All Episodes
Previous Next
Sept. 14, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
39:02
414 Two Dreams Part 2: Ice Flying
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi everybody, it's Steph.
How's it going? Hope you're doing well.
I'm going to finish off the question or the podcast on the dream about the Jesus bunny.
And we will then take a quick look at another dream.
And the reason I'm going to finish this up this evening is while I was playing badminton with Christina, we were chatting about this dream.
This is For those who aren't aware, my gorgeous wife, who practices psychotherapy, she's a licensed practitioner, and she is wonderful at helping me with these kinds of things.
And we were talking quite a bit about this question of the urinals.
Oh, sorry, if you're just looking at this one, but you haven't seen Two Dreams Part 1, if you could just watch that now, I'd appreciate it.
I can wait. Oh, good.
You're done. Okay. So, I'm going to just read this a little bit about the urinals, and then we'll talk a little bit about what it might mean.
So he's on the bridge with the bunny, with the Jesus bunny.
The Jesus bunny is...
Boy, if you haven't seen the last one, this is going to be completely incomprehensible, but okay.
So he's on the bridge with the Jesus bunny.
The bridge extends from the city.
The dwarfs take the Jesus bunny.
He falls into the water, and then it turns out that he's in a urinal, or a bathroom with stalls and urinals, which is filled with four feet of water, which is at the bottom, underneath the city, which is associated with God or religion or Jesus, because it's a city of God.
And it's where the Jesus Bunny goes to, which this gentleman was trying to build a bridge, I believe, of knowledge to get to.
So I'll just read this bit. Oddly enough, I landed in a large basin of water at the bottom of the canyon, and I was fine.
I realized it was going to kill.
As I fell into the water, I went into some kind of bathroom, a restroom with multiple stalls and urinals, that had an entrance or perhaps opening at the base of the canyon.
I believe it was an underground restroom of the city above, on the other side of the canyon.
Yet somehow it felt like a prison.
In this restroom, water was flooded to approximately 4 feet.
I think there may have been other people there.
In any event, I remember walking, I guess, or sloshing up to a urinal and urinating, except I'm not sure if there was, in fact, a urinal, as I may have been simply urinating in water, that was almost to the level of my pelvic area, where it would start to be submerged.
Now, I'm going to be a little bit more aggressive in my interpretation here.
I've tried to check to make sure, sort of within my own conscience, that I'm not projecting my own particular views onto this analysis, but this is sort of the conversation with Christina that I think has cleared it up a little bit for me, so I think this is important.
And I think that the analysis might go something like this.
If the city, which you're trying to get the Jesus punny to, is religion, and the fact that people, when you get close with knowledge, people snatch Jesus from you and disappear back into the city and leave you to fall, it's obviously that you've overextended yourself psychologically.
You have attempted to do something which is not possible to do.
So you have tried to reach God through knowledge.
But of course...
God can't be reached through knowledge.
God can only be reached by rejecting knowledge, because any rational knowledge is that there is no God.
So you can't reach God through knowledge.
You can only reach God, so to speak, by abandoning knowledge.
You can only reach ignorance by refusing to learn, and you can only believe in God by refusing to think.
So the idea that you're going to study your way into religion is ridiculous.
It's ridiculous, and it means that you are rejecting a very core requirement for rationality in your pursuit of knowledge.
So, you fall because you can't conceivably get to God through the pursuit of knowledge.
There's a completely contradictory notion.
And so, when you fall, when you no longer, and this is something that's occurring for you psychologically, and you'd really better sit down and think quite hard about this.
I don't mean this in any sort of commandment, but it's very important for you to do it.
Because your faith is failing.
Your faith is falling.
And that's a good thing. That's a good thing.
It's like saying your prejudice is diminishing.
That's a good thing. It means that you're getting closer to some sort of rational view of the world, to some sort of intelligent and consistent and intellectually rigorous and soulfully integrous or having integrity.
You're getting closer to that in your view of the world.
Your faith has caved in and you've lost Jesus.
Your faith has caved in, and you've lost Jesus.
You're out of the desert, you're out of the cave, you tried to build a bridge to the city of God, and you fell because the city...
