Step Into The Dream with Steven Kampmann

(upbeat music) (upbeat music)

Welcome to Synchronicity. How many episodes can I do in a week? I think three will be at this week. Uh, my guess this week is Steven Kamen. Is this Steven's fourth time or third time? I think fourth time. One of my favorite people to talk to. Uh, expert in dreams and just a really insightful guy who's lived an interesting life. And, uh, birth one of my other favorite people. Mikey Kamen. So, you know, it's good. Well, I guess he didn't birth, but he created, it's his progeny. Anyway. Uh, so this episode is great because it dovetails nicely with what we've been talking about. And thank you for everyone for the amazing feedback and everyone who's sending in those imaginal acts. I'm still on them. I'm excited to hear the feedback when the things happen. Um, but this is a nice episode because dreams.

Right? What, what are dreams? People don't even talk about dreams that much when they do. They're weird and sometimes people can't relate. And then you find the odd person who knows about dream symbolism or they've read a lot of Carl Jung and they start using dreams to access states of their own conscious and all these other things and the collective unconscious. It's just a cool gateway, right? But what if, what if, this is a dream? What if it is? Well, it's weird. Sometimes it feels dream. There's a Bob Marley quote too. I don't remember which song, but he goes, some people think this life is a dream. They're only making matters worse.

That one fucked me up for a little bit. It's like, what? Okay. Got to take this shit seriously going to the world to figure out what the fuck is going on, which is truly what you're supposed to do. But something I've been realizing lately is you got to deal with your own shit first, not just conceptually. And the easiest way to figure out if you have shit going on inside of you is if you notice shit and other people out there, not that you just notice it that you get bothered by it, that you get triggered by it, that you get emotionally upset by it. Those are all signs that something is popping up for you. And yes, there are injustices and horrible things and traumatic things and things that shouldn't happen that take place in the world.

And I'm not saying let's passively just allow these things to happen, but you will be far more effective at doing what you're supposed to do. If you take care of yourself first, not in a selfish way, you still pay attention to what's going on. Don't tune out. Still pay attention. Cass and I bear witness. Do what you're supposed to do. Make sure you got your shit together. Make sure you got all your gear on you that you need to go out there in that world of fucking sorrow and misery and horrible things. Right? It's just a good idea. So dreams can be this, all the things we use to access our dreams and the way we use dreams to unlock aspects of ourselves and our lives, we can apply to this reality too.

So that's what's really interesting about it, because when you get to talk to someone like Stephen, like he has been fascinated with dreams. He's got this dreams course where he's essentially mentoring people for free as you'll hear. Just me asking people make a donation to the Michael Jay Fox Foundation for Parkinson's research. Like that's, you know when someone's really doing something right, that if they're sharing what they love and pat and they're passionate about without a monetization scheme in mind for that thing. Like here's the deal. You can make money however you want. I'm making money in some fun ways now. But you make, you know, like if I, something about, and I've said this before, I think in the early episode.

The last one or the one before. I'm never monetizing the idea, not the idea, the reality that your imagination creates reality. That's, yeah, I could come up with a course. A retreat, a blob of block is this shit will fucking change your life. Like that's, it's rare that someone can deliver on selling you the Brooklyn Bridge. You know what I mean? Like that's, that's why someone saw you were going to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge. I'm actually going to deliver the Brooklyn Bridge to your fucking door. So, I mean, of all the things to monetize, that's the jackpot. But why? Why would you do it? Because you don't lack imagination if that's how you think you have to do it. You can imagine any other scenario. So don't do that one. But I bring this up because we can use dreams as a portal into examining this reality of imagination, creating external reality, materiality.

We do this through symbolism. We do this through our actual dreams that we have at night and then connecting to them to the aspects of our lives. We can identify things like archetypes and patterns and complexes and things that seem to reappear that feel like us so weirdly. So the same things keep happening sometimes. So odd. It's because it's you. But again, any modality that you're well versed in is applicable to this idea of imagination. That's the beautiful thing about it. And I don't say that in a kind of a wishy, washy way. Like I fucking been interested in a lot of different stuff throughout the years and really diligently, you know, studied it. Anyone who knows me knows I get intensely passionate about things.

And I'm interested in that's just how it goes. I don't know. I was born. It's the way I imagined myself. And for that reason, like, I can tell you that, like, all of those modalities, I found one that's like, they're not scams, even the ones that are scams sometimes don't turn into scams because people believe them truly and faithfully, right? You ever see those weird documentaries on Netflix? I think it was where like this, like the cult families and like, there's the guy who's like, clearly loony tunes and he's got like the short shorts on and he's like doing crazy fucking weird sex things with everyone there.

And he, you know, it's just obvious to anyone looking in, but then he would go and do these like energy transferances to people's heads. And like, you could see what the something was going on. And, you know, that's known as Shakti put and the Vedic traditions. And what we're experiencing there is either someone's belief, the person getting that that something is happening. Therefore, it happens or his belief, making something happen. And then the actual thing happening. And it's not so weird. And it's not so hard to understand if what I say is true that your imagination creates your reality. So again, this episode is fantastic. If you want to go connect with Steven for his mentorship classes, and I highly recommend it. I'm pretty confident this will fill it very quickly for him.

Again, there's just a donation to the Michael J. Fox Foundation, but use his email, which is linked to I'm not going to fuck it up in this podcast. So if you're whatever app you're using or website, it's there and just click it. And it will take you, you see his email, email him, and then you can get started because I think it'll be pretty good for those of you who make the connection that this is the thing for you. Stevens were really genuinely all of my conversations on air and off air have gone pretty much the same, which is I'm always like, Oh shit, this applies to that. That applies to that. Holy crap. This guy knows a lot of stuff. So enjoy this episode. Big thanks to the guys at Ned. Go to Hello Ned.com.

I was going to say slash think don't that's not a thing. Just go to Hello Ned.com and use the code sink. That's why I see it. Check it out. You get 15% off. Again, this is only CBD oil I use. It's full spectrum hemp oil. Listen to the, that's all I can say. I could go on and on about how they play music to the plants and binaural beats and they grow them with love and they actually genuinely give shit about the community. I could do that. Or you could just go listen to the episode with them after this or some other time and get a sense of who they are and see if you're going to use CBD for any. What is it? You know, healing benefits or whatever it is. You imagine it to be a miracle tonic and therefore it is.

These are the guys. So let's do a little imaginal exercise that anyone who uses that code is going to get the real good stuff. You know what I mean. So that's it for this episode. Rate and review. The ratings are coming in. The download numbers were so weird. They're going up. Everything is going up. So weird. Why is that happening? If you like the show, if any of these episodes about imagination have helped you share it with someone you love and care about, you never know. If you want to test your own imaginal properties, imagine that when you tell people about this stuff, rather than looking at you as you and casting doubt, someone gets it.

Maybe a lot of them get it. Maybe everyone gets it because then we're moving into a pretty cool version of reality. Okay. Without further ado, here is Steven Campbell. Let's start here. Let's start recording. Let me do the forfunctory. Thank you. Thanks for coming on, Steven. I think it's been a year since we spoke last and I'm trying to get filled with thoughts and ideas and all those kind of good things want to hear what you've been up to. So thank you for having me. Yeah, my pleasure. These are always my favorite episodes. Let's start right where we were. You were talking about this idea, which I'm very much subscribed to. This is a big union thing too.

