Ep. 37 - Dreams with Steven Kampmann

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To dream bar, check out the Apple Camomail flavor, my favorite, tell 'em Noah sent you. All right guys, thanks for listening and here is the episode.

This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity. (upbeat music)

Welcome to episode 37 of synchronicity. My guest this week is Steven Campman. You may remember Mikey Campman, who was a previous guest, if you are just tuning in for the first time, if you go back a few episodes, you'll see Mikey Campman. Mikey's awesome, I just had Jay Winegarten on, they're out in LA doing hilariously funny things with two wet crew and their own stuff. But Steven Campman is Mikey's dad. And Mikey actually recommended I speak with his dad because he knew that I was interested in Carl Jung and dreams and all this stuff that I'm into. And Mikey's a hell of a guy because he tipped me off to like one of the coolest people I've met in the last couple of years or so.

Before I get to Steven, you know what I do? If you don't know, I talk about the guest a little bit, say the name and then go do talk about other stuff. 'Cause this is a very organized operation I'm running here. But I did, I did wanna talk about a few things. So Steven Pressfield, you know Steven Pressfield is, he wrote the War of Art. One of my favorite books, if you don't know it, check it out, I will have a way for you to do that in just a second or two, but he has a new book out and it's called "No one wants to read your shit." And it's really good for anyone who is a creative artistic, I feel like we all are on some level.

But if you have any aspirations, especially from a writing standpoint, really great book and it's free, so you could just Google it. Steven Pressfield, nobody wants to read your shit and it's free, you don't even have to give an email, right? That's how free it is, that's really free. I highly recommend checking that out, which leads me to my next point. I put up a fairly extensive reading list on syncpodcast.com, S-Y-N-C podcast.com. Basically some of my favorite books from some of my favorite authors broken down by category. It's there, it's on the website. Go there on your mobile device, on your computer device, on whatever devices, your implant devices.

Go there and you can check out the whole reading list. It's just something that I thought would be cool 'cause a lot of people write to me and tell me their favorite books and I tell them my favorite books and now I can just say, hey, here are a lot of my favorite books, check 'em out. So I hope you enjoy that. The next thing, so this synchronicity generosity experiment is about to kick off. And by the time you're hearing this, it will have kicked off. So what this means is, here's what I've settled on. Here's the premise again, in case we don't know what I'm talking about. We're raising money, right, a undetermined amount.

I'm setting the bar right now at $500. I hope it's more than $500, but I think that's a substantial chunk of change that could hopefully help in some either someone's life who's going through a difficult time. So what I decided to do is set up a GoFundMe, specifically for these generosity experiments. I was toying around with the idea of collecting the money into an account and then sending that to a GoFundMe or somewhere else, but this seems like it's gonna be the easiest way after researching and reviewing this for the past month or so. So basically, here's what it's gonna be. You just donate via the GoFundMe.

We're not picking the person who are persons who are going to get this money until the end of August. That's how long this first one's gonna run for. I think that's plenty of runway to get this done and be cool. And then we're gonna collectively vote. And with all of your inputs, we're going to vote to basically decide where to send this money to. And I really, I think it's gonna be a cool thing. Like I know it's gonna be a cool thing. So that's essentially what is going on. So if you wanna participate in that, again, what we're doing is we're raising money for someone, we don't know who that person is yet, but we're gonna collectively decide where we're gonna send this money at the end of August.

And right now, it's the beginning of July. This is 2016, if you're in the future. And this is past, oh man, that was great, right? Went really well, super happy with it. But if you wanna participate in this, here's what you do. Go to Sink Podcast, S-Y-N-C, podcast.com/generosity. That's it. And I will have either decided, by the time you're hearing this, I will have decided whether that's a redirect directly to the GoFundMe or if there's a page with some information about it on the website. But not for you to worry about, just for me. Not even to worry about, it's gonna be cool. So yeah, that's going on.

I really encourage you to participate not only because it's a cool thing to do for someone else, but I think you'll find when you participate in these types of things, you open up little portals into other realms and things can start happening. Not guaranteeing that, but it has been my experience. Okay, so let's talk about Stephen Campman. Man, he's such a cool guy. And we speak about in this episode, basically, I mean, we talk about a ton of stuff. We have a mutual love for Carl Jung. A lot of our outlooks and perspectives on life and reality are very similar. But in particular, we talk about dreams.

And dreams are one of my favorite subjects, topics, things ever. I read about dreams all the time. I've kept various dream journals over my life. I find them to be fascinating. You'll know if you have any understanding of Carl Jung or have read him, dreams are a huge part of what he looked at to get insight on an individual psyche and then eventually the collective psyche. He, the symbolic forms that appear in dreams we see in religious and cultural and entertainment, things throughout the world, like we work on symbols or very symbolic creatures. And dreams are just, there are little portals into another way of being some people liken this life to a dream, an illusory world that we perceive as real.

There's a lot of different theories on dreams. So this episode, if you're interested in dreams, this is the one for you. Really, oh, I will preface this too. So I recorded this on FaceTime with Stephen and the quality, usually I have my microphone on. It recorded through my computer speakers. So the quality is, it's like a Skype conversation. I've cleaned it up, it's listenable. It's really not bad. But that is, not up to the regular standard of this show. But truthfully, this episode, man, Stephen is incredibly knowledgeable. He's basically dedicated his life, life's life to dream and he also, but he's done other stuff too.

Like he wrote the movie back to school, Rodney Dangerfield, love that movie. The one where Rodney Dangerfield's son is in college and Rodney Dangerfield goes back to school and is a diver, it's amazing, great movie. He had an entertainment career, he was a writer, he was on the New Heart Show. But his outlook on life, he's one of these people who seemingly, and just in talking with him, I know this is the case, who can tread in both worlds, simultaneously, without forgetting the responsibilities and perspective of either. That's really cool. When you meet someone who can do that and really is doing that, and we'll oscillate, of course, between each of those things at times.

Even if your only investigation into other realms is when you dream and some crazy stuff happens, that's still another world. So yeah, and I've also just to tie this into what I've been reading, oh, oh, I forgot. Oh, oh my god, I totally forgot. So book winner this week, hold on, I'm gonna look this up, I will pause this, okay, I'm back. The reason I diverge and got excited there is because this week's book giveaway winner is Patty, and she won a book, getting a book coming to you, Patty, called "Mind Beyond Death" by Polnope Rinpoche, or Zugchen, Polnope Rinpoche. And this book is really great, it's about barto states, if it's about in between, the states between life, and well, in between life and death is where we are now.

But after death into clear light stages, into the reburthing stage, into meditative states, and dreams, dreams is also a place, a barto state, it's an in-between place, like when you go to sleep and you wake up, this is one of Socrates' famous things where he says he likens dying and being reborn to going to sleep and waking up. So, yeah, dreams are barto states, according to Tibetan Buddhists, and I totally believe in that. And you can actually accomplish things according to certain schools of thought and dreams, like basically the purpose, as I understand it, of dream yoga is to basically lucid dream, get to a point where you realize you're dreaming, and then meditate, right?

Essentially for like the benefit of all sentient beings for yourself in the dream. So you're basically doing like double-time work. You're basically accumulating merit and helping yourself and everyone collectively and all sentient beings evolve by doing your work in dream land. So, dreams are cool, right? Stephen's cool. I am very confident you're gonna enjoy this episode. I am also definitely having Stephen back on sometime soon. Like I said, I've been speaking to him on the side. He's kind of like a mentor at this point. In our first conversation, he spoke about the importance of mentorship.

And I gotta say, people who I've had the privilege of learning from personally on one-to-one friendship relationships, like I've learned so much from those things, more than books, more than anything else. Those provide references and map posts and guides. And I would map posts, that's not a thing. Maps and sign posts, but seriously finding someone like Stephen, I don't look at the opportunity as a trivial thing. To know someone like him, his son is super cool. So basically, what else I gotta say? What else I had to say before this episode? Write and review? Listen, I gotta say this, I had so many wonderful reviews coming in for this podcast before June.

And so many, 30 plus of them, really great, awesome. And they've just dried up. And unless this show has gotten significantly worse, which I don't think it has, if anything, maybe just like a little bit better, I don't know how to reviews are stopping to come in. Again, I'm not 100% convinced that the reviews are the most important thing, but let's pretend like they are. So if you find any benefit, if you enjoy the show, if you don't turn it off, please, leave a review on iTunes. I'm assuming that that helps me. That's what people tell me. And I listen to those people. So that's it, right? If you wanna make a donation to sync podcasts, do that.

I got a little baby now. I've got to put food in the baby's mouth. I'm joking. I'm joking. There's operational costs associated with the show. Oh, and also one other thing, mind-pied network, right? If you haven't been paying attention, there's some cool stuff going on over there, some new podcasts coming out. Go check it out. I think there's gonna be some stuff you enjoy. But yeah, enough rambling from me. Without further ado, here is Stephen Cantman. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

Yeah, and I'm really happy, Mikey. I coincidentally, or not coincidentally, if this was a plan, but I did, I released Mikey's podcast today, the one I just did with him from a few weeks ago today, which I was really happy with.

