: big dreams, but even kind of quote unquote everyday dreams
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: can contain wisdom for others as well. And that's partly
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: why dream groups work so well is because we hear
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: another person's dream and there's kind of wisdom from the
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: rhizome in every little dream that we pull up. And
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: what are we as a culture missing that we don't
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: have these really well-established practices for dream sharing? How might
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: we be missing an opportunity to solve collective problems? This
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: is a kind of imagination that I have that somehow
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: if we could bring our collective dreaming ability to big problems,
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: what might we be able to do with that?
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: That's as David Lynch would say, that's the big fish.
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: That's the, that's the, that's, that's what we're looking for
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: is how to the extent that big dreamers illustrate, they're not,
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: they're not exclusively so, but they illustrate these, these potentials
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: for dreaming to provide guidance and insight and wisdom for
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: the community. In addition to the dreamer, that's very exciting.
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: And dream sharing as a practice becomes one of the
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: ways to kind of cultivate and nurture that. Now, I
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: think as we said at the outset, you have to
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: be careful about where and with whom you share your dreams.
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: It's if you just stand on a street corner and
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: start talking about your dreams, that probably wouldn't end well,
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: at least in this society. So the right thing, I
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: would say your podcast is, is one, you know, I'd
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: say a shining example of creating a space in contemporary
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: society for dreams and dreamers to talk and share and
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: be part of the waking world space as well and
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: enabling dreams to become part of that. So now the
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: thing that I think is somewhat surprising to people who
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: are somewhat new to it is that a method like
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: Jeremy Taylor's, which is similar in other ways to Montague
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: Ullman's dream sharing approach. A lot of people speak of
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: the Taylor Ullman approach. general approach where you have a
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: group of people together, you share a dream, and it
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: involves in a Jungian sense, a great deal of projection
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: from the group onto the dream. And because dreams speak
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: an archetypal language that we all share, your reflections on
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: my dream, even though it's not your dream, might be
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: very relevant to me. And vice versa, my dream might
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: have themes that are super important to you and revelatory,
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: even though it's that not what it means to me.
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: So the dream sharing groups, the unconscious wisdom of a collective. Yes.
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: But the distinctive thing and the very modern thing is
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: that it's among strangers or it's designed to work among
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: groups of strangers. in most historical and anthropological contexts, these
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: are families, these are clans, or the raven people, they're
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: going to go talk about dreams. You wouldn't just talk
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: about dreams with anybody. And in many other contexts, you
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: wouldn't interact with people you didn't know anyway. It's a
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: modern phenomenon, I think, in some ways to be in
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: a society where We interact with strangers all the time.
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: And what Jeremy Taylor and Lonnie Ullman did was create
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: a very simple kind of humanistic, Esalen kind of vibe
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: way of bringing dream energies into a space where people
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: who don't know each other, have no context, no obligation
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: or responsibility to each other, can do it safely and productively.
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: and creatively in ways that people really find compelling. It's
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: off-label dream interpretation, for sure, according to Freud and or Jung.
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: They didn't run dream groups as far as I know.
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: Their ideas are thoroughly infused into these practices today.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: And I've been part of dream groups myself, and I've
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: run them. And there is something so powerful about Just
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: getting multiple voices. I mean, I think even just, you know,
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: when the three of us on the podcast talk about
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: a dream, I always get, I'm sure that, you know,
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: more gets pulled up than if just I were talking
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: about it, you know, so there's just the multiple perspectives.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: And when you get, you know, six or eight people
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: doing that with a dream, it really, it's a very,
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: very powerful thing. I thank you for bringing up the podcast. I, I,
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: I did, as I was reading that part of your book,
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: I was thinking, well, maybe we've kind of stumbled onto
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: a modern form of dream sharing. Um, because I, I,
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: there are listeners who love that part of the podcast and, uh,
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: you know, I think it's often meaningful to the dreamers,
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: but I think it's, it's meaningful to others too.
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And, and, and, and I'd go so far as
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: to say that, that a dream isn't, incomplete if it
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: hasn't been shared. I think there's something about, I think
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: we make a mistake if we isolate dreams as sort
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: of atomized little moments. I think dreams are woven into
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: our dreaming and waking life and humans being naturally sociable people.
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: I think we've been dream sharing as, you know, we
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: mentioned back as, I think as far back as humans
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: have been you know, a species. And I think our
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: primate ancestors are dreamers as well. So I think that
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: the sharing is, it seems weird in a Western, large
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: urban society context, but I think dream sharing has been
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: a natural, normal, regular part of human life for so
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: long that the sharing is sort of the fulfillment of
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: the dreaming in a way. It's what the dreaming is
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: leading towards or yearning towards. feels to me.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: I think that's a really important attitude, that even to
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: approach the dream as if it could be valuable to
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: the community, as it could be valuable to the family,
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: and then therefore to listen in such a way that
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: we're looking for ways of using the dream as a
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: metaphor to open up some concept that's relative to the group,
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: as well as relative to the individual. I was thinking
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: as you were talking that one of the things that
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: listening to dreams over many years has afforded me is
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: that some people's dreams will provide a whole new metaphor
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: for how to imagine a relationship between themselves and some
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: of the unique experience inside of them. And when something
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: truly novel happens that way, my whole body responds to
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: this absolute feeling of delight. like something brand new has
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: come into the world by finding this different way, novel
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: and unique way of bringing something forward. And then it
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: brings something alive inside of me. It may be abstract
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: to think about this expansion of metaphor, but I think
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: that is one of the contributions to sharing dreams. And
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: even for the podcast, when we do that in every episode,
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: and we very explicitly Hold that symbolic attitude where we
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: are offering the dreams over and over again as metaphors
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: for psychological process or perhaps for other things. And sometimes
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: those metaphors catch on, which of course we see in
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: great writers. They'll have a way of framing something metaphorically
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: that an entire culture will take hold of and expand
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: our understanding, our capacity to understand something. It just comes
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: to mind as we're talking about how valuable it is
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: to share the way that we conceptualize ourselves or the
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: way the self is conceptualizing us, I guess, is the
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: right way to think about it.
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah. As fun as it is to dive deeply into
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: particular dreams and to identify themes and insights, part of
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: the goal, at least with this book, is to encourages
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: that ongoing flow of dreaming and of sharing and of reflecting,
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: the ideas will come. If you can get that flow going,
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: if we can create these spaces in our waking lives
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: for dreams to regularly enter into our collective discussions, then
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: we don't have to worry anymore. To me, then the unconscious,
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: then we've got that back and forth traffic between consciousness
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: and the unconscious. And then we've got a fighting chance,
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: you know, for whatever it is that we've got to face.
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: If we don't have that back and forth track, then
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: we're limiting ourselves. But, yeah.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's like we've made a place for the
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: unconscious to be there, even in a group. I mean,
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: I was so moved. I just recently read Jeremy Taylor's book,
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: and he was talking about the dream work that he
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: did with community organizers, I think, in Oakland.
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: You know, it was kind of a disaster. These volunteers
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: were just kind of bumbling and doing a terrible job.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: And there was dissension. And he didn't know what to do.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: And so he just started having them share dreams. And
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: as I understand it, this is, you know, kind of
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: the way I make sense of it, kind of defensiveness decreased,
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: self-reflection increased, trust among the group increased. And it just
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: actually totally transformed the whole program, even though the program
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: itself had nothing to do with dreams per se.
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, exactly. He was doing his, um, alternative service
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: as a conscientious objector in the Vietnam war. And, uh,
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: he was, yeah, working on racial divisions, you know, it's
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: not like this, a new issue back in, uh, yeah,
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: the East Bay and yeah, kind of stumbled on dream,
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: dream sharing as a way of sort of indirectly addressing
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: the big issues that were, that were blocking everyone's, everyone's work. So, um,
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: my home in Oregon here. I, uh, I am, uh,
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: creating a space for physical, uh, dream books and journals and,
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: and Jeremy Taylor, who passed away a few years ago, uh,
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: his daughter, um, gave me the honor and responsibility of, uh,
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: being a steward of his dream journals of his library. Uh,
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: so yeah, so there'll be a, a lot of Jeremy Taylor, uh,
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: his books in this way that I don't have there.
