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Aug. 11, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
42:18
838 Two Dreams, Two Fathers - and Stef!

I get Air Miles for astral travel...

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Time Text
Good afternoon, everybody.
It's August the 11th, 2007.
It's 3.04 in the afternoon.
And we're going to do a Dream Dyad.
And that is a group of Freedomain Radioers got together...
Far from the mothership.
And discussed, I'm sure, a coup.
And during the discussion of that coup, there was an intense philosophical debate about topics which they have not shared with the rest of us.
Said coup. And they then each went their separate ways.
And two of them have posted a dream about father issues, which I think is very interesting.
And in one of them, I show up.
Actually, I'm in the dream. And this is Europe.
I don't mind that because I have a really great aeroplane plan.
I actually get air miles for astral dream travel.
So that's great.
Soon I'll be able to go to imaginary Mars.
Now, I'll read the first dream.
We'll talk about the first dream and talk about the second dream.
And then see if there's anything in common.
So, to start...
Oh! Almost forgot.
Buy my book. Vote for Freedom Radio at www.podcastawards.com, lulu.com, search for Freedom Radio, or On Truth, The Tyranny of Illusion.
Excellent reviews are in, and I massively appreciate those who have bought it, and it will help you very, very much.
I completely guarantee it without offering you a refund at all.
So, this is one person's dream.
He says, I am on holiday somewhere in Northern Europe.
Europe, maybe England?
In this dream, I think I am at the coast.
I was looking at the cover of Steph's new book.
The cover had moving film pictures on it, each one with a soundtrack that played as you looked at them, a new technology sort of sci-fi book cover.
The pictures were of beautifully lush green trees in natural environments, perhaps also a coastal scene.
The coast appears later in the dream.
The leaves rustle gently in the wind as I look at the picture, and the soundtrack replays the sounds.
Suddenly, Steph appears in the bay, walking on the water in a thong.
Oh, sorry, that was my dream.
Let's just go back to this.
Steph notices me, looking at the book cover, and strikes up a conversation with me.
Somehow, he is in his garden and is talking to me through the fence or hedge at the end of his garden, a green lush garden.
However, I am standing alone in a desert valley next to some kind of ruins of an old kingdom.
His garden somehow borders onto the base of this valley, hence he is able to talk to me.
Steph starts the conversation by saying cheerily, If you can get better pictures, then I'd be happy to replace them.
Referring to the book cover that I'm looking at, I say, Are these places worth visiting then?
He says straightforwardly, No, not really.
He then crawls through the fence to come and talk to me about the pictures on the cover and to expand on his statement.
The ruins around me are like an ancient abandoned city or temple.
There is some kind of column on the ground with ancient symbolic carvings or hieroglyphs in a language that I don't understand.
When writing down the dream, the column's imagery reminded me of the phallic symbolism Steph discussed in a recent dream interpretation, and also that I do have Egyptian hieroglyphics carved into my own penis.
Oh, sorry.
I misread that. Sorry. It is dusty and hot.
People start to arrive in the valley.
Buses show up with tourists in.
There are also armed Middle Eastern looking guards in dusty green army style uniforms.
I say to Steph, wait a minute, am I in Iran?
Steph says, plainly and calmly, oh yes.
Wow, you know this is a dream, because I'm saying something plainly and calmly.
I'm thinking about my passport, visa, etc., and realizing that somehow I don't have any of this.
He then reassures me with some kind of sentence like, you don't need to take any action.
That sounds more like me. People are now wandering around the ruins all around us.
I am thinking to myself that this is dangerous, as this is Iran and I don't know how I will escape.
Steph walks over to a young army guy and talks to him in a foreign language.
The guard, who looks like a clean-cut teenager with an AK-47, looks at me whilst talking, smiles and nods, and happily lets me past.
I begin to scramble up the side of the valley behind the monument, which means at the same time I was scrambling into the back of one of the green gardens that are incongruously fronting onto this desert valley.
Steph and or the god have pointed the way to climb up and guide it where I need to go.
Just as I am leaving the valley, I notice that I have some kind of ancient rune stone in my hand.
It is a bit like a small replica of the fallen column that I mentioned, and this also could be phallic symbolism.
I wonder if I am supposed to just leave it here.
Does it belong to the historic monument?
