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Feb. 7, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
31:04
635 Dream Analysis - The Insecurity Blanket

Sprinting towards liberation...

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Good afternoon, everybody. It's Steph. Hope you're doing well.
We're going to struggle with the outside today.
It is the 7th of February, 2007, and we are going to try our level best to survive this unbelievable cold that we have going on out here in Canada at the moment.
I haven't been able to go for lunchtime walks for a little while, or at least I've chosen not to because it's just been so ugly out, but we'll see if we can't survive this particular one.
And I'm going to go with a blind dream analysis.
I haven't done one of those for a while. I haven't got caught up with what is going on in this person's life.
And so here's the dream.
What I've done is ask this person to give me some details about their life.
And then I will see how things correlate to this sort of blind sample taste test of dream analysis accuracy.
So here's the dream.
Here's a weird dream I had last night.
I used the generic term Bob.
I dreamt that my family and I were staying in a strange place, possibly on vacation.
I dreamt that I woke up knowing that I needed to get rid of this brown blanket I had.
It was folded neatly in a 24-inch square.
Although it was dark and cold outside, I went right out in my PJs to take the blanket away while my family slept.
I was carrying it down a sort of a jogging path.
Significant? I run early in the morning when it is dark and cold out while my family sleeps.
And I felt extremely frightened.
I remember thinking, oh, it's a good thing I'm a runner.
I can get through here quicker.
And I started to run. I went away from some buildings into a more rural area.
I knew that after I passed a field, I would go through some woods and then I would arrive at the city dump where I could get rid of the blanket.
The blanket was in perfect condition, not what you'd call trash.
As I ran, I felt more and more frightened and I couldn't wait to get to the dump.
I was holding the blanket to my chest while I ran.
In the middle of the woods, I had the sudden realization that the blanket was valuable and that if I just threw it down, someone who wanted it would probably pick it up and take it.
I threw it with both arms into the path in front of me and turned around to run back.
Very soon there were lots of people out, walking and jogging, and my new fear was that they had seen me, quote, littering by throwing down the blanket.
But no one said anything to me.
Then I woke up. The dream is bothering me because of the intense feeling of fear that I was experiencing.
But it seemed to have nothing to do with the blanket.
I was afraid of the dark and the vulnerability, that something might hurt me.
What the heck is the blanket all about?
Well, I don't know.
But... I can do what I can to stretch out my stick insect antennae and see what we can come up with that might make some sense out of this mystery blanket.
Now, the first thing that comes to my mind, and thank you for supplying the few details that make it a little bit more coherent or comprehensible to have a look at the metaphors at play, The first thing that I would mention is that there are two coincidental instances which both describe either family isolation or you within the family separation.
Let's not go so far as to say isolation.
That might be something that we can tease out of the dream as we move forward.
But separation, for sure, is going on.
So the first instance that I see is that your family is on vacation.
And that all makes perfect and illustrious sense, as far as I think the dream goes.
So the first thing that happens is that you're on vacation, or it seems that you're on vacation, And you wake up, and you're in a strange place.
So your family is not in its usual place.
And again, that setup, the first couple of metaphors that you get in dreams, seem to me, or at least in my experience, have seemed to be the most essential aspects.
So you've got to realize that, or to start working with a dream, you have to realize the initial metaphorical construct.
The dream, of course, can place you anywhere.
Somewhere beyond the sea.
It can place you on a mountaintop.
It can place you underwater. It can place you in the part of the sun.
It can place you on a mountaintop.
It can place you anywhere.
And in any relationship to anything.
There's no, at least, practical limit that I've ever seen to the imagined power that occurs within a dream environment.
So, where the dream places you to begin with, I think, is very important and well worth taking.
So, the dream is placing yourself and your family in a strange place.
That is the location.
So, this is an indication, I think, obviously, that it's related to your family.
If you remember the tornado dream, there was that aspect in there as well.
And, of course, the climbing to behold the horror of God dream So, the dream is not giving you many obscure things to begin with.
Your family and yourself are staying in a strange place.
Now, that's interesting because you are not separated from your family, but your family is separated from their normal environs, we could say.
And again, that's all very relevant.
You could have been separated from your family in the dream.
Your family could have been in a familiar place, and you could have been on the other side of a glass wall looking in.
It could have been anything, but you are with your family in a strange place.
So, you dreamt that you woke up.
Now, this of course occurs In dreams and there are some physiological aspects of dreams that are important to recognize the state that occurs in dreams that we all experience which is the feeling of leadenness within the limbs or low gravity like you want to run but you can't find any purchase and so on.