Really, Grace, a good boy there. (laughing)

He's an interesting guy.

Yeah, he really is.

Yeah, he really is.

But yeah, and I'm really glad he connected us to, because he immediately, like right after we were done talking on that one, he's like, I think you would like to talk to my dad, 'cause he's like really into Carl Jung, and Hesse, and all these people, and I was like, okay, that sounds really interesting. And then I did, I went to your website, I checked it out, I found all these interesting tidbits. And I think we're definitely gonna have a fun conversation. And then I saw that you wrote back the thing about the dreams, and then you sent me the thing--

Yeah.

About, you know, where you visited Young Scrave, and where he's from, and Hesse's as well. And your wife Judith was, she was a really good filmmaker there. It was a--

She was a, yeah, she, she, when we came east, we brought all the children, we did this experiment where none of us, I'd never taught, and we ran a dormitory, and our kids went to school with us. I wrote the movie back to school, but then literally did it in reality.

That's awesome.

We were trying to find something to contribute to the school that they didn't have, and they didn't have a video program. And so we ended up, and she ended up really creating it, and we worked together on some projects, but she created something that didn't exist, and that's why you see a pretty skilled level there.

Yeah, I mean, it was very entertaining. I think you sent it to me on a Sunday afternoon.

Yeah.

And it was relatively early. I was still in bed with the baby, and I watched like 40 something minutes on, and I watched the whole thing right there. My wife was like, "What do you do?"

I know.

Looks like I'm watching this video.

I know, I just had to give you instructions to go ahead and get to the young part, and I said, "Well, he'll figure it out." And I figured you would look at the whole thing, but--

I did.

But you know, when she adds some music and stuff, it kind of works as a travel log in its own way.

Oh, it's awesome. It was really, really well done, and it was cool, and I was particularly interested. The fact that you got, and we started this technically, so this is recording. But the fact that she had, you know, that you both got to meet young, great grandson, that was nuts. Tell me a little bit about that, and I'll have context, like I'll do an intro for this before the episode to explain what we're talking about, 'cause I don't feel obligated yet.

Well, there are a lot of things in here that are interesting, and synchronicity is one of them. I'm a great believer when you take risk, then interesting things happen. And it's so funny if we mention Mikey, because, and then I'll come back again. When I met this man, this great grandson and his wife, up came this beautiful 16-year-old Swiss daughter, their daughter, and all I could think of, I swear to God for the next 10 minutes was, how am I gonna get Mikey to marry this woman? (laughing) So that our family can be young family. I swear, that's all my mind was, I was thinking, how am I gonna do this?

We've got to have a marriage, and so what happened that day, which I think is kind of interesting, and we did a trip to Iceland, we did a trip to Bhutan. And we do the same thing, we experiment, and we go off road, like dreams do. And in this particular day, we started in Zurich and took a train down to a little town called Rapper Swill. And this was the town nearby where young had built the towers way back, I think he started in the, before the 1920s, and over the years built it, and it was such a unique concept. The idea was he was trying to build a structure, a round structure based on his visits to Africa, where he had seen the homes of the natives were always round and circular and holistic.

So he was trying to create something kind of out of stone of his inner life. And as he evolved as a human being, he kept adding different parts of the building, right? So when I was a young guy, really young guy, just 20s near, just out of college, I read Memory Dreams Reflections, and it's all the picture of the tower. And I thought to myself, I got to see the tower someday, and some of these events and dreams and goals sometime take years, well, 30 some odd years later, I was teaching a dreams course. And so I said to Judith, why don't we go to Switzerland, and we'll try to go see Carl Jung, and then we'll go see Hasson, be part of my class.

You know, I'll bring it back, show the kids the tape. And that's what that was. So that day we said to Zurich, got to the town, asked a cab driver where the towers were. He had no idea Carl Jung was, but terrible.

They had no idea.

Lengless people, really.

I mean, none, I said he was a famous man. He built these towers, and then he got on the, on the, you know, the dispatcher.

Yeah, yeah.

And then you saw that in German, you know, figured out where it was, and then took us some 20 minutes away, and I could see the towers, where we got to the car, paid him. And there we were, and there was kind of the lake, and then there was a house, and then there was a field, and a fence, and I saw a car. But oh my God, we've come all this distance, and now someone's in the house, how are we going to do? And I just said the hell of it.

Yeah, so awesome.

So we've come here, right? So we walk in through this kind of orchard, this field anyway, and I see this woman, and I go up to her, and I said, "You speak English," and she spoke very little. He said, "You should speak to my husband," or said something, and he came out, and I said, "Look, you know, I've come a long way." I'm a teacher, and for years I've wanted to see the towers. Is this the towers that Carl Jung built? He said, "Oh yes." And I said, "Wow." And he said, "Would you like to come in?" I was, "Oh my God," so we walked in, and then he introduced himself as Carl Jung's great-grandson, and we were, you know, floored.

Right.

In fact, you know, synchronicity. If we hadn't arrived them, they were leaving in about an hour.

Oh, really?

Yeah, none of this would have happened. And then we were sitting there talking, and I was thinking of dreaming about Mikey marrying the daughter, and then I just said, "Would you mind if we videotaped some of this for my wife, for my class?" And he said, "No, go ahead." Well, there he then began the whole process of the entire deal, the outside, the inside.

Yeah.

And Judith was able to film it, and we were there for about an hour.

Yeah.

And we were left there just absolutely sky-high. And how everything kind of just magically pulled together. And from there, we took an air train, and it was a hot day, so I went into a hotel, changed what swimming, got back, went to the front desk, and said, "You know where Carl Jung is buried?" (laughing) And they said, "Well, there's a Catholic cemetery and a Presbyterian, I knew he was Presbyterian." I said, "Well, yeah, where would it be?" And he said, "Well, over there, over here, go there." So we walked up there, and then we took 20 minutes, we couldn't find it, and then Judith found it. And then we ran to get the last ferry of the day and made it and sat and drank beer going over this incredible day, and it reminded me that the best days, and the best days or days like that, where you don't, you have a kind of a plan, but then, you know, the gods have to interact.

And we were just sat there on the back of the ferry and having a beer and watching the sun go down from, like, Zurich and said, "What a just a remarkable day." And we had it filmed, so we were happy.

I know, yeah, I mean, it's clear.

Yeah, go ahead.

It's clear from that, like, how awesome it was, and I like that you described it as magical and kind of these things constellating and the synchronicities where they almost left. And this leads to kind of something that I think we'll have a lot of fun talking about, which is dreams, but that is somewhat, I have experienced many, when synchronicities add up and they constellate around a short period of time or a timeframe, I usually notice that there is something going on or something is going to happen. And sometimes it crystallizes into a day, sometimes it's spread out over, you know, a longer period of time, but what, it also feels dreamlike, right?

Like, I also, I don't know if you've had this experience, but when you first fall in love, or something, you know, really transcendent happens in your life, you can have these things kind of percolate up and it feels kind of magical and dreamlike. So what, this is one of my favorite subjects, and I'm so happy I have here to talk about this.

I'm thrilled, I've seen out here in isolated New Jersey, so you're like, you're a no aces for me.

Yeah, no, I'm happy to talk about this any time too. I'm actually in July, I lived in Manhattan from '08 to June of '15, last year, still last year. We're looking to move back to the Hudson Valley pretty soon, I've talked about this a lot, you know, I love the area, but I'm actually coming to New York on July 13th, there is a workshop at the Riverside Church in Manhattan. It's a Minjar Rinpoche, he's a Tibetan Buddhist.

Oh sure, I know him.

He's giving a workshop on dreams, dying, and awareness. So I'm like, I gotta go to that. So it's--

Wow, what is that on the 13th?

July 13th, yeah, I think it's a Wednesday.

Yeah, yeah.

We're taking, we're gonna be up in Maine for a couple of weeks around that time, but I would, I think that's, you know, I mean, I've had this discussion, in fact, I just, I have all these books on my, I have a couple of things for you, I have all the books that I think are good for people to read.

Awesome.

I have a poem I wrote about dreams for my one-year-old grandson. When the time is right. And I've just read a book about Buddhism and dreams, and one of the Buddhist beliefs are that dreams, the dying and dreams are like dreams. Dines like dreams, it's, you don't wake up, you don't come back.

Right, right.

And there, so I think the Buddhist approach to dream life is fascinating, it's definitely different than the, it's different, but not so different than the Western, the young, you know, but it's all, you know, it's just a fascinating angle. So I think that will be a very interesting workshop.