Is that kind of the as above so below in the same way that we individuate ourselves or succumb to our shadows or any of the processes that we could go through psychologically, emotionally, whatever. Nations go through that globally. We go through that groups go through that social groups. What is your kind of takeaway for how we can use that perspective to not mitigate, but let's say navigate the world that you were just talking about politics. I know this is getting every age group, every demographic is caught up somehow in the political landscape, regardless of how much they're tuning in. What do you think, you know, that idea provides us, you know, in terms of perspective.

First of all, I just can't imagine Trump's dreams right away. Here's me. Second of all, I would never take him on as a dreamer. That's a second thing. I think we were just talking about in my lifetime, which spans so many decades. This is the most the kind of darkest time that I've experienced in the sense of things seem to be falling apart. Things aren't making sense like they did externally. And I think that's the message and certainly that's what I want to do in the course is if you're looking to the outside external world for the answer, you're going to probably be pretty disappointed. You're going to have to shift that consciousness over to your inside life and find your true power.

And that's really what the dreams course is all about. So we've been talking about the dreams for people who don't know, the dreams course is essentially a one-on-one mentorship, right? That's exactly what it is, where people are coming to you to learn about their own dreams and how to kind of find their true calling and individuate or actualize what they really should and feel like they should be doing. And I'm going to link this later on to something that my audience at this point, my listeners at this point, and we talk about a lot at Nauseam, but I think this is the starting and focal point of anything that anyone's going to do is finding how to find the thing through this symbolic language of dreams.

How do you do that? So tell me what the dreams course has evolved into for you. Okay, well, first of all, it's taken me a while. I'm backtracking a second just to give it to you. I've always envy the people who have been born with a purpose. They know they want to be a doctor or they want to be some significant, you know, a teacher or whatever they want to be. That wasn't my coin. And a lot of the people, the dreamers, I call them the dreamers. Those are the people I work with. Many of the people I work with don't know what they're younger tend to be in their 20s, which are always very hard, maybe early 30s.

And they're, they, I think they sent some lack of purpose. And for me, my life was such that I started out to be a therapist and had mentorship by an amazing woman named Dr. Elizabeth Forsberg. And then I went into show business and was affected by many comedians. And then I went into teaching was affected by a mentor by many teachers at the school I went to. And now I've arrived at this point in my life. And what I realize is what I want to offer is not therapy, but mentorship. And mentorship means I want to help those people feel a little bit out of back. Out of purpose out of don't fit in exactly don't feel in sync.

And I want to help those to discover their own path to individuation. And let me just say what that is because people often get that confused with individual individual versus individuation. Individuation really is a lifelong journey to become the complete individual you're meant to be by integrating opposing elements of your personality and discovering the true purpose in your life. It's really what makes you unique. And my job as a mentor is to help you get on get on in awareness through your dreams to your own path of individuation. That's my job. My job is to live out your life or be a therapist or check in with you.

My job is to reinforce your calling to be different, to be yourself, to not to look to the external world, but learn to trust your inner life as your guide. Yeah, I mean, and talk about we've spoken about it, but talk a little bit about the role of mentorship in your life and kind of why you view it as such an important. And I also just to say like I have realized in my life from people who have helped me and when I've accidentally been able to help other people that the role of mentorship is just like, it's kind of like this elusive term that is now basically sacrilegious totally corrupted because a lot of things that are going on in the West of the guru, right? It's like a mentor is someone who you can go to and implicitly trust has your best interest is there to kind of help you realize what's already in you.

They're not going to give you some secret magical thing that you have to keep coming back to them for, but they're going to actually be there to help support you as you figure out and discover who you are and what you want to be. Right. I mean, I just talk a little bit because I know your thoughts on this. I spoke to a lot of people. I never really heard mentorship broken down and kind of with the mystical overtones and like the actual real importance it hasn't in practical life. No, it's really. You just said it. It's not. You're not there. You're there to help them find what is already there. It's really an awareness to bring in awareness and also to give them help them with the confidence to take risk to trust that inner calling and don't turn away from it because parents or teachers or society is telling you, you can't do that. You can't do this. The only people we really admire in life for all the people who took risk and followed their own path.

Those are the heroes. Those are the biographies we read, whether it's political, social, you know, psychological like Carl Jung or Freud. These people didn't just follow the kind of the, you know, what do you call the bean patch. Yeah, that path. They've chosen even the frost poem. There are two rows I took the one less traveled. That's really what this course is about. What is your path? And it probably is less traveled and it's probably a little scary, but that's where your power is. It's not going to be in the external world. It's going to be in the internal world. And once you're in that world and connect with that kind of universal will and be part of that, you're just a different human being. You truly are a different person.

All right, so let's talk a little bit about this internal world and the validity and reality of that. So I am now a firm subscriber to the idea. And I don't know that I would have staked out this stance a year ago. I probably wouldn't. I would have intuitively felt like this, but I wouldn't have said, yeah, I'm pretty sure I like 100%. I now believe that consciousness, awareness, I amness, whatever you want to call it, precedes our external reality. I think that everything we see is essentially comes about from what I call referred to as our imagination, our sense of I am and what we essentially picture and load with sensory and emotional and mental resonance actually happens out in the world, regardless of whether we recognize this is happening or not.

So this then, for me, has shifted reality into a world much more like a dream. Now, I don't think that aren't our real world consequences. Like I recognize gravity exists. I recognize that if I cut myself open, be tons of blood everywhere and I'll probably die. But in terms of what can happen and what can be revealed in our waking life. I found a technique and a few different kind of perspectives that have really convinced me that this is actually how things are, not just from a conceptual level, but from a direct experience. So why I'm really interested to talk to you about all of this, you know, the dreams course and just your perspective on dreams is you have a wealth of knowledge and so many years of just really not just studying and reading about it, but being passionate and being genuinely curious about this stuff. So I feel like you are an excellent guide, you know, and just to be clear, I think what I'm saying about consciousness preceding reality that goes for everyone, whether you realize it or not.

So if people can start using some of the insights that you've gleaned from when we go to sleep and have dreams and applying it to their lives now, as you described in the beginning, like external reality seems to be crumbling for a lot of people. It doesn't mean that the world is going to end in Armageddon, it's going to be some horrible catastrophe, although it could certainly be going that way, but it means something has to change. You mentioned it, like there's some transformational element of something going on here. So my question to you is, is what, A, what do you think of the idea of consciousness and awareness preceding our external reality, then B, what have you gleaned from the dream world that could be applicable if that's the case, and this is essentially a dream?

What do you, what are your takes on those two things? Well, you know, I read, did you read that Deepak Chopra book, the universe, we are the universe for the universe is us, and it's basically that consciousness pre-existed everything. Yeah, I, I, I shift to interchangeable spaces of consciousness, but it's consciousness is the only the grail. Yeah, I didn't, I haven't read any, yeah, I don't know when the, I go with Socrates that said the only true wisdom is the knowing you know nothing. The older I get, nothing, no, but my curiosity has increased and here's something interesting when I'm doing the dreams course with a dreamer I call a client of dreamer, because one thing is mandatory in my course is you do have to remember your dreams.

It's not a course teach you how to remember your dreams, plenty of books on that this is you already are a dreamer, but what's really interesting is kind of what we're doing now, really a hour long session is really a good conversation, but it's all coming from not the external, how are you, what do you do for a living, you know, who your parents, it's all the inside stuff, and the energy created by discussing the inside realities through our dreams, discovering. So if someone gives me a dream we'll find usually something in that dream that will be an issue of some sort in their life and then we discuss it, but the conversation is like it's no longer external it's no longer I care what job you're doing or not doing it's all talking to one another in this kind of inner language and it's so energizing, it's just, I'm not just for I hope the person that I'm doing that with, but for me, right, I always end every time it says, how do you compare your energy now at the end of our talk and at the beginning, and I would say 90% of the time the energy is up because we're finally talking about things that actually are authentic and matter, and that's what's important.

