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Sept. 22, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:27:09
1154 Cave Bombing - Dream Analysis

The war is within.

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Time Text
So you'd like to start by reading the dream?
Sure. Alright, this is from two nights ago?
Friday night? Right.
Alright, so I'll start.
I can see the scene moving past me as we drive along the pitted streets in our car.
Almost none of the asphalt is left intact, but most of the road has been destroyed by the repeated blasts.
Almost every house has been hit by one of the bombs or flying debris.
I think that we are in Georgia, the country, after a lengthy bombing campaign from Russia.
The international community had been begging Russia for weeks to stop the bombing, but they had not relented until it was too late to stop the damage from occurring.
As we drive, I can see explosions in the distance as the final volleys are fired.
Houses are flattened and debris flies everywhere.
One house very close to the road where we are driving is flattened by a mortar shell, and a cloud of smoke and debris spills onto the road behind us.
You say the final volleys are fired.
How do you know that they're final volleys?
Just because later in the dream there are no more explosions.
Do you feel this at the time, or is it something you realize later?
Um, well, I don't, after we passed that house as it's hit, where I say the final volleys, I don't really feel like we're in danger of being hit after that.
Got it. Okay, sorry. Go ahead.
My fear and apprehension, which had been growing slowly as we drove, suddenly spike because I realize that we are in danger of being hit ourselves.
So at that moment, I do feel like we're in danger, but after that, I don't.
My stepfather pulls the car off the main road and into one of the cul-de-sacs in the nearest bombed-out neighborhood.
He parks the car, and we get out and walk around for a few minutes looking at the houses.
None of the houses have been spared from almost total damage.
Most were hit by the bombs directly, and the few that did not suffer direct hits were severely damaged by the shock waves or flying debris from nearby impacts.
Many of the houses have collapsed, and the few that are left standing are only empty shells of shredded wood and broken glass.
In the waning light, I can see the sky through the holes in the walls and roofs.
The houses were once very beautiful and stately mansions in a wealthy neighborhood, but now there is almost nothing left.
The architecture looks European, but the arrangement of the houses is like an American suburb.
As we walk among the houses, I begin to feel a growing sensation of dread.
It isn't just my earlier fear of being hit by one of the missiles, but a growing sense of dread associated with something bad happening after the sun goes down.
I cannot quite place my finger on the source of the dread.
Perhaps there could be refugees living among the rubble who would attack us to get our car or some food.
I have the feeling that if we met any survivors, they would be deformed or severely injured.
They would be impervious to reason and would almost certainly pose a serious danger to us.
And the sun is already going down.
The sky is still stained with the smoke and soap from the bombing raids, so the final rays of the sun are not even visible through the thick clouds as the sky grows considerably darker.
It is only 4 o'clock in the afternoon, but I suddenly feel that if we stay here any longer, we are going to be in great danger.
I walk quickly back toward the car, telling my mom that I really want to leave now.
I say quickly that I am very afraid to be here.
She doesn't seem to understand what I am saying, and I repeat that I am afraid to stay here any longer.
I explain that I can sense great danger, and I believe that it is important to trust my subconscious cues because perhaps my instincts are sensing something I am not.
Maybe I am subconsciously sensing a danger that I cannot consciously comprehend.
My stepfather doesn't seem very pleased with the idea.
After all, we just got here, and he has just gotten the ladder unloaded from the car so that he can start salvaging materials from some of the blown-up houses.
They aren't listening to me, and as it gets darker, my fear of remaining even a moment longer begins to spike painfully.
I am completely overwhelmed with the sense that something terrible could happen to us at any moment, and my request to leave quickly turn into sobs and screams of sheer terror.
I scream at her that I'm afraid and that we have to leave right now.
If we don't leave right now, we are going to die.
I run the final few steps to the car, throw myself inside, and slam the door shut.
Mom and my stepfather don't seem to understand the danger we are in.
They aren't in any hurry to leave, and they walk slowly toward the car and get in.