Am I stealing it, or is it just finder's keepers?
It seems to be okay for me to take it, so I sort of shrug and proceed, contented that I am not stealing it.
At some point, whilst making my escape from the dusty, hot valley into the Green Garden, I am crossing the border from Iran, and I am therefore safe and relieved.
I walk through the garden into the back door of a detached family house, the house which owns the garden, where it looks like a table is prepared for a large party.
I don't really stop.
I move through the house, leaving by the front door and getting onto the street.
I realize then I'm at the coast, a green coast, like the English coast.
Am I at the coast for the first time or arriving back?
It's hard to tell as I don't remember if there was another bit of the dream at the beginning.
However, I look at the sky and notice that it is dawn and the sun is just rising.
I start to walk back to the hotel where I know my girlfriend must still be asleep in bed.
I want to get back there to be with her again before she awakes.
And I asked him, of course, what's going on in your life?
And he said, what's going on in my life?
He said, wow, really a lot is happening.
Defooed my dad almost one year ago.
Hey, one year anniversary. Maybe I should celebrate.
Stick out my tongue. Defooed my mom's side of the family about two months ago.
Ceased contact with mom herself long ago.
I'm making important but step-by-step progress in my relationship with my lovely lady.
The defooing issue and the wider philosophy-based personal freedom agenda has led to some significant bumps in the road for us, but we are talking very openly and working through it together.
Biggest thing at the moment is that I'm on the brink of a major business deal, which I can't really go into, but which would provide me with a very significantly increased level of financial security for the future.
For me, financial security is a major tool for personal freedom.
I have also finally found a therapist who I consider clever enough to at least give it a shot with.
She actually provides feedback that I didn't think of myself, which is wonderful and challenging as opposed to the last one who just said, ooh, that must have been very difficult for you, love, over and over.
What happened on the day before the dream?
Went for an all-day philosophy jam at the park with so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so and had a great time.
Met up with my girlfriend and a new friend of hers in the evening.
Later, when we were alone, I had a discussion with my girlfriend about a minor thing that I was annoyed about.
We agreed on how to tackle it in the future.
it.
I felt good that we had talked about it and came to a constructive conclusion that we would have a threesome.
Oh, sorry, I misread that.
In the evening before going to bed that day, I checked my email and had a message from my father for the first time in a few months.
He had even cc'd my girlfriend as a way to try to ensure her that I got this message, a particularly annoying tactic that he has tried before by phoning her.
This email was to inform me that an uncle of mine is dying of cancer.
I barely know this man and have never had any kind of meaningful contact with him.
The email also bizarrely updated me on the fact that my father has now finally officially married his second wife, but he wants me to keep this to myself, as this is just for tax reasons, and he doesn't want people to make a fuss about it.
It ended with the predictable stuff about how he was thinking of me in hopes that sometime I can explain to him what is going on in my head and emotions.
I shut the email just before bed, feeling pissed off and also feeling somewhat sorry for my father, as the email was another example of how he is so out of touch.
With his own feelings and mine and how he's really quite pathetic.
Well, fantastic dream.
I'm very glad that you remember all these details because it's a nice challenge.
Alright, so let's go through this in more detail.
So you start in Northern Europe, maybe in England, and you think you're at the coast.
I mean, this is definitely a boomerang dream, right?
So you exit the familiar coast.
Which is England, which is where you live, and you go to the Middle East, to Iran, and so on, and then you return in a sort of peaceful kind of way to be with your girlfriend before she wakes up.
So you're looking at the cover of Steph's new book.
Now I think that when we look at The book as a very concentrated, I think as you say here, it's a window.
It's not a book, it's a portal, it's a window.
It's something that you look through and see moving scenes.
As you say here, moving film pictures on each one with a soundtrack that played as you look at them.
A quality soundtrack, I'm assuming.
Not one of my, quote, musical podcasts.
But it is...
And this, on Truth, the Tyranny of Illusion, is...
It is a doorway through which you can step into a clearer and brighter and happier and more rich and deep world.
So the pictures...
And of course, the book is beautiful lush green trees, natural environments, perhaps also a coastal scene.
The leaves rustle gently in the wind as a look at the pictures and the soundtrack replays the sound.
So there's a beauty and a harmony in the book.
And... Without wanting to appear overly immodest, I think that there is a beauty.