Part of that may be psychological but of course dreams have a very strong physiological basis and one of the things that occurs in dreams in the actual act of dreaming is that Our body gets flooded with muscle suppressants, muscle relaxants, so that while we kick in our mind, we do not kick in our sleep and wake yourself up.
So, the Latin feeling that can occur in dreams is maybe psychological, but it's also important to recognize the physiological characteristics that occur in order to keep us asleep.
So, when you wake up within a dream, that is quite an interesting phenomenon.
The dream... I mean, there's lots of theories about dreams, I'm not going to get into mine in any great detail, but to me, the dream is the world that we're actually living in, metaphorically rearranged to...
Expose the undercurrents that we are not able to, usually because of repression or suppression, that we're not able to have access to in our daily lives.
So, the dreams are a map of the world as it is, in a metaphorical way.
And so when you wake up in a dream, in my particular opinion, is that you need to wake up in life to something.
And I'm not going to say I know exactly what this is.
Of course, I don't really know the details of what's going on in your life right now.
But when you have a wake-up situation in a dream, it's usually because there's something in your life that you know unconsciously, but you reject according to some false set of values because there's no...
I think there's no set of values that would ever be considered valid or rational that would say you must reject your nature, your experience, your impulses, your instincts, your images, your dreams.
You don't have to act on them, of course, but you certainly don't get anywhere by rejecting them.
So... There is a contradiction between that which is occurring in the world, which is passing through to your true self, and that which your false self is able to accept.
And this occurs for all of us, it's no particular criticism, but because we've all been so badly raised and twisted into balloon animals of unrecognizable conformity, unkinking takes a little bit of time, and I think it's important to understand that That reality is constantly pressing in and trying to contact our true self.
And this is a metaphorical way of putting it, of course.
There's no tendrils. Reality is constantly attempting to connect to our true self.
But our false self is constantly and consistently in the way.
And it's aimed at rejecting the principles which would threaten the bond with other false selves.
It would get a too complicated discussion of this.
So, you wake up and you need to get rid of this brown blanket that you have.
Now, I don't have any particular history of this blanket.
I don't know what your memory of blankets are.
There are certainly some I think some fairly common associations with blankets, and, you know, I don't know, maybe you were smothered with a blanket when you were young, I don't know, but the general connotation with blankets is warmth, envelopment, care, being, and often when you're ill, right?
You get a blanket over you, and Christina's got a bit of a cold, so I'm making sure I tuck her up in a blanket before we chat or watch TV or whatever.
So, I think blankets in general have this association which is basically involved with care or with comfort or a sort of physical caringness or physical care for someone.
And to my mother's credit, to whatever credit we can ascribe, such a witch, she was very good when I was sick.
She put me in sofa blankets and Neocitrine and so on.
So she was actually quite good when I was sick.
It was never a bother.
She actually quite preferred it.
And that's not too unlikely.
The hypochondriacs often make the best caregivers because you are living out the fantasy that they wish, or that they believe they are, or they wish they could, which is being genuinely ill.
So... Now, the interesting thing for me And again, I'm not going to claim to know any of the particular metaphorical or emotional etymology that you have with regards to this blanket, but it's not a snake.
If you woke up in a strange place, you're in the cat's gills or the errandex or whatever, and you wake up and you see that there is a snake on the ground, then the dream is obviously saying that there is a threat to you.
And to your family that you must take care of, right?
And so you would look for anything which would resemble that kind of personality structure, a serpentine, cold, lizard-like, tempting within your life.
And that, to me, would make good sense as far as what to do.
I think it might be a little bit too windy.
I can't imagine that you could hear too much at this point, so I might slither back to the garage and finish this up there, just because it's not actually too cold out, but the wind is pretty extreme, and I know it always, even though I've got my Zen wrapped in a sock, the high-tech seems to be somewhat less.
Oh, that's not so bad. So, you need to get rid of this brown blanket.
Now, the dream ascribes some very interesting characteristics to this brown blanket, which would not be, at least not what I would expect, if this was something which was a genuine threat to you or to your family.
So, the brown blanket is folded neatly in about a 24-inch square.
And There's no explanation as to why this blanket has taken on such a threatening existence for you, or why it has such threatening characteristics.
So it's folded neatly, it's in perfect condition, and it's certainly not junk and it's not garbage.
So to me, the dream is indicating that your fear of the blanket Is irrational.
Now, the interesting thing for me as well, it's all interesting to me, is that the blanket is not a threat to you.