My stepfather drives a short distance down the road and pulls through a cave-like opening.
I realize that the place with the bombed-out houses is in fact in an underground dimension, which is shaped like a very large underground room that is accessible only through a narrow cave beneath the forest floor.
I can see roots and rocks sticking out through the walls of the cave.
Part of the cave ceiling has collapsed, and I can see light streaming through from the forest above.
The light coming from the sky above the forest makes the bombed-out city look even darker by comparison.
Sorry, I just want to make sure I get myself oriented here.
It feels like a fairly big transition.
It is. So he pulls down the road into a cave-like opening.
The place with the bombed-out houses is in fact an underground dimension?
Yeah, it's kind of like it's inside of a big room underground.
But it didn't feel like we were inside of a room when we were in there.
But as we drive away, it becomes clear that it was actually inside of a cave or something.
So it's like, I don't know, like a dwarf city underground or something?
I guess so, but when we were actually in that palmed-out neighborhood, we could see the sky and everything.
So it didn't feel like we were underground then.
It just felt like once we left, it became clear that we had been underground.
Got it. Okay, I just wanted to make sure I was with you with the transition.
Sorry, please continue. My stepfather suddenly stops the car and begins backing up toward the bowels of the cave again.
I ask him what on earth he could be doing and he replies that he forgot the ladder and that we have to go back to get it.
My fear comes rushing back.
We are very vulnerable if we go back into the cave, but we have to get the ladder.
I would rather not go back for it because I'm so afraid of being in that bombed out neighborhood.
And I'm so sorry to interrupt you again.
I thought you were in the cave, in the dream, and now you're saying go back to the cave?
Did you leave the cave? No, we were still actually in the cave, but he's backing back up toward the deep part of the cave again.
Where the bombs were falling.
Right. I got it. Okay, sorry.
So we're actually heading out of the cave.
We're not to the outside of the cave yet, but we're, I guess, getting close.
And then he realizes, oh my goodness, we've got to get the ladder, so we go back.
Got it. Okay, sorry. So...
But he keeps backing the truck up through the cave.
He gets to a point where he has difficulty backing up because the cave turns sharply, and I get out of the truck and walk around behind the tailgate.
I lift up the back half of the truck and move it over so that we are in line with the path of the cave.
It is very easy for me to lift the weight of the vehicle and set it going in the right direction.
My stepfather can then pull the truck back into the bowels of the cave and retrieve the ladder.
After parking along the houses again, he gets out and walks around to the back of the truck.
I help him pick up the ladder and position it atop the truck.
The ladder is too long to fit in the bed, so we are going to have to place it on top of the cab and tie it down.
He has some yellow nylon rope that we are going to use.
Because the ladder is so long and cumbersome, I do not think that we are going to be able to get it tied down in such a way as to avoid dragging it on the ground behind us.
But I don't care. I decide that if it's not perfect, we can reposition it once we're safely outside.
I happen to glance back up the road that we had been driving on to leave the area.
And I see a man running out of the woods and on to the road.
His clothes are torn, and he has a very dirty, ragged hair.
He appears to be carrying a baby deer, and Mom suggests that he has just caught it and is going to eat it.
I believe that she is right.
The few survivors in the area must be nearly to the point of starving by now.
My sense of dread grows unbearably strong now that I have seen another person.
I begin to look around me in all directions, trying to guess where the danger lies.
Finally, my stepfather gets the ladder tied down, and then there are other things they want to do before we leave.
Several hours later, I find myself pacing back and forth looking at my cell phone.
It is now 8 p.m., and we still haven't left yet.
I plead with Mom for us to leave, shaking with fear and anger that we are still there.
I almost scream that we have been here for four hours since I first asked to leave.
She seems put off by my screaming, and when she answers, it is almost as if she is blaming me for something.
It doesn't matter to her that I sense we are in great danger.
I shouldn't yell about it because yelling is bad.
I can feel the scorn and irritation radiating from her.