I think it's a very beautiful book.
I really do. I think it's a very small, very poetic, very symphonic in a sort of quiet kind of way.
I think it's a beautiful, beautiful book.
And I think you feel that.
And this gentleman was kind enough to do a proofread and had some great suggestions.
So you have had more involvement in it than just as a mere reader, but you had some Some great suggestions, which was actually don't include a soundtrack.
So I notice you looking at the book and I strike up a conversation with you.
I am in my...
Sorry, I'll do the he, sorry, just so I don't have to keep flitching this.
The he will always refer to Steph in this.
He is in his garden and is talking to me through the fence or hedge at the end of his garden, a green lush garden.
So here again, I live in a green lush garden.
The book I produce, you look at as a portal to see these beautiful scenes of green lush gardens.
And I'm talking through a fence or a hedge at the end of my garden.
This to me, a fence or a hedge, indicates boundaries, which I think is a very healthy thing.
Within this, right? So I'm in my garden.
I'm talking to you, but my garden is self-contained, right?
That I'm not projecting into you.
We're not merging together. We're not just lost in some wood or in a big ocean or something, right?
So we're not merged together.
We're two individuals talking to each other.
And I've always enjoyed my chats with you and found you to be very perceptive and intelligent.
But we're two individuals who are talking, right?
So we both have our sort of own domains.
We have our boundaries and hedges.
Now, you, though, are standing alone in a desert valley next to some kind of ruins of an old kingdom.
And this, I think, is also partly in the book, right?
In the book, I try to do a touch on the sort of grand sweep of history, that this is the way things have always been in the past, that we have been tyrannized by these illusions that we mistake for the real world, and that there's a reason for it to change now.
There's a possibility for it changing now.
So I think the fact that you feel like you're in this ancient garden is very, very important and helpful.
And I start the conversation by saying cheerily, if you can get better pictures, then I'd be happy to replace them, referring to the book cover that I'm looking at.
And I think this is really what differentiates this conversation from most, if not all, conversations that have happened in the past and present, that I am specifically rejecting my personal authority.
This is the mistake that Ayn Rand made.
This is the mistake that the Socratic School made on its founding, that there was a personal authority that was put forward, that you should believe Socrates or Plato or Aristotle or Rand.
You should believe these people.
They have the truth. And I specifically reject that repeatedly and repeatedly and repeatedly because that was a foundational error of these other philosophies.
I consistently say I'm not wet to my theories.
The important thing is not me.
It's not me.
It's not the podcast. The painting is the important thing.
Not the painter. Not the paintbrush.
Not the style of paints. The painting is the important thing.
The truth that we are building together That is the edifice that will stand the test of time and that is vital and lush and green and alive and natural.
We're not trying to create a new world that is unnatural.
We're trying to stop the world from being so freakishly unnatural and revert back to its original, relaxed, positive, benevolent state.
So when I say, if you can get better pictures, I'd be happy to replace them.
So I've got a book which opens a portal to, I think, a beautiful world, a natural, healthy, beautiful world, But if you can come up with a more beautiful thing or a more true statement, I'm absolutely happy to replace everything that is in the book.
And that, of course, is part of what happened, right?
So you had a chance to read the galleys and provide suggestions.
You don't respond to that.
You say, are these places worth visiting then?
Which sounds like a little bit of an unsequitur.
And I say, no, not really.
Are these places worth visiting then?
So this is very interesting.
You look at my book and you see these beautiful landscapes and beautiful sounds.
And then you say to me, are these places worth visiting?
And I say, no, not really.
Which is very interesting. Why would I withhold a beautiful destination from you?
And that's because the portal that you think is a vision of another world, is a view to another world, or my garden, or something like that, the book, the Tyranny of Illusion book, the beauty that you see in it is a mirror of yourself.
This is not a place that you can go and visit.
These beautiful landscapes and soundtracks and all of the gorgeousness that you see through the window of the book is your soul.
It's your own soul. It's your own true self.
So when you say, are these places worth visiting?
I say, no, not really, because it's kind of a non sequitur.
It's like saying, where do I have to go to be in my own skin?
Where do I have to visit to be myself?
Well, you don't. It doesn't make any sense.
You are yourself. You are yourself when you choose to be yourself or when you stop letting other people define you or defining yourself by approval or all the false self stuff that we've talked about.