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: They're not here right now, but that's, that's, that's in
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: the works. And, uh, Yeah, he was a very good
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: friend of mine, a close colleague and teacher. So he
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: influenced a lot of people, as did Montague Ullman, who
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: really had significant differences between their models, but similar in
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: spirit in many ways. And he did all sorts of
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: community work in Sweden. He was a psychoanalyst in New
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: York and applied his community dream sharing methods in Sweden
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: in particular with great success.
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: You had just brushed against one of the things that
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: you're so widely known for, Kelly, is this vast collections
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: of dreams that your organization receives and curates. Can you
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: still say a little bit more about this extraordinary process?
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: I think I'm coming to the realization sort of as
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: my life proceeds and I see what I feel I'm
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: able to do and what my muse is, the are
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: feeling good about these days. And I realized that an
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: opportunity I have is to provide kind of an archival space,
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: both for physical books and papers and such, and also
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: through the Sleep and Dream database that I manage with
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: with the help of several people, um, a digital online
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: archival space for dream, uh, research documents, um, information that,
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: that somewhat selfish. I just think, man, if I was
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: a grad student and I had access to some of
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: these things, I would have been so happy, you know,
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: instead of having to go down to the 10th basement
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: level of some library to find an old journal that,
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: you know, it was hard to get at. So, um,
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: And with certain things that just are not available in
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: any other way. Like I've had a couple people come
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: to me or like, I've, I've gone to my local
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: Jung Institute. I've gone to my local library, my local university.
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: Nobody wants this. I'm ready to throw this person's 40
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: year dream journal in the garbage. Can you, can you
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: do anything with it? I'm like, yes, yes. Don't throw
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: it in the garbage. You know, um, the, the spirituality
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: of dreaming book, the book I wrote that came out
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: earlier this year, that the scribes asleep, which is about, uh,
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: history of dream journaling, I feel very strongly that dream
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: journals are primary research documents of tremendous value for the
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: study of dreams. And when someone has gone to the
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: trouble of keeping track of their dreams for some number
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: of years, and in some cases, 40, 50 years, that
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: is that is enormously valuable information and not, not necessarily
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: for me. These are things that I, I, I may
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: not have time to study and that's okay. Uh, but
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: I do to the extent that, you know, as we've
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: been speaking, like if there is in, to the extent
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: that there is information for personal relevance, collective relevance, um,
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: in dreams, we're, we're reaching the point where some of
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: the analytic tools can help work more easily with very
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: large collections of, of, of dream data. Um, And I
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: don't want to lose the spirits and the fine-lived texture
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: of each individual dream. That's not what the technological wizardry
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: is about. But it's trying to learn from the opportunity
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: of being able to gather lots of dreams. If we
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: can learn so much from one or two, what can
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: we learn from thousands? That's the... the hope. And like
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: I said, it probably won't be me figuring all this out,
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: but I'd like to at this point do what I
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: can to kind of create a foundation for that.
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: So how large is the DREAM database now? And can
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: researchers contact you to access this?
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the Sleep and Dream database is an open access,
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: free archive of DREAM reports, DREAM journals, collections of DREAMs
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: that psychologists have gathered of you know, lucid dreams or
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: nightmares or political dreams. And then there's some survey data
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: in there, you know, asking 5,000 Americans, how often do
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: you have insomnia? Or how often do you remember a dream?
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: How often do you share your dreams? So there's a
• 42:32
  Speaker 4: lot of information that's, yeah, that's free open access. I
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: think there's maybe 40,000 dream reports now in there. Right
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: after we talk, I'm going to be talking with some
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: people who are helping with another upgrade. We're trying to
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: make it even more accessible, adding a bunch of new dreams.
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: I've got a couple of postdoc researchers helping me streamline
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: the data and some of the way it's labeled and
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: such to make it easier for researchers to use it
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: as a data set as a whole. So, you know,
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: I'm having a lot of fun on the digital side,
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: but the The physical side, I love my books, you know,
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: my physical, tangible, sit down in the chair. I don't
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: have to plug anything in. It's not going to give
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: me any banner ads. I don't have to upgrade it.
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: It's my book, you know, so I love my books.
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: And we have a space here kind of in the
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: forest outside of Portland, Oregon, where one way or the other,
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: I'm going to have all the books all together where people, yeah,
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: we'll be able to access them over time.
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: Kelly, um, how would people access the, uh, open source
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: dream database? Where would they go to check that out?
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: Uh, sleep and dream database.org all one word. Uh, yeah, yeah.
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: That's the, uh, the team of guys who now, uh,
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: also manage the, um, elsewhere, uh, dream journaling app, which
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: is an online, uh, you know, on your phone. I
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: do it on my desktop. I'm, I'm, I still like
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: my desktop better, but the, uh, But the guys who
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: run the Elsewhere app, that's kind of the outward facing
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: journaling part of the database now. They're not directly linked
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: in that sense, but they're working together. And the guys
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: are managing the database, developing this app, which is, yeah,
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: blowing my mind in terms of what it's able to
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: do with some of the new, you know, AI tools
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: and images, image generation and such. We can talk about
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: that at some point if you like.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: I'd like to move into that. I mean, first of all,
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: let me just ask you, how have you kept your
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: dream journals through the years? What's your preferred way? Yeah.
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: Pat a paper and a pen or pencil by the bedside.
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: If I don't scribble it down, something down before I
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: get out of bed, I'm going to lose a lot
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: of it. And then when I have a chance, ideally
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: first thing in the morning, I'll transcribe my scribbles into
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: a computer text to some form. And then over the years,
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: I'll periodically read through the dreams and just kind of
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: look for themes. I'll do some content analysis type things.
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: Calvin Hall and Bob Vandecastle, the content analysis system, which
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: I was really surprised. Like the first time I applied that,
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: I tried that system on a set of three years
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: of my dreams and And when I looked at the
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: numerical result and I'd been, I had really attacked that
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: stuff in my dissertation and kind of first couple of
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: years of scholarship, like bad, bad, bad content analysis, you know,
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: turning the dreams into little numbers and statistics and you
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: lose the richness and the spirit and the depth and
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: all that. And then I looked at this, this, the
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: numbers of my own dreams. I'm like, oh my God,
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: look at that. Like, yeah, that totally, that's very consistent.
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: And wow, that's a real pattern. I had no idea.
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: It was very interesting. And so I've done kind of
• 46:10
  Speaker 4: a 180 on quantitative analysis where I see if it's
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: not used reductively as like, oh, well, this is the
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: real answer or these are the real patterns, but rather
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: as here's a lens. Wow. Very, very helpful. So that's
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: been part of my journaling as well.
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: And now seeing what the elsewhere... AI bot does, which
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: I'm ambivalent about, of course, but I'm also curious about
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: and see potentials.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: So I will acknowledge that, first of all, I poked
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: around the dream database and it's been really interesting. And
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: I also have been using somewhat inconsistently, I've been using
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: elsewhere because I'm curious. I start from a place of
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: deep distrust that an AI could interpret a dream. And
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: of course, I don't want to believe that it could too.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: I'll acknowledge that I have a kind of investment here
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: in this. But I will say that sometimes some of
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: the AI interpretations help jolt me out of my ego
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: position and make me think, oh yeah, that's something to consider.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, it doesn't, I think at this point anyway,
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: it lacks the richness of a full interpretation of I mean,
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: and I think it's coming, so we better wrap our
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: heads around it.
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah. This has been kind of my attitude from early
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: on is that it's easy to be a critic from
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: the sidelines and it's harder to kind of be in
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: there seeing how things work. And the risk is losing
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: one's soul, of course, which is not an inconsiderable risk,
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: but the gain is like, maybe you can make things
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: a little bit better or maybe figure out, I don't
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: know that that's the hope. So, So that's been the
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: spirit in which I've gone into. I've been very skeptical.
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: And certainly from a Jungian point of view, this is
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: very worrisome. Already people are forming these kind of weird
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: transference relationships with AI systems. They're like, whoa, what are
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: you doing? It's a machine. And not even a very, like, wow,
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: that's kind of weird. But I'm also taken with the
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: idea that this is a technology writer named Clive Thompson
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: who wrote a The concept of the centaur kind of
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: humans or better. I like that better than a cyborg,
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: you know, half human, half machine, sort of a half human,
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: half empowered beast that we learn how to use these
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: technologies to save us time. Why should, you know, like,
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: why should I have a grad student? Because it's usually
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: not me, you know, a grad student spending hours reading
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: through a thousand dreams, counting up. red, blue, yellow, green,
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: when a computer could do that, you know, like that.