Yeah, I'm really excited for it. I read, I think, a while ago, the six dream types of dreaming yoga from Naropa, who was like, you know, an avatar who taught about dreaming. And as I understand it, and this isn't totally unique to Tibetan Buddhism, but I think one of the main functional aspects of the dream yoga is that you can actually accomplish, you can basically in your dreams, lucid dream and then meditate, which then accelerates, you can be meditating while you're sleeping in different dimensions and worlds, which I think there's a very interesting crossover, which brings me back to the towers thing with Jung.

I have one of the books I've been reading, I've literally been reading this book by Marie-Louis von Franz, Psyche and Matter, for one of my favorite books for like a year and a half.

You're looking it down.

Oh, it's incredible. I mean, she's one of my favorite post-youngian, I know we're nerding out on Jung here, but I don't care 'cause it's a fun topic. But the whole book is Psyche and Matter, right? It's the interplay between Psyche and Matter. And what Jung did, which by physically creating, you know, his psychic and unconscious and trying to create the mandala in physical reality, to me is a fascinating thing to do and also emblematic. To me, I'd like to hear your thoughts about, what do you think about the interplay between Psyche and Matter? Like, what's going on there?

Well, I mean, everything is such a mystery. You know, when people always try to pin down dreams, I'm always the person dying. The first thing to say about dreams is I know nothing.

Yeah, you know, and I totally believe, by the way, the dreams have flexibility to do many different things. They have some brain functional things. And then they have the kind of Freudian Jungian stuff. And I think that they are, I've had a number of dreams that have absolutely predicted future events.

Sure, absolutely.

The most remarkable was when I was teaching my dreams course at the school called Blair Academy in New Jersey, boarding school, an old boarding school. And I put together a psychology and a literature course called the 10 Jungian principles and the literature of harmony.

Yeah, I thought it's really awesome.

Yeah, I don't believe they allowed me to teach it. (laughing)

That's really great.

Kids loved it because it was, all the literature I had were just a young 18-year-old, kind of 19-year-old people trying to figure out their own path, trying to figure out individuation.

Right.

And of course, Hess underwent a Jungian therapy with a guy named Joseph Lang at 68 Sessions, then he actually worked with Jung.

Yes.

And his novel, Damien, which is one of my favorite all-time novels, is a Jungian novel.

I haven't read it. Oh my God.

You have to read it and then we should, whether it's your podcast or not, it's such a worthy piece to discuss with the premise that Jung, with Hess, wanted to write a plot that leads nowhere but to the self.

I love it.

No, I'm--

No, you all love it.

Damien, Damien is worthy. But, you know, I don't have, you know, in terms of opinions, you know, as soon as she's mentioned that book, I wrote it down because I'm gonna go read it and after I read it, I'll have more opinions. All I can say to you is that dreams seem to turn the time, the time deal on its head and has no respect for present future or past. So in the dream I was telling you, I was teaching the course. I met with the headmaster to tell him, you know, that I can't, you know, we probably won't stay on campus. We want to move off campus. He said, fine, but I'm gonna probably be leaving the school to go to a school called Grotton, which I had never heard of.

And I said, okay, and we left the meeting and I said to Judith, I said, we've got back to the dormitory and I got my dream book because when I was teaching, I was also marking my own dreams.

Right.

About dreams all the day. And I went to three weeks earlier and then in my dream book, it had the date, three weeks earlier from the meeting we just had. And it said, I'm in the headmaster's office and he informs me that he's leaving to move to go to a school called Grotton. And I showed Judith that it was three weeks earlier. So you tell me.

Right. Well, you tell me what that means.

And I mean, this also, when you're talking about time, the dissolution of time and it's kind of meaning in terms of linear time as we tend to think of it, you know, this is backed up by a lot of different things, right? Even the four fronts of modern physics and quantum physics, right, non-locality and things being affected not by time and space, seemingly no logical correlation. Like they know this happens. It's hard to reconcile what's going on in these tiny 1/1000 of an inch levels and smaller. Like that's what's going on. Yeah, I mean, time to me is a concept that also just from psychedelics, right?

Using LSE, using mushrooms, like these obliterate the concept of time. And those synchronicities can seemingly, and if you have the foresight like you did with dream journaling to record it and validate that these things like, "Hey, maybe this is weird and it doesn't make sense, but it's happening." Which I think again, going back to Jung, he was one of the best at doing this. I mean, when I really started delving into the red book and what he was doing there, right? I mean, it's unbelievable. Like to go to the forefronts and the edges of your own psyche and after you identify something called the collective unconscious, which we can definitely get into, but then to delve into your own and have these conversations with Philomont, you know, a manifestation, an archetypal father figure in your own consciousness that you're, you know, and then record it all and draw these beautiful paintings.

I mean, it's unreal.

And when you realize that what a frontier he was on, it's not like he was going down to Starbucks and talking about dreams you're doing on a podcast, right? If he, everyone around him thought he was in total madness.

Right, right.

And he made the greatest point, which I'm always believing in doing the dream work that I've done that, you know, until you kind of address some of your own issues and really stare into the abyss in your own way and figure out some of your own issues and darknesses and lights and what I call the orchestra of the self. By the way, I finally wrote down, I have 16 different voices I figured out that are in my orchestra.

Amazing.

And I gave them all names because I think what happens is everyone gets jumbled and we kind of lose our way.

Absolutely.

But, you know, the fact that he was doing that and almost went into madness and was doing that in 1913.

Right, come on.

That's insane.

Hey, go back for a second and tell me a couple of the principles that blow you away on the psyche and matter. What about that book that--

Oh my God, that book gets you.

Well, Mary Louise von Franz in particular, I find to be one of the most clear and direct just kind of post-Yumian things. And she was his translator, as you know, and like she just really had a tremendous access to him. So I really respect her opinions and a friend tuned me into it. Actually, the guy who did the podcast art for my podcast. And I haven't even finished it. I think I'm like, it looks like 70% of the way through. I really have been taking my time with it. It's equally as dense as anything Carl wrote. So, you know, it's not something to be breezing through and really grasping stuff.

But one of the things I love about it, and I've mentioned this before on the show, is she goes into the number as an archetype. And she talks about how she views it as one of the most primordial archetypes. And she gives these wonderful stories. One is a parable, which demonstrates how different cultures relate to number, which she gives a Chinese parable of an emperor who was consulting 11 of his wisest consultants, right? To whether to go to war or not with a rivaling or nearby, you know, dynasty. And they took a vote. And the vote was eight to go to war and three to retreat. And so they retreated.

And the point of that story was tying it into the Yiching and how, you know, they view numbers, is that three qualitatively had greater significance than the eight. So even though that the majority of votes were to go to war, the three was more significant. So, that's one of the things in the book. Oh, it's fascinating. She's, I mean, she goes into dreams. She gives a really wonderful exposition on synchronicity relating it to quantum physicists. I mean, she's talking about stuff that now is truthfully just starting to percolate into like mass consciousness. Like really talking about quantum physics relating to neuroscience, relating to Eastern religions, relating to dreams.

Like she's tying it together. I guess this book is probably from, you know, either the late 80s or mid 90s at the latest. I forget when she died, but it's one of my favorites. It's just truly like there's so much stuff packed in there. And it really just takes the work of Carl Jung. I haven't read a ton of post-youngian people just 'cause I was more fascinated with him. But, you know, man in his cymbals is one of my favorite, which isn't just him and yeah. Oh, yeah. So I read that book when I was 17, I think. And it blew my fucking mind. Like I didn't think I was, I truly probably wasn't ready for my psyche, like had to adjust to reading that book at 17 years old.

No, you're not, but you know, I gave this, this was the textbook for my course.

So cool.

Great, I love it.

But I always said to them, just read chapters one and three 'cause the other stuff, just give you a kind of a synthesis of what he's up to and give you a clear idea. But, and I still recommend it because I think it's a fabulous, I think it's a fabulous book on 1,000 levels. And it does give you, kind of, when I first read it, the reason I loved it was it really, it really got me going. It really inspired me to wanna know more about dreams.

Yeah, I know, right?

Yeah, and that's not easy for a book to do. And, you know, over the years, I mean, one of the interesting things about conversations like this, is how you come across books that, or dream books. I don't collect them for collecting. I collect them to read them in order to keep finding the different opinions and angles. So I'm gonna get, coming from this conversation, I will get this book. I will get the book "The Psyche and Matter."

Ah, that's great.

And my sister, I did a dream workshop down in Philadelphia and she had sent, and she's not into this as much, but she sent me this book called "The History of Last Night's Dream," which is really interesting. And speaking of synchronicity, makes reference to a guy who was a mailman in Burlington, Vermont, or up in that area, who is gifted in dream interpretation. And he makes reference, talks about it. And what's amazing was, that's where I got into dream work, was in Burlington at the same time that he was around, working with my mentor, a woman named Elizabeth Forsberg, who was a therapist at the state hospital and a young man.

And I did a year of dream therapy with her, and here was this guy, one, one, basically town over, doing the same thing on his own. And so when I read the book, it brought me full circle. And of course, I contacted them and sent them a dream for them to interpret. And I just got it like yesterday.