My frustration with the situation rises to unbearable levels.
It feels like an impossible situation.
I desperately want to leave the bombed-out city because of the danger I sense, but no one is listening to me.
And there is only one car, so I cannot leave by myself without abandoning them to face the danger alone.
As I begin to wake up, the idea comes to me that this would be a good dream to talk to Steph about because of its vividness and emotional extremes.
I can actually see myself talking to him on Skype after the Sunday call-in show.
Sometimes dreams do come true, true, true.
Okay, no, that's great.
I mean, I think you're quite right to pay attention to this dream.
I mean, obviously it's vivid and obviously it's powerful, so I think that you're entirely sensible to take note of it.
And this was two nights ago.
Was there anything in particular that happened the day before the dream?
Yes. Yes.
So I got an email Friday night, right before I went to sleep, that was from my mom.
And she was just telling me, we have some neighbors who were going through kind of like a financial crisis.
And she had told me at the end of the dream, I mean, not the end of the dream, at the end of the email, to pray for them.
And That kind of struck me as odd and a good bit frustrating because she knows that I'm an atheist and that I don't believe in prayer.
So it felt kind of manipulative that she would tell me to pray for them or something like that.
And I was pretty irritated by that.
And that was right before I went to sleep.
And your stepfather is this real world, right?
Yes. What is his relationship to religion?
He's basically the same as her.
I mean, they go to a pretty fundamentalist church, Christians.
So, I mean, I don't know a whole lot about his specific beliefs, because we don't talk about it, or I don't talk about it with him.
But, I mean, he goes to church and all that, so.
Right, right. Is there anyone in your family whose name is George or Georgia?
No, no.
Okay, I'm just trying to figure out why Georgia, I guess.
Do you have any relatives, or are you from Georgia in the United States?
Well, we do. I'm originally from Alabama, and we have a farm that's on the Georgia border.
It's almost to Georgia.
Right. But... But in the dream, I really didn't attach any significance to that.
I mean, I've been watching the news and stuff and know about the Russian-Georgian conflict and all that.
So that may just be some residual news that may not have anything to do with personal stuff.
Right, right. Okay, okay.
And what do you think or what are your thoughts about the dream that you've had over the last two days?
Um, well, I mean, obviously I thought it was important because of how strong the emotions were.
Yeah. Um, it's kind of like when you, like a little kid who's been dragged to the mall all day long, like for 10 hours straight of shopping, they were ready to go like when they got there.
And so they've just emotionally drained by the end of the day, just from being in that heightened sense of, I really want to leave for hours and hours and hours.
Right. And, um, I thought it was interesting that at the end, it was like my subconscious was telling me that this would be a good one to have a chat with you about.
Now, did you...
Sorry, go ahead. Some of the things that I thought were interesting in the dream itself was the part where I picked up the back of the truck and moved it over.
Yes, and that was to help your stepdad, right?
You're like, okay, well, we're not going to leave, but maybe I can help...
Get the ladder so that we can get out of here, right?
Right, right. But it was actually something that, I mean, obviously wouldn't be very possible in normal life, so I thought that was pretty interesting.
Right.
And there were a couple of other things.
But.
Oh, yeah, I also thought it was interesting that I was explicitly thinking to myself in the dream how important it is to listen to my subconscious subconsciously.
So that was interesting. Right, right.
And I wondered if there was any...
I couldn't figure out if there was any significance of the guy that was running with the dead baby deer.
I really... that was just weird.
Yeah, well, I can guarantee you there is.
And is there anything else you wanted to add before we start working the dream itself?
Um... No, I don't think so.
Okay. Well, the first thing that I notice about the dream is that you start off with indications that you're outside in the world, right?
Right. But, I mean, not even indications, clear evidence, right?
But you look through the shattered roof and you see the sky, right?
Yes. So...
In the early part of the dream, you have the illusion, that's more than illusion, but it seems real, that you're in the world, right?
Right. But then, it turns out that you're in an underground city.