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: Once the computer tells me the numbers of colors, it
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: doesn't tell me what the dreams mean, what those patterns mean.
• 49:10
  Speaker 4: That's where the human intelligence and intuition and creativity is essential.
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: And again, this is the happy, more utopian. I could
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: I could go dystopian on you if you like, but
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: the utopian view would be that these tools are enhancing,
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: let's say, dream interpretation by providing quick and objective and
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: detailed analyses of some of the basic patterns that we
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: could see in dreams if we were took a lot
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: of time to go after him, that it just serves
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: that information up and then we can go on. To me,
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: interpretation proper can begin.
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: Kelly, I had a question as you were speaking. In
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: some ways, you are the test case for what it
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: does to a person to be exposed to other people's dreams.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: Your thirst for reading other people's dream journals, hearing other
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: people's dreams in many, many different contexts. I'm going to
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: ask you a question, which I imagine would be difficult
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: to ascertain, but how has it changed you to be
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: exposed to this vast library of other people's dreams? What
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: has that done to your personality, to your psychic life?
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: I'm tempted to turn it around because you guys listen
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: to a lot of dreams and, and, and spend a
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: lot of time in that world too. But I, I
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: hear you and I, I feel it creates a historical consciousness,
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: I guess, where the people that I feel most kinship
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: with are people like Artemidorus, Acrobius. There are a couple
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: of other kind of dream encyclopedists in different cultures. If
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: every community has a big dreamer, a shaman or a
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: healer or somebody who's kind of tuned into that, maybe
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: every civilization has a dream encyclopedist, you know, and you
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: need a civilization. You can't just have a small band
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: to justify having setting aside a role for a dream encyclopedist.
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: You have to have a lot of stability and civilizational complexity,
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: I think for that. But like, I do feel like
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: I'm holding a kind of wisdom that, that, that is
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: not literally that people are, are on the verge of
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: throwing in the trash and, And so I'm preserving things
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: that in the contemporary setting are attributed virtually no value.
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: And yet I feel they have enormous value. So that
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: is a strange kind of feeling, I would say. And
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: I'll also say, I bring this out every now and then.
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: I don't know if you've ever heard of a, I'm
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: pretty sure it's Arthur C. Clarke. A short, the science
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: fiction short story called the nine, I think it's the
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: nine trillion names of God. Does it ring a bell?
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: So it's written in like, let's say the late 1950s,
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: right after computers have gotten going, IBM. And there's a
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: religious Buddhist group in the mountains of the Himalayas whose
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: practice is to chant the names of God, the nine
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: trillion names of God. And in their belief system, once
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: those nine trillion names have been chanted, that is the
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: purpose of creation. And that will be the end of reality.
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: That is what reality is. And so one of the
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: monks works it out with IBM that IBM would come
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: up to their monastery, set up a computer, and would
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: very quickly chant out those nine trillion names. And so
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: the IBM tech goes and sets up the machine and
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: goes out and has a smoke. And the last line
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: of the story, I'm going to ruin it, but he
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: looks up and one by one, the stars began to
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: go out. The metaphor I take from that is to
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: what extent does massive computer knowledge and intelligence and technology,
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: does that somehow fundamentally transform and perhaps end dreaming in
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: some way? That's my fear, that somehow this is going
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: to kill dreaming. I'm carrying that around too, I suppose. Like,
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: is this bad?
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a terrifying thought. Yeah, I mean, I was
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: just actually doing some reading yesterday about dream deprivation and
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: which is a new concern because there are, I mean,
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: just the fact that most of us don't get enough
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: sleep in the Western world, but also certain medications, some
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: medications that you take to sleep inhibit your ability to dream.
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: And what happens if you're not dreaming? And, you know,
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: it has to do with like consolidation of memories, but
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: also if you have reduced REM sleep, you get, um,
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: You know, you can have increased depression and increased anxiety,
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: and one person even called it something like a degradation
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: of consciousness. And if you think about dreams psychospiritually as
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: that connection point between the ego and the transpersonal, then
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: it's even more dire to think about what happens if
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: we stop dreaming. So there's the way, I think there
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: are multiple threats, perhaps, you know, Kelly, the one that
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: you're talking about, if we codify this too much, do
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: we empty it of its potency? As well as, you know,
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: is modern life leaving us deprived of dreaming?
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: There is an angle at which it can look like
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: modern society is designed to suppress our dreaming with psychoactive medications, alcohol, drugs. cannabis,
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: all sorts of things that people often will do late
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: at night, we know that these, they disrupt regular sleep cycle,
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: REM sleep in particular, to the extent that's associated with dreaming.
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: And yeah, technologies, I mean, in some ways, like the
• 55:15
  Speaker 4: screen has, I don't know if it's replaced dreaming, but
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: when I see people lying in bed with a screen
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: watching you know, fantasy material, that sure looks like a
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: substitute for dreaming. And not in a good way, because
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: that's mediated by others. It's, I mean, for all sorts
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: of reasons.
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: You know, Joseph just brought this up. I think it
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: was last week, Joseph, I've been thinking about something you said.
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: You were talking about young people, or anyone, I guess,
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: who spend hours and hours and hours playing online video games.
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: And then that imagery, I mean, you spoke about it
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: really eloquently and I'm only going to probably not going
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: to capture it, but I don't know if you know
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: what I'm talking about, that that imagery kind of soaks
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: into your imagination. And you do see people who play
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: a lot of video games, their dreams will very much
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: be in that video game imagery. And so Joseph, I
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: don't know if you want to go back to that.
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: I thought that was such an interesting point.
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: It's just an observation that, um, And my brief foray,
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: and this was probably 15 years ago, I was helping
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: raise some stepkids. They're all gaming and I'm gaming. And
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: just even after four or five hours, I was exhausted,
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: but I would just close my eyes to rest them.
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: And I would see the images, the repetitive images of
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: the game dance across my visual field for hours, just
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: closing my eyes. So Whatever that does by exciting those,
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: I suppose that same center of the brain or those
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: same neurons over and over and over again, presages those
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: images in a way that I wonder what that does
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: to folks.
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. With my kids, none of whom were intense gamers,
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: but all are engaged in online activities far more than,
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: you know, we're engaged in a vast social experiment. The
• 57:16
  Speaker 4: worrisome thing is that there's so much money to be
• 57:18
  Speaker 4: made by certain practices that may not be to our
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: psychological or physical health.
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: I also wonder if there is some kind of a
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: compensation happening with the meteoric rise of interest in psychedelics.
• 57:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: So there's this oppressive thing happening in the waking life
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: and then this need to at least have punctuated experiences
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: of where the ego has a totally wide open vulnerability
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: to unconscious material, that may be a response.
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And I think it
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: also aligns with the tremendous interest in lucid dreaming, in
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: awareness and potential control within the dream state, which often
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: lines up with gaming experience and I mean, it's certainly
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: the most popular topic in dreaming. In some ways, it's
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: almost become in some people's minds synonymous with dreaming. It's
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: who really cares about dreaming if it's not lucid? Like now, like,
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm old enough now where it's like, but
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: wait a minute, what happened to the debates between Freud
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: and Jung or, you know, over sleep lab findings? Like, no,
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: none of that matters anymore. Now it's like, are you
• 58:38
  Speaker 4: lucid or not? It's a fascinating phenomenon in research on
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: variations of consciousness across the 24-hour circadian cycle. I think
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: there's a lot we can be learning and the idea
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: that sleep is not a mental desert, that there's all
• 58:57
  Speaker 4: sorts of things happening and perhaps degrees of consciousness. It
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: feels very instrumental. It feels very means to an end,
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: like dreaming becomes another reality. arena for ego gratification, you know,
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: and that just that makes me a little sad.
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: I appreciated, Kelly, your discussion about lucid dreaming in the book,
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: because it's true that as Jungians, we're usually like very
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: dour about that. It's like, oh, that's just the ego
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: trying to control. But there is a long and important
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: history of lucid dreaming and cultures, for example, in Tibet.