You don't build a bridge to God.
You don't build a bridge to God.
It's like studying. What's the course of study to become ignorant?
There is no course of study to become ignorant.
There is no way that you can study your way towards God.
Because God is an illusion.
God is false. God is a fantasy and an extraordinarily destructive fantasy at that.
So, your faith has collapsed.
The bridge has collapsed.
And where you are now is you're in a bathroom.
You're in a set of toilets.
Underneath this city, the basis of this city, what's at the bottom of the canyon, what's at the root of religion, is excrement and urine.
And why it's important that the water is half full, that it's higher than the people who are the dwarfs who live in the city of God.
Dwarfs and aliens and mutants.
I mean, this is pretty important.
This is not your unconscious telling you that these are great people that you really want to join.
They betray you in the desert.
They betray you in the cave.
They betray you on the bridge, both the friends who are with you, possibly your girlfriend, and the people who come across from the city.
And they don't want you there anyway.
They're willing to let you fall and drop into the canyon, seemingly to your death.
And you fall into the root, the bottom of the city of God, and you find out that what's at the base of it is human waste.
Effluent and it's feces and urine that should be discarded from the body and you're in it.
So once you take the blinkers off with regards to faith or prejudice or frankly bigotry, all religion is a form of bigotry, once you take the blinkers off and you see this for what it really is, Then you see that you're standing,
not aiming at some big shining city, that the knowledge that you thought was going to get you to the city of God, your knowledge, your study of rationality, of philosophy, of economics, of sociology, of psychology, of family relations, the study that you're undergoing in your life that you thought would lead you to God, has led you to God!
And God is human excrement.
It is something which should be dispelled from the body.
Expelled, expunged, flushed away.
It is a waste of your mind, of anybody's mind, to pursue religious topics as if they're true.
And what the dream is telling you Is that not only have you got to the root of religion, which is excrement and urine and waste, but you're contributing to it.
You're contributing to it.
And that's what I believe is meant in the dream by your peeing in the water you're standing in.
You've risen, the dwarfs are all under the water, basically living in this filth and this sewage.
Religious thought, I know we all think it's this big shining city on a hill and God and Jesus and Buddha and Yahweh and Allah and all these people.
It's all nonsense.
And it's all nonsense.
It's all kind of evil nonsense, right?
Because it's inflicted on children, and it warps people's minds, and it kills their humanity, and it makes them violent, and it's all bigotry is racism and religion are the same thing.
Result in violence, irrational preference, belief without reason.
Inflicted upon children.
Now, you've got to the root of religion, right?
The bridge you were trying to build to religion has gotten you to religion.
Now, the knowledge that you've pursued has made you bigger than religion.
Religion is only four feet high.
You're, I don't know, six feet high or something.
So you've outgrown that.
But you are still adding to the filth.
Because you are still believing in this sort of stuff at some level.
At some level.
And you have studied a lot of rationality, you have studied a lot of rigorous intellectual disciplines, and you are very close to understanding the nature of religion.
You just kind of have to look down and realize that not only is this kind of stuff filthy, A sort of contaminant within human society.
I mean, look at these theocracies around the world, the Muslim societies, the fundamentalist Christian societies, the Bible camps.
I mean, this is just deranged.
It's really, really unhealthy.
It's unhealthy for adults and it's kind of abusive to inflict upon children.
And you're peeing into it, right?
You're actually adding to it.
And the last thing that I'll say about the dream, which ends with this image, right?
Which is where you are right now.
You're waking up to religion. You're seeing.
You're not out, right? You're in another.
I sort of said earlier that you were in situations that you couldn't stay in.
You couldn't stay in these situations.
The first was the desert, the second was the cave, the third was the bridge, and now here you're in another situation that you can't stay in because you're sort of sitting in human filth, or standing in human filth.
Now, Okay, that was not quite the last thing.
The last thing that I will say is that I'm guessing, and I hope that this is not incorrect, and I hope you don't mind the forwardness of what it is that I'll say here, but I think that, remember, everything in dreams is specific, and I don't want to come all Freudian and sex-obsessed here, but everything in dreams is very specific.