So then I crawl through the fence to come and talk to me about the pictures on the cover and to expand on a statement.
The ruins around me are like an ancient abandoned city or temple, right?
So this is a place where long dead, this is early history, this is the prehistory of yourself merged with the prehistory of the species.
Because I've talked in recent podcasts, and particularly one, about why we have developed free will as a response to the viral predation of mysticism.
So we've talked a lot about prehistory in some of the Diamond Plus podcasts, so that probably has something to do with that.
As well, there's some kind of column on the ground with ancient symbolic carvings or hieroglyphs in a language that I don't understand.
When writing down the dream, the column's imagery reminded me of the phallic symbolism Steph discussed in a recent dream interpretation.
Well, a column that has fallen over on the ground with ancient hieroglyphs in a language that you don't understand, absolutely that seems to me a broken father image, right?
And you talk about that. This happened right after you had an email from your father, which was pathetic and...
And reedy and weedy and whiny and so on, and manipulative.
So yes, I mean, don't we have to go any further into that, but your dad is, this is a sort of broken phallus, broken masculinity, right?
People start to arrive in the valley.
Buses show up with tourists in.
And this, I think, is partly Free Domain Radio that I'm saying, let's examine this early, arid, dead history of ours so that we can come back to life in the present.
There are also armed Middle Eastern-looking guards in dusty green army-style uniforms.
I say to Steph, wait a minute, am I in Iran?
Now, dreams are playful this way.
And I ran, I ran, I ran so far away.
I think that you are looking to get into a big-haired 80s band, and I'm definitely the one to co-found it with.
And Iran! So, Iran is not accidental, right?
And this is the desert of fleeing, right?
This is the desert of fleeing the past, right?
If you flee the past, if you don't examine the brokenness of the past, you end up in a desert, and a dangerous desert, right?
So, am I in Iran?
Have I inhabited fleeing?
Right? So we run away from our families, we defoo, and that's all very healthy.
But then we have to stop running and be who we are.
Right? And this is around the boundaries and so on.
And I say, oh yes.
And you're thinking, oh, passport, visa, and realizing that somehow I don't have any of this.
Right? So clearly you're in.
Right? You're in yourself.
Right? Because you've traveled to Iran in the blink of a note without any intervening travel.
without any passports, without any money.
So you're in yourself, right?
So the view that I'm showing you of your soul, which you get through the book, is of a beautiful place, but where you're standing right now is running.
You're still running from something.
And then I say, you don't need to take any action, which means stop running.
Stop running.
Stop trying to flee this.
People are wandering around the ruins all around us.
I'm thinking to myself that this is dangerous as this is around.
I don't know how I will escape, right?
So you want to run again, right? So you're escaping, running from the past, running from the family, running to something, right?
Steph walks over to a young army guy and talks to him in a foreign language, the guard who looks like a clean-cut teenager with an AK-47.
Looks at me whilst talking, smiles and nods, and happily lets me pass.
I begin to scramble up the side of the valley behind the monument, which means at the same time I'm scrambling into the back of one of the green gardens that are incongruously fronting onto this desert valley.
So I come out of the garden, now you're going into the garden.
So this is a return to yourself, right?
You are allowed to pass...
I mean, I'm a guide.
I talk, and this is part of what I try to do, is to talk the false self, which is carrying your true self on the ledge.
Talk it down off the ledge. Calm it down to let us pass.
So you feel that you're in the land of a tyrannical false self.
The false self is very dangerous, but I'm saying you don't need to take any action.
I'll talk to the false self, and that's part of a lot of the complication of what it is that I'm trying to do here.
It's to energize the false self to put down its arms without alarming it, without humiliating it, and so on, right?
So this is a real challenge.
A stiff end of the guard have pointed the way to climb up and guided me where I need to go.
But you have to do it, right?
Just as I'm leaving the valley, I notice that I have some kind of ancient rune stone in my hand.
It's a bit like a small replica of the fallen column that I mentioned.
And this could also be phallic symbolism.
I wonder if I'm supposed to leave it here.
Does it belong to the historic monument?
Am I stealing it, or is it just finder's keepers?
It seems to be okay for me to take it, so you say.
So you take it. Well, stones is actually slang for testicles.