So what do you think the operative principle is that creates more energy? I also respect your Socrates opinion, I've gotten really, like I said, much more into the Greek philosophers and kind of their whole lineage and what they believed and some of the more esoteric aspects of it. And they were all mystics, the real big ones at the end of the day and my favorite Socrates thing is as much as he claimed that he didn't know, we all knew he knew a lot. He is in the Phaedra, which is Plato, he talks about when Socrates basically proves that reincarnation happens with the person by using the analogies of going to sleep and waking up, which dovetails nicely into your dreams course because these are, you know, they're different states of consciousness. No one has to look up in a book and read that to understand that when you dream and you go to sleep at night, what's happening isn't happening to your physical body, right?

But the validity of it obviously is there. So what do you think is the kind of catalyst for when people are talking to you or going through your dreams course, you know, and feeling more energized, feeling closer aligned to their individuation process? What do you think is happening? Like you've done this now a few times. Like what's the mechanism there? Well, the mechanism usually will begin with a dream of some sort, which dovetails into all sorts of tangents. And you finally are looking what tangent strikes a chord. And if strikes a powerful energized or repressed or whatever, that's where we said, that's where we discussed.

That's where we talk. That's where we open it up. And in opening it up, you effectively are kind of connecting or you're connecting one on one for one thing through a dream. And once you come to some kind of agreed explanation for a dream or a part of a dream, often by the way, it's not the whole dream that I interpret or am interested in. It's usually a small part, a word or a building or a person. And that's what kind of triggers it. But the reason the way I approach the dreams are every part of a dream, every character in a dream that you come across is some part of yourself. Okay, yes. And so what happens, you talk about the energy. It's an energy course in the sense that as we come to know and reclaim parts of ourselves that we have ignored or not known and take ownership for those fragmented parts of yourself.

It's like we're a shattered mirror and we're trying to put the pieces together. Well, as the pieces come together, your energy is being increased because the whole mosaic is now got, it's like a puzzle. You're putting pieces in and it is that thing moves toward wholeness. Your energy is becoming released and available to you in consciousness. Right. This makes a tremendous amount of sense. And that's, I think, exactly what's going on. This is what I think our world is too. Right. I think even when we look at someone like Donald Trump and we go, we're not like that. That's fucking horrible. Like, who would be like that? Well, the truth is if metaphysically you believe in any of the concept of non duality and we're all one.

Well, guess what? That is you too. There may be a tiny point zero zero one percent of your personality. That is Donald Trump. But this is what I'm realizing about this kind of mental flip of just being like, here's what I've been doing recently. I feel like you would appreciate this is I will catch myself throughout the day. Times good and bad and neutral and just say, this is the dream. The reality is my imagination. And, you know, yeah, that's a fun, fun, weird thing to do. But I found that if you kind of charge your imagination with a certain realness, sensory realness and emotional kind of resonance, you can start creating things in this reality without taking direct steps in this reality to make them happen. And essentially, when you step in, and I'm sure you're familiar, most people are familiar with this who have created and had strong visions of what they wanted.

And then they step into them. But this is something that's a replica and operative principle that since I discovered it like, geez, I don't know, 45 days ago, 60 days ago, the amount of times I've stepped into an actively imagined situation, sometimes within minutes, is really, really, really astounding. And eventually, it kind of just flips this whole, this is what I love speaking to you now, because when you say, I'm asking you, like, what are you doing the dreams course to life? What's that operative? And you talk about the mirror being placed back together and kind of putting these things of yourself and rectifying and shining a light on them and putting it back and feeling more energized. I truly believe this is what we're doing in this life as well. And when we forget that and we externalize and we do the dance that we can do internally externally.

It just slows us down a tiny bit. It's not like the worst thing in the world and you're like, you know, it's a sin and irredeemable. But I've noticed, you know, especially in the realm of politics, this happens so much. And it's not like I approve of really anything Donald Trump is doing. But the more I can recognize him as an aspect of myself, I can be morally, ethically, consciously opposed to his actions, but recognize that, you know what, there's a little Donald Trump in everyone. It's this weird kind of healing charging. You don't get depleted by it anymore. It's a weird thing I've noticed.

That's interesting because I'm going to come back to it, but Carl Jung talked about active imagination, which was what she said is valid as a dream. Yes, you know, you're lying in bed and you're not asleep, but you're a machining a different world, creating a different. And he would say, you know, if he had patience and things, he would analyze and deal with the active imaginations as much as the dreams. The other thing I wanted to say about what you said before about the Donald Trump, I think it's really interesting because what I said about individuation, it's actually not only just figuring out who you are, but it's integrating opposing elements of your personality.

Right. And that's why you buy the Trump. Trump is kind of the negatives or the narcissistic, the dark, that side of himself, but we've seen this side, we've sold this in Hitler, we've seen this in the world forever. You know, it's not new. And that darkness ultimately has to belong to us as a species. We have cruelty in us. We have darkness in us. Many, many thank God people have far less darkness and far more light. Most people are pretty good, but nevertheless, it's not until you accept your own nonsense. Your own darkness in your own light and realize that they're integrated is one. You know, that's, that's where all the individuation comes when you finally aren't fighting the opposites, but you're accepting them as different elements of the same thing.

You're not trying to be all, all light. Yes. And you're not all dark. Yes. Okay. So I think up as a reminder to take a look at your own self in every situation you're in every single day. You're given an opportunity for growth, your choice in patients standing in line in a bank, getting mad at someone for some reason, failing to go and apologize when you should apologize right away. Right. Doing thoughtful things without looking for recognition. These are the things that build us up and affect everything in us, including the dreams and everything. This is why this is why the patient, the people I want the dreamers I want to come are often just the people that feel disjointed. They're not terrible people. They're not horribly neurotic people.

They're people that don't feel in sync and they know there's more, they're seekers, and I want the seekers. I want the seekers, and I want to be part of that to make them to let them know that it's okay being where they are right now. It's okay enough to have all the answers. This is a lifetime process that, by the way, you're in a different world than you were two or three or four years ago. I'm in a time of life with different things going on, my own unfolding of my own individuation continues, as she does. Of course, and I think that's exciting. I love that. I love it too. I also love that at least from a metaphysical standpoint and my conception of what life is.

As I've moved from different idea or feeling or whatever it is, I've been able to integrate and piece them together in a way that doesn't feel forced or just the human compulsion to make patterns of things. But I think reveals just slightly more of the most sliver of understanding of what we get about that's going on in this world. People can create on that. Things do not stay the same. I think learning how to deal with that reality in this world and having some perspective on it and especially using dreams, which I mean being able to go and use something that is unconsciously generated. You didn't devise it with your conscious mind to get to the bottom of something.

I think it's a very powerful tool because what it does is it teaches us the importance of direct experience and relying on ourselves to get meaning and understanding out of things. I forgot that Jung spoke about active imagination. Let me just tell you this technique so you can hear it. I strongly encourage you to try it in anyone you know and care about them to try it too. I'll preface it by saying the only ethical framework that... Let me just say this. It's a neutral technique, meaning that you could use this for really great things or you could use this for really fucked up things. There is no perspective on it that this only works for good stuff.