The blanket is not a threat to you.
If you can imagine that it was a snake or a bomb or something, then you would obviously try and rush it out of the house, but that would be a threat to you as well.
But in this instance, there is no threat to you at all.
In the realm of this blanket, this blanket, you can carry it, you can take it on a run with you, you can do all these sorts of things with regards to this blanket.
And so it's no threat to you.
So given that it's in good condition, given that it's Not damaged.
Not ratty. Unfold the blanket and find rats inside or maggots or something.
It's in good condition. It's in excellent condition, I think you mentioned.
And there doesn't seem to be any harm that the blanket can bring to bear upon you.
But you feel this great fear of the blanket.
So I think that the reason that your family is isolated is to reduce the variables in the dream.
And so The dream is clearly stating that what you fear is not dangerous.
If we don't fear something that we should fear, then the dream will create characteristics of what we should fear and amplify the fear characteristics of it.
So if there's someone in our life who's acting like a snake and we're pretending that this person is our friend, then what will happen is the dream, or a dream, may do something like, or will likely do something like, recreate this dream.
Some sort of image of this, quote, friend, and include within that image the characteristics that would allow you to associate it with the friend in real life, but exaggerate the fear characteristics of that friend so that it's attempting to balance, right?
The unconscious is always attempting to balance our prejudices, right?
So whatever we have a prejudice against or for that is irrational or subjective or based on conformity or habit, the A dream will attempt to correct that for us, to give us a counterweight, right?
So, whenever you veer off in one direction, it's like the ABS, automatic braking system.
So, when you veer off in one direction, the dream, or the unconscious, if you veer off in a false self-direction that's too great, then the unconscious will attempt to correct you for it.
So, in this instance, you are afraid of something, but it can't be on behalf of yourself, because you face no direct threat from the blanket.
And because you're isolated with your family, I mean, you're not in a big crowd, right?
So, it must be that you perceive this blanket to be a threat to your family, but the dream is saying that this blanket is not a threat to your family because the dream is ascribing no characteristics of threat to that blanket.
So, without wanting to labour the point too much, blanket, family, fear, irrational.
So, then what happens is you're in a big and extraordinary hurry.
And so what you do is...
You know what, maybe I can just walk around to the garage for a bit.
I'll just stretch my legs a bit.
So what you do is you're in such a big hurry that you go down...
You're in such a big hurry that you go down to outside to a jogging path.
And you take the blanket with you.
You don't even stop to put on any protection against the cold.
And you say that it's dark and it's cold.
And at this point you're extremely frightened.
And you take it to a jogging path.
Now, is it significant that you run early in the morning when it's dark and cold while your family sleeps?
Well, I think it is.
Because again, the dream could have had your family wake up and say, what the heck are you doing, don't worry, there's nothing to be afraid of, and all this, that, and the other.
But that's not what the dream does.
The dream has you scurrying out of the house in your jammies, trying to get rid of this blanket.
And you can run through these buildings sort of very quickly.
And you leave...
I'm sorry, so the reason I think that the jogging path shows up is when you jog in the mornings, you are separated from your family, but you're doing something that's beneficial to yourself, right?
Assuming that you've got good knees, and that you're doing something beneficial to yourself, which is you are exercising, and so this is good for you, but it separates you from your family, and I'm building to a big a-ha.
As we go along, which hopefully will make some sense.
So, I think the fact that it echoes this other thing that's good for you, but separates you from your family, I think we shall see where that shall go.
So, you go away from some buildings into a more rural area.
In other words, you're leaving artificiality, you're leaving the man-made construction behind, and you're going to a more natural area.
Which, again, I'm not sure what your associations are with all of these things, but in general, or overall, this sort of stuff, these kinds of metaphors, tend to occur when we are returning to a more simple perception of reality, a more logical and empirical perception of reality, Less artificiality.
So it's not too surprising to me that you're leaving an area with man-made buildings and going to a more natural area.
So you're going to go through some woods.
You're going to arrive at the city dump where you can get rid of the blanket.
You mentioned the blanket was in perfect condition.
As I ran, I felt more and more frightened and couldn't wait to get to the dump.
So the blanket, obviously, is no threat.
Your anxiety about the blanket is growing.
As you're running alone with this blanket.
And again, I think this fits into the explanation that I will advance with all humility in a minute or two.
In the middle of the woods.
You have to suddenly realize, oh, and you're holding a blanket to your chest while you run.
That's interesting. That's not a particular, again, I don't know the weight of the blanket and so on.