Oh, really? So everything connects, and the key is that you, when you jump on something like, when you mention that book, the key is, I'm not gonna wait seven days. I'm gonna order that today.

Right, I see this is, what you're talking about is being open and receptive to what I fundamentally view. This is called from Carl Jung's work, but that I think everything is one giant synchronicity. And it's kind of up to us to figure out how to engage or interface with what's happening. And I think that is a non-local, non-time-bound thing. But the more receptive you are to kind of being aware that these things are happening around you, and exactly like seeing, well, that's a signal that lines up with, it's easy for someone, like when you have a dream that predicts something and it happens. If it happens once, you're like, oh my God, like that's pretty crazy.

If it happens again, and then it happens again, and then it happens again and again and again, it slowly builds up, I don't know if it's a totally right term, but it builds up an element of faith that this something is happening, that there's either a mystery or there's some significance to it, which is what synchronicity is. It's attaching significance to something that is not causally related, right?

It's not causally related. And I always did, and I want to come back to that point about repetitive dreams.

Yeah.

And the kind of dream work, at some point, I want to discuss what I think is important to do in dream.

Yes, whenever you want, yeah.

All right, well, just let's say it on that, to me, and I was doing a dream workshop out in Seattle, and it was, and I found myself listening to people's dreams, and you could kind of come across the area where that person might be blocked. And I realized they are doing the workshop, that the only thing that interests me about dreams and the kind of discussions we're having is when people take the responsibility of not only recording their dreams, but thinking about them, and here's the cake, then doing something about them.

Right, right, right.

Right, that there's a lot of people that are culture, of course, dreams are discounted big time, you know, they move fast enough, they're not this, they're not that. I am going to send you, I know I already did send you that, that my whole point to young people, and why I'm more interested in the dreams of younger people, was, no, no, you got it all wrong. The dreams are movies in your heads, and you're the writer, producer, director, actor, star, and it's all about, you know, kind of talking to you, and you're creating it. The reason to get into it is because you're engaged in it, you know, it's kind of a narcissistic view of why you should get into dreams.

But a good one nevertheless, yeah.

You know, the Twitter to the Twitter age. But, and then on top of which is that, you know, that you're, that, you know, I've always said this, that dreams are an incredible source of, you know, of, for me, have been a source of creativity. If you do nothing else.

Right, yeah.

Just, just, just, just being aware of how wildly creative they are and smart and funny, has to have through osmosis an impact on you, and I always figure, I would have never done any of the comedy or writing or anything like that in my life without a dream life. Period.

What, so talk about that. What, what is the exact, I mean, I, I'm with you 100%. Just to be clear, I think it's an ultimate source of creativity if you just pay attention. But what, what was the connection for you for getting into comedy writing? 'Cause I don't have this in the intro. I mean, you wrote one of my favorite Rodney Danger's field movies back to school. I love Rodney Dangerfield in general. That movie in particular are always the diving part. It's amazing. And there's some really Jungian stuff in there jumping, there's a lot of water stuff in which I love. But can you talk about the how for you from a practical standpoint, those things were connected?

Yeah, and I want to say something 'cause I'm sure we're skipping around, but I, my whole belief is that great conversation is circular, nothing is lost.

Right, totally.

And you know, you don't need to be, you don't need to be sequential, you need to just, if you just have faith, if you jump off, go to an air topic, you'll, you'll eventually come around to where you were before, 'cause I see you I'm already, I'm already doing that.

And I just because I'm excited about the-

Of course.

Of the subject matter. There's nothing clear about, I mean, what I discovered about dreams and where they impacted me, where was, I think I wanted to write when I was very young, like 20 or 21. And I noticed that, you know, I would sit down with pencil and paper and then I went, I really have nothing to say. And what I learned, what I learned shortly thereafter was I don't have anything to say, but I'm remembering dreams every night. And this allowed me to fill up the journal, so it looked like I was writing, you know, it looked like I was doing it. And then this continued from age 21 to, you know, two nights ago, speaking of, you know, back to school, I dreamt of Harold Ramis, who just passed away two years ago and did a lot of work and stuff with him.

And in the dream, he was directing and very happy and very happy.

That's awesome.

And I had an opportunity, both with his daughter and his wife, to communicate I dreamt about them.

That's cool.

Yeah, they were thrilled. But what dreams gave me, I think, because of their dairiness, I think it gave me a high level of risk-taking in terms of living my life as interesting chapters. Mikey, my son, is doing this in space. I was just gonna say, like, it sounds like this is, this is, you're talking about Mikey, who is moved, maybe what some of us do in our actual dreams. He's doing it in real life. I mean, this is a fascinating concept because I do think that it's not just with Mikey, but there is this merging of these worlds that is slowly maybe not so slowly taking shape and we're seeing people doing this stuff.

But yeah, continue, continue.

Well, I think that like I told you the day we went down to Young's Tower place, you know, you have to take risk. Well, I was in a state hospital working in a state hospital as a counselor, and I worked for, here's how everything gets connected, you would say, and I totally believe that is true. And I worked for a man named Bill Dean, and he did psychodrama, where he worked with five families, where they would work on a problem and pick out strangers to play the different roles in the family, and it was just blown away by how the person that, you know, let's say her name is Betty, is picking out someone to play her sister, who she doesn't know, she picks out someone, they come up, they do a scene, and then the girl that she picks says, so I have the same problem the Betty does.

(laughing) And I just was going, this is like so wild, it was like five families, and I met a guy there and we said, you know, let's do something dramatic. Let's, it's so powerful, and we started to do plays, and then we did a comedy act based on two comedians, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, and then here is where I'm getting to. We did one summer, we said, let's take a risk and go across America doing different things that are really risky, and one of them will be we'll audition for Second City.

Cool.

And we got to Second City. We had an act by that point was pretty good. I mean, it was, you know, it was pretty, it was pretty smooth for what it was. We walked up the steps, and you know, total confidence said, you know, we'd like to audition. (laughing) And by timing, good timing. Past was there, rehearsing. The director and owner of the place was there, that the manager was there. They huddled, and they said, well, okay, come in here and improvise. Within 10 minutes and say we'd like to audition, we were auditioning for Second City. (laughing) And got back in the car and somewhere around Kansas got a call that we were in.

Cool. That's amazing.

And in my world, none of that happens if I'd done letters.

I'm doing it, right?

I'm interested about possibly auditioning for you at some point. No, get off your ass, take what's in your heart and go do it and watch what happens.

Well, it's, you know, here's the thing. That is obviously, and it's happened in my life, and every time I've heeded that call, you know, whether it's the Joseph Campbell Heroes journey and going through that whole thing, I think there's a huge element of fear for a lot of people when they hear something like that. You know what I mean, it's obvious. You can see 'cause if everyone was doing that and listening to that inner voice, whether you wanna call it the conscience, whether you wanna call it something you can tap in through dreams or symbols or just your passions and your desire, there is stuff that stops people from doing that or it's obscure or they don't have the belief.

And I wonder how do you, do you use or have you found dreams to be useful and kind of combating that to kind of give like a glimpse that maybe it's worthwhile to do that? 'Cause this is where I'm realizing this podcast and there's a network that this podcast is on called MindPod Network, which is basically an attempt to provide conversations and potential practical tips and helpful solutions, not even necessary solutions, but a spectrum of them to help people kind of do the thing you're saying to do, right? Like get off your ass, really do what you love. It's possible. You'd be surprised how many magical things can happen.

You can go and meet Carl Jung's great grandson. You can walk into Second City and have these things happen. And rather than them being isolated, kind of like, wow, what a crazy thing when they have, they can become rather, you know, they can proliferate. Those things can really, it's not always gonna happen at every single time, but those things really can manifest in life. Like do you, how have you helped to do that? Like this is really good stuff here.

I, you know, I wanna tell a story that I was gonna write 'cause I've been working on a thing called Dream Memoir and I've told it because one of the reasons I got kind of bored of dream workshops is people would electrolyze it too much to me. It's a center to come together to get the support, to go out to kick some major ass in your life.

Awesome.

And if you're not gonna kick ass and be intellectual and sit around, and have a latte and then go back to your own. I'm now at a nation now, I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna be around people that, that's why I love young people 'cause they're willing to go there and a lot of my students ended up doing really interesting things 'cause I kept saying to them, why are we in a classroom?

Right.

What do you mean, Mr. Cameron? We should be out of here, we should be in Switzerland, we should be able to train, we should be in the book, we should be full-time, the leaves coming down, and we're visiting the graves of Carl Jung, we're having a good conversation. You guys are pulling in love, you're having sex behind my back.

Yeah, yeah.

That's what we should be doing.

Right.

We should be in a classroom where it's all being organized and graded.

Totally.