Now, I would submit, at least this would be my first instinct, and we'll see if it pans out or not, that the underground city...
Is a metaphor for the unconscious.
Right. If that makes sense.
Yes, it makes sense. Now, is it airplane bombing that is occurring, or is it shells, artillery shells?
I don't see any airplanes while we're there.
It feels more like an artillery shell that's being fired from somewhere else, like The next town over, like maybe up in some mountain somewhere.
Right. I don't know exactly where they're coming from, it's just like all of a sudden a building will blow up.
And of course, if it is an underground city, that's not possible, right?
Right. So we have some violations of the laws of physics, right, in that you see the sky but there's no sky.
And you hear or you see shelling that is impossible because it's underground, right?
Right. There's nowhere else that it really could be coming from if it's all just in like a cavern or something.
Right, right. So, not to try and jam your dream into my pet theories, but we'll start and see if it works.
I have done a lot of work in the show trying to remind people or to get people, and myself as well, to remember That it's so important not to mistake the world for yourself, right?
Right. And in this dream, if we accept that the underground city is a metaphor for the self, for the unconscious, for your internal state, then clearly you say, well, we're in a foreign country, there is sky above me, and there is The Russians, the bad guys, shelling us from the outside, right?
Right. But the dream later says that all of these are false, right?
Yes. So you think that you're in Georgia outside being shelled, but the dream later says it's not true.
If that makes sense. Right.
Yes, that makes sense. So I think that the dream is saying you are mistaking external stimuli for internal stimuli.
You are projecting an inner state onto the world, if that makes sense.
I know it doesn't make sense like in practical terms, but as a general rule of thumb.
Right, right. I mean, I've heard the podcast that you've done on the dream research, the dream interpretations before, and so I'm familiar with that idea.
And it makes a little bit of sense, too, in terms of, like, the last few weeks for me have just been kind of, I don't know, it's like I can't really, like, my motivation's pretty tough the last few weeks.
My classes are really excruciatingly boring.
Yeah. And one of my classes in particular is like a complete mind screw.
It's supposed to be like a class about the philosophy of science, but it's completely retarded.
Yeah, yeah. Well, certainly when you're...
This is one of the problems of the inner journey, is that the world becomes less interesting, right?
Now, eventually it becomes more interesting, but this phase is like different, right?
Right. And I think that the dream...
It's also pointing out that you are explicitly, not even implicitly or metaphorically, but explicitly pointing out that you're dealing with an internal state.
So, for instance, you keep believing that the danger you are facing comes from two key things.
One, well, three, I guess.
The bombing, the mutants that you expect to come out at night, and Your parents desire to stay, right?
Right. None of that is true, fundamentally.
Where does the danger really come from in the dream?
Well, my first thought on that would be my own willingness to stay.
Well, it's more than a willingness.
Right. It's a desperate need, right?
Yeah, because I'm actually facilitating staying by helping them move the truck back.
Well, actually, I think that's designed to facilitate them leaving, isn't it?
Yeah, I guess it could be, because you're right about if we go ahead and get the lighter, then we can just leave.
So where was the indication that I was trying to help them stay, then, if that's not it?
Sorry, you said that you were trying to help them stay.
I said you were trying to help them leave.
Right. I just assumed that since I was helping them go back, if it was really as dangerous as I felt like it was, then we could just forget about the latter.
It's kind of the way that...
I was thinking about it, and then the fact that I was helping them to go back and get the ladder was kind of like, I'm actually facilitating staying, rather than saying, let's just forget about the ladder, we can buy a new ladder, whatever.
Well, no, but you have no, I mean, they've ignored you already for like an hour, right?
So you're accepting the inevitable, so to speak, which is that you want to leave, they're not going to listen to you, they want to get the ladder, so it's like, fuck it, okay, let's get the ladder, right?
Right. So we can leave, right?
Right. But that doesn't work, right?
Yeah, because we end up staying for several more hours.