I think an ethical framework or guidelines before going over it is somewhat useful because it's a pretty powerful thing and it's worked for me. That said, I think it's harder to do fucked up things with this. People can naturally do it, but intentionally it gets more difficult. But anyway, here's the technique. Let's give me the ethical framework. Golden rule and know thyself. Those are the only two things that I really think are important for using this. One of those things, know thyself is essentially in a nutshell what your dreams course does. That's why I think it's really going to be effective for you because you're really teaching people how to get that one know thyself, you know, individuation process started.

For me, the person you were describing in their 20s and early 30s, that was me. I completely relate to who this is targeted for and who you're trying to help. Here's the technique. Before you go to sleep at night, you enter in that state right between sleeping and going to sleep, right before there. You're still somewhat consciously aware, but you haven't quite gone into a dreaming unconscious state. It's called the hypnagogic state. A lot of people are familiar with it. In the morning, if you're really drowsy, that's called the hypnopompic state. Both are valid, but you could do anything to get into this state at any point in the day.

So if you wanted to have a sip of alcohol, if you wanted to smoke a joint that makes you sleepy, if you wanted to do anything that gets you into that state, that's valid. There's no, like, holy way to get into this state and then this is how it works. That's the only state you're going for. It's a drowsy, like, bordering on sleep state. So you do that, and then this is where your stuff comes in. You need to figure out, in the truest sense of the word, what you want the most in your life. What you want the most from life, what is your biggest desire, your wish, your passion, and you need to go through until you are very clear about what you would like to see happen in this world.

And there's no imagining going on. You're just thinking of, you know, what this is. So then as you're going into this drowsy state, what you're going to do is in your imagination, we all know how to do it, just imagine things. In this hypnagogic state, you imagine a scene that implies what you desire or wished for has happened. It's already happened, so it's going to be a scene that follows the thing already happening. And what you would say you wanted a lot of people for your dreams course, right? So you would see, you know, a lot of subscribers, you know, on your email listing. Oh my gosh, a lot of people want to sign up, and then you would talk to your wife or someone else you love, or someone and say, "Oh my gosh, all these people signed up, this is incredible."

So that's a scene you would imagine in your mind. And what you want to do is charge that scene, which is much sensory detail and vividness as you possibly can. So make it essentially as real as you can to mimic this world, realer if you can, and incorporate all of your senses in it. So that's the next step. And it's going to be a relatively compact scene. And then the other thing you're going to do is then load it with the emotions and feeling, typically positive, that's what you'd be going for, loving emotions into this imaginal scene. So imagine how you would really feel that if you imagine this thing, then it happened.

How would you feel? It would be a pretty crazy sensation. So you do that, and then you go to sleep, or you get up out of the chair, or whatever it is, and then another important part, and people have different debates on this. I'm a firm believer that you shouldn't take any direct steps outside of what you would normally do. So you need to be honest with yourself to make what you desired happen. So that means if you want to be a successful musician, keep making music, but don't try to then make connections with people. Don't try to climb the charts and send out a lot of emails or contact a bunch of people.

Don't do any of that, because the reason I recommend not doing that is because then you'll have a bridge of incidents that you can say, "Oh, well, this is why it happened." It wasn't because I imagined it didn't happen. But what will happen, regardless of whether you do that, if you really believe this and do this every night, or until it happens, is eventually your imagination constructs a series of events that makes this thing happen. And you'll literally walk into the thing you imagined. And if you believe that it's only going to be somewhat like you imagined, that's what you'll walk into. But if you believe that the exact thing you imagined will happen, and you really feel and know that, and there's this kind of weird point where you know something is valid.

You know, I've experienced it multiple times with things that haven't happened, and when it happens, you'll know it, and this is an operative power. I don't know what else to call it that I've vetted and experienced before I knew about it, and then subsequent to knowing about it, and it 100% works is all I can say. And I think it applies to literally everything. So what gives reality, its substance, or stable, imaginal acts, that includes gravity, that includes the idea of karma, that includes the idea of anything everyone has ever thought up or seen in this world. What I do, and I will add to this, I think, not I think, I'm very confident that the source that upholds this kind of operative law, or whatever it is, is a very loving, generous, like it's a very loving, unconditional love type thing.

It's not some weird tricky fuck around thing that's "Oh my God, are we existentially fucked forever?" It really feels like there's substance that actually delivers and does this stuff. So essentially what I'm saying is that I think the "I amness" of our mind, that sense of "I" that we all have inside of ourselves, I'm quite certain that's what people refer to as God, as source, as energy, as consciousness. That is literally in all of us creating what we perceive in external reality. And as I've kind of subscribed to this idea and used this technique, I've just been blown away. And it's reality functions not all the time, but a lot of times much more like a dream than what we're used to. And then on top of that, I'll just say, I think this is happening for everyone regardless of whether they want it to or not. So it's at least a good idea to try it.

Well, the reality is that most people dream for five dreams at night, and most people in our society, which is not an inner society, it's an outer society. Yeah, very much so. The value is not inside, that you're "Oh look, I'm all, you know, I have Nirvana and I've reached it." And yet in this world that we live in, you're kind of considered a loser. And I think that the fact that we don't listen to our dreams, you know, we don't, they have no validation in the world is why I trust dreams, because the world doesn't make any sense. And I'm going to trust that inner world that's coming from whatever the universe has your back kind of feeling that if you could plug into that, which is I'm reading that book by Gabriel Bernstein, quote, the universe has your back.

And it's basically saying exactly what you just said, whatever this all is, it's in us, we are it. We're not, we're not Noah and Stephen with our personality traits. It's way beyond that. We're leaves on a tree that are connected to something much bigger. And once we surrender to that feeling, then our lives can start losing the anxiety because all of the anxiety is basically the ego fear. The mind is brilliant. That coming up is starving all the time to make plans, make up fears, make up, make up stories where the body is forever always making miracles to magic. How you're walking around and what the chemistry takes of the trillions of cells inside you orchestrated and coordinated together to make you lift your arm or to smile or to have a thought or have an active imagination is simply unspeakably brilliant.

Right. And we develop is constantly undercutting that. And that negative mind thing is what a lot of the and a lot of my course is about. It's learning to quiet that mind to not give it, you know, see it, recognize it and move on because you're, you're, it's limiting you, it's limiting your very essence of who you are and you're connected to connection everywhere. So I'm all but I'm going to do do that tonight. I love that. Oh, it works. Go ahead. Let me, you know, I was going to say, because I think it's a good thing to try to figure out, you know, this last year is the first year of doing the course and when did I learn from that kind of thing about dreams and people can't.

Number one, women tend to be more interested in this world than men. Interesting. Which is whatever the reason that I've come across that a number of times which I wish I had an all male dream group. I think it'd be absolutely fascinating. I have, I know some people who I'm going to put in touch with you who I think you'll really appreciate who are very much interested in their dreams. I'm, I'm sure many of them will hear this and hit you off. I get in touch with them. I'm just saying there will be a tendency to have my experiences been the seekers that I've been reaching. I've been looking or looking for purpose. By the way, that is the purpose I've arrived at what I'm doing now, talking with you and about the course.

That is my purpose. I've lost a lot of interest in interest in a lot of things. Just to interest me in the world is kind of shedding of things I used to do and realize that's not where I am right now. Where I am right now is discovering my purpose at this moment in time and sharing it with people as I've had that shared with me. That's the code. If you have a mentor that has done something for you, then you need to be that mentor, not need to be. You will be that mentor for someone else down the line. That's the kind of universal code. So for me, the prerequisites of anyone that I work with is first, you have to remember your dreams.