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: And I've heard incredible stories of lucid dreams that were
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: clearly a psychological issue was really being worked on in
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: a really important way. But it is interesting how many,
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: you know, when you just like kind of Google dream
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: interpretation or so much pops up about lucid dreaming. And
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: I actually had a question for you about that. You
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: spent some time in the book talking about some of
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: these new technologies, including some that, that are really quite,
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: I wanna say frightening about the ability to hook someone
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: up to a machine and be able to literally generate
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: a picture of what they're dreaming about. But here's a
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: potential for, since you have a, I'm gonna make a request.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: There are wearables that are meant to help you become
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: lucid because I think they pick up when you're in REM.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: and then they give you a little jolt or something.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: What about a wearable that would gently wake you toward
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: the end of your REM cycle to improve dream recall?
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: Can we have that, please?
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's what they do in sleep labs, right?
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Right. They'll keep an eye on you
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: and wake you up right then, yeah.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: And we get so many requests on the podcast. So
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: many people say, I have trouble remembering dreams. And we
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: have a resource, actually, that we're going to be launching
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: soon for help with that. And there are many things
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: that one can do. And this would be sort of
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: an extreme thing to be awakened at the end of
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: every REM. But if you really were intent on trying
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: to have a relationship with your dreams, this might be
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: a way technology could help. So I'd like for you
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: to make that for me, please.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 4: Okay, Bill, we'll work on it.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I just want to say about our dour
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: predictions about dream and dream deprivation and could we sort
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: of reduce dreams. The fact that so many people are
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: interested in our podcast, for example, or in your books,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, dreams do fascinate us and people know that
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: they're important and people are drawn to them. And most
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: of us do dream at least... you know, at least
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: dreams that we could remember at least a few times
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: a month. And so the good news is that wellspring
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: is within us and it's, and it's there. And, and,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: and all we have to do even is just turn
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: toward it a little bit usually. And it starts flowing
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: with more, it comes to meet us. So I just
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: want to put that positive note in there.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, our, our, our dreams are very patient with us.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: You know, they are, they, They'll, they'll, they'll put up
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: with a lot of abuse and they'll stick around. They'll, they'll,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: and that's a great idea for some sort of wearable
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: that could specifically signal when you are just finishing, you know,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: let's say a long REM phase when presumably you would
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 4: have just been dreaming that. Yeah. I mean, that certainly exists.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: Now this is where like it becomes a chicken and
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: egg thing. So, you know, the wearable people like, well,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: where's the market for that? You know, what, You know,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: there's a market for lucid dreaming, for things that'll, you know,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 4: pop you up and get you lucid. So it comes
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: back to what is the value. But I agree, like,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: I think that for helping people dream and recall to
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 4: the extent that there are people, and I agree, I
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: think that there's more than green shoots. There are plenty
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: of reasons to be optimistic that there's renewed interest in
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: dreaming and attention to some of these deeper things. spiritual depth.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: So ultimately I think that it's not just, um, self-help in,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 4: in sort of a, you know, that kind of limited way, but,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: but it's no, this is really, this is, this is
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: deep soul work. So, and, and if a technology helps,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: I mean, I wouldn't think that a wearable would be
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: like a great thing to, I don't know, every single night,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: like you do that, but like to sort of spark
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 4: a new relationship with, with one's room to get familiar
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 4: with what it feels like to, come out of a
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: REM phase, people can kind of learn these things. And yeah, I, I,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: I'm a, I'm a big believer in the kind of
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: build it and they will come, you know, you put
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: out the welcome mat, you know, metaphorically it's dream incubation.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: I mean, these are all variations on the ancient practice
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 4: of dreaming incubation of prayers and rituals and sleeping postures
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 4: and whatnot in the hopes of being in the hopes.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: It's never, I don't think it's ever an automatic, uh,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: mechanical kind of response, but in the hopes that a
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: dream will pay a visit.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: One of the things that's been coming up in my
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: imagination as I've been listening, I think most of us
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: may have seen that movie Arrival. It was put out
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: in 2016 and it's a science fiction movie. And these
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: aliens have mysteriously arrived on the planet in these strange
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: oblong spaceships. And Of all the people who they're going
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: to connect with, they find a linguist who goes into
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: these chambers where these strange tentacled beings will lift up
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: an arm and then they'll hit the membrane between them
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: and her and then they create these complicated mandalas. Really,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: they look like raw-shot inkblots. But where I think the
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: parallel is relevant is that she's profoundly determined to try
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: to understand what these images mean. And in the process
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: of understanding them, it transforms her own consciousness. And I
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: think that's such an apt metaphor for dreams, that the
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: dream happens much as if it's given to us by
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: an alien. And the actual effort to understand the dream
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: simultaneously changes consciousness. And then we do find we can
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: understand something of the language of the unconscious that we
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: couldn't earlier on. And we are different for having learned
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: to discern it.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's just a gorgeous, gorgeous metaphor, Joseph. You know,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: I was thinking, and this relates to the question you
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: asked Kelly a few minutes ago, I was thinking, I mean,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: just two days ago, someone brought in a dream. And,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: you know, I didn't know what it meant. But as
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: we started working on it, it revealed such, and this
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: happens all the time, right? I'm just thinking of this
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: because it was just the other day. But it was
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: the most nuanced, eloquent, elegant, layered. I mean, if it
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: had been a work of fiction or a movie, I
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: would have said, you've got to read this. It's so beautiful.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: It's so poignant. It's so It opens up so much.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: It's the complexity of it. And it's just this few
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: minutes of this, you know, these images. And the wisdom
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: conveyed in that dream about this person's life was, what
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: happens to me is awe. You know, again and again
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: and again, when I work with a dream, it's like,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: oh my God. You know, Jung has this thing, we're
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: talking about childhood dreams, where he talks about his childhood
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: dream of the underground phallus. And it's very moving. He says,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: who was it who spoke to me of things beyond
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: my understanding? You know, who is it that speaks to
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: us in dreams? Who came up with that? My conscious
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: mind could never have come.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: Up with that.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 4: That's Jacob awakening from the vision of the heavenly ladder. Like, whoa,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 4: how awesome is this place? This must be the house
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 4: of God. I didn't know, but whoa. Again, like that
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: transcendent experience or, you know, Joseph, you mentioned kind of
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: hearing someone else's dream and that deep, visceral, physical feeling
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 4: of like, wow, something like the really real is present here.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 4: Like there's something more than just my ordinary existence is happening,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 4: is coming into my mind here. That can be... obviously revelatory.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: To me, that's the spark that ignites many religions and
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 4: spiritual movements and philosophical ideas. It is also a profound
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 4: insult to the rational ego, you know, an unauthorized entry
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 4: into the mind that is embarrassing, is destabilizing. And so
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 4: it just depends on sort of how invested one is
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 4: in sort of the conscious status quo. Yeah, this is
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 4: the drama of many a Jungian analysis, I know, you know,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 4: kind of getting that waking ego, that persona to kind
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 4: of get comfortable with that, the dynamism of a self,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 4: of the self.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: Kelly, moving full circle back to the title of your book,
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: The Spirituality of Dreaming, what I'd like to do is
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: take just a slight pivot. We're circling around all of this.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: but can we lean into the central thesis that spirituality
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: and dreaming has a particular relationship or could be viewed
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: from that lens? So if we start just with that point,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: and I know you have a from an educational background
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: in spirituality as well as psychology. So this is a
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: place where you stride those two worlds easily. So tell
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: us how you conceptualize what spirituality is and how is
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: dreaming specifically related to that?