I don't think it's wet. It's not particularly intuitive.
I've been a long-distance runner, and what you need to do, of course, is keep your arms moving and so on.
So to hug a blanket to your chest indicates an extraordinary, though unconscious, affection for the blanket, which, again, we'll get to in a moment or so.
Don't you just love this teasing?
And then... You have a sudden realization that the blanket is valuable, and that if you just throw it down, I guess, into the blanket, somebody who wanted it would probably pick it up and take it.
Oh, I see, I see, I see, I understand.
So you're sitting here thinking, well, I need to take this blanket to the garbage, the garbage dump, because it's junk.
But then you realize, well, basically, this is like dropping a bag, a clear bag of $50 bills on a sidewalk.
It's not like these people are just going to step over it.
You realize that the blanket is, in fact, valuable to others, but not to you.
And certainly not to your family, right?
Because this value that you put into the blanket, when you consider it with relation to your family, A negative value, right?
It's actively destructive, which is why you want to take it away from them.
But to other people, or to people other than your family, it is valuable, right?
Now, so there's a real, there's three people who have very different perceptions of the value of the blanket, three groups.
One is other people who will find it very valuable, so there's no point throwing it out.
The second is your family, who you believe, though without any evidence, right?
The dream doesn't start with your family screaming in terror while looking at a blanket.
And you, who believes that the blanket has negative value to others, but not to you, but also has positive value to others, but not to you.
The people it has negative value to are your family, you believe, and the people it has positive value to is everyone else.
It's all complicated, but I think can be tied together.
So, you throw it with both arms into the path in front of you and turn around to run back.
And very soon, lots of people are out walking and jogging, and your new fear is that they've seen you literally by throwing down the blanket.
And again, so here we have a change in value, right?
So you have a pretty, you know, frankly, a pretty tortured relationship with this blanket, which again, I think I have a way of understanding.
But you're afraid of it on behalf of your family.
You run it out of the house, you're going to throw it out because it's junk, although it's in perfect condition and obviously seems to be a valuable blanket.
You're going to throw it out, but you're hugging it to your chest as you run, thus indicating an unconscious state of affection.
And then you throw it down because you consider it to be of such value to other people that they'll pick it up.
But then you're afraid of people thinking that you're littering.
And then no one...
No one says anything to you.
So, in each case, your fears are not realized.
And this is sort of very, very important.
In each case with this blanket, your fears are not realized or are not empirically validated by anybody else's feedback or experience.
So, you're frightened of this blanket on behalf of your family, your family don't show any fear.
You want to throw it out because it has no value, and then you see that it has great value.
And you want to throw it out, but you're hugging it to your chest because it has great value.
And then you want to throw it down on the ground, and you do, because other people will find it so valuable that they'll pick it up, but then you're terrified that they're going to accuse you of littering, but nobody does, right?
So, you're having a very intense inner turmoil and inner conflict with regards to this blanket.
So, I will tell you what I think the blanket is, and you can tell me if it's close to on the mark, or not so much.
Now, I would say that the blanket is philosophy.
I would say that the blanket is philosophy in all of its depth and power and glory and meaning and beauty and terror.
And I'll sort of step you through why I think that's the case.
Since the very beginning of Freedom Aid Radio, I've talked quite considerably about the degree to which developing rational values will put you in conflict with Your family and those around you, and there may be exceptions to that rule, and I certainly applaud every exception that occurs to that rule, like the gentleman whose mother was positive towards atheism and so on.
Wonderful. But for the most part, it creates an enormous amount of conflict, or rather, it reveals an enormous lack of connection that we all imagine is there, based on our fantasy of the interconnectedness of our family relations.
So, it reveals an absence.
It does not create an absence.
So, No, never mind.
I think you get the idea.
So, I think that, I'm guessing that, I don't know, but it could be that you listen to podcasts, mine or others, or audiobooks or whatever, while you're jogging, and so there's a certain solitariness that philosophy brings to your life, if that is the case. It would certainly fit with the dream.
That may not be the case, of course.
The blanket is folded neatly, which again, every detail in a dream is important.
The blanket is not sprawled out and stained with yogurt and, you know, egg yolk and stuff like that.
And it's not tied in this sort of sack-like structure with human heads in it or anything horrible like that.
So the blanket is folded neatly.
So there's an organizational element to this.
The blanket is in great condition.
The blanket is folded neatly, which is a good metaphor, I think, for the warmth and protection.
And orderliness of philosophy and what it can bring to your life.
But the philosophy is taking you away from your family, right?