You could have been sweating into the water, you could have been pushing excrement, you could have been taking a dump in the water, but what you're actually doing in this dream is you're peeing in the water, and that would lead me to believe that your sexuality is somehow wrapped up in religious edicts, because it's your penis that is adding this waste or filth into the environment.
It's just a possibility. I would certainly look over your sexual premises in sexual life.
You know, see. See if this shows up anywhere.
That's a bit more of a possibility.
But I think I went through a whole bunch of different possibilities with this particular thing because it was such a striking image.
Strikingly different. And this is sort of what I came up with.
And that felt the most satisfying.
You know, that's a logically rigorous criteria, but...
Sometimes that's the best thing that you can do, is to keep casting about for different ideas until you get one that really clicks.
And I think that there's enough evidence within it.
But of course you do have to accept that religion is a contaminant in any kind of rational or positive philosophy, in any kind of mental health.
We kind of know this because...
You don't get mental health in numbers, right?
As we had talked about in the series on philosophy, you don't get to be a good or bad human by joining a group, and you certainly don't get to get mental health by joining a group.
And if you imagine that I was the only person who believed in the following, you know, that a living man God came down 2,000 years ago and died for my sins.
He was born of a virgin.
He made bushes burst into flames and he ran pigs off cliffs.
And he healed lepers, and he just died for my sins, and I owe him this, and I owe him that, and I'm going to live forever, and there's a demon in hell, and there's a God in heaven, and there are saints, and there are apostles, and I pray to all of them, and there's one for lost keys, whatever it is, right?
If I was the only person who believed that, it would be classified as, you know, kind of mentally ill, right?
But of course, if you put billions of them together, sometimes...
Well, somehow it always seems to end up as a cultural norm that you can't question.
Now, I did promise to do two dreams in 14 minutes, so we'll keep it sort of quick.
But the second dream is much shorter and I think quite interesting as well.
This is from another gentleman.
I am with a couple at the top of a hill.
which isn't too steep, but not that shallow, either.
At the bottom of the hill is a vast, solid, frozen lake.
The guy offers me his hangclider, which I accept with hesitation.
I take off flying.
Above the lake. The scene switches to the couple who are now on the lake.
The man somehow turns evil with red eyes and one of his hands is turning to ice and he's about to apparently hurt the lady in some way.
Then I wake up.
And of course I did my usual.
I asked What was going on in your parents?
Where is he in his life? And the gentleman replied, I am in a forced, quote, limbo.
I know that I loathe my parents, and I would dearly love to get away from them.
When I have had discussions that hint at my feelings, my dad seems to react negatively towards it.
That anarchy crap!
He referred to it once in a heated discussion about school.
And my mother is a schizophrenic who is paranoid about the neighbors, which greatly annoys me.
But since I am 16, I have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Obviously, huge, huge sympathy.
This is a very, very, very difficult situation.
And I asked if his father had ever been physically or verbally abusive towards himself or his mother.
And I asked what he thought would happen to his mother when he left.
He said, my dad isn't abusive really towards my mother.
But my mother often starts irrational arguments with my dad, and I wouldn't be surprised if dad was annoyed by this.
I think my mother will be, quote, sorry for me after I leave.
I have one older brother who is autistic, lives with us, is 21 years old, and does things that have driven me to the point of rage, although I haven't really acted on it.
Again, this is very, very sad, of course.
I asked him if...
If he recognized the man or the woman in the dream, he said no.
He said, I have flown once to see my grandparents, whose company I enjoy very much, and again to come back, I found the flying experience itself enjoyable.
And he said that my mother is paranoid and will accuse my dad of bad things that he hasn't done, and my dad tries to counter her.
And I asked, has your mother been formally diagnosed with schizophrenia?
Is she on medication or is she just generally paranoid?
And I asked him if he's planning on leaving home as soon as he can, going away for school or work.
And he said, I believe she has been formally diagnosed and yes, she takes meds.
And yes, I do plan to leave.
But unfortunately, I am not sure how easy it will be to transition into the real world.
I will probably leave during or after college.