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 4: My graduate studies, both master's and doctoral, were in divinity schools,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 4: studying religion and psychology. And I'm not a particularly religious
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 4: person in a formal way, but I found quickly on
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 4: that to explore dreaming in the way that I found
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: most compelling and important, I needed to go beyond 19th
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 4: and 20th century psychology, that there were cultural and historical
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 4: and other sources, and many of which I found were
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: expressed in religious and mythic texts. At one level, simply
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 4: my view from that point has been that to study dreams,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 4: we have to understand religion and spirituality because that's the
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 4: arena in which humans historically and traditionally have most often
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 4: talked about their dreams and expressed them and explored them.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 4: So that purely as a dream researcher, there's sort of
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 4: a religious studies has to be part of the conversation.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 4: Can't just be neuroscience and psychology. More deeply, though, I
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: do believe that when we look at the history of
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 4: dreaming in human life in different cultures, again and again
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 4: and again, dreaming is either at the origins and the founding,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 4: as I said, sort of the initiating spark of religious
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: and spiritual movements. Oftentimes, it can also be kind of
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 4: an encouragement, a reinforcement, or a conversion type of experience
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 4: that dreams provide. So dreams are tied up with, with
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: the lived substance of, of religion in, in throughout history.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 4: So that's, I think a significant fact right into the
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 4: present where people turn to dreams, not only for help
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 4: with the problems of living with, with issues with family or,
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 4: or friends or work or whatnot, which are important and, and, and,
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 4: and dreams can help with that, but more broadly. And
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 4: I think Jung was really good about this, uh, dreams, uh,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 4: as a way people seek meaning in life, purpose, understanding
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 4: of their own inner depths. In some ways, I feel
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 4: that you almost have to work hard to keep spirituality
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 4: out of a dream discussion. I find that if you
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 4: talk about dreams long enough, you're going to get there.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 4: You're going to start talking about morality. You're going to
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 4: start talking about life and death. You're going to start
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 4: talking about the divine. At that level, I almost feel
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 4: like dreaming. And I don't want to push this because
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 4: it scares people away. Because the goal was help people
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 4: form a relationship with their dreams. And if that happens,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 4: then I'm good. Things will take care of themselves. But
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 4: people have trigger words and red button words that they don't,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: things they don't want to hear about. So sometimes it's,
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 4: this is why I use the term spirituality. Maybe this
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: goes right to your question. which is somewhat synonymous with religion,
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 4: but for many people in present day society, religion has
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 4: negative associations in terms of being dogmatic, being rigid, indeed,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 4: very sadly, in this country at least, being biased, being intolerant.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 4: So a lot of complexity around religion in this society.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 4: spirituality for some people other people that's a trigger word
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 4: too but for some people spirituality is a more encompassing
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 4: term it's more uh it's more about experience and about
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 4: one's personal relation with the divine however it's conceived i
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 4: think of spirituality as a religion in a more playful
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 4: mode uh just less the formal institutional side of things
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 4: and more the movement and the the flow, the energy,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 4: the change, the dynamism. That to me is, those are
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 4: essential qualities of spirituality. And again, the hardest argument I
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 4: would make, or the strongest argument, I suppose I should say,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 4: is that dreaming is the experiential origin of religion and spirituality.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 4: That our original ideas of the soul and the afterlife
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 4: and the divine and all sorts of things Again, I
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 4: don't like to get into arguments about these things because
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 4: who's ever going to know for sure? But I feel
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 4: that there's a lot of evidence that suggests that dreaming
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 4: is at the very core of religion and spirituality.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: I think that makes total sense. And I also think
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: that in a world where traditional religious containers don't do
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: it for most of us anymore, I mean, even if
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: we were raised in a Christian tradition or something, we
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: might feel... moved by it. It might have some relevance
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: to us. But if you said, you know, you know,
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: did this person actually die and was resurrected? And are
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: you actually eating his body on Sunday? Most people go, well,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: not really, you know? So, so what do we do
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: with that? And Kelly, to your point about it being experiential,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: I just want to share a quote from Jung. He says,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: for the collective unconscious, we could use the word God.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: You all know what the collective unconscious is. You have
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: certain dreams that carry the hallmark of the collective unconscious.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: Instead of dreaming of Aunt This or Uncle That, you
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: dream of a lion. And then the analyst will tell
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: you that this is a mythological motif and you will
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: understand that it is the collective unconscious. So you get
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: the collective unconscious right there. This God is no longer
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: miles of abstract space away from you in an extra
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: mundane sphere. This divinity is not a concept in a
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: theological textbook or in the Bible. It is an immediate thing.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: It happens in your dreams at night. And I think
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: for many of us, it might be frightening to think
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: that our dreams are the point of contact with the
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: numinous or the divine. But for some people, that's incredibly comforting.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: Like there is an immediate way that I can find
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: that in my life. And I don't have to muddle
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: through all of the dogmatic religions that come with all
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: the kind of baggage. Not that I think that it's
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: just as simple as that either, but there's something really
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: profound there.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I see dreaming in this regard as a
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 4: primal wellspring of spirituality, that cultures shape and conceptualize in
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 4: different ways, but yes, is intrinsic to all of us. Now,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 4: this is where just what you said, like if you're
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 4: a religious official who prefers to have the mediating role
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 4: between other people and the divine, dreams are not your friend.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 4: Dreams in that regard are a competitor. And so this
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 4: is where in not only Christianity, but other traditions as well,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 4: anytime my view that you see a power differential emerge,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 4: dreams become suspect because dreams give power to the people
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 4: regardless of their position in the social hierarchy. So That
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 4: adds another sort of stress point for dreaming in culture,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 4: precisely this unmediated, direct spiritual potential they have. Anybody can
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 4: get at that. Women, children, poor people, you know, there
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 4: are people at the top of society who won't be
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 4: comfortable with that.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: You don't even have to be literate.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. I would say the next 10, 20 years
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 4: of We may really have to rethink a lot of
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 4: our ideas about dreams if we fully take into account
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 4: that we are not the only dreaming species and what
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 4: they mean and what they're doing and what they're about,
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 4: how we understand them, learning to share dreams across species,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 4: which we're going to be able to do, I think.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: Well, I think anybody that's owned a dog has watched
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: them pretending they're running and barking at something in their
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: dream world. it's pretty clear they're having an experience while
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: they're sleeping for sure.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, if we, if we grant our fellow animate species, uh,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 4: the status of dreamers, what other kinds of, you know,
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 4: what else do we have to grant them in terms
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 4: of their consciousness, their selfhood, their dignity? Yeah.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 3: So I could imagine how wonderful and radical, how much
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 3: resistance that that will bring forward in the culture of
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: I wanted.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: To just stay with this theme about dreams as a
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: basis for sort of spiritual experience and speak to another
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: book that you wrote that you referenced in this book,
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: and that is the book Dreaming Beyond Death. As I
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: understand it, there's been some research done within the past
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: 10 years about this. But you wrote about it some
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: 10 years before that with your mother, who I understand
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: was a hospice social worker. Is that right?
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 4: She was a Presbyterian minister whose ministry was hospice work.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 4: So she worked for about a dozen years as a
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 4: hospice chaplain.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: But if you look at the writings on this, it's
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: apparently a very common thing that people who are getting
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: close to death will have a particular kind of dream,
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: very vivid dream, or a particular kind of vision. and
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: it's so common, I understand from just reading a little
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: bit about it, that hospice workers just kind of, this
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: is just taken for granted. Um, but I wonder if
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: you could just talk a little bit about that.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. Well, this was, this was, uh, just great,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 4: good fortune. And my mother, uh, went through Presbyterian ministry training,
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 4: became a hospice child. She'd always been good at caring
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 4: with elders and people who were dying. And, um, as
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 4: she worked, she got a doctor of ministry degree. And
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 4: as she finished her thesis, she asked if I would
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 4: help her turn it into a book. And it was
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 4: basically a collection of the experiences she had had with
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 4: her clients as they faced the final weeks and days
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 4: and hours of their lives, the dreams and visions that
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 4: they had that were, yeah, that were remarkable. And I, I,
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 4: I like to be a good son. So yes, my
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 4: mom and I wrote the book together. It was mostly her.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 4: I mean, it was her, let's say clinical experiences, which I,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 4: I kind of framed with some historical and cross-cultural context,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 4: but this is the thing. These are the, there is
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 4: an archetypal pattern towards the end of life of dreams.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 4: The pattern that we identified involved a journey and the
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 4: journey of It could be in a car, a boat,
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 4: it could be on a path, it could be a plane,
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 4: but there's a sense of movement of the dreamer, I'm
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 4: in one place and I'm about to go somewhere else.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 4: And then the theme of a companion, often someone who's
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 4: already died, a parent, a spouse, a teacher, appearing to
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 4: provide guidance along this journey, crossing a river, getting on
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 4: a train, And often as well, a third recurrent theme,
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 4: in addition to the journey and the companion, were obstacles.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 4: Sometimes there'd be a hole, there'd be a big rock,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 4: there might be confusion, you don't have your bags, you
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 4: don't have this or that. And all of this was
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 4: revolving around the conscious dealing with the fact that the
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 4: person's about to die. And so these dreams were... direct
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 4: response to that. And the emotional outcome very often, and
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 4: this was what my mom worked with kind of in
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 4: a therapeutic sense or a spiritual sense even, was the
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 4: feelings of peace and reassurance that often came after these
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 4: dreams that, hey, I know I'm going somewhere and I
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 4: know someone's going to be there helping me. And even
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 4: though there are obstacles, we're going to find a way.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 4: And Bracketing out, you know, were these visitations, were these ghosts,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 4: was this God, was this just your mind making this up,
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 4: were these deep wish fulfillments? Bracketing out the explanatory concerns
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 4: and just focusing on that emotional reassurance, these are powerful
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 4: and beneficial and deeply human moments and experiences that I think,
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 4: you know, as we found are both very common, and
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 4: yet in contemporary Western medical settings, maybe less so now,
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 4: but when we were writing this book, early 2000s, this
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 4: is not something people really talked about. And if someone,
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 4: if a patient in a palliative care unit in a
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 4: hospital started talking about dreams and visions, that would be
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 4: a sign to jack up their pain meds, right? Like
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 4: a lot of... So there were kind of two... practical,
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 4: you know, ideas that we took from this. One, that
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 4: an end-of-life diagnosis, a diagnosis of terminal cancer or something else,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 4: is not the end. And people, when they receive a
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 4: terminal diagnosis, often become suicidal. You know, they're like, what's
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 4: the point? I'm going to die. Why am I even
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 4: sticking around? And what my mother would respond is that
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 4: there is, however long it is, there is another stage
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 4: of life opening up right now. And it's an amazing
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 4: state of life. And there's a lot that's going to
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 4: happen if, and again, this is the second point, if
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 4: you don't need so many medications that you can be
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 4: present and conscious through this. Sometimes pain and whatnot, you
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 4: need those meds. But if there's an opportunity to remain
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 4: clear and not give in to ultimate despair, there is
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 4: this final stage spiritual season of life, that these dreams
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 4: become these wonderful sort of flashes of deep human wisdom that, again,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 4: my mom often found that the dreamer, the dying person
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 4: would be transformed by these dreams, would be reassured and
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 4: comforted in a much better place. The families are still
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 4: a mess. The families are still freaking out. Don't go.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 4: You can't leave us. What can we do to keep
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 4: you here? And so her her counseling work often involved
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 4: less the dreamer than the families. And they're ready. They're ready.