And there's a story that in the dream memoir, dream memoir basically is memoir, which there's a million versions of memoir, except my dream memoir takes dreams, your dreams, and then I figure out a prompt for something for you to write about. So if you've been dreaming about your grandfather, I'll have you write about real things going on about your grandfather, the idea is you're linking, you're putting a bridge from your conscious to your unconscious, you're unconscious to your conscious. So these two worlds can start working together, it should be like Venice.

Yeah.

You know, the inner psyche should look like Venice.

I love it.

There's thousands of bridges connecting, and we live in a culture where they're trying to take down the bridges.

That's right.

Yeah, they don't want bridges, and so there's isolation. So a story that is one of them, and I've written about 10 of my own dream memoirs, and one of them that I want to write, but I just haven't done it, happened when I was my most lost. I was going through a very difficult time, mid 20s before show business. I was working at the State Hospital, I was seen a therapist as Dr. Elizabeth Forsberg, and I was driving from Burlington, Vermont, down to Montpelier every day and passing this incredible mountain called Camel's Hump. Somewhere in my stupid brain on the way down and back doing this once a week, I got in my head that if somehow I could climb that mountain in the middle of winter and make it by myself, everything would be fine.

Wow.

And I was going through a bad time of a divorce, and there I had a child involved, and it was just I didn't have any career, and it became this mountain. This mountain became like my focus. So one day in the winter, I got up, and I did the journey, and I parked my car, and I noticed a little cabin and a little smoke coming up, and I thought, "Well, I gotta be smart here." Hey, something happens. I knocked on the door, it was a woman answered, and there was her husband, he had emphysema, and I said, "Look, I'm going off the mountain. "If I'm not down by three, I'm on the mountain." And they were very gracious, and they gave me, he had been a jazz player, and we had a conversation, and then he gave me a guidebook and some snowshoes, and off I go.

Go up, I get to the last 300 feet of the mountain, which is bare, with winds about 50 miles an hour, and I'm falling, and I get to the top, and at the very top I stand and put my hands out and go, "Fuck it!" (laughing) I'm alive, I'm here, everything is fine. I made it, and I went down the mountain, stopped by their place, had a cup of tea, and every season until I left Vermont, every season I would climb the mountain as my mecca.

Wow.

Well, 10 years later, now keep in mind, this was me, lost.

Yeah.

10 years later, I'm not in Vermont.

Right.

Where I am is in Los Angeles, and what I'm doing is being an actor on a TV show called New Heart, which, ready, was set in Vermont. (laughing) Okay.

This is incredible.

Right.

Now, I'm sitting getting ready to do a scene, and the directors are going around, and the actors are getting ready, and makeup is doing makeup, and the prop guy comes out to me, and hands me the Burlington Free Press, which is the thing, and they're getting ready to say, and I'm sitting in a chair in the dining room, and Bob Newhart is upstage from me, talking to someone, and 30 seconds after the scene begins, he comes over to me. So, action, and I've started reading the paper, reading the paper, this is on camera.

Right, right.

Reading the paper, Bob's talking to the other actor, and I'm reading, I turn to the back, and there, there is the obituary of my jazz player that I always stopped and had to--

To cabin.

Every time I learned about his death--

On.

Set of a show set in Vermont in Los Angeles is where I learned that he had died.

So, I mean, it is insane, right? This is a crazy, crazy story.

Well, it's insane, but to me, when that happened, like, people would usually go nuts. What it did to me was validate every single decision. It validated every single thing that I did, including the crate, here we go again. Crazy guy goes up the mountain, and I'll tell you what, you know, as the Dalai Lama says, great achievement involves great risk.

Well, it's, I love this for so many reasons. Let's start with the symbolic stuff. Like, you literally climbed a mountain, which is a metaphor, even in the podcast I did with Mikey, one of the things we were talking about is how there's a lot of paths up the, this is a metaphor for spiritual paths and practices or philosophical paths, you know, many paths of the mountain, the view is the same, right? So that's a metaphor that you can access this mysterious stuff in a lot of different ways. And I think we were also talking about how you can, you know, circumvent, you can go around the mountain and try a lot of different things, but until you actually commit and go up it, you're not gonna have that view and you're gonna have that thing.

So, to me, this is incredible because what this is is a real, we're talking about psyche and matter, right? And I wonder you're gonna get that book right away because this is a direct, this is an example of you doing something that connected through time, right? Through symbols and through the creative act of your life and your career at that point. I mean, this is a thread through all of those things, which I would expect when I say and say and I mean, that's, I mean, that must have been extreme validation at this point that you're dealing with something here that is obviously a little more than most people would probably think is gonna be going on in people's lives, right?

I mean, yeah, it's fascinating.

Yeah, and I mean, I really believe in the, I really believe in the HESS idea that, you know, man's true profession is finding his way to himself, that all these experiences we have are leading us if we're on game to figuring out who and where we are, what our purposes and how we connect and all those things. And everything else are all the distractions to lead you away from that. You know, the, all the things we see in the world, all the things keeping you from your kind of intervene. That's the opportunity to act out who you really are. You know, whenever I find people that are making a living from that, which they really are, that's the game.

Yeah, it's the game, right? I mean, this is something.

It's the game.

It's the game is you got people to pay you for following your inner life, follow your bliss. You know, all that. Now, you know, there's a, there's a thing with Mikey that's interesting and it's an interesting dream because you mentioned mountains and stuff and this is the most, this is a dream, by the way, you can have a dream and this is, this dream is an example 'cause it's almost three years old. That continues to resonate because it reaches a spiritual quality, it kind of, it transcends the day-to-day stuff that dreams can be interested in, you know, the personality stuff and gets into more like some of the bigger, larger issue.

You know, Young always said that you only had to figure out one thing in your life and that was your relationship to the universe.

Right, right.

Are you afraid of it? Hate it, love it.

What is it?

What is it? You know, and when you, when you could say what it is, really mean it? And I think when we're talking about, when we're talking about dreams and people and somebody's experience, that is trusting that universe. It's saying, if you give over to that universe, even though it can be a scary, scary place with some very bad stuff happening, when you can trust into it, something magical does happen and when you, if you're making decisions based on fear, nothing good, nothing, nothing good is going to come from that, maybe nothing bad happens and you used to have a kind of a tedious, kind of uninteresting life.

But the game here to be on a planet in space circling a star at 250,000 miles an hour and to have consciousness and to be able to act on what's in your inner life, that's the game. You know, that's the, so on the dream, I'm in a car literally, it's a perfect dream metaphor and it goes off, it goes off the main highway. So that's like, individualization right away.

I have that dream.

You do?

Yeah, a lot.

Look, let me tell you something, cars, or of course, great symbols of the body and the ego and here's the truth, when I have any, when I have a dream about a car, if I get out of the car, and I now know this through the years of doing it, if I get out of the car, not driving, stop it, get out, I know I'm in for what the Native Americans call big dream.

Because now it's like I've exposed myself, I've gotten away from the body, from the defenses, and now I'm gonna be open to the reality of what I need to know about it.

So let me, I want you to continue your dream, but I just wanna tell you, I typically stay in the car and usually do not have a good handle on it, but the one time I remember distinctly, it was on a bridge, and I did, I got out, I think it was ejected from the car, something, and I plunged into the water below. But this is like classic symbolism here, but I plunged into the water and there was like a dolphin and a whale, and I remember like, this is a very significant dream to the point where I'm you're mentioning getting out of the car, I still remember it, and this was, this must be like three, four years ago too, so that's very interesting, you said that, that's cool.

Oh, you could have a, you could have a, you really, if you had good dreamers, people around, do you remember your dreams pretty easily?

Well, there's an interesting thing, recently, since my son was born three weeks ago, I have basically been remembering almost all my dreams. I am a marijuana user, which is a big time dream suppressor, so typically, if I do have a dream, it'll be a vague kind of memory of it, when I abstain, I dream crazy, I mean like, also when I dream journals, if I'm keeping a dream journal, like you do, and this is a great tip for anyone who's interested in doing this stuff, I remember my dreams without fail, and they get way more detailed, my recall is a lot better, and lots of other interesting things tend to happen in my life too, but it's, you know, doing my dream journal, it didn't stick with me, like it obviously has with you, it's, I put it into the category of meditation in a lot of ways with me, like, I do it sometimes, and I know the immense value of doing it, but I often forget and kind of oscillate between doing it and not, but yeah, when I record my dreams, they, they're, I remember them almost all the time.

Yeah, I mean, they're, I don't record every dream because I think they're, I read in a book somewhere that, you know, dreams deal with kind of the everyday anxieties, they deal with some of our, which I think is an interesting thing, some of the personal myth that each of us walking around with a view of the universe, which doesn't mean it has anything to do with the universe, it just means it's your personal perspective.