Now, For those who haven't gone through some of the podcasts at Free Domain Radio, those particularly associated with the family, I may as well sort of fess up and tell you up front that as a philosopher, I don't ascribe any moral value to concepts.
I don't ascribe any moral value to a state, to a nation, to a race, to a creed, to a religion, obviously.
And of course, fundamentally, You cannot logically ascribe any moral values whatsoever to your family.
Your family have merely a DNA-based biological relationship to you, and you cannot logically or with any kind of integrity Claim that your father is good because he's your father and your mother is good because she's your mother and your brother and your sister are good and your extended family and your culture and blah blah blah.
None of that has any logical validity whatsoever.
There is no moral content to concepts.
You might as well say that the number nine is good or evil.
It doesn't mean anything.
The concept family, nation, states, religion, all these kinds of things have no moral value because they're merely aggregate descriptions of individuals, only individuals.
Only individuals can have ethics.
A crowd can no more have ethics than a crowd can digest a hamburger.
And so the stuff that I talk about quite a bit in my podcasts is that your family...
Cannot be considered moral because they're your family.
They can only be considered moral if, well, I'm sure you get where I'm going with this, if they are in fact moral.
You can't judge your family as good or evil based on the category called mother, father, brother, sister, extended family, whatever, grandparents, whatever.
The only thing that is moral is an individual who acts universally preferred behavior, all the consistent stuff that we've talked about.
And so... This family, obviously, is very, very dysfunctional.
I'm not going out on much of a limb here, and I don't think they're going to take my license to broadcast away by saying that this is a very dysfunctional family.
And listen, huge hugs to the people who are in this kind of situation.
I can't even express just how terrible the situation is and what an incredibly raw deal people get in life with their families and how...
How so much propaganda is focused on this question of the ethics of the family.
It's like we live in some sort of mafia-based universe where you've just got to be for the family no matter what.
And that's pure nonsense.
And it's incredibly corrupting.
And it actually makes people act a whole lot worse because they've got the eternal get-out-of-jail-free card of being a family member and therefore they can act however they want and people have to take care of them.
Parents beat their children and the children will take care of them when they get old.
And so this kind of...
Trying to be the bigger person, this false forgiveness is not healthy.
It just encourages bad behavior.
It's technically or semi-technically, you'd call it kind of enabling behavior.
And so this poor young man is stuck in this situation where he has a mother who is mentally ill.
He has a father who's scarcely better.
Because arguing with a mentally ill person is itself kind of crazy, right?
It's like Billy Joel said, you should never argue with a crazy man.
Or a woman. And so we have, from this child's perspective, sorry, this young man's perspective, we have parental units that are locked in perpetual, exhausting, horrible, destructive, stressful battle all the time.
And of course, this must have gone on the whole time.
And people who are paranoid are extraordinarily exhausting to spend time around because you keep wanting to talk them out of being paranoid, but the whole point of paranoia is the destruction of rationality, and so you can't do that.
Keep arguing about the evidence that they put forward and so on.
And it doesn't mean anything because they're actually trying to get you in to argue with them so that they can assault and attack and undermine and degrade rationality.
And I'm not saying that's all a conscious choice or anything.
I'm just talking about what actually happens with paranoid people.
So we have the mother who's paranoid and destructive and...
Bad as the dad or mad mother all around.
We have the father who chose her, who chose to stay married to her, who chooses to keep somebody who's mentally ill in the house, right?
So this is somebody who's seriously disturbed himself.
And you have...
I don't know much about the autistic brother, and I know even less about autism, so I'm not even going to go and talk about that.
But I certainly wouldn't be surprised if some of the difficulties that are in the children, in the young men, the emotional difficulties, socialized difficulties, Would absolutely come out of this kind of stressed, broken-down, destructive parental configuration.
And so this young man has been listening to these podcasts, and I'm certainly not going to claim any influence here.
I'm simply going to say that somewhere he has been getting an idea that he can leave, but the dream is talking about The fears that he has about leaving, right?
Because parents who are really stuck in destructive patterns don't want to let go of the kids.
That's sort of a universal, almost like a law of gravity.
So he's with a couple at the top of a hill, which isn't too steep, but not that shallow either.
At the bottom of the hill is a vast, frozen, solid lake.