I'm not interested in that. That's not me. You have to come with dreams. Maybe one or two, maybe three a week, whatever, but you have to be able to make reference and all the people I've worked with are doing that and it makes it much more intriguing. The second one is you must be hungry for change within you. You must be starving, or as one of my clients said, after a session, I feel hydrated. I feel inner hydrated. I love that expression because you're hungry to be different. You don't want to stay in the right. This is all tangent, but dreams really fall into three categories. One is the residue of the day you just had the anxiety or the tension or whatever good things.

It kind of gets rid of those stories for the day. It kind of cleans itself out as a clean, clear slate for the next day. The second type of dream is the one that it's kind of your own personal mythology, what you're walking around thinking the world is. That's based mainly on your childhood. The third is the deeper stuff, the search for the self, the spiritual realization of that part of you that is beyond your personality. What's interesting is most of the people that I deal with are still so deeply hung up with the negative view of themselves from childhood. They can't change it. It's so powerful. If you think about it, when we come out on the planet and you've got two young babies in your life, it's so powerful.

Don't tell me that now. Don't tell me that now, my fucking toddlers. No, I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm joking. Of course I know this. So with my course, it's not just a chatty course. I always had some action going with awareness. Put it into play. For example, one of the clients I had wanted to travel, but this came out in a dream, her passport. She didn't have her passport available, needed to renew it. The assignment for me was get the passport done. Your dream is about travel wanting to explore. You have a dead passport. The way to activate it is go tomorrow and get the passport. When you have a dream, you have awareness of what's inside you. It's not enough to go. Oh, that's nice. You need to make a step forward, which allows the validation of your dream to take reality in this world.

I'm a doer. I'm not. I'm not. I don't have a lot of patience for permanent paralysis. People that are addicted to addicted to negativity, and they don't really want to say they want to give it up, but they're not really prepared to give it up. That area is the biggest area that I deal with. As we break through that area, the dreamer can now move much closer to her or his own path that they want to take in light. Okay, you got to break. You got to go. Let me ask you this. Let's say I say exactly what you just said, but say to you that applies to waking life, not just our dreams. I really believe because I really think it really is. This is really a dream. Here's the thing. I don't want to convince someone that we're going to start flying around and all the magical things that happen in our dreams are going to happen in this waking life.

I think enough people believe that's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. I don't believe that's going to happen. It won't. But I think when you use this technique, and here's another thing talking about trauma, because I love that you brought that up that a lot of people, this is a block that people know is real. I'm a parent now. I can see. You know this. You can watch the active trauma going on in a certain incident. You can say, "Oh, shit. This is definitely going to have some lasting repercussions." For instance, our toddler got very, very sick, very high fever just when we had a newborn at home, and we found it was very contagious and not a good virus for a baby, and the doctor told us he can't go near the baby.

Our older son is the sweetest kid I've ever met. All he wants to do is hug and love his brother. And one time he was about to sneeze, and he was coughing, and he was going near, and I went, "No!" And he lost his shit. And I'm like, "Oh, man, I know that one's embedded in there." However, this isn't just to tell. Sorry about how shitty a parent I am. What I'm saying is this is that I found another kind of imaginal technique that I have seen again through direct experience. I'm not just proselytizing this stuff and saying, "Oh, this is the best in evangelizing it because it's new. I've used it. It's worked. It's crazy."

This idea is, let's say there is childhood trauma. Let's say there's something you remember being very traumatic. This doesn't even have to be when you're a kid. It could be at any point in your past. You do the same exact technique with the sensory vividness, the imagining, the feelings, and you just change it. And it doesn't mean that the person, let's say there's another person you had a disagreement with, you don't go to the person in real life and be like, "We never had that fight." They're like, "Yeah, we never had that fight." It still happened, but the internal impact of imaginally feeling yourself into that really changes your state of consciousness.

We were talking about right before air. I was telling you all the crazy shit that was going on in my life objectively. I've noticed for the most part, see if Alexis agrees with this, but for the most part, I've been pretty stable relative to how I normally would be in terms of emotional reactions. I really attribute that a lot to this kind of imagining myself out of these states when you talk about negativity and getting sucked into that. I mean, it happens to everyone in a lot of different aspects of life, but if you can feel yourself and imagine yourself or assume yourself or just pull yourself out of that state first of consciousness first, everything else starts to change.

It's a very hard thing to describe until you experience it enough, but I think it applies not only to dreams and interpret them symbolically to get insight into our unconscious part of our mind we can't see, but I think it's like an equally incredible tool for just our regular everyday. We woke up. We're in the earth world life. It's just been astounding when I apply those same principles to our everyday life. What happens? Is there an example that you have where that's worked to amazing? I mean, you kind of talked a little bit about your sick child, but is there another example where you've done something and then you had the experience and went, Oh, my God, this is working?

Yeah, I'll give you a minor and a major. I'll give you two majors in a minor. How about that? The minor one, the first one that really will start by this. The first night I started doing this was the first day I had ever asked myself, like, what do you want in life? I had gone through 35 years of life, getting married, a kid. I have an awesome life. I have awesome friends. I have an amazing family. Everything is pretty good, but I never sat down. I was like, you know what? This is what I want. Basically, the purpose of your course. I had never done that. So that was the first day I did that. And this is like 45 days ago. It's astounding.

I figured that out. So then I had some material to work with for my imaginal scene. And what didn't happen right away is that thing didn't happen the next day. But what happened the next day is I got a series of phone calls and interactions of people telling me about the most incredible synchronicities just objectively, like, holy shit, like one of them I can't speak about because there's an NDA involved. And it's like a real NDA, not like a bullshit. Like everyone wants you to sign NDA. It's like, oh my God. But there just a lot of people came out of the woodwork to tell me about all these weird synchronicities.

So that was the first thing that happened. The second, the thing that first imaginally happened that kind of like really caught my attention. This was when Alexis was still pregnant, she was going to and from work. And she had to go to a doctor's appointment one day and she needed to go back to work after that. And it was like a far drive and she was pretty pregnant. And I could just tell it was really stressful for her. And I told her, you know, I was like, yeah, that sucks. She was like, yeah, I know. So then I was doing this imagining stuff. I was doing it during the day. I was just like really into it. It was like fresh for me then. And I was doing it during the day. And I imagined in her boss's voice, in her boss's head telling herself, you know what?

I actually went with Alexis to a doctor's appointment last week. I think she should be able to work from home. She can't take the day off, but she can work from home. And I was like, all right, that sounds like something that is definitely going to happen. So then I get out from my stuff within 30 seconds. Oh, and I imagine this. I imagine this is the scene I imagined to confirm it. I imagined Alexis calling me, my wife calling me and saying, guess what? And then I'd go, did your boss give you let you work from home? So that's what I imagined specifically. So I get up, wake up from out of the state within 30 seconds, a minute tops. Alexis, I got to see Alexis calling.

I'm like, oh, shit, it's happening. I pick up the phone. She goes, guess what? I go, your boss gave you there. And she goes, how do you know? So then it was like, all right, that's weird. Maybe it's just like this pre-cog little thing. But that's just like a little psychic thing you could look at from a number of perspectives. I wasn't completely sold, even though I thought it was interesting. So here are the two big things that have worked. So our son Gabriel, who was born, had these, the doctors freak you out about jaundice and babies. Like, they really get your freaked out about these levels called Billy Rubin levels.

And the reason is it's not because they're assholes, not just because the medical systems fucked up. It's because there's preventable conditions, 100% preventable that if these levels get too high, it can indicate there's a problem with the liver. But they got you all freaked out and all these doctors freaked out for accountability purposes about these numbers and these levels of what were going on. So the first day Gabriel was born, everything was fine, no worries whatsoever. He was 15 days early, so they're just like kind of looking at him. Second day, I get pulled into this room. I'm in this like very open state. And this girl goes to me, you know, Gabriel, you know, I feel like I know you.