And then, and then there's spiritual concerns. And when I get dreams about nonsense that happened the day, generally speaking, if you, you'll remember you, the dreams are using your everyday consciousness, but not when you're aware of it. So if I, driving along and I see a billboard, if I go, I'm gonna dream about that tonight, I'll use it, the dream will use what you're not paying attention. And for me, it's literally the same day. So if I drive over a bridge that I go, this is a remarkable bridge, that night I will probably, I may have a dream about a bridges. So I'm fascinated by the fact that the way the creative part of the way a dream is just looks at your life and my life as if they're just like playing.

Right.

And it's just gonna use it.

Right, whatever is there, even stuff that we're not consciously perceiving.

Oh yeah.

And by the way, that looks like nothing. I mean, it looks like no big deal.

Yeah.

And then suddenly there it is, and it's turned it in. That's where it's creative geniuses. It's turned it into something that is significant or meaningful or whatever, even though the event that you were having the previous day was not eventful.

That's right. I mean, this is, this is also, this is similar to what the Buddhists are talking about, with the Bardo states, that there's intermediate states that are very malleable and that this is, they believe, I'm pretty sure I believe it too at this point, that a Bardo state after death is much like a dream state, that there's also functional uses for these things and it's not just the symbolics of, but you can actually really gain and benefit, which is doing an analysis, a lot of those things, which I'm fundamentally interested in. I think it's fascinating. I think it's something that everyone does.

To me, it's just crazy that people aren't really always talking about dreams. It's like, what the fuck, how do you guys not recognize?

Well, I say in the video that my wife Judith put together, I say, you dream, if you live 75, you dream literally six years of your life.

Yeah, it's nuts.

Yeah, I mean, you literally are dreaming, and I always say, I'll say to the students, "Well, isn't it worth for you taking a look at this? It doesn't it fascinate you at all that this is?"

Yeah.

Really? I mean, it's Xbox, that great, when you've got Xbox inside your hand?

I mean, I'm a big video game fan too. Don't get me wrong. And I think one of the cool things, and I think video games is a huge topic, but I think one of the things--

Well, they're dream, but they're dream-like to begin with.

Right, that's right.

They're tapping into what is kind of a universal source, and that's why it has such a resonance, because it's moving figures right in. Well, it's lucid dreaming.

That's what I think. I mean, I was reading an interesting article today, which I'm not totally sure I agree with his viewpoint, but Elon Musk was saying that he's very much of this opinion that we're in a simulation, the chances and the percentage points. He thinks, point clearly, that the fact that we're not in someone else's video game, just based on the speed and rate of that technology has increased in the past 40 years, he's like, "Well, it's more probable that we are." I don't think I necessarily believe that. I think it's a little too nuts and bolts for me. I think there is a function of being in these incarnations at these particular times, and I think that's why what you said also about following what's in your heart and taking action and paying attention to those things that really do help you.

That is a huge part of, I think, why we are here. And I was gonna say, the other thing, I was just reading the other day, one of my favorite things is Plato when he's describing Socrates, and Socrates is explaining basically his logical proof of reincarnation. It's a great thing, I'm not gonna go to it now, but it lines up, he uses the example of sleeping and waking up and going back and how they're not totally different from dying. It's one of my favorite logical proofs. I know that people can poke holes through it, but I think it does kind of line up with what the function of dreams can be, and just like how they consulate and we think about them in our lives.

So I thought that was interesting.

I mean, I don't have it in front of me to see if I have it, but I have about, you know, about, I don't know, they're, they're, there we go, here we go, as I have to remember. They have about, this gets back to the function. I think that, you know, the human brain wants to kind of pin everything down.

Yeah.

You know, what is it and what does it mean? It's where we get very frustrated when we can't, when we can't find a purpose. And what's happened to me through just experience of things like, you know, like dreaming of the headmaster.

Right.

Of dreaming of other synchronicities, of having dreams that are very kind of Freudian, of some Jungian, some this, some that. I think what we're not giving credit to is the dreams are incredibly malleable.

Yeah.

They're incredibly, they're much more mysterious. They have real brain functions like, you know, one pointed out, I talked to this interesting person who has written a book on, on the male, the male brain and the female brain. And she was saying that, you know, at night, basically when you're dreaming, you know, the brain, the matter kind of opens up a bit so that the fluids from the residues of that day and drain out to, so you can get ready to have another, another day with an adventure. So that's happening while you're physically dream, while you're dreaming.

I'm just gonna start this, yeah.

Brain is kind of, your brain is finding a way to get rid of the, the, the, the stuff. So because it can't just store all this stuff, it needs to dump it.

It's like a detoxifying thing, right.

Well, yeah, because every day is a challenge. And if you go back to the survival, every day was survival. So, you know, you can't be hung up, you know, it's trying to give you the strength. You can't, you can't be weighted down. I'm thinking, well, this is so remarkable that I'm asleep. And this, this incredible mysterious force is so evolved that it can take my dream and then do things to my brain that I'm not, I used to always say to my students, like, you know, about the ego, really? Can you control your heart right now?

Yeah, autonomic functions, go ahead, go ahead.

Yeah, good luck, good luck with all that. And by the way, who is monitoring that? Who is that?

Right, what is that? Yeah, exactly.

What is that? So the whole thing with dreams is if you come in with not trying to pin it down, but stay open to that they're much more wild, creative, and they can shape themselves to whatever they need. They don't really care about your reasons for whatever they are. You know, one of the great dreams I had about the collective unconscious and the unconscious courses, your mention is the ocean. And in this one dream, I had repeated dives into the ocean and I went down and I found these incredible, beautiful jewels of different sorts and gold and, you know, a treasure chest. And all I did in the dream was go down and pick one up, come up, and lay it onto a beach, go back in another one, lay it on a beach.

And that, to me, was the perfect metaphor that the game of foot is to basically expand consciousness, awareness.

That's right.

That little 10% that we're all worked up about of who, you know, who Stephen Campman is and what he likes and what he does. That's so, you know, I was realizing the other day that really all human beings, we really got screwed up when we started to walk. I'll tell you why, because before, like I was walking, I looked at the tree and all the leaves. I said, "Leaves aren't seen there with egos going." You know, I'm like, I'm so sick of this maple tree. I'm just gonna move over and be with the birch trees for a while. They just do their thing in the tree. And I said, "We're like leaves in a tree, except we can walk and we think we're separated from everything.

We're separated from nothing."

So this is my first client in my current profession, which is doing digital strategy stuff, was Rom Das, Rom Das' love server member foundation. He has a great thing where he talks about, you know, when we go outside and like, you know, good, I'm paraphrasing here. But if we go out and like in our car and we see people, we judge quickly, right? We make all these judgments really quickly go, "Oh, that person's this type of person that's like this," or even with ourselves. So I don't like this about myself. I don't like that. He's like, "No one does that when they go out into the woods in the forest.

They don't look at a tree and they go, "Oh, that tree's bending so awfully." Like, what a shitty tree. He's like, "That is a perfect metaphor for like a tree is just being a tree." And someone else who I've been working with, I've been working with Mark Watts, Alan Watts' son. And he's incredibly eloquent about, we're working on a really cool thing right now. I'll share it with you when it's ready, but we're putting together a whole digital community, highlighting lots of things. It's going to be cool. But he has, he's another one who's really great at talking about how like we're being, we're coming out of the world.

We're not like separate and distinct separate things, which is a very, you know, Vedic and Buddhist concept as well. All right, listen, here's the deal. I'm going to cut us off. I want to get your book recommendations and I want to get a practical tip from you, but I'm purposely, I do this. I did this to invite you to. I'm purposely cutting us off because I want to talk about this in another episode with you, like for sure. I definitely am going to get that book. Damien, I'm happy to talk about any of this stuff.

Damien, if you, you and I are discussing Damien, I will believe me will be really interesting. Read Damien, which is.

I'm going to get it. I'm going to get it.

I'm going to get the other book.

Oh, it's okay.

And whenever I read that, you read Damien, let's regather.

I'm 100% down. But okay, so tell me, tell listeners to some recommended reading and then also with our parting thing, ask every guest practical tips that someone could use that have helped you in your life. Could be related to dreams, could be related to anything. It could be, you know, anything that is like, this has helped me in my life. Maybe it'll help you. But start with the books.

Well, the books we've already discussed, man and his symbols.

Yeah.

I think that's a great place to start for understanding some of the Jungian concepts. I think it's very good.

For you, by the way, this minute for everybody, I really think you need to get this book.

I know. I saw that in the video.

Well, that was my course.

Yeah.

Of course he did. And by the way, that was, you know, that's how I was connecting the two men. One's a novelist, creative, one's a scientist. And yet their worlds, they lived, you know, 60 miles one another. They went, he did therapy. You know, it was very interesting. It has...

Maybe make the book. So people know what book, because you showed it to me.

All right, I'll show it to you. It's called C.G. Young and Herman Hessa, a record of two friendships by Miguel Serrano, S-E-R-R-A-N-O. And he was a guy from Chile who, here we go, decided to take a risk and without really, you know, too much introduction, travel to Switzerland as a Chilean and to, with the goal of meeting these two men, and he got it.