The guy offers me his hang glider, which I accept with hesitation.
I take off flying above the lake.
This is not brain surgery from this standpoint.
This is somebody, a 16-year-old young man, is obviously thinking about leaving home and is worried about the vast anchor of guilt at leaving broken-down people behind when he wants to take off to a new and healthier kind of life.
And so he's flying, and he's flying away, and he's flying over a frozen solid lake, right?
I mean, a frozen solid lake could be extreme dissociation, possible psychosis, because water often represents the unconscious, because you can just see the surface, it's full of life, it's where all life comes from, it's the majority of the planet, it's like, what's it, two-thirds of the planet is water,
and of course the majority of what goes on Up here is unconscious and so a frozen unconscious is a really bad sign in terms of emotional availability, in terms of flexibility, in terms of curiosity.
So he's flying over this.
He's trying to vault over this family situation.
Now, the scene then switches to the couple who are now on the lake.
So, I'm not even going to guess.
I think this has something to do with his parents, or it could be his mother and his brother, but it's certainly a family situation.
And the scene then switches.
So, after he's flying away across the lake, the scene switches to the couple who are now on the lake.
So now we're switching to his parents' perspective, and the parents are on the lake, right, rooted on this dissociation or frozen soul sort of situation.
And... The man somehow turns evil with red eyes, and one of his hands is turning into ice, and it is about to hurt the lady in some way.
And then he wakes up.
Now, this could be a clear indication that he's worried about either his father, or it would seem more likely his brother, might become violent, which would be something that he obviously can't stay shackled at home forever.
That would be extraordinarily unhealthy in...
Not a great reward for surviving a childhood like this.
So it could well be the case that this is his unconscious telling him that there is a danger within the household that he needs to deal with when he leaves.
But also, I think that the dream also points towards a kind of manipulation.
A kind of manipulation.
And the dream is pointing out to him that it is manipulation.
But it feels emotionally forceful.
Of course, I can imagine this kind of dream.
You don't want to fly away.
You want to go help the woman who the man's attacking and so on.
But the very interesting thing is that...
The dream is pointing out that what is going to happen to you when you leave home is probably going to be quite manipulative.
In other words, when you leave home, your parents or maybe your brother are going to latch onto you like a bunch of lampreys and try and keep you emotionally involved to prevent you from going off and having a great life somewhere else.
It certainly does seem to be the case that people who are very stuck in their lives, especially as they get older, don't like anybody else to get away.
This is pretty true within a lot of families, of course, that it's sort of like if you're a...
You know, if you've spent your whole life in prison, you're locked in the cell, there are 15 locks on the door, and you've sat there and tried to make the best of it, and you haven't tried to break free or break out because you think there are all these guards and so on, and then somebody who's been in just for a couple of days, you've been in there for 20 years, and somebody who's just been in there for a couple of days just says, hey, you know what, I'm just going to try this because, you know, I don't see any guards, so he goes and all the locks just fall open and he walks out.
Well, isn't that going to make you feel kind of upset?
You've sort of sat in this cell for 20 years, could have walked out at any time.
Of course, life is really all about freedom, and we're free to do those kinds of things at any time.
And so when you have a severely dysfunctional family, assuming that they're not totally, you know, honest to God, balls to the wall crazy, then what often happens is that they really resist emotional growth, particularly the children, right? Because the children have futures and have hopes.
And if a children gets out of the situation, And goes and has a great life somewhere and sort of doesn't look back, then that makes the people who've chosen to stay in the cage of their own histories and of their own illusions, the fundamental illusion being that there is such thing as a cage in life.
I mean, if you're not actually locked up in some Turkish prison, it seems hard to argue that there is.
But people will...
I kind of hate you for doing that, because then they think that they're in a cage and that they've made peace with their situation, and as soon as somebody walks out, they realize that it's their choice to be there.
That it's their choice to be there.
It's not inevitable. It's not written in the stars.
It's not their fate. They're not locked in.
There are no gods. There are no points for good or bad behavior.
And that they've probably been subscribing to a false system of ethics or loyalty or duty or whatever.