Right, and that's another reason why it's important to work on the dream, because of the length of time involved, right?
Right. So, here, I think we can clearly see, and I say clearly only because it's obvious from the outside, it's never obvious from the inside, I understand.
But I think we can clearly see that you have Non-reciprocal attachments or loyalties in your life.
Because you don't want to leave because you don't want them to face this danger alone, right?
So you really care about them and their safety and so on, right?
Right, right. Because, yeah, because that was actually, like, I just explicitly thought about that when I was in there.
I was like, you know, well, I can't leave because if I leave, then they're not going to have a vehicle and they won't be able to get away.
Well, unless you left without the vehicle, right?
Right. But then that also puts me in some danger, too, just trying to walk away from there, because especially after I had seen the guy with the dead deer...
Because he was walking down that road that we were going to leave on.
So if I start walking down that road by myself without a vehicle, then it feels dangerous.
Well, yes. But objectively, it's less dangerous than staying, right?
Yes. But I understand sort of what you feel, right?
Now, the interesting thing is that you care about your parents' safety, and you obviously care about your own safety.
But your parents care neither about their safety nor your safety.
Because they don't even think there's a danger, right?
Right. Yeah, because they're just like, oh, let's, no, we're going to salvage, we're going to go in these houses with the ladder and we're going to salvage some wood or whatever and it's no big deal, you know, because they've got plenty of time left in the day, no worries.
Right, right. So they don't experience any danger, right?
Right. So you're the only one who's experiencing the danger.
Now, at no point in the dream do your parents ask you about the danger that you are experiencing.
No, they don't. They just, eh, poo-poo, right?
Right. So they don't care about you in the dream, right?
In the dream. Right.
And that's what it feels like, too.
It's just like hours and hours of being completely ignored, and no one even cares at all that I'm completely freaked out.
Well, I'm going to have to tweak that just a little bit, because ignored is an official Swiss term, if you know that joke, right?
Yes, another joke.
I mean, for instance... Before you started listening to the podcast, you ignored me completely, right?
Yeah. You didn't even know I existed, right?
Right. And I did not experience you ignoring me as a problem, right?
Of course. 99.9999% of the world completely ignore both of us, right?
Yes. And it's not a problem, right?
Right, yeah. So it's not that you were ignored.
That's not accurate enough for our purposes.
So it's not just being ignored.
It's like active defiance of my preferences and denial of my experience.
Well, I don't, unless there's stuff in the dream which didn't make it into the text, which I'm sure there is, I don't, I didn't experience when picturing the dream, they did kind of ignore, they didn't argue you out of, right, and say, well, you know, there's really no danger because of X, Y, and Z. They're just like, eh, right?
Yeah, they were just, they just didn't say anything.
All right. That's different from being ignored, and that's different from being rejected.
Because when you're rejected, if you're ignored, that's most of the world, right?
So it's not specific enough.
And if you're rejected, people are actively denying what you're saying.
Right. So...
I don't know.
I guess I don't know the word.
It's a tough word, and I'll give it to you because it's horrible, right?
The word is erasure.
Erasure. It is an active erasure of who you are.
It's not ignoring you, because that's most of the world.
It's not rejection, because they're not fighting you.
You're just not there for them.
If that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, that's what it feels like, because it's just like...
I mean, the analogy that I thought of was like the kid being dragged around to the mall.
It's like, he's just...
You know, he's just, like, part of the scenery, almost.
They don't...
Yeah.
Right. Now, the kid who's...
Did you have that experience as a kid?
No. I mean, I've been dragged around the shop before, but it wasn't, like, terrible.
If I didn't want to go, normally I didn't have to, or it was...
The trip was made shorter because I didn't want to go, that kind of thing.
Right, right. Okay. So, the difference is...
I mean, I did get dragged around malls as a kid, and...
It's different. It's different from being ignored because you're being dragged around, right?
So, if my mom had wanted to just ignore me, then she would have just, you know, dropped me off at a neighbor's place.