Because you fear that your interest in philosophy is going to threaten your family.
And I don't know enough about your relationship with your family to know whether or not the dream is saying You need to be scared, although I don't think that's the case, because there's no evidence in the dream that you do need to be scared.
But I'm guessing that your interest in philosophy is something that you're afraid to share with your family.
And I totally, totally understand and sympathize with that perspective.
It is a very scary thing to share what is the most treasured aspect of your life.
I'm guessing that it is, maybe it's not.
Well, actually, I do believe that it is, because without philosophy one cannot...
Really value anything.
It's just sort of random attachments and sentimentality and so on.
So, that's why I think you have this ambivalent relationship to a perfectly good blanket, right?
The blanket itself doesn't change its nature.
Your nature changes with relation to the blanket, which is really what philosophy has done to me, to you, to everyone else who's dabbled heavily in the deepest art.
That we think that it's going to supplement our personality, but what it does is generally rewrites us.
Hmm. Not exactly from the ground up, but I think you know what I mean.
So, you are running to throw this thing out, and of course this is the ambivalence that you have with regards to philosophy or with two objective values and all that that entails.
You're running to throw it out, but you're hugging it close to your chest.
So you want to get rid of it like it's a dangerous creature or bomb or something, but at the same time you're hugging it very closely to you, right?
So this is the false self that you have that fears it, And the false self has fears and concerns and all these sorts of things that are specifically non-empirical.
The false self is the root of beliefs and things like gods and the virtue of parents and religions and governments and so on.
But everything that occurs within the false self is in relation not to reality but to conformity or to the expectations or the ideals of others.
And fundamentally, that's not having any relationship to anyone.
It's just conforming to other people's prejudices.
It's not having any relationship to anything.
So, I would say that you are holding it to your chest because you value it greatly, but you also want to take it away from people because you fear what philosophy will do.
Now, the dream is saying, though, that you do not have as much to fear as you think from sharing your love of philosophy with your family.
And that your fears are not based on anything empirical.
Because, again, there's nothing in the dream that actually expresses danger with regards to the blanket.
So then, you figure, well, I can't handle philosophy, I'm going to get rid of it, but other people are going to find it hugely valuable.
And that, I think, is partly to do with the fact that you wish to have this sort of guilty secret called philosophy, and we all take up this course thinking we're going to ride it, and it ends up riding us, which I think is something which can be managed when people are raised more philosophically than they are now, but right now it feels like a little bit of a possession, at least to me.
So, the dark and the vulnerability, that something might hurt me, what the heck is the blanket all about?
Well, the dark and the vulnerability is that you are living a life of isolation.
You are living with a guilty secret called the truth.
You are living with a guilty secret called rationality or empiricism or philosophy more properly.
And again, this is just my hypothesis.
You can let me know what the case really is.
Because what happens is you throw the blanket away.
I'm going to take this thing away from my family.
I'm going to get rid of it. Because someone else, it has value.
It just doesn't have value to me.
But the moment you throw it away, you feel that you're going to be criticized by others.
When, of course, the reality is that it is your own conscience that doesn't want you to Forswear or remove the ideal, the philosophy, from your family or social or political or work environment or whatever it is that this is being compared to.
I'm guessing it's the family because that's what the dream indicates.
So, you think that people are going to accuse you of littering by throwing the blanket out right after you've said that they want you to throw it out or somebody's going to be happy that you threw it out because it's so innately valuable.
And that is very interesting.
Again, that's a reversal of values that occurs with no outside evidence.
And people don't reinforce. Nobody reinforces your relationship to this blanket throughout the course of the entire dream.
Nobody says, well, yes, you're absolutely right.
That is a really dangerous blanket.
My God, it's a bomb.
Let us... Get rid of it.
That doesn't occur within the dream, and when you throw the blanket down, thinking it doesn't have any value, or it will in fact have value for others, nobody picks it up, but then you're afraid that they're going to start yelling at you because you're littering, but then nobody does that either.
So again, you're very much involved in your own inner turmoil and torture with regards to this blanket, which I believe is philosophy.
It could be something else, of course.
But I think that all evidence points to it, and I would say that it probably is time to fess up that your fears around philosophy and the value that your family will find in that, in your approach, are not particularly rational.
At least that's not what the dream says.
And I don't know if you've shared your growing love of philosophy with your family, but I think it's well worth doing, and I hope that this helps, and let me know what you think.
I look forward to your donations. It's been a bit dry for the past two or three days, so if you feel like handing in some cashola, I would absolutely, completely and totally appreciate it.
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