Testicles are formal for balls, and balls are synonymous with male assertiveness, not aggression, not dominance, not bullying, not put-downs, not manipulation.
But assertive masculinity, which has also been an interwoven topic of the podcast, because I think that men have been de-stoned, I guess you could say, de-balled.
But one of the things that I think could be said about a lot of men, and I'm not talking about you in this particular area, but...
It's sort of like, grow a pair, right?
I mean, this is like, let's be men.
Let's treat our women with respect.
Let's be assertive about our needs.
Let's be respectful towards the woman's need.
Not just cave. Not just buy women's love.
Not just try and impress women by being cool or have six-packs.
But be strong men, right?
To be good fathers, strong husbands, and so on.
Treat the women. Don't just give in to the women.
Don't get, oh, they're mad or whatever, right?
But But embrace your woman with your masculinity, with your strength, right?
So the fact that out of this broken phallic symbol you get to take a stone, right, a ball, is good.
I think hopefully there'll be another one soon.
So you make the escape from the dusty hot valley into the green garden.
You're crossing the border from Moran and therefore safe.
So Iran, of course, is a conflict.
The United States, there may be war and so on.
So this may also be something that is part of your thinking as well about your own life.
I walk through the garden in the back door of a detached family house.
Now, detached family house, right?
You have detached from your family.
That is your home. You have detached from your family.
And that, of course, is, even in a loving family, and of course this is sort of the definition of a loving family, you have boundaries, right?
You have your rooms. People knock before they come in, right?
You have your space. You have your privacy.
So the fact that it's a detached family house is good.
Looks like a table is prepared for a large party.
I don't really stop. I move through the house, leaving by the front door and getting onto the street.
That you're at the coast, a green coast like the English coast.
So you have returned.
You've run away.
You have now faced the broken wreck of your father's life and the imprint of masculinity that you receive from that.
It's very hard for us to be strong men when we're raised by weak, de-balled puppets.
That's not easy for us.
But you now want to spend time with your girlfriend, right?
A heterosexual love relationship is fundamentally about masculinity and femininity.
And of course, it's about children, but that only is the result of masculinity and femininity, right?
So, the fact that you have gained some of your manhood through this process is wonderful.
And now that means that you can more love and want to be with your girlfriend.
Right? Because you now can more fully appreciate her femininity and you can be there in a strong way for her and not allow her to manipulate you and not allow her to bully you because that's just...
that's not caring for her.
Right? That's not caring for her.
And again, I know nothing about your relationship so I'm not saying that this is happening or anything like that.
But you've said later that in this negotiation about virtue and integrity and so on there's been some rough stuff and I absolutely am sure that there has been.
Right? But it's not about...
it's not about... When I talked about this kind of stuff with Christina, and Christina and I have faced some of these challenges as well, it's never about me bullying her.
It's never about me dominating her.
It's never about me winning.
Right? It's about we gain agreement on the things that are of value.
And I don't make up things like, say, you know, it is now a value for us to go and get tattoos or whatever, right?
I mean, what is it that we want to live in terms of virtue?
And then when she agrees with those things, then we, you know, just say, well, we're going to remind each other.
Like, if we say, well, we both don't want to gain weight, we remind each other, you know, do you need that 12 piece of pie or whatever, right?
And so on. Um...
So, that is something that you get these common standards and then you just remind each other.
And there'll be times when Christina will remind me to eat less, of times when I remind Christina to stop hawking all the food and give me my fair taxation share of approximately three quarters of her plate.
Obviously mine, that's not in the equation, but...
But that's the kind of stuff. You just need to watch each other's back and say, that's caring for someone, right?
That's caring for someone. And it allows them to relax and live a more instinctual and relaxed and free existence because they know that someone's watching their back, right?
So, you know, a cheesy example is, you know, those SUVs that have the radar in the back and if you're about to run over a child's toy or a child, it will warn you.
That allows you to back up with somewhat more confidence, right?
So... Or if you have those GPS things in your car and it tells you where to drive, where to turn, and so on, that allows you to sort of relax and enjoy the scenery more, right?
So you get rules that you're both going to agree on, and you can define those rules.
And it's hard for women to agree to some rules if it provokes conflict or challenges with their own family because women are basically trained to be social lubricants and not to cause a fuss and to smooth things over and so on.
This is the slave aspect of femininity, which we'll talk about in the future.