She just, this is really weird interaction. She's a nurse. She goes, I feel like I know you. I'm like, that's a weird thing to say. She checks his levels with this thing on his head and she goes, oh, that's, that's a little high. So from then on started this three day saga of his levels going crazy high, we had to put him under this blue light and we're pretty much freaking the fuck out at this point because it's looking like he's spiking into like dangerous levels. He's early. So I tell Alexis, I'm like, listen, we got to try this imagining stuff. Like, just try it with me. Let's picture a number. Let's try to bring it down if we can.

And we just started picking numbers. And I started telling my mom and other people. And within a few days, the numbers went down. Then we came home. Then we kind of forgot about it. Then the numbers started going up again. Then we started doing the imagining. Then they spiked back down to the point where the doctor was like, it's fine. Now, you can anyone can look at that and say, hey, this is a regular pattern that happens to some babies. It's not a big deal. Here's two others. The other thing I specifically imagined was we were throwing this event, this ambient stargazing event that happened last Friday, July 5th.

And this is an event that was pretty much dependent on nice weather and clear skies to be able to see all the stars. We had like guided astrology. It was fucking amazing. But week of the event, it was going to rain. It was like 60, 70% rain, not even a question of clouds. It was just going to be raining. So of course, there are clouds overcast, no light whatsoever. We almost canceled the event on Tuesday, three days before, because it was staying the same. And then I told my friends about the imagining thing. We all started doing it. And then against all odds, the night of, it was the clearest skies like anyone had ever seen. It was fucking insane.

And here's the last thing. My dad had a little heart incident this past Friday, and usually I would freak the fuck out. Any death in the family close to me, I just intuitively always have thought I'm going to freak out when that happens. And maybe I will, maybe I won't, but that's just what it's felt like. But as soon as I got the news, I found out a day after, after this event, I just described actually. And he had been here and I had seen him and he looked fine. When I got told he was in the hospital, there was, I just quickly, very quickly, I intuitively imagined and knew that there was nothing physically wrong with him.

And my dad is someone who, if you looked at him, probably wouldn't think that. He's like heavy, and like, he smokes. Like, he's the person you expect to find blockages. And you can tell by the tone of my voice, he's getting discharged from the hospital today. They did a catheterization, looked at his arteries, and found that there was minimal to no blockage, nothing needed, not even medications. So again, you can look at all of this stuff and say, well, it would have happened anyway, but I can tell you from my own direct experience, the felt aspect of my state of consciousness, the equanimity, the knowingness, the, just kind of, I don't know how to describe it, just recognition that this is an imaginal scene that's playing out.

You know, there is going to be a time where both my parents die, and I'm not going to imagine it in a way, that's not what I'm describing. But what I'm saying is, is when you use this power within the kind of context of our reality, it works in a weird way. And I think health-wise, too, this has tremendous ramifications, but first people have to figure out how to use it internally. So it's just been nuts. I mean, there's so many other ones. This is just in a short period of time with a newborn, so that's all you can remember. It's, it's, once you come back to what we were talking about the, and of course having an inside conversation, it's an inner.

Once you're connected to that inner conversation and that act of imagination that you're doing is exactly that. It's, it's tapping into your unconscious. It's connecting to the powers of the universe. The thing that the, the, the creating, you're part of it. So you're, when you think it or whatever, then you're affecting it. You're, you know, that's my hope that once you, once you can have inner dialogue with people, with someone, anything is possible. I really believe that. Because you're now connected to some power that I know nothing about. Don't need to put a name on it because whatever, but it's in us.

That's right. And we spend a lot of our lives ignoring that power. And that's where we lose our energy. That's where we lose a purpose. That's where we're all cutting up in the externals. And then they wonder why they're having a nervous breakdown or suicide rates are high or whatever blah, blah, blah on. Because the gift that we've been given is being totally ignored all the time. That's right. And so you're connected. And by the way, what we're doing is purpose. You have this, putting this conversation on is affecting your, what you've been describing will affect me. Because we're not talking about, okay, and what kind of shoes did you buy the baby.

And, you know, where did you go on for, for, for the July? We're, we're having inner dialogue. And man, when you get to inner dialogue and then you're willing to act on it or be part of it and believe in it and surrender to it, synchronicity will follow in many, many forms. Yeah. And I also add to that, like you're doing it anyway. That's what I didn't realize. Like a lot of people, even people who wouldn't consider themselves mystical or inner aware at all. Like, let's use Donald Trump again as an example. I firmly believe the reason Donald Trump is president is not that he's actively aware that his imagination is super strong, but that's what he's doing.

His vision for himself as president was greater than all of our collective vision of him not being president. And a lot of us were like, what the fuck? But this time around, what's been interesting is a lot of my friends who don't like Donald Trump kind of have this weird feeling that he's going to win again. I don't know if he's going to. Everything is malleable. We can jump into a timeline where that doesn't happen. I firmly believe that. But I really think high achieving people in all facets of what we deem the external material world are using this principle. They wouldn't think of it like that, but this is the same principle that Nikola Tesla used to design and invent the AC conductor or AC energy.

Einstein did this for his theory of relativity. This is all literally how they saw in vision in imagination in whatever you want to call it. Things that substantially altered and changed our world and to think that we all don't have that ability is just wrong. And once you do this thing enough and realize this is pretty much a dream within certain parameters, there are certain laws that enough people believe in so they exist. You really, really have not ultimate power and control over people, but a greater degree of control of your own state of consciousness, which again, I posit affect your external reality.

They precede it. So yeah, I just feel like with your dream knowledge, combined with an operative technique, you know, and just to be clear, I think what you've been getting at too is like, I'm talking about that I amness as both our individual consciousness, your sense of Stephen, my sense of Noah, anyone's sense who's listening. And this greater source, you described it as the leaves of the tree, which I love, and then the tree itself. We're also the tree itself. That's just not our individual sense of who we are, but we are still the tree and can do a lot of the things the tree does. Can we necessarily support an entire other thing? No, maybe if we get cut off and fall day ground and plant a new seed we can, but otherwise, you know, there's not the easiest thing to do, but we're the same.

And if that's true, that means literally anyone can try this. And that's what I like about the technique aspect of it. It's one thing to conceptually think about this and feel it and know it, but if you can empirically test it and be like, all right, I'm going to do this crazy shit I heard on a podcast. And then it starts to work. Like, whoa, that's a game changer. So, yeah, it's pretty cool. As it is a game changer, when you dream of a friend that is having trouble and you pick up the phone next day, not to say I jumped about you, but to say, how are you? Yeah. You're activating the inner world. When you activate, that's why action for me is critical. No change happens without action for it.

Yeah, this is most of us are strangely, maybe since the nature of the beast. We live in a completely changeable world. I always, my line is I can't keep up with all the changes in my life. I can't, you know, just when you think you've painted the house and it's in good shape and a year later, something happens to the house and you have to go back and do it again. It's like, and this change, it never stays the same. And, you know, that, and yet, and yet, we hang on to these visions of ourselves in the world as if they were permanent. Yes. You know, as if you were, this is who you are. So, so many people are fighting through that time trying to get to their place of individuation.

The earth is undergoing individuation both physically in terms of the climate. And I think in terms of idea, we're, we've come into a really critical time. By the way, in 2016, a hundred million Americans did not vote. Yeah. And I point out that, that one of the visions, if you don't have a vision that democracy is good and it's important, and you let it slide. And it doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter because all politicians are crooked and don't vote. You're going to get what you deserve. And that's one of the things that Trump, I'm sure, is counting on is that people's indifference. And less people voting more of an opportunity for him to win.

