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April 17, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
32:18
715 Zombie Dreams
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Good afternoon, everybody. It's Steph.
Hope you're doing well. 17th, I think, of April 2007.
And we have a juicy three dream sequence, which somebody's posted on the board.
I hope they don't mind. I'm going to pillage it, or we haven't done a dream analysis for a while.
This is a gentleman who had distant and unemotional parents.
Parents who could not express feeling or passion, and of course prevented him from doing The same through a variety of mechanisms which he hasn't described and which is probably a little unclear to him.
So, these are three dreams that helped him make a pretty significant decision.
Dream number one, getting rid of the shitty friends.
I'm in a place that seems kind of heavenly, cloudy, bright and shiny and all of that.
I'm sitting on a very large chair and looking out into a sea of faces, some of which are very angelic looking.
I spot a few of my friends' faces among the crowd.
Everyone is smiling, except for my friends.
I start to talk without making any sound, mouth just moving, as if I'm talking, and then all of a sudden all of the faces are replaced with the faces of my friends.
The scene suddenly changes.
I hear a terrible grinding, growling, moaning sound, and the large crowd of my friends turn into terrifying corpses that resemble zombies from horror movies.
I'm still silently talking.
All of a sudden they release a collective scream slash howl and begin to chase me.
The only sound I make through the dream is while I'm running I scream stop and the zombies all die disintegrating into dust.
Then I woke up. Dream number two.
Stopping. Cutting. I'm sitting on a park bench in a large city though I don't know which city it was.
I'm sitting alone on a bench in public cutting myself as was normal procedure back then.
I wasn't crying, just indifferently cutting.
No one was paying attention, just walking by me.
No snide remarks, no making fun, just ignoring.
Then all of a sudden a small child, must have been seven or eight, walked up and sat beside me.
We started talking.
The conversation was, approximately, child.
Why are you hurting yourself?
Me. It's what I do.
It doesn't hurt. You're not in pain?
I am, but not from this.
Have you never been sad before?
I have. I usually cry.
Do you not cry? No.
Do you want me to cry for you?
Then I woke up.
Dream number three, ending the relationship.
I won't get into the gruesome details of the relationship, as it is pretty disturbing.
I've only told two of my friends about it in depth, but anyway, the dream...
It's flashes of my day-to-day activities, going to school, playing my bass guitar, writing, watching TV, etc.
I'm happy in every, quote, flash, which was weird because I wasn't happy then.
Before the flash would change, my friend would appear out of nowhere and stab me, once in the heart and once in the back.
The stabs didn't go away with each scene change.
They would just build up.
By the end, my chest and back were nothing but scar tissue.
I couldn't move due to the tightness.
For the rest of my, quote, life, the rest of the dream, I couldn't function due to the pain.
I lived the rest of my life as a twisted, broken person.
When I asked my friend why they did what they did, they said, You don't give me what I need.
You hurt me.
I hurt you.
Then I woke up. Well, first of all, an enormous thanks to this gentleman for sharing some wonderful and very powerful dreams.
And I'm going to laugh and grab myself some lunch, but I thought we could talk a little bit about these.
This gentleman has full of forgiveness for his parents, or full of attempted understanding for his parents, which I appreciate and understand, but I think is a very bad idea, because it is so easy to forgive parents, especially distant and unemotional parents.
Because it's very hard to see the boa constrictor that they have placed around your heart in terms of self-expression, in terms of joy, in terms of spontaneity, in terms of passion, all of the things that make life worthwhile.
And when parents are simply inert to one's emotional overtures as a child, it is a very disorienting and very painful thing.
It's a very painful experience.
When we are children, we are passionate.
Children are very passionate creatures.
And, of course, they're unscarred in that they're new from the womb and therefore haven't built up all the defenses.
So, when a child reaches out to a parent in passion, in need, in desire, in hostility, There's a connection, right?
Even hostility can be something that is quite connecting.
But when a child feels something strongly and attempts to communicate those feelings to the parent, when the parent does not respond, is inert.