And so, they don't want to think that what they took as an absolute is actually just a choice.
I mean, it's a sort of fundamental aspect of human psychology when people are taught silly things when they're younger.
It's that they grow up and these silly things harden into truths, like a frozen lake, maybe.
And they take all of these things as absolutes.
And then when somebody comes along and says, you know, I really don't, I think it's all just nonsense, and wanders off, right?
Then these big, massive Berlin brick walls, people just walk through them, and they realize then that these absolutes and these moral rules that they've grown up with are all just illusions and aren't real.
And, of course, because they're human beings, they don't get angry.
At the people who taught them all this nonsense that enslaved them.
They get angry at the person who, by walking through the wall, proves that it's nonsense.
I can't even tell you the number of times people get angry at me about my opinions on religion.
Of course, I don't actually put out literature saying that Christians should be put to death for believing in Christianity.
That's not really my style, so to speak.
But of course, in the Old Testament and in parts of the New Testament, it is written quite repeatedly that unbelievers should be killed, burned, drowned in rivers, stoned.
And people don't really get mad at the Christians as much as they get mad at the atheists, but I think that the atheists have quite a bit more to complain about in terms of civility and politeness than the Christians do.
We point out logical fallacies and moral corruptions involved in the nature of organized religion, and they want us dead, or at least they subscribe to books that want us dead, and you may say, well, I know Christians who don't want you dead.
That's fine. They may be in the KKK, they may not want all blacks dead, but that's kind of what the KKK manual says.
So as a Black atheist.
I sort of find that objectionable.
But of course, people get mad at me.
They don't get mad at religion.
And the reason that people get mad at those who break free of the bonds of illusion rather than those who continually spout the bonds of illusion and plant such evil weeds in the minds of children is because it's safer and it's easier.
It's a form of moral cowardice.
So when this young man flies on his hang glider away from home, Then the scene switches and something's changed.
So the moment that he's flying away from home, something has changed.
Now, that's how you know it's manipulative.
When you do something and then something else changes, then you know it's manipulative.
So, to take a silly example, if a child trips, gets up, and sort of...
I'm okay. And then his mom comes around the corner and he bursts into tears and throws himself on the ground because he gets cookies and a hug or whatever.
Then you know that it's manipulative because something has changed based on something that has just occurred.
So this guy's flying away.
Then the parents or the people are on...
We're on the frozen lake, and the guy turns evil, and one of his hands turns to ice, and he's about to apparently hurt the lady in some way.
And then he wakes up.
Now, what this indicates to me is that there is a lack of boundaries, obviously, between the people in this family, right?
If the brother or the father or whoever is going to become violent when you leave, that's not your fault.
I mean, you can take precautions, you can inform people, you should say, I should do this, I should do that.
But it's like a drug addict, right?
You can say you should do this or that or the other, but whether they go and take drugs is absolutely up to them in the last resort.
You can't control other people's behavior.
So, you wake up because you feel that it's your responsibility that this guy is doing something, and of course it's not.
And the fact that he's only doing it after you try and fly away is an indication that it is manipulative, and he's relying on you to take ownership for other people's behavior, right?
This is the fundamental problem.
With codependence, right?
That other people want you to take responsibility for their behavior, right?
I mean, it's like that old cliche in the hostage movies where, you know, the killer phones up and says, if you don't give us the planes and the million dollars, then we're going to start shooting hostages and that's going to be on your head, right?
I mean, that's what you always hear. You'll be responsible for their death.
And of course, it's not true at all, right?
Right? The person who's responsible for the people getting killed is the person actually pulling the trigger.
But in dysfunctional families and dysfunctional organizations, then you are sort of responsible for other people's behavior.
So Adam eats the apple and you go to hell.
This is sort of basic dysfunctional situations where people don't take ownership and they're constantly projecting ownership onto everybody else.
So, the fact that as you leave, this whole scene changes, the guy's on the ice, his hand is turning to ice, and he seems to be threatening the woman.
Doesn't actually hit her, doesn't actually do anything bad to her, but seems to.
You react to that as if it's your fault, right?
That jolts you awake and so on.