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 4: You know, it's OK. And that's that's that's the. That's
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 4: a gift of these kinds of dreams. It don't occur
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 4: to everybody and it's not an automatic thing. But when
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 4: they occur, and it's more often than I think we
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 4: often assume.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 3: I recall Jung writing a bit about this. One feeling
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 3: that doing dream analysis with people towards the end of
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 3: life was incredibly rich and that something in the psyche
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 3: would move very quickly forward, make great progress in the
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 3: short amount of time. He also said that it was
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 3: remarkable that the psyche and the dreams seemed untroubled by
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 3: the pending death of the body.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 4: Right, right.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 3: People weren't dreaming about their cancer or dreaming about some
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 3: other illness. The life inside of them was just proceeding dynamically.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 3: The other thing that I was moved by, as you
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 3: were talking about, people generally having dreams of a journey.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 3: The last week of my father's life, he had become
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 3: delirious after a heart attack and it had changed his
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 3: brain in some way. So he had to be restrained.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 3: It was very chaotic. But the last night of his life,
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 3: we were able to kind of get him on his
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 3: side so he was comfortable and I could put my
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 3: head on the pillow and hold his hand. And he
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 3: looked at me with this kind of wide-eyed delight and
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 3: said several times, I'm going to Jerusalem. I am going
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 3: to Jerusalem. He patted my hand softly and he sang
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 3: me a little song and then he passed away rather
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 3: unexpectedly that night.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 3: And my father was not one to say things like that.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 3: But the delirium, of course, puts people between the worlds
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 3: in some ways. They're in a somewhat visionary place. the
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 3: journey and the delight of the pending journey was a
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 3: gift to share that moment with him.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there'd be times my mom, she'd say she, the
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 4: person she'd be with would be looking at something or
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 4: someone past her and she just wouldn't turn around. She'd
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 4: just be like, yeah, that's hair on the back of
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 4: her neck going up. They're like, I'm not turning around. That's,
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 4: that's your, cause the veil, yeah, the veil becomes very thin,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 4: very thin.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: And maybe this is a good point to switch to
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: discussing a dream. Just taking a minute for our usual
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 2: mid-episode reminder about all things This Jungian Life. First of all,
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: we are recording a live podcast on February 10th at
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: 3 p.m. Eastern. It is free to attend. It will
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: be live on Zoom. You can reserve a spot by
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: going to our website at thisunionlife.com. At the live podcast,
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: you'll have a chance to ask questions. You can submit
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: your dream then and there, and we'll pick one of
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: the dreams of current participants to discuss that day on
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: the podcast. And Devin Joseph will be helping me launch
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: my new book, The Vital Spark, Reclaim Your Outlaw Energies
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 2: and Find Your Feminine Fire. That will be our topic.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: The book publishes on February 6th. I also want to
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: ask that you, you know, like us on social media platforms,
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: follow us on YouTube, write us a review on Apple
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: podcasts or another platform that really helps to support the podcast.
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 2: And of course, you can become our patron by going
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: to our Patreon, which you can find linked on our site.
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 2: If you go to our site, again, this union life.com
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 2: and then go to the podcast page, you'll find our
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: Patreon You get extra bonus episodes every week, including dream interpretations.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 2: If you want your dream interpreted, you can look to
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: become a patron. And also want to remind you about
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: Dream School, which is our online platform where we teach
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: you how to work with your dreams. So go on
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: over to our website, thisunionlife.com and check out Dream School
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: as well. Thank you.
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 3: Our dreamer today is a 19-year-old male who is a student.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 3: Here's his dream. I'm in a public school on a
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 3: Saturday at a chess tournament. In between games, I walk
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 3: around the school exploring the empty rooms. I'm wearing a hoodie,
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 3: and I reach into the center pocket of the hoodie,
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: and I find some loose jelly beans. I'm happy to
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 3: find them, as I'm happy for a snack. so I
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 3: start eating them. But eventually the dream continues, and I
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 3: think about it, and I realize that doesn't make any sense.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 3: And once I realize that it doesn't make any sense,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 3: I wake up. But I'm still dreaming, and I don't
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 3: know that. I wake up in my room, and it's
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 3: been trashed. According to the dream logic, it's somehow my fault,
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 3: but indirectly. I didn't do it. There's a ghost in
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 3: the house who may have done it or may have
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 3: been provoked to do it by me. Somehow it's my fault.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: I immediately start kind of picking things off and putting
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 3: them away. Then I realize I'm really thirsty. So I
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 3: drink some water and put on lip balm. Then I
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 3: reach into the center pocket of my hoodie and find
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 3: some loose jelly beans, which is really strange. So this time,
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 3: it doesn't take long for me to realize that this
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 3: doesn't make sense and I must be dreaming and I
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 3: wake up in my room again. I go into my
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 3: bathroom and it's a bit of a mess. There's still
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 3: stuff all over the place and a bunch of people
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 3: whom I don't know. I'm on the edge about this,
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 3: but I'm thirsty, so I get some water and drink it.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 3: As I head back to my room, I can see
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 3: in the mirror outside that there's a bald person with
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 3: blue skin. sitting on the floor of my room. They've
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 3: had their eyes closed, but they're not asleep. I'm agitated.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 3: They don't acknowledge me as I approach, so I smack
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 3: them across the face. Not hard, but not lightly either.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 3: They get up and open their eyes, and the moment
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 3: they stand up, they immediately turn into a woman with
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 3: long black hair, and they still have blue skin. She
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 3: and I have a conversation that I don't fully remember.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 3: She expresses that she may be some kind of spirit, maybe.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 3: Maybe the one who trashed my room. It might be
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 3: related to the trashing of the room somehow. And she
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 3: might kind of reside in the house. She lets me
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: know that even if I can't see her, she is there.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 3: She lets me know she's protecting me. I was agitated before,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 3: but now I feel comforted. She's not beautiful or attractive,
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 3: but she is comforting. The last thing she says is
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 3: that she'll be visiting again. I finally, truly wake up,
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 3: and I sit on the side of my bed. As
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 3: I say out loud, please come back at some point.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 3: And then I get some water, because I am very parched.