But he don't make any mistake in Jungian terms. He is the shadow who is in position of the self. He is in, he's a shadow figure that should never have power because they're basically just destructive, he's satanical. But isn't it, isn't it, isn't it a reflection of our nation's kind of psyche since its inception? Like, to me, he's the perfect representation of the shadow. Yes. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's like, you know, it's, I mean, there are a lot of things I could sit here and be negative about. But yes, he's the shadow and it's what we're calling, that's what's being called. But so therefore, can you control that? Not really, except when you vote, but you can work on yourself.

Right. You can discover your shadow. You can make sure your shadow doesn't take over your life and ruin things. You can become aware and conscious and suddenly living out of your inner life with active imagination, with your dreams, and start putting them out into the world so that your soulness, your who you are, is having an impact on someone. That's the game. I mean, the game for me at this point in my life is to have an impact. Yeah. And the people I take and I don't take, you know, it's a good lead in because people say, well, how do I reach you or how do I do that stuff? Or what happens with it? Well, it begins with a conversation for an hour.

And at the end of that hour, if I think this is a good, you know, energy relationship and the willingness to dream, the ability to dream, the willingness to change and to activate the experience, the inner experience is there, and it takes you on as a client. And then I never talk to you again until you do little assignments. So this case would be pick up reading material, which is a dream journal to pick out a dream journal to. I hand out a kind of a 30 page brief overview of dreams. You buy Herman Hesse's Damian, maybe Jeremy Taylor's wisdom of your dreams. And then you're going to learn 10 young in terms and they're going to redeem me and then you're going to be writing dream memoir.

And all this is, I move forward to the degree that you move forward. So, for example, if you contact me and I don't hear you for six weeks, that probably isn't going to work out. You know, you know, didn't have enough impact, but the course really has moments that you do that. And then someone says, well, what are you charging? And I go, it's free. It's free. Yeah. But there's one with one trick. And that is the trick is it costs $10,000. You can just send me $10,000 today. I see a really happy future for you and your dream. No, I ask people to do a one time donation of what they can afford. I could be 10 bucks. It could be 30. It could be 100. And they have to do that before I begin working to the Michael Fox Parkinson foundation, which I picked out for reasons of my own.

And so I'm in the early stages of Parkinson's. And I'm not on medication. And I'm mentoring with an amazing man in Israel. And I'm doing a lot of dancing and active stuff. Awesome. So it's all, it's all good. But I want to, there's no cure to this problem. A lot of people have it out and order the actor has it. No, I didn't know Alan Alda had it. Yeah, he just, he came out with that about, oh, about two or three months ago. And, you know, it's a progressive but slow moving. And they don't have a cure, but this institution, the Michael J Fox is really working on it. So I ask people to give something to that, which will make them feel good. They're doing something good. And then that's it. There's no more payment. There's no more three installments.

There's nothing. It's just you doing your thing. And when I think you are on that path and trust yourself enough, we're done. That's really cool. That's like the anti, it's like anti therapy, payment structure. Yeah. It's like, you do pay me once a week forever, no matter what. Just feel like I don't care. You know, I've reached that point where I just don't care. Like, like, if suddenly, you know, I had an imagination. I had 10,000 people who I'd have to be organized, but it still works for me that you do what you want. I think to a donation. I mean, it calls that I like. It's more important to me than send me 50 bucks or so many hundred bucks. Well, I found when people had that intention and aspiration with business activities that it often exceeds their expectations because I truly believe that's how things are going to function in the coming years and will need to function because if we're just slaves to the corporations that have been created by people and then they take over, we find ourselves where we are now.

So I think that's a direct antidote to a lot of the problems we see, which emanate from the business world and professional world a lot of the times and it's understandable for a lot of reasons. It comes from those decisions like you make a decision to do something for free and then you get a client and then that client ends up. Oh man, I've made tons of money doing that job. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, once you open your world up, you don't know who or what is coming in, but you can figure it out. And by the way, by the way, speaking of your premise of waking up as a dream. Yeah. That's interesting because that makes you when you meet someone in that particular day that comes your way. It's, it's, it's a message point. It's an opportunity for you to see something about that encounter that applies in some way, other way to your life or whatever.

In other words, you're treating the statement is that others, others in your life are merely mirrors of you, meaning that if you see that behavior, then you become aware of your behavior, your behavior, your, you know, what is the moral compass. What's the goal to rule here? Gee, they're breaking it. No, it's listening to all this stuff on TV about this billionaire pedophile guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I was thinking like, man, you get away with nothing. No, you're clear. These days you don't. Oh, donzo. Oh, not just his, not just his. There's like so many politicians and other celebrities who are going to get rolled into this day. It's fucking terrible. I didn't, who's a pedophile? I didn't know so many pedophiles.

So that's the time we live in. If you told us 10 years or 15 years ago, and all this, the amount of corruption we're in, that's why what we're talking about why going into the inside world, why exploring, knowing it is absolutely critical. Yes. Yes. And does that mean that you've been passive? No, it means that you're going to go inside to figure out who and who you are, and what is your purpose on this planet, and then go do that purpose and stop doing what everyone else is wanting you to do. Rest of your life. Yeah. I think this is what I'm interested to see. And I think it's really going to be a nice alley hoop is I think the imaginal techniques combined with your dreams course is like a solid slam dunk, just because I love that.

I really, really do because it's just like the tool, you'll be able to believe you can create a here's here's the thing. If you know what you want to do, it's sometimes hard to add the belief in that you can do it, even if all the talents and skills and signs and everything are there for you. I think if you start to teach yourself or realize that you can do whatever you want, and I don't, again, you have to really believe it. So do you really going to believe you're going to grow a horn out of your head? You're probably not going to be a believe that. So it's not going to happen. But you know, knowing who you are, know thyself, and within the confines of the golden rule, like do whatever you want that combined with something like your course, which kind of ramps up the, you know, unconscious aspects of your dreams and symbolism.

I really think could work for people. And it's like free. No, we're not charged. There's no upsell here. No, no, no, no, no. But I think that's a really good, because what I like about it is it takes the inner life and then it, it takes the same concepts and applies it to the outer life realizing you're receiving opportunity and messages all day long. Oh, I know this. So, as opposed to this, the reality and I'm at a gas station and I'm getting gas. What is it at the gas station? Just being aware of your environment being conscious of your environment and who's coming through it. And not judging it, but just taking it in is, is, is a great way to approach the conscious part of our lives. Well, it's, I love that. Yeah, it's the reality of the situation. So I know this not just because of recent discoveries and ideas, but when I experienced life is one giant synchronicity for three months in my early 20s.

This is exactly what was going on. I was a, it was not. I think what synchronicities are a lot of the time is a recognition of a pre-imaginal event that was then out pictured by our imaginations into the world that totally mess with our rational and analytical minds be like, wait, what? How did that happen? That's weird. And I think what I essentially did, I don't know how. I don't, I, you know, think something preceded the physiological aspects of it given what I was on an LSD for a very short period of time. I think I just dampened the parts of my brain that were able to, you know, rationally, cognitively put together everything and I stayed in this imaginal state where when I was imagining something, instead of it like taking, you know, a day or two or a month or a week or an hour, it was like right then, like within a few minutes at most.