Then the parent is, to the child, emotionally deceased.
Deceased. You can't put that too strongly.
There is a very strong literature, of course some of it is referenced in these dreams, to the undead, right?
To zombies, those who have rotted and expired, but still move and have the appearance of life.
And in my view, this is The child's view of the dead parents, of the parents who are there, who speak, who move, who drive, who communicate, who pick up, who may even play, but are emotionally and spiritually inert, dead, rotting.
And rotting, of course, in a leprous kind of manner.
And rotting in a leprous manner is kind of like The communicability of the disease, right?
So, there are a great many myths in literature and art that depict these undead creatures, the vampires, zombies, or whatever.
And there are two basic ways that undead creatures are created in mythology.
The first is that a powerful sorcerer creates them In other words, a parent creates a child.
So you have Dr. Frankenstein, and you have the golem creators of ancient Egypt, I think it was.
And so you have a parent-child relationship, wherein the undead creature does not exist, and then the undead creature does exist.
And this is either created from one of two ways, either the sorcerer It creates an undead from scratch, like a golem, like a clay golem or a stone golem, creates these beings from scratch, or it takes a dead body and animates it.
And so you create something from nothing, you animate a corpse, or the other way of doing it is you take a living person and turn them into a dead person, or this undead, or a zombie, or whatever.
And in my sort of opinion, The first two represent the mythology of what occurs in the realm of the parent-child relationship.
And the second occurs when you are in an adult, usually sexual or peer relationship.
And the sexuality that is associated with vampires and so on is pretty considerable.
And we can talk about vampires another time.
They're absolutely fascinating. Examination of the false self, in my view.
I'm talking about that. It's on the list.
Of things of which to chat.
But if we look at the parent-child relationship, then the parent creates, the sorcerer creates the zombie in one form or another.
The parent creates the zombie.
Now, sometimes, of course, in the mythology, The body is, you need to create a zombie, so you actually have to kill someone and then reanimate them as someone else.
So you either sort of go and grave rob, or you actually go and kill someone to create the undead creature that you want, the ghoul, the ghast, the zombie, or whatever it is.
And these undead are really quite fascinating.
And they're common throughout.
You look at the voodoo mythology of the Caribbean, and there's the undead in Eastern religions and Western religions, and so on.
They're universally common.
And I believe that what occurs is that...
Oh, here we go to the loud, please.
What occurs is that there are memories that children have of...
Trying to interact with their parents.
Of wishing to have some sort of emotional communication or connection with their parents.
As is natural for children.
This is what children do.
They try to connect, they try to connect, they try to connect, they try to connect.
And when their parents turn out to be inert, non-responsive, what is the child to do?
Now, I think it's important to understand that when a parent does not respond to a child's emotional overtures, when a parent denies the reality of the child's emotional experience, it is not a neutral act.
It is not a neutral act.
If I am walking past a pond That is empty or just water or fishies or whatever.
If I'm just walking past a pond and I do not turn my head and I just walk along, that is a neutral act.
That is a neutral act.
If, however, I am walking past a pond wherein somebody is drowning, then we are in a rather different situation.
If I do not turn my head and continue to walk past the drowning person.
Let's say, to close the metaphor off, the drowning child.
If I walk past a pond, do not turn my head, do not change my course.
It is a neutral act.
If there is a child in great need in the pond, drowning or whatever, and I do not turn my head and keep walking, That is a very conscious act of rage.
That is a very conscious act of rage.
And if you can sort of mull on that for a few minutes, then I think you can get the self-destruction that is involved with non-responsive parents.
The hostility and destruction that is involved in non-responsive parents.
One sec, let me get my food. Alright, we are ready.
You shall now listen to me devour my lunch among the girls, and we shall continue to talk about this remarkable series of dreams.
So, if we have a sort of thesis that non-responsive parents is an incredibly passive-aggressive way of communicating enormous and nearly invisible rage and frustration for the child, then I think we are in a position to have a look at Some of these dreams.
So, first dream. Heavenly place, very large chair, looking out to a sea of faces, some of which are very angelic-looking.