Not that women are slaves, but this is how they're raised, right?
So, the fact that you are the food and all this, the fact that you are negotiating successfully with your girlfriend in a strong and assertive and confident way, it's going to make you love her the more.
It's going to make her love you the more.
And once you get the manipulation and the fear and the cowardice and all this, again, nothing about your relationship, once you get that out of your life, then you're free.
The road is free and clear to love each other that much more deeply.
And Christina loves me more when I help her to not...
Give in to her foo habits and so on and vice versa, right?
So it's a very, very important thing for that.
Oh, and just as a last note, of course, your dad's talking about your uncle dying of cancer because he wants to browbeat and bully and terrify you into getting in touch with him.
You know, like, I will one day be dying of cancer too and how will you feel?
Oh, it's just so sad, right?
So the fact that you dream about a broken penis is not all too shocking.
So, the other person who was in this conversation, this three-way conversation, also posted this dream.
I recently had a conversation with so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so about my relationship with my father.
They said some things that really made me think, and it was amazingly helpful.
A day or two later, I had one of the most vivid dreams of my life.
I dreamt it was about 3 a.m.
I was awake and back in my father's house.
I pulled out my retainer, something I haven't worn since I was in my early teens.
I'm 22 now.
I wondered why I was wearing it, and it was hurting me, as if it just didn't fit me anymore.
All right.
My father came downstairs and started nagging and almost yelling at me.
My father almost yells a lot, which is him talking very harshly and loudly, telling me I should go to bed and demanding to know why I was awake.
I told him I was awake because my retainer hurt, which was a lie.
I was awake because I wanted to be.
He kept nagging, which caused me to get angry.
I told him he can't tell me what to do, like he owns me, and I gave him the reasons why.
He kind of scoffed at the idea, and then I woke up.
Odd, odd dream. I think not.
And so I asked him what his family history said.
Father is an American who moved over here and met my mother.
They had my sister and then me, out of wedlock, got married when I was a few weeks old.
My sister was two. Things seemed fine until I was about six, but apparently they weren't.
My dad moved us all to the States to try and get my mother away from her family.
They apparently would call a lot and my mom would end up drunk after every conversation.
This progressed into alcoholism and my mom...
Sorry, my notebook just ran out of juice, so...
The family history is available to all and sundry who wish to read it on the Freedom Aid Radio board.
Freedomainradio.com forward slash B-O-A-R-D Just search for...
Dream and American and something like that.
So... So here we have a dream, and clearly this is a dream, and dreams are not that subtle.
That doesn't mean that they're easy to interpret, especially from the inside.
I mean, you wouldn't believe the difficulties I sometimes have with my own dreams, but the dream is very clear about a younger time in your life, approximately 10 years ago.
So in your early teens, you're 21 or 22 now.
Now, a dream wherein we wake up I believe most times when we sort of wake up in a dream, the dream is our life.
What we're waking up from is from a merely unconscious life to a conscious and chosen and alert and aware and assertive life where we're not just conforming to other people's expectations like water poured into a test tube, right?
Where we actually start to think for ourselves and have our own values and compare people to those values and so on.
So, when you wake up in a dream, it's almost always that you are waking up to something important about your life.
You are awake. And your retainer doesn't fit anymore.
Right? A retainer is a wonderful metaphor...
Right? Because you are retaining something.
There's a retaining wall, right?
Which keeps something back, right?
Like a mudslide or a hill or something like that.
To retain something is to hold on to something usually beyond what is healthy or what is possible, right?
So to retain water...
It's not good, right?
So it's holding on to something too long, right?
Or I think of an animus. It was a retain the water before letting it go.
God knows I've never had one, but that's apparently how it works.
So to do retention, but it's also to recall, right?
To retain memory.
Retention is your ability to remember, right?
So you're waking up and a retainer that doesn't fit anymore.
So it's like a memory or a past or a history, a constraint.
A conformity to other things which doesn't fit anymore.
So you wake up.
You go downstairs.
So you go downstairs. I can't remember.
You go downstairs and your dad is like, why the hell are you awake?
What the hell is going on? What are you doing?
Why are you up? And you say something very interesting.
You say, Dad, I'm awake because my retainer was hurting.
I don't think it fits me anymore.
And then he starts nagging at you and bitching at you about all this crappy stuff.