And so I love him just for his, and this was written in the '60s.

That's cool.

That's really cool.

Late '50s. So anyway, now, and two other books that I think are very good for an overview of dreams are called The Wisdom of Your Dreams by Jeremy Taylor. And good overview. Jeremy does a lot of dream workshops and a lot of, I haven't done his, but a lot of people like him. I'm not a big dream workshop guy in general, because I think it's so much more interesting to work like the way we're doing now.

Totally.

101 and not getting to kind of group principles. And you know, 'cause what happens is it all gets intellectualized.

Exactly.

The power and the emotion of dreams are taken away from you.

Aye, totally, I agree.

All right. And then recently I read The History of Last Night's Dream by Roger Kamance, K-A-M-E-N-E-T-Z.

Very interesting. A different view about, you know, the fact of how, ultimately, all of our dreams, when we really look at them, ultimately, they have a divine quality.

I love it.

And if the game, again, a foot is to, you know, how to get through your own personal addictions. And so your dreams aren't poor dreams, having to deal with all your predictions. And you free yourself up so you can be open to the spiritual and the spiritual part. So if you take man as symbols, the wisdom of your dreams, Jeremy Taylor, and The History of Last Night's Dream, Roger Kamance. You know, that's a good, that's a hell of a good story.

I think so.

Damien in, and a little, the journey. See, the book of the McGahn, the guy with Miguel Serrano is really a mentor book to remind you that, again, you need to take your dreams and then you need to put them into action.

Right.

The game, you know, I used to say to my students, if you dream enough, you will find out you have certain recurring symbols. So let's say your symbol is an eagle.

Sure.

And let's say you're now in an interview for a job and you walk in and behind you when you're talking to the boss, this is incredible picture of an eagle.

Right.

To me, I say to them, at that moment, relax, you're gonna get the job.

Right, right, but I actually believe that.

No, no, and I know that you believe that and I know for a fact that I believe that and that's happened to me and I know people, I've spoken that, like that's, I believe that too. And I think, you know, some people only say, well, that's self-fulfilling prophecy or there's a psychological impact and there's a trigger. No, maybe, sure, no, but I don't think so. I think that, yeah.

I think ethnicity is a synchronicity at work.

Yeah, I believe that too, okay.

And if you're either gonna believe in it and I believe in it, you believe in it, once you believe in it, when it shows up, I just kind of give it a nod and go, okay, this is where I'm meant to be. I was meant to be on top of that mountain. It already knew I would be in LA on a show.

Right, in linear time, right?

It's not in my, our body linear time frame. It's in something else and then I catch up to it.

Exactly.

10 years later.

Exactly, I mean, that's exactly how I look at it too.

Now, a practical, now when you say practical, I'll give you something like, 'cause I'm kind of addressing myself to younger people.

Sure.

I don't think our lives, and there's an air-grade textbook called "Beneath the Wheel," which is about what happens when you don't have mentors in life. I think the most significant thing that any young person can get is finding, and I've been lucky 'cause I've had about three or four or five, where you come across a mentor and then you take time out to really learn from that person, they're there to teach you. You know, one of the guys was this older guy, my father died when I was 16 years old, so I've always tried to have an older male figure in my life, and I knew this wonderful man named Dick Brewer that I met.

By the way, we met, I mean, again, it's a success that we're necessarily involved in it.

You know, I said to him, he came to just watch me teach a class. This will be perfect.

Yes.

And I said, "Dick, your old school, "your martini, drinker, you were in second world war." But you're coming to my class, but I gotta tell you, it's gonna probably bore you because I'm teaching a course from Carl Jung and Herman Hesse, and he just looked at me and he said, "I had lunch with Carl Jung." (laughing)

Nice to what?

Yeah.

He said, when he was in the army, he and his friend were looking for some girls in action, and they said, "Oh, the next town over." So they took their skis, they climbed over this ridge, skied into a town, had a blast. We're hanging out with this one guy who was terrific, fun, fun to the bone. And the guy said, "You gotta come to our house "for dinner on Sunday." And that guy was Carl Jung's son. (laughing) And so he, my friend, had dinner, had lunch with Carl Jung. (laughing) And there I am, Eric and Lee St. Oh, Dick.

Yeah, yeah. (laughing)

I actually said to him, you probably never heard of him.

Yeah.

You said, "I had lunch with him."

Yeah, that's, how's that for him?

That's a lady.

So I made him, of course, tell the story to my students.

Right, of course.

Of course, right? (laughing) Including the part that I was Eric and Lee.

Right, especially that part. That's the best part.

Yeah, and especially that part. But in terms of practical things, I think in a practical matter, I think that if you wanna be creative, let's just start in that interbed. Let's address some creative and then they'll do the mentor.

Sure.

From a creative point of view, the reason you get a dream book, and by the way, when you get a dream book, you don't just get a dream book. You go into Barnes and Noble or wherever, and you look at every book.

Right.

You're looking for something to catch your eye, that's gonna be a little wilder. And you know, maybe it looks like, you know, maybe it looks like something a girl and a 16 year old girl. (laughing)

They're by not getting a girl's book.

Yeah.

And it's actually a dream saying, "Well, you see, you're coming in my world "where you're gonna have to."

Right.

And then you go, "Okay, so, you know, "my dream book is in the other room. "It would be a book I never would buy. "I mean, I've had hundreds of diaries and stuff, "and I've had really serious dream journals, "and now I've been at a point where I look "for something that's gonna inspire me." All right, so, if you're remembering your dreams and you're writing them down, what's happening is you are effectively retraining the creative muscle in your being. And everything, I'm not, by the way, interested in creative, like you do a movie or you do this, what I'm interested in is your creative, like, so when you're sitting in a restaurant, you're sitting there in a school, let's say, where I was at school with Blair, and I'm in the lunch line, and none of the food looks good.

Then the creative part of me says, "Well, what if I combine things?" And now I can take a little bit, I used to have teachers coming up, "What the hell, what the hell's in your bowl?" It's not a, that's not on the menu. And I go, "Yeah, right, it's not on the menu." But it's really good. They said, "You've taken all the vegetables "and put them into the tomato soup, "and that's all you're eating."

Yeah, but it all works beautifully. The idea of the creative to become a creative person in the moment to the moment, how you pick out things from flowers to clothing to luncheon when you're in line to dinner. We should be creative all the time. I once said, in every decision we make, we always have a creative choice, and the more creative choices we make, the more we're fulfilling the creative principle, which is at the core of our being. In other words, then, what the world does is kind of drive the creative self. So remember dreams just so that they're kind of training as a really practical tip.

They're really actually gonna help you become much more creative and be more free flowing in your everyday life once you start doing that.

Totally.

And the other big one is just, if you come across a mentor, don't walk away, don't be paying attention. The universe is sending you someone you need in your life and develop that relationship because I really don't think we can grow without mentors.

I totally agree. I mean, I know that a lot of people who I've learned a tremendous amount from have become some of my friends, like really good friends and just the conversations that we have are constant reminders. And especially like I've, I gotta say, for the mentorship/friendship, someone who can really help you, it can be a mutually beneficial thing and can really help when things are not going wonderfully, when things are a little, not as smooth as you would want them to be. I find that to be really helpful. And in a lot of different ways, too. I don't know, I won't say much more about that, but I definitely agree with that.

I'll tell you one thing that always reminded me, it was Elizabeth Forsberg, which is a whole story under us, is a remarkable German. She and her mother, by the way, in Germany, when the Germans came into her house, she was in Austria. And her mother tricked the Germans to go down the cellar, then lock them in, and that the Americans came and liberated. And one of the Americans said to Elizabeth, "I'm gonna come back for you. "I'm in love with you. "You've met her for 10 minutes." Two years later on a bike, he came back and they got married, which is how she got to Vermont.

Oh, wow.

But, Elizabeth, I went to see, I was really lost. I found her in the yellow pages. And I was, summer day, I'm thinking about it, and I drove up, Vermont, Vermont, by the way, is one of those states that you should, when you don't really know who and what you are, it's one of those wonderful states that you can go, and it gives you the space and the beauty to kind of figure it out. And I've always said to students, you know, like it's hard to do that sometimes in the kind of craziness of cities.

Definitely.

And when you get out into the plains and the beauty of a place like Vermont, but I said to her, I finally looked her up and I went so hard, I thought she was gonna say, "I was crazy." And she looked at me and she said, "There's nothing wrong with you. "You just have been with the wrong people."

Hmm.

And that was such a mentor moment, because inside me, I suddenly was okay.

Great, great.

And the confidence of the person that I am was validated. She validated in, without knowing, she picked up. And that became one of the critical mentors that, without her, I wouldn't have gone in. Here we go with the synchronicity. (laughing) I'd gone in to study in Chicago, I wouldn't have gotten a master's degree in counseling, and then work at the hospital where I met the guy that got me into John Smet, where we did the ACT, which got us to Second City, which was blah, blah, blah. It all begins with Elizabeth because she said, very simply, she said, "There's nothing wrong with you. "You've been with the wrong people,"

which means my car goes off the term bike. My car is in free-willing in the desert, and I need to be with other free-wheelers.