I spot a few of my friends among the clouds.
Everyone is smiling except for my friends.
I start to talk without making sound.
My mouth is moving as if I'm talking.
Then, all of a sudden, all the faces are replaced with the faces of my friends.
The scene suddenly changes. Terrible grinding, growling, moaning sound.
A large crowd of my friends turn into terrifying corpses that resemble horror movies, zombies, I begin to chase you.
The only sound of the dream is you screaming stop.
The zombies all die disintegrating into dust.
So, heaven is...
I mean, to me at least, it's often associated with very early childhood.
You're in a sort of cloudy place that's only semi-corporeal, where...
There are gods and so on, and this to me has a lot to do with the early crib life with our parents.
Now, you're looking at the faces, some of which are very angelic-looking.
This is the original impression that you have with the world, I would suggest.
Everyone is smiling, except for my friends.
Now, you start to talk without making sound.
This, I think, is a clue regarding the manner in which You are unable to communicate to those around you, to your parents in particular.
You open your mouth, but it's exactly the same as if you're not speaking.
If I'm walking past the pond where the child is drowning, and I do not act, despite the fact that the child is crying out for help, and it's a very lonely spot that I'm the only person who could conceivably be around, Then, there is absolutely no difference between the child crying out for help and the child not crying out for help.
I think I've got the pattern.
If I throw them some fries, maybe they'll be quieter.
I'm probably quite deluded about that.
But we shall see.
So, When you are a child and you are crying out for help or you're in pain or you have a need or you have a joy.
It's something that you want to share with your parents.
And they are completely unresponsive.
It is exactly the same whether you are speaking or not speaking with the horrifying caveat that if you speak and no one listens it's worse than not speaking at all.
Right? If you speak and no one listens it is more painful than not speaking at all.
The child who is drowning in the lake, desperately hears the sound of the footsteps of someone approaching and is overjoyed because somebody is going to come and help this child.
If the child cries out, and I do not come to help, but instead pointedly ignore the child, then It's actually worse than not crying out if you're the child.
If you don't cry out, at least you expire without the feeling of being rejected.
At least you expire without the feeling of being rejected.
If you cry out though and you are rejected, it is worse than not crying out at all.
So you're opening your mouth and you can't speak.
Or you don't speak. Or you don't sort of notice whether you're speaking or not.
All the faces are replaced with faces of my friends.
Now this is fascinating. If your parents ignore you when you were a child and you attempt to reach out to them and to connect with them in some manner, as all children do pretty continually, until they give up depression humiliation loneliness nihilism
then you are stuck in the situation where contact equals horror and Where contact with someone equals horror.
If you have been fundamentally rejected by your parents, then any kind of emotional contact is going to highlight the rejection.
My God, I'm looking at an Alfred Hitchcock movie here.
It's going to highlight the rejection that you have received from your parents.
So, when you are a child, you are rejected by your parents, which you then internalize and normalize, as we all do, as is inevitable to do.
And then the problem becomes, since we have normalized a lack of connection, when we then achieve some connection, what happens?
Thank you.
Well, when we begin to achieve connection with others after an early life of fundamental rejection from our parents, the closer we become to others, the more pain we feel.
This is how this horrifying solitude Forever reproduces itself.
This is how people are walled off from other people, mined into dismal and depressed solitude.
It is this terrible paradox.
We wish to be close to people, but when we've been rejected by our parents, getting close to people equals an increase in agony.
So, you start to talk without making a sound because of a lack of connection.
When you haven't been heard, it's exactly the same as not being able to speak.
If I record some beautiful song and then throw out the recording to all intents and purposes, what is the difference between me having recorded that song and me not having recorded that song?
Well, there is no difference, practically.
If you're not heard, it's exactly the same as if you don't speak, but with the additional horror of being rejected.
So, you start to try to speak, my friend.
And what happens? Well, your friend, the faces of the anonymous people, are replaced by the faces of your friends.
And then, let me just get the sequence right, there's a sound of intense pain and horror.