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 3: And I put some real Vaseline on my lips, because
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 3: my lips are very, very chapped. And then... I realize
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 3: I'm dreaming and I wake up again. This time it's
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 3: for real. And then I do get some water. What
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 3: were the main feelings in the dream? He writes, a
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 3: bit embarrassed when I was trying to clean up the bathroom,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 3: irritated there were strangers in my bathroom, and a blue
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 3: person sitting on my floor, comforted by the presence of
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 3: the woman. And then he adds a few associations. I
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 3: don't particularly like jelly beans, and I wouldn't go out
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 3: of my way to buy them. So this is one
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 3: of those interesting dreams I've had once or twice in
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 3: my life, but not often, where I'm sure that I've
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 3: woken up and I'm proceeding, but then something strange enough
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 3: happens and I'm like, ah, I'm not sure about that.
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 3: So there's this sequence of thinking we've awoken several times,
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 3: and preceded is it's a very uncanny feeling in a dream.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: So it's almost like a dream nested within a dream
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 2: nested within a dream. And there were so many points
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 2: at which he thought he woke up, but then he didn't.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 3: And that waking up becomes a metaphor over and over again,
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 3: that this is a young man who's having a series
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 3: of awakenings. Yeah.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: Becoming more conscious. I also, I think that the jelly
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 2: beans are really interesting because, um, Twice the awakening is
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: kind of precipitated by the jelly bean, which reminds me,
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 2: speaking of lucid dreaming, that one of the techniques for
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: becoming lucid is to like teach yourself to look at
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 2: your hands in your dream. And once you're really examining
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: your hands, that dissonance between like, oh, wait, is that
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: this doesn't quite seem like this doesn't quite seem right. Oh,
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 2: I'm dreaming, right? So the jelly beans almost play that
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 2: role in this dream, like the The thing that makes
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 2: him think, wait, this is weird. Why do I have
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 2: jelly beans in my pocket? Is what causes him to
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 2: realize he's dreaming twice. And so like, what about jelly beans? Like,
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 2: why did the psyche pick that? And the dreamer kind
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 2: of says, well, I don't really, you know, jelly beans
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 2: don't really mean that much to me. I have my
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: own associations with jelly beans, which I will share. I'd
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: be curious to hear what either of you think about them.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: First of all, they're often associated with Easter and And
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 2: they're called beans, but they also look like little eggs.
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 2: So either a bean or an egg both has that
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 2: sense of being, you know, the germ of new life. And,
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 2: you know, something that contains something within it. And I also,
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 2: this is quite perhaps very personal, but when I was
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 2: a kid, my favorite version of Jack and the Beanstalk
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 2: had this wonderful illustration of the magician holding out his
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 2: palm full of these beautiful magic beans and all these
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 2: different colors and they kind of look like jelly beans
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 2: so there's there's something you know there's something about that
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 2: there for me they they they feel a little like
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 2: i don't particularly like jelly beans either but they hold
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 2: a little bit of magic i think i mean.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 4: I i find it a fascinating dream just on what
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 4: you're saying about the nested consciousness or the nested realities
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 4: which brings up all sorts of interesting philosophical questions about reality.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 4: And so any, any time a dream plays with that
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 4: kind of experience of like, am I, am I awake
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 4: or dreaming? I think it's, it's tapping into something a
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 4: little vertiginous, a little, a little, not even a little
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 4: quite destabilizing, but also illuminating in some way as well.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 4: And then, yeah, the, this detail that the jelly beans and,
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 4: If it's a younger dreamer, my association on that context
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 4: goes to the Bertie Bott's beans of Harry Potter novels,
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 4: where instead of jelly beans being like watermelon and strawberry,
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 4: you could get booger or earwax. They were seed to potential,
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 4: but very surprising. You really didn't know what you were
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 4: going to get.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: And they were magical.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, with Jack's beans. He didn't know what he was
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 4: getting into there.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: Right, right. That's great.
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: And this streamer would have been would be the right
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 2: age to have experienced birdie bots. And so yeah, you
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 2: don't know what you're gonna get. I really like that.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: I'm curious, I don't know if either of you have
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 2: any thoughts about the opening setting, that it's a school
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 2: chess tournament. Joseph, I can see that you're like, are
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 2: you writing? You're coming up with lots of ideas.
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 3: I always circle, I look for patterns on it. I'm
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 3: always interested with a long, complicated dream to get a
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 3: sense of what is the condition the dream ego starts
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 3: in and what is the condition that the dream ego
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 3: ends in. So that I can at least have the
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 3: sense of in between that is some kind of medicine
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 3: that the dream is providing in order to get the
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 3: ego to a new state. So the one thing I
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 3: would say is it seems that he moves from a
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 3: state of exploration into this agitation and kind of helpless,
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 3: chaotic process. And then he ends being comforted. And comforted
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 3: by something transcendental. Just stepping away, there's a lot of detail.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 3: and there's a lot of words that he's using in
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 3: the arc of the story. But to me, it seems
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 3: relevant that he could be comforted by many things as
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 3: a young man. Might be comforted by his girlfriend or
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 3: getting a drink or smoking some weed or going to
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 3: a party or who knows. But as a young person,
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 3: there's lots of things that could take us away from
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 3: feeling agitated. But in the dream world, he's shown that
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 3: there is a comforting, protective female spirit. And that that
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 3: is a thing that can comfort him, his inner life.
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 3: And if we think about this as perhaps the anima,
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 3: it's that beginning of a relationship to this inner spirit.
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 3: feminine figure who can provide something more than perhaps the
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 3: outer world can provide so that's that's just the general
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 3: arc which of course seems tremendously positive and certainly positive
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 3: for a young man to find so early in life
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 3: introduction to his interiority as a comfort when i think
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 3: of the blue woman i can't i mean i think
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 3: of avatar i mean that's the big yeah blue female
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 3: anima figure who's so extraordinary that I'm sure lots of
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 3: young men were impressed by as well.
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 4: I was thinking of Mystique from the superhero character, also
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 4: a shape-shifting blue woman who is human but more than human.
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 2: It's interesting that you guys picked up on the kind
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: of popular cultural references to blue women, because what came
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: up for me was Kali, you know, and she is
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 2: blue skin. And of course, she's the great mother. And
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 2: she's also the death mother. So and this is this
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 2: does feel a bit like a visitation. I mean, she's there.
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: She makes it clear. She's been there the whole time
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 2: kind of watching him. There's a protective relationship. And, you know,
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 2: I think the relationship between the ego and the figure
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 2: is interesting because we wouldn't ordinarily think of walking up
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: and let's say she's a goddess or spirit or something.
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 2: Walking up and smacking them is not usually the recommended
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 2: way to make contact with But somehow this is the
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 2: right thing to do in this dream because he smacks
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: the person and then she stands up and immediately is
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 2: this woman with long hair who's able to converse with him.
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 2: So somehow being willing to kind of confront this, you know,
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 2: she is sort of confrontive with him because she trashes
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 2: his room apparently. But then he in turn kind of
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: walks directly toward her and gives her a smack. And
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 2: that turns out to be the thing that enables more
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 2: of a direct relationship. So I thought that that was
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 2: really interesting. It actually mirrors, there's a fairy tale actually
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 2: about an Indian fairy tale about a woman who kind
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 2: of finds her power after she basically beats a statue
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 2: of the goddess Kali. And again, you wouldn't think that
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 2: would work out well, but it works out very well
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 2: for her. So I thought that that was an interesting
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 2: parallel as well. Sometimes you have to confront the god
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 2: or goddess.
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 3: And it reminds me of the fairy tale where the
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 3: princess throws the frog against the wall so aggressively and
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 3: it becomes the prince. So sometimes the smack, the throw,
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 3: the aggression is the thing that makes the change.
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and there's a fine discrimination kind of in the
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 4: dream world. around that smack. Like it's, it's measured. There's
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 4: sort of an Aristotelian mean to it. It's not too
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 4: much of this, but it's not too little of that.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 4: And it feels that way at the, like at the
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 4: end as well with the perception of the woman. She's,
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 4: she's not a romantic target, but she's not unrelated to
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 4: me or disconnected to me. There's, there's some sort of
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 4: calibrating of her intimacy and his, the dreamers relation with
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 4: that figure that, Within the dream, I'm kind of impressed
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 4: at the, it's not wild and kind of chaotic and uncontrolled.