Right, I mean, and that's just a really good metaphor.

And we're gonna break this up. I just wanna read if I could at the end of it.

Of course.

My poem, which I've written about dreams.

Totally, of course. - For my grandson it will be one in August, so I send this in a frame it so it'll have it, and it's called Sammy's Dreams.

Cool, awesome.

Now it's time to say good night, time to close your tired eyes tight, and wonder as you drift from light what stories your dreams will write. Well, they soar to lands afar beyond the moon and twinkle stars, and when you awake to Dewey Morn with pinkish clouds, the new day born, remember your dreams without delay before they slip, slide, and fade away, for no better friend will you ever find than nightly dreams, not left behind. (laughing)

That's awesome.

That's awesome, I mean, it's also really cool that that will take on more and more significantly.

Well, that's, you know, that's, you know, the agenda that I have, don't show them other than Mikey, they don't really know about my old dream world, they don't walk. (laughing) And I really am doing it because it's a way of a little, it's a little synchronic moment that may heal, you know, years from now he'll find this little frame thing and just look at it, and then say, you know, you know, I had a really, that's crazy, I had a really crazy dream the other night, and that begins a whole journey for him because he stumbled across the poem his crazy old grandfather wrote, there you go.

Yeah, nevermind, it's a wild, wild world out there.

Steven, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. This was awesome, I had a really good time. We'll definitely do it again, I'm getting Damien.

Really?

I just get that in all seriousness.

I don't work up now because I realize I'm so desperately alone and, you know, I think about this stuff all the time.

Seriously, I mean, outside of the podcast.

Yeah, just to let you know, outside of the podcast, yeah, I'm, Thor's always open to talk about this stuff. Like this is my favorite stuff. And like really the point of the network that this show is on is to specifically talk about these things. And I can tell you like, I have analytic data, analytics data that proves people really like hearing and listening to this type of stuff. So like this is, this is where it's at. So both on and off, like don't, yeah.

You would have, and I'm gonna say, because I'm gonna get my website back working because I've been a little lazy on that. But my agenda with that too is exactly that, that, you know, the idea is to build the circle. And, you know, the people that are, maybe are listening to this have more interest. I wanna be available for them to reach out. So whether it be the web site or whether it's my, if it's someone you trust and you really know and they wanna talk about it, that works. You can give my email. This is the world that I believe in, and live in. Last thing for you to think about for yourself.

And I'm gonna leave you with it. Is I had this idea, I talked about the orchestra of the self.

Yes, I love that.

Which I can't, I wish we'd talk again. I have all things like, oh, an obligation, that's the obligated self. And I have Steve, I have Fearful Freddy. (laughing) And Funny Freddy. And I have Anxious Andy, an angry owl. And I got Mighty Muse, who's my female inmate, that's the news.

Totally.

And I've got a, oh, Judd, Judge-er. You know, he's looking at everything. And it's my orchestra, you know, it's my orchestra. But in my world, I was thinking about an inner sanctum. And I want you to think about this before we speak, for what yours would be. And in my inner sanctum, this is the circle made up of the mentors and the people that have affected my life. And it's set in Switzerland. It's in a, it's on a ledge overlooking a valley with mountains around it. On each window, it's got four, which is a magical number for young. Young, that was a, an integration number, back here, the first thing you were talking about.

And it has the four walls, four windows. And in each window, simultaneously is a different season. So outside is snowing, the other side is blooming, the other side's leaves are falling, the other side's is full of summer. And then the inner circle is a circle made up of the people that mean a lot to me. And the people for me are my mother and father, who were, you know, give thanks to them. You know, Carl Jung was a pretty wild, inventive soul, but you know, when the end, when the end game came, he was buried with his parents.

Yeah, yeah.

And my brother, Bobby, who's not on this planet anymore, my friend Dick Brewer is the guy that I told you that had lunch with Carl Jung. And Elizabeth Forsberg, I told you the psychiatrist. And then I added Hess.

Yeah.

And I added Carl Jung. And I have Joseph Campbell.

Awesome.

And I have a young girl, the movie that I made, and I won't mention her name, just because they'll protect her, but I did a movie called Stealing Home and the movie, the Jodi Foster characters based on this real life woman. She's there, and then finally, Robert Frost. And they sit in a circle, and these are my higher counsel.

Mm-hmm.

These are the people that are there moving me and moving my dreams, trying to get me to be fully integrated into the circle.

Yeah.

And got an empty seat, by the way, ready for the Dalai Lama when he goes.

Yeah, totally.

I love it. And what's I gonna say to you? So the question for you will be, if you have an inner sanctum, what does it look like?

Yeah.

Who's there? Who's there there that you go, oh my God, I can't believe they're engaged in following and evolving my consciousness in life.

I mean, I'm definitely gonna do this. (laughs)

Yeah, of course, that's an amazing exercise.

That's why I said mentors who are important, because all the, by the way, even though I was up in Vermont and lost as lost could be, and I was reading young and I was reading Hess, those guys, plus Woody Allen movies in the 70s, they saved me.

Right.

It's not just paper, you know, and words on paper and a book and it was nice. I connected to these people. I thought there was someone out in the universe that was alienated like I was feeling, and I was so thankful for them. So then I wanted to read everything that they had to say.

Right.

And so mentors that can be cartoons, they can be real people, they can be fictional people, but what's important is that you're in a circle.

It's funny, I mean, and we'll read this, we could go forever, I know.

I know.

It is, it sounds a lot like the concept of a guru, which is a very misunderstood term and really appropriated word that really has been co-opted. It doesn't, I think it's just, it's not really that meaningful, like a lot of these words, but Ramana Maharshi, one of my favorite, and he had a very symbolic thing with a mountain here, him, a famous Vedic saint, non-dual guy. He had God equals guru, equals self, right? And that is the inner sanctum. So those people are reflections of you, and when you resonate with them and learn about them, it brings, it coalesces and ties these things together, which really can be meaningful for a lot of people.

So I love that idea, and of course, I'm gonna do that. That's like a, it's a really fun time.

Yeah, I love calling them the gurus within me. And that, you know, the game is for, you know, for you, I know why I had this one fantasy, by the way, and I'll swear to God we'll stop. But it was a long table, it was a, at one end of the room, it was a television where you're walking down a table that goes for miles and miles, and you cross and meet every single person you've ever come across and had an exchange with. You have an opportunity to say something to them. They're all at the table in the inner sanctum. Everything, nothing's lost.

Right, right, right.

You know, energy equals MC square, but you know, I was saying, you know, energy is transformed, it's not, you can't lose energy.

That's right.

Which is, I guess, where the reincarnation thing makes sense too. We're gonna have another conversation about it.

Okay, you promise?

Of course I promise. Like, if it's an email me, you think I'm joking.

I'm lonely, I'm lonely if you do crazy.

Please, email, email, call, whatever, man. I'm totally open to you.

Good fun, I appreciate it all. Great stuff, and we'll talk.

Yeah, thank you so much again, seriously. And thank Mikey for introducing us. I'll thank him too.

I sign all letters off and I end with Dream Much Live More.

Thanks, man.

Talk to you later.

Bye-bye. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

I told you, Steven was cool, didn't I? I was just like one of the nicest guys I've ever come across. I mean that, I think he's on vacation right now, and he's coming back. We're gonna talk about some fun stuff. Just a great guy. Really cool, practical, love the dream stuff. He recommended a book to me, which was a book giveaway, book I think a few weeks ago called "Demian" by Hermann Hesse, Hermann Hesse. And truly, what a cool book. I highly recommend picking it up. It's like a short 100 page fictional novel. He then, we got on the phone and he interpreted it through a Jungian lens, through the individuation process, and what the various characters represented.

And it was just like, awesome. It was like, it was so fucking cool. So yeah, I hope you enjoyed it. If you're listening to this point, that's past the music. That's past the relatively long episode. Seriously, if you can review on iTunes, that would be cool. Probably just for my ego, but still, come on. Send a little love this way. That's it, there's the reading list. If you have, if I mentioned that at the beginning, I think that's cool. If you want to know what books I'm reading or I really enjoy, check that out on the website. And that's it. Thank you so much for tuning in. I really appreciate it and I'll see you next week.

I hope him of you in the video.

Talk to you in the comments.

I'm in the web, I'm in the web.

This episode of Synchronicity was brought to you by EatDreamB.com. Pick up a delicious dream bar flavor for you and your family today by visiting EatDreamB.com/Sync. That's S-Y-N-C. And thank me later as you sample the delicious array of wonderfully crafted, dream-inducing, health-promoting, relaxation-optimized dream bars. Once again, eatdreamb.com/Sync. Thanks for listening.