And it was such a long period of time that I was in this state that I got to go through regular states of consciousness as well. Like, what the hell? Like, this is weird. Like, I'm a person. Like, what is this? Here's some information I didn't know before. And what you were describing about being at the gas station, every single encounter took on that symbolic resonance in a deep, deep way. And, you know, by virtue of that, I would meet a much broader range of people. But I wasn't approaching them. They would approach me. I didn't have to go up and talk to someone to expand it. So it's a pretty -- it's a phenomena that I'm well versed in and now feel having used it and also recognizing the validity of dreams and, you know, the pioneers of dream research and people who looked at them as tools to our consciousness and unconscious.

Like, there's a lot of groundwork that's already been laid for how, if this is a dream within a certain context, we have some maneuverability in it. So, yeah. >> I think it's great. Do we have time for me to tell one integrated synchronous story that I probably -- but I always come back to it because I think it sums up certainly what we're talking about and definitely my approach. This is back in the 70s, and I was very young, and I was coming out of a relationship and was very depressing. I had no purpose. So I was in that vulnerable 20s time where you don't know what you've meant to do in life.

And I was doing studying dream therapy with a wonderful mentor named Elizabeth Forsberg. Let's not forget the mentorship that those who are truly going on the path of individuation, here's something they can guarantee when you're taking on that path. You will come across mentors. You will -- mentors will enter your life as guides to help you for sure. No question about it. >> There, get the phone. Get the phone. Yeah. >> No, no. Sorry, phone. You'll stop in a second when you move it. >> Great. >> Yeah. >> All right. Continue. I could understand, but I know people listening to me like I cannot hear anymore. All right. Continue with the story of this.

>> Okay. Sorry. So I drove down to Montpelier, Vermont, to do the dream sessions once a week, and I looked at this mountain, which is called Camel Somp, and it's also known as the Leon Cucinan, which in France, the Crouching Lion. And I looked at it. I said, you know, that is an amazing mountain. I would love to climb that. It was winter. And as I went back and forth over the weeks, I came to me that I said, if I could climb that mountain in winter by myself, everything would be fine. It's like your imagination. I imagined myself at the top of that mountain, and at the top of the mountain would be this release, this freedom.

And so I said, and this is what's important. You got to follow those instincts if they keep going to you. If they don't go away, they keep saying climb the mountain, climb the mountain. And finally, you climb the mountain. That's a critical moment because now I'm activating the inner life that is going in. And up and out, and I go. And I see a little house over to the right with smoke coming out of it. It's like the middle of January. It's very cold, but a clear day. And I stop at the cabin, knock on the door. And I can see a man in there that turned out, was on the emphysema and was on our kitchen and his wife. And he had been a jazz musician and all this stuff, and this is where they were living.

And look, I've been up the mountain, but if I don't come down by three, could you notice someone? Because I don't think I will need help. And they said, of course, meanwhile, take these snow shoes, and here's a map, and off I went. And off I went. And at the very top of the mountain took me three or four hours to get to the top. It was bare. It was not it was snow on it, but it was windy was 50 mile an hour winds and I crawled the last 300 yards to the top. And then I stood up and opened my arms and just suddenly felt this incredible confidence that everything was going to be all right. That it was okay. And I just screamed into the night. I'm sure I said, I think I just screamed, fuck me. I'm alive. And I walked. I came, tried came down. This is true story.

Came down the path and had tea with the couple, the jazz, jazz player and his wife at their house. And then for every season, for the next few years, I would climb that mountain and stop and have tea with them. And I flash forward. Now, remember, I have no idea what I'm going to do in my life. But I had this moment on the mountain 10 years later. I'm in Los Angeles. I'm an actor on a TV show called New Heart. The show is set in Vermont. So this thing that is taking place was actually called on camera. I'm sitting at a table. I'm reading the paper, which is the current paper. They give you the current paper. So in case the camera picks up, it doesn't say San Francisco Chronicle.

Rare in Burlington, Vermont. So it had the paper. And Bob Newhart was upstaged having a scene that he was going to come over to me. So I was just reading the paper waiting for him to come. So, I'm hearing the page, and they're in the obituary is my jazz player. We died that day, the day before. So I'm discovering, while I want to show and tea about Vermont, I'm discovering about the man who let me the snowshoes. I discover his obituary on the paper in Los Angeles on the show that he had just died. It all came full circle. Up on that mountain. I had no idea where it would lead me, but I had faith that it would lead me somewhere. I had no idea about Los Angeles. But there was a synchronicity in that very moment on camera saying this all began with the day you climbed the mountain.

Yeah, well, the symbolism of the mountain there, obviously. I mean, listen, to me, obviously looking at the imagination stuff, it sounds like a pretty good dream. So, all right, let's, I'm going to have links to everything for your dreams course. So people will be able to click them. But if people want to, they're like, all right, I'm sold. What do they do to get in touch with you? Well, I think there's the web, which is, I think, the dreams.com. I think that's what it says. And if they go there, they'll effectively find my email that you so kindly help me put together. And there's my email, which is csmoke@optonline.net.

And they should reach out to me. That's how it's been working this past year. It's cool. If any of this stuff that we've been talking about resonates, the worst that, you know, that's your first moment of bravery. Reach out. We'll have a conversation and either that will lead to the next decision of whether this is the right course for you and right course for me. If it is, then there we go. All right, sounds good. Let's end with the three questions and then one question. So four, I guess I should probably start taking four questions. First question, favorite color. Green. Favorite number. Nine.

Favorite animal. Eagle. Nice. Practical tip that has helped you in your life that you could share with people listening. It could be anything. A practical tip? Yeah. When you're in the company of someone who knows more than you, shut up and listen. I'm so bad at that. That's a really good tip. We're taught. You know, so we can, you know, we can eat a room up, but that's what we do. No, but it's a really good tip. Steven, thank you so much for doing this. Let's catch up soon. Off air. Great. No. All right. I'll talk to you soon. Talk to you soon. Bye. (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music)

(music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) Thanks for listening to that episode. Go check out Steven at the link on this podcast. It's his email. I'm not going to just say it out loud. You can go check it out. If you're interested, those of you who get it, do it. A reminder on syncpodcast.com. There is a menu item that says, "Imagine." Let's say you don't believe in this really, or you kind of believe in it, but you're having trouble doing it. You can have me do it for you. Just tell me what's going on. I've gotten 10 of these in the past few days. I'm doing them. I'm doing them. It'll be really interesting when people start reporting back.

And when people do, maybe we'll aggregate some of those stories. Here's what's going to happen. Eventually, people will wake up to the fact that this is going on. If you're in the lead about it and your reality, it's going to be a smoother transition for you. We know that there are seemingly insurmountable odds and problems in the world. And that's not easy to overcome through logic and reason. If we did, we probably would have gotten there already. But we haven't. Maybe making progress. It depends who you're asking. Like Stephen Pinker or someone probably says, "Things are pretty good in the world, but it depends where you are."

So if we want to truly make things better, this is how we do it. And don't mistake using your imagination to affect reality as a specificity. That's not what it is. So don't make that misapprehension. That's it for this week. I will see you. Oh, let me say this, too. Just won't let it go. I'm going to do more episodes that are not Skype-based. Internally, I know and feel for this podcast to be what I want it to be. I want there to be more live conversations. Before I imagined, I was hindered by my geolocation and financial situation. No longer the case. That is no longer the case. So I'm going to make a firm commitment to you, the listener, and myself that the vast majority of episodes, unless there's someone very special and we can't connect in person, will be done with not on Skype and not remotely.

Because why? Why not just imagine them being in person? They're so much better. So that's what we're going to do. So for those of you who've stayed tuned to this, you know a little bit more about the show than the people who checked out. That's it. I will see you next week.