And... Your friends then begin to attack you.
And because when you are rejected by your parents, you end up in this underworld.
In this underworld of like-minded, horrifyingly rejected people.
And so, you end up in this underworld where you can only try and make contact with people for whom contact, along with you, is sheer agony.
Because contact highlights the rejection.
The way we survive the rejection of our parents is we say we're bad.
Or our parents are sad or lonely or whatever.
But of course, a parent who does not rouse himself or herself to comfort a child and respond emotionally to a child is actually in a hostile manner.
Why the fuck have children then?
So what happens is the moment you try to communicate, the moment you even imitate speech, You end up in this situation where you get attacked.
And that's because you're locked in this underworld of people who've been rejected by their parents.
And in this world, anybody who tries to connect with anyone else experiences the most abysmal and God-forsaken pain, emotional horror of the first order.
If you can't feel Right?
This is a very chilling thing to say, but I think I'm right.
If you can't feel, and you decide to have children, why is it that you want to have children?
Kind of fundamental question, right?
If your parents are not capable of expressing emotions, why is it that they would have children?
I would submit to you that the reason that they want to have children It's that they wish to reproduce their own self-destruction.
When you can't want anything, the only thing that you can want is to destroy one.
This is the Buddhist thing, anyway.
So then you scream stop and the zombies all die disintegrating into death, so...
This is the self-salvation that occurs when you realize you're in an impossible situation and you have to get out of it.
Stopping cutting. Now, I'm no expert on self-mutilation, but I will say that it arises from a desire to feel something, even pain, and it arises from having faced an empty blank wall for your entire childhood
not having had anybody respond to you emotionally, or your parents let's say to have been fundamentally rejected by coldly depressed people and And... There is a desire for the endorphins, of course, but...
There is just anything.
Anything to... You want to get to the inside.
You want to cut. You want to feel.
And the only way that you can feel is pain.
It is also an attempt, I believe, to substitute physical pain for emotional emptiness, right?
People don't cut or kill themselves because they feel bad.
They kind of kill themselves because they feel nothing.
There is no greater horror than the absence of feeling, the total absence of feelings.
that's a zombie to be dead to be dead so this is the true self I don't know when this dream occurred but this is absolutely an encounter with your true self.
So you're cutting yourself and nobody cares, nobody notices, nobody makes any comments.
So So, here again we see the theme.
There is an emotional display, which is cutting yourself.
Obviously you're doing it in public in a park bench to try for help.
Everybody's walking by, nobody responds, nobody cares, right?
This is what I was talking about with the panda, the drowning child.
The child says, true self says, why are you hurting yourself?
Me, it's what I do.
It doesn't hurt. That's a very fascinating...
I don't know the detail, but I'm sure that even the remembrance of it has complexities in it.
But... Why are you hurting yourself?
The first thing you say is, it's what I do.
Now that, of course, doesn't really mean anything about anything.
It's what I do is a sort of meaningless statement.
Why are you six foot tall?
It's because I'm six foot tall.
It's a tautology. But you are not rejecting the child's observation.
But you are hurting yourself.
Why are you hurting yourself? It's what I do.
That's the false self. And then the false self...
Then says, rejecting the child's observation that you're hurting yourself, it doesn't hurt.
The child then asks for clarification.
You're not in pain? You say, well, yeah, I am, but not from this.
Have you never been sad before?
The child says, I have.
I usually cry. Do you not cry?
No. Do you want me to cry for you?
Fascinating. There's really not much that needs to be said about this.
It's so clear that there's not much I can add to it.
The authentic experience of pain It's what liberates us from history.
It's what liberates us from the past.
As Justin, the wannabe rap artist, says in The God of Atheists, when he is lost in his false self, he writes a poem where he says, I am what remains when history wins.
When the lack of feeling involved in history wins.
Do you want me to cry for you?
I have the capacity to feel.
And there is a child who is talking to you.
Everyone who's walking around you is also themselves in enormous pain.
And I think just in general it's very important to understand just how much in pain everyone in the modern world is.
Throughout history in many ways.