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 4: It seems very like, wow, this is the basis of
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 4: a good relationship, I guess, is what comes out to me.
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 2: And in the next iteration, when he wakes up, he says,
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 2: come back and visit. So he's really extending himself to
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 2: this figure, which again, feels really positive in the same
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: way that you're talking about, Kelly.
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 3: There's a couple of things that seem very age-appropriate as well.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 3: He uses the phrase over and over again, it doesn't
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 3: make sense. It doesn't make any sense. This sense-making stage
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 3: in one's life, making sense of one's life, sense of
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 3: one's inner life, sense of one's destiny or trajectory. But
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 3: it's a meaning-making process, whether it's looking into the chaos
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 3: of one's inner life or the chaos of the outer life.
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 3: but a sense of wanting to make sense of it,
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 3: make meaning of things. So I think that seems like
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 3: an appropriate task. There's also this iterative process. I'm so thirsty.
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 3: I'm parched. I'm thirsty. So metaphorically, biblical words, Phrase, like
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 3: as a heart desireth the water brook, so longeth my
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 3: soul after thee. So being parched and thirsty for any
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 3: number of things. But it does seem like the thirsting
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 3: somehow leads him to this transpersonal encounter. And that seems important,
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 3: thirsting for spirit.
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and there's some new contemporary resonances around the phrase thirst. Yes,
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 4: there is. Uh, as, as I hear it, you know, uh,
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 4: I'm not a young person, but, uh, I'm, I'm hearing it, uh,
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 4: as excessive desire, excessive, maybe avarice or greediness or wanting
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 4: too much. And then a thirst trap, uh, is something
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 4: you gotta be careful of it. You know, if a
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 4: guy you want, want, you want to watch out for
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 4: a thirst trap girl, right? That's, that's you, you know,
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 4: you get, you can get trapped by your thirst. And
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 4: so if that's at all, this could be a stretch,
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 4: my version of the dream, but is, again, finding the
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 4: right relation with this blue woman who could be a,
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 4: you know, Navi, could be Mystique, could be, you know,
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 4: any number of desirable thirst traps. But as a dreamer,
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 4: that's not how I'm coming out of it relating to her.
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 3: The comfort seems like the meeting of some kind of
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 3: a need in the same way that we're parched, we
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 3: drink water, we're sated. Comfort is a kind of sating process.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 3: So she provides, again, she provides protection. Protection from what?
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 3: Perhaps protection from meaninglessness, protection from chaos and mess, and
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 3: the vulnerability of not being able to control everything. inside
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 3: of ourselves or outside of ourselves. But, uh, Kelly, I
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 3: was thinking the same thing that to be thirsty is,
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 3: you know, if a young man is just too, um,
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 3: sexually focused, if he's a little too interested in you
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 3: a little too fast, it's like, ah, you seeming a
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 3: little thirsty man, but also young men are thirsty or they're,
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 3: they have a lot of avarice and they have a
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 3: lot of sexual tension. So while, yes, it's being monitored,
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 3: there's also just a truth about it that is a just-so-ness. Yes,
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 3: young men have a lot of unsated desires in all
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 3: number of realms. And feeling that drive to get what
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 3: you need also seems appropriate, you know, at 19 and
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 3: starting out in your journey.
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, one of the things that I think is interesting,
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 2: like this related to the topic we've been talking about today,
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 2: is the way that images like this, perhaps, are kind
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 2: of visitations from the collective realm. And, you know, does
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 2: this say something just about this young man's psyche? Well, presumably,
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 2: of course, it does. But is it also, you know,
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 2: just a point where, again, the veil is thin and
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 2: this young man has had this experience of something? beyond
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 2: his own personal psyche.
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 3: Something inside. The blue woman is also a classic first
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 3: stage anima figure as Jung classifies it. The young man
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 3: meets an Eve figure whose primary task is the sating
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 3: of body desires and comforting and orienting a young man
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 3: to his body and to It is an extension of
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 3: the mother complex in as much as the E figure says, listen,
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 3: you're tired, go to bed. Or you're hungry, let's get
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 3: something to eat or take care. of yourself in this
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 3: wilderness of the world. So the fact that she's not
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 3: beautiful or attractive, she's not Helen of Troy at this stage,
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 3: but she's somebody who protects and comforts very much that
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 3: beginning process. and is not explicitly a mother figure, that
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 3: he doesn't think of her as a mother. So that
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 3: gives us a sense that there's a differentiation of the anima.
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 3: But again, it's just in that beginning Eve, mother of
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 3: all dynamic, which makes perfect sense. One of the things
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 3: that the Eve anima does is to help a man
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 3: identify his mother, needs, his instinctive needs, and empowers him
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 3: to address it. So it's interesting that he meets her,
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 3: he feels comfort in, he literally wakes up, and then
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 3: finally does what the anima would say, which is, you're thirsty,
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 3: get some water. That's the natural place that one would
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 3: go with that instinctive need.
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, just as you're talking about this figure and
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 4: her she assumes within the dream I go back I
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 4: think you said about the beginning in the chess tournament
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 4: at school and as I'm reading into that now it
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 4: feels like a chess tournament as a to me that's
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 4: intellectual competition that's very mind and head oriented at a
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 4: school again and it's an empty school I think so
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 4: to me, that's not a very nurturing environment. And so, and,
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 4: and the, the constant awakening and am I, am I
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 4: awake now? Oh, wait, no, now I'm waking up. I
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 4: must've been dreaming then in a different context. That's, that's,
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 4: that's a nightmare.
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 3: Indeed.
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 4: That's a, that's almost a existential psychopathology, you know, psychotic break.
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 4: If you feel you can't get out of that. And if,
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 4: projecting into a young man that my desires, my avarice,
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 4: my thirstiness, how can I ever get out of that?
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 4: How am I not always within that? And so it
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 4: feels like the dream offers in this figure, this blue woman,
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 4: something to hold, not hold onto, but some stable presence
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 4: that can help with these swirling and with the, as
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 4: I take it, almost intellectual emptiness of my setting, my
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 4: original setting there.
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 3: It also seems very important that as I head back
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 3: to my room, I can see in the mirror outside
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 3: that there's a bald person with blue skin sitting on
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 3: the floor of my room. So the pivoting symbol is
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 3: that he encounters a mirror and then, something extraordinary happens
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 3: that isn't just another iteration of waking, there's a mess,
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 3: I try to clean it, and then I wake up
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 3: again and again. But it begs the question of what
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 3: is the mirror? You know, a capacity to self-reflect. Perhaps
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 3: also the mirror is some form of reflection from another
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 3: person who has put him in touch with some capacity
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 3: inside himself. It's an indirect way of seeing something rather
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 3: than the direct, straight-on view of it. But this other
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 3: perspective is what reveals something that was hidden, perhaps, in
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 3: this first several iterations, an actor underneath the scene. So
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 3: he's able to see deeper by virtue of the mirror.
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 3: How relevant that is for all of us, particularly when
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 3: we're young, to have something that mirrors us or mirrors
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 3: us something deeper back to us that we couldn't see
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 3: the first few times we looked.
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that, Joseph. That's really great.
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 4: William James had a dream like this in 1906. It's
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 4: one of the few dreams that he, to my knowledge, recorded,
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 4: where it's kind of a nested consciousness experience. And these
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 4: are really profound dreams. types of dreams. I mean, it's
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 4: a rare, it's a rare type of dream. And yet it,
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 4: I can't help but think it's part of a big
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 4: individuation moment of being able to see one's life from a,
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 4: another perspective and both be in it and seeing it
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 4: at the same time and not let that completely freak
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 4: you out, you know, to be able to be, to
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 4: do both, not to get lost in the one or,
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 4: abstract out to the other, hold that tension. That's a
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 4: powerful dream for sure.
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 3: But what makes me positive in that way as well
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 3: is that throughout the process, it could have been disturbing,
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 3: but this kid holds on nicely, as you were noting,
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 3: and that in each of the iterations, he finds a
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 3: little bit of sweetness because that's what a jelly bean is.
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 3: I don't know what's going on, but there's a little,
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 3: something sweet that I can find which I wouldn't normally
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 3: expect to be there.
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to This Jungian Life. From our website, thisjungianlife.com,
• 1:54:04
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• 1:54:15
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• 1:54:17
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• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: living this Jungian life.