But you know that you were awake because you wanted to be.
You are awake because you wanted to be.
And of course, you do want to be awake.
You do want to be awake.
We all want to be awake. Sometimes waking up is a bit of a bitch, but we all want to be awake.
When your foot falls asleep, you want to get the feeling in your foot back.
It tingles and it hurts, but you want to get the feeling in your foot back.
So when our soul goes to sleep or stays asleep, and basically what it does when we're kids is it gets bludgeoned into a coma.
We want to wake that brain up.
And so you don't tell your father, hey, I'm awake because I want to be, because he's bitching and nagging at you and so on.
And again, I would say that...
Right, as Tyler Durden says in Fight Club, we are a generation of men raised by women and not raised by very healthy women either, right?
There's not a lot of...
I don't know, maybe one family that I know of where the father was a decent role model for the children, where assertiveness was not aggression, where there wasn't whiny, bitchy, hyper-feminine humiliation and manipulation and nagging and so on, right? Where a man was a man, a strong man, a healthy man, a kind man, a loving man, a firm man, a man who has references to values, a man who has character.
A man who has integrity.
A man who cares enough for the people in his life to not let them get away with bad behavior.
That is real love.
That is real masculinity. Women can achieve all this.
We're just talking about the man side.
The fact that you have to lie to your father because he's bitching and nagging at you is sort of important.
The amazing thing to me, and this is something that is very true about parents as a whole, The amazing thing about your dad is that your dad does, as you say, he does the near yell.
Sometimes it's called pressured speech.
Scary, right?
The rumbling and things are going to go bad and blah, blah, blah.
Your dad will nag and correct you.
Your dad married an alcoholic.
Your dad married an alcoholic and exposed his children continually to that alcoholic.
And your dad didn't even confront your mom.
He moved her away from what he considered the trigger.
So your dad...
Looks at his marriage to an abusive alcoholic and the fact that an abusive alcoholic is raising his children.
He looks at this situation, at the choices that he's made, at the danger that he has put his own children in.
He looks at that, at the mess that he's made.
And he says, you know what's wrong with this picture?
Geography. You know what's wrong with this picture?
The lack of a long-distance phone bill.
That is what we need to fix in order to make this picture good.
What narcissistic, self-serving bullshit.
That is contemptible.
To solve my wife's substance abuse problems, I need to move her to a new country.
Not, wow, what the hell did I do marrying an alcoholic?
Oh my god, my children are being raised by this woman.
What am I going to do? I've got to have an intervention.
I've got to lay down the law.
I've got to say, look, woman, you get dry and sober.
You stay sober for a year.
You can see these kids again.
I don't take her to court.
I don't get legal custody.
I don't divorce the witch.
I move her! Because moving is always the cure for alcoholism, isn't it?
Right. And of course he moved you away from your support structure too, and he moved you away from people.
This, I don't know, you were...
Right, so...
You were moved. Fathers will move.
Parents will move children not just because...
I mean, the story is, well, I wanted to get her away from her parents who were making her drink.
Right? Well, that's ridiculous.
If your mom got drunk after talking to her parents, the problem is not that she's talking to her parents.
The problem is that she's using alcohol to try and solve her problems.
Right? That she's turning to self-abuse and the abuse of others, the inevitable abuse of others that results.
Right? Right? So taking away one particular proximate trigger, of course it's only going to exacerbate your alcoholism.
So how is it that a man who has made such unbelievably terrible decisions in his life, marrying an alcoholic, my God!
Don't even imagine that your mom wasn't a heavy, heavy drinker before they got married or didn't show signs of instability or substance abuse before they got married.
He knew all of that. Married her, had kids with her.
Didn't protect the children. Isolated the children from their support structure, from their extended family, from their friends, moved them to a new country, and, of course, spirals.
Sorry, I didn't get to read the end of this on air, but you can find it online.
How the hell does this jerk get to criticize you?
I mean, it's just astounding.
Right? So, I mean, this is something that's so funny, right?
And it's just as true in my family as it is in every other dysfunctional family the planet over.
That all of the old failures just knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.
All of the young people who have not become failures as yet.
I mean, that's just inevitable. Those that can't do, teach.
Those that fail, correct others.
Or have a huge desire to correct others.
And there's a dare in that, right?