The world is incomprehensible, unless we see how much in pain people are.
Anyway. I won't get into the third dream.
I won't get into the gruesome details of the relationship, as it's pretty disturbing.
I've only told two of my friends about it in any depth.
I think you should share it, but it's up to you.
Flashes of my day-to-day activities, going to school, playing my bass guitar, writing, watching TV. I'm happy in every flash, which was weird, because I wasn't happy then.
Before the flash would start, my quote friend, which I assume is...
I don't know if this is a dating relationship, but probably just a non-dating relationship.
My friend...
I'm happy in every flash, which is weird, because I wasn't happy then.
Before the flash would change, my friend would appear out of nowhere and stab me, once in the heart and once in the back.
The stabs didn't go over. They'd seen change.
They would just build up by the end of my chest and back with nothing but scar tissue.
I couldn't move due to the tightness for the rest of my life, the rest of the dream.
I couldn't function due to the pain.
I lived for the rest of my life as a twisted, broken person.
So... To me, again, everything in a dream is important.
Everything is important, because everything is manufactured.
So, you get stabbed in the chest, in the front, and you get stabbed in the back.
So, basically, you get stabbed in the front.
Sorry, let me just see here, make sure I get the stab here.
Once in the heart and once in the back.
Now, I don't know which sequence This is, but I think what happens is we move through time, right?
Like a fish down a stream, or a pebble, or sorry, a leaf on the surface of a river.
As it flows, we move through time.
So there's stuff that's ahead of us and stuff that's behind us.
You get stabbed in the chest, which is the front, and you get stabbed in the back.
And to me, this is indicative of the fact that you get a cycle of pain.
To avoid the pain of the past, You end up reproducing the pain in the future.
I mean, this is the bad paradox of mere pain avoidance, which is the recipe for mental health that the false self gives us, which is not much of a recipe for anything but an eternity of pain.
And this is, of course, the great danger that people face when they've had very difficult and painful childhoods.
We don't have an infinity of time with which to recover ourselves.
We do not have an infinity of time with which to correct our mistakes, or with which to deal with the pain of the past.
It certainly is the case that if you do not deal with the pain of the past, it continues to reproduce itself, you continue to be in bad relationships, you continue to get your heart broken, and the dream is entirely correct.
At some point, you simply become a massive scar tissue and cannot function, or cannot enjoy life anymore.
And this happens when we attempt to use people.
Your friend says, why is he stabbing you?
He says, you don't give me what I need, you hurt me, I hurt you.
So his needs, obviously, are from his own history.
He's attempting to try and resurrect his needs, or have his needs met through you.
Unjust needs met, greedy, bottomless, child, infant needs met through you.
And when you don't provide me, provide him what he wants, then he attacks you.
This is, of course, and I've got a series coming up on parenting with regards to this.
This is a very common thing with parents.
Parents think the children are going to love them and be wonderful and make their life meaningful and worship them.
And when the children disagree with them or begin to see their hypocrisy and vanities, then the parents react as if the child is attacking them.
And this is a way that abuse spreads, right?
This is how abuse spreads and escalates.
And people say, well, I have legitimate needs.
You, my good friend, are not providing them, which is an action of aggression.
So, when we're children, we are ignored by a parent, like the child drowning in the lake or the pond.
And then, when we become adults, The great temptation is to continue this process by manufacturing needs and then pretending that other people don't meet them and attacking them.
So we throw ourselves into ponds and pretend to drown.
Other people don't react to it and we react to them as angrily as if this was the original situation with our parents.
You don't give me what I need, you hurt me, therefore I will now attack you.
This is just an excuse for people to be hostile and rageful and Brutal and so on and so on.
So I would absolutely suggest to this gentleman that you need to examine your history with your parents.
You really, really need to examine your history with your parents.
You have a lot of anger and I think that that anger is perfectly justified and perfectly just.
Being ignored by your parents, being rejected by your parents is the greatest brutality almost that a child can experience.
So I hope that this has been helpful.
Thank you so much for listening as always.
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