And your dream, of course, is saying that it's manipulative, that it is not real, that he's going to hurt the woman in some way, that as the child here, you're not responsible for the family dynamics.
I mean, it's my very strong contention.
Children, unless the parents become complete doddering, Alzheimer-based forget-me-nots, Then children simply can't take the emotional lead in family situations.
You can't have parents rule over you for 15 to 17 years and then turn around and say, hey, you know, my first 20 years of first impressions, I can put those aside and now I can take on the leadership.
This is kind of like a fantasy that far too many children fall prey to.
You're always going to be susceptible to the authority of your parents.
There's simply no way to get around it.
And so I would say that in this situation, you have to recognize that when you leave, it could be that your parents are going to encourage you to go, like if these are your parents in both, at the top of the hill and the bottom on the ice, your parents are going to say, go, go, have fun, go away to college, but then as soon as you leave, there's going to be all these problems that are going to demand your attention, because they don't want you to go, but they don't want to be perceived as not wanting you to go, and so on.
So my particular advice would be that I would start before, you know, you plan your escape, right?
I would start to really focus on recognizing and really work this out.
Like get journals, get a counselor, get a counselor.
If you can get books on this, get books on this.
Really start working through this issue that you are not responsible for other people's moral decisions.
You are not responsible.
You're not responsible for other people's actions.
You're not responsible for other people's thoughts.
They are responsible, and you are responsible for not being responsible.
I mean, that's very important.
I don't want to get all tricky and linguistic on you, but you are wholly responsible for recognizing that you're not responsible.
So if you forget that and you sort of go in and try and fix everything for everyone and make everything okay because stuff's falling apart, you become like the central tunnel support of the crumbling subway line or something.
Then you are totally responsible for recognizing that this is not your job.
We're not here to prop each other up.
We're here to love each other, to be good to each other, and if we can, and if other people let us, and if they're good to us, that's great.
But we're not here to prop other people up.
You certainly aren't here to fix your family.
You certainly aren't here to fix your parents, which is completely and totally impossible for children to do.
This is a great illusion that keeps a lot of things going.
So... I would really start to work on delineating moral responsibility for yourself and for your parents and for your brother, right?
To recognize that you did not create this family.
You did not choose who your parents were.
Your parents are totally responsible for their choices, right?
I mean, I don't know the degree to which your mother is mentally ill.
But your father, of course, is totally responsible for keeping a mentally ill mom around, for marrying her in the first place, for arguing with her, which means that he's seriously disturbed.
And your brother, again, not that I know anything about autism other than a few anecdotal things, but none of this is your responsibility.
None of this is your ownership.
You can choose this family to get born into.
And it doesn't sound like they've been treating you well enough that you would have any kind of reciprocal moral obligation.
In my opinion, I don't know the details.
So I would really start working over the moral responsibility that you have relative to your parents.
And to recognize you can't fix your parents.
You're not responsible for what they do.
You're not responsible for propping the family up after you leave.
That everybody makes their own decisions and has to live with the consequences or not.
But it's not your issue either way.
And I think that's the manipulation that goes on within the dream, that your parents are probably going to encourage you to go and then undermine or cripple your going with terrible tales of this, that, or the other, is one possibility and I think a very strong possibility for this dream.
The other one, of course, is that you might want to talk to, gosh, I don't know, social services or something about what's going on with your brother.
I doubt that either of your parents are competent to handle the situation unnoticed, I don't know the details, of course, but I would definitely recommend that you talk to someone, or I don't know if you can talk to your brother, try and establish the degree to which he may be dangerous, and try and get that sorted out at a practical level.
But if nobody's willing to sort it out, then you've got to get on with your life, and it's not your issue to solve.
Oh, it was going to be so short and I didn't quite make it.
I hope that that's helpful.
I do appreciate very much the honesty.
It's a searing level of honesty to expose your dreams to this kind of forum.
And I really do appreciate it.
I really do feel, especially for the young boy, the young man in the second dream, you know, stay strong, brother.
It is a very, very hard road you're on.
But if you manage it right, you can end up as a very, very strong human being.
And the best way to do that is to avoid taking responsibility for things that are not your fault nor your responsibility.
▲
Export Selection