I mean, your father's daring you, right?
So by nagging at you, and of course I'm sure he does this in real life too, right?
But by nagging at you, he's kind of daring at you.
He's kind of saying, okay, I dare you.
Come on. Come on.
Call me a failure. I dare you.
Come on. Say that I have no right to correct you because I've made so many abysmal decisions in my life.
And of course, that's kind of important though, right?
And of course, this book that I've written, I don't know if you've got a copy or read a copy, but It's about this as well, right?
About this particular issue as well, in much more detail than I'll go into here, because I enjoy the remote internet coaching of additional books purchased.
So, there's a deer, right?
Your father instructed you when you were a child, because he said, I know what is right, and I know what is good for you, and so on, so you should obey the good that I represent.
But, of course, a central question to ask people who nag you is, Hey!
How's your life working out?
This is when I went out with this girl in my 20s and early 30s who was a bit of a nag.
Actually quite a nag at times.
She just continually felt that she knew how to live and I didn't know how to live in certain particular key areas.
She was a secretary and I was the chief technical officer in my own startup company which was employing like 30 or 35 people.
So, at some point, right, when I was in my early 30s and she was in her late 20s, I just sort of went, hey, you know what?
When we met years ago and I was a starving student and actor and so on, you said that I should learn how to live more responsibly and reliably and this and that.
Now that I'm running a successful company and making a good deal of coin, your criticisms of me have not changed one little bit.
I really get that your criticisms of me have nothing to do with me.
I've crossed the Rubicon of competence.
I'm now highly successful in my own career and yet...
You still think that I do everything wrong.
Not everything, but that's sort of a fundamental thing.
It's like, at some point, you've got to call these supposed experts on their expertise.
You tell me how it is that I should live.
Christina's mom's a little bit of a nag this way as well.
Christina's not. It's only because she's given up.
But she's like, oh, Christina, you should live this way, you should live that way, you should live the other way.
But your life has not been a great success.
So at some point you have to compare your coaches, especially the coaches who say, I've won the Olympics.
It's like you have to say, okay, you know what?
Show me the goddamn medal because I really don't see it in this ash heap of a life that you live in.
So that's another sort of issue.
The fact that you lied to your dad is not good, right?
Because it means that he still has power over you, that you're still afraid of him nagging, still afraid of him bitching at you, and so on, right?
But I tell you, you don't need to know a whole lot about a guy to know that he's been worse than a failure.
And failure is just, you know, oh, I wanted to be a rock star and I ended up, you know, not being a rock star.
That's failing, right? But...
Your dad's, quote, failure is worse than just not achieving something because he actively inflicted, like, had children with an alcoholic woman, inflicted that alcoholic woman on his own kids and became a nag and a bitch himself, right?
That's worse than just failing.
That's active, like, destruction.
And it's not failing to save someone's life.
It's killing three other people, right?
So this is like a real negative life force on the planet, like your dad and your mom, right?
So, you know, at some point it's okay for you to say, okay, so why is it that they're criticizing me?
Is it because they have been such shining successes and I am such a failure that they have all of these great things to impart to me?
I guarantee you that it's not.
When people nag you, it's never about...
You. It's never about you.
Of course, until people become philosophical and aware and alive and true self, nothing is ever about you in your interactions with people.
It's all about them.
It's all about them. So, again, this is a failure of masculinity that has occurred where your dad has become a pathetic kind of whiner, the same way that the previous dream poster's dad had become a pathetic kind of whiner.
So, You need to sort of work on this image of, I don't need to lie to my dad about the fact that I'm waking up.
But I do need to judge my father.
I do need to judge my father relative to rational standards of success.
Relative to rational standards of success.
What is a successful human being?
A moral, a good, a virtuous, a kind, a strong person, a man of character, of integrity.
What is a strong, virtuous, and successful man?
What does that look like?
Has my father achieved that?
If my father has not achieved that, how can he conceivably tell me what to do?
There's this funny demotivational poster which has a ship sinking in all of its detonated glory.
It says, it could be that the only purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.
The nagging is definitely part of that.
You need to learn the lesson that is implicit in In your father's conduct, not explicit in his language.
And run.
And run.
I'll talk to you soon, my brothers and sisters.
Thank you so much for listening. I look forward to your donations.
Don't forget to vote. Do it!
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