But instead, she dragged me around at the mall, right?
Yeah. So, that's quite different from just being ignored or being rejected or whatever.
It's just, it's being erased, actively and aggressively erased.
And that, to me, ties in to your experience of the email before you went to sleep.
Yeah, I think so too.
So go on about that.
Because, I mean, I've talked with my mom for hours over the last few months about...
About religion and about that kind of stuff.
She knows that I don't believe that.
She knows that I don't believe in the same things that she does.
She knows that I'm an atheist. She knows all this stuff.
But she still will put in an email, you know, oh, pray for so-and-so as if, you know, it's like completely, it's like, yeah, I understand that you don't believe this, but I'm going to put it in here anyway.
No, it's not that. Sorry to interrupt you.
It's not that. Because that would be that, right?
If she put in an email, I know you don't believe, but I'm going to tell you to pray anyway, that would not be erasure.
Right, no, I mean, like, what I meant was that she knows...
I'm sorry, go ahead, I'll let you finish.
But what I was just going to say was, like, I know that she knows...
That I don't believe it. But she obviously didn't say that in the email.
She just pretends like I do believe it or something.
I experience it as manipulative.
I don't know exactly, but it feels manipulative because it's like she thinks maybe that's going to make me believe it or something.
Okay, I think that it's possible, obviously, that it's manipulative, but I think that unconsciously you experience it as something different.
And I think that you're right in your unconscious and not in your conscious use of the word manipulative.
Okay. I'm going to sound extreme here, not too unusually, and I don't say this in an extreme way because I... Want to be dramatic or think that it's, you know...
Or I want to exaggerate.
I'm simply working from the dream.
The dream is full of murder.
Right? Okay.
Yeah. Right?
It's war. Yeah.
People are dying.
Right? Right.
Now... You don't see people dying, right?
Yeah, I don't actually see anybody get killed.
But you're in an environment where people are dying and you're afraid of being killed, right?
Yes. Not by the shells, but by the after effect of the shells, which is these mutant people at night, right?
Right.
So being ignored or being erased by your parents puts you or keeps you in a murderous situation.
Can you go on about that some more?
Yeah.
Well, you're afraid of being killed in the dream, right?
You say that you're panicking to the point where you are screaming and sobbing, right?
Yes. Now, the image that I get from that, again, we'll do the goosebump test, but the image that I get from that is that it is a very young toddler phase, right?
It's like a toddler tantrum.
Yeah, that's what it feels like.
Right, and that's certainly what it sounds like to me, right?
So, for a child to be erased by his parents, for his parents to keep him around, to give birth to him and keep him around, and then act as if he does not exist, the child experiences that as a kind of murder, created in order to be destroyed.
if that makes sense.
Yeah. When I was a kid, my brother and I, other friends, we used to, sometimes we would buy these model airplanes and we would meticulously build them and we would paint them.
And we even would heat up pins and put them into the eye sockets of the pilots and paint eyeballs.
Like it was that level of detail.
And then we would blow them up.
So we created these things in order to destroy them.
Not in order to ignore them or to oppose them, but to destroy them.
Now, obviously we were acting out unconsciously what we were experiencing within our families, right?
Right. So tell me what this idea of being created in order to be destroyed What it means to you.
Or if it means anything, it could be a complete wrong term, right?
Yeah, I mean...
Like, what do you mean what it means to me?
Like, I can understand what you're talking about.
Like, what it means, but...
Okay, sorry, let me be more clear.
I'm not sure. When your parents act as if you have never spoken about your beliefs...
Mm-hmm. You say you've talked for hours with your mother, right?
Yes. How do you experience that deep down when she acts as if you never opened your mouth?
It's just like, what was the point?
What was the point of us talking?
What's the point of me being around if it doesn't matter?
If what I say doesn't even matter at all?
Like, it feels so pointless for me.
Like, I can understand that it would have...
that it's not pointless for her, but...
Sorry, what's not pointless for her?
To pretend...
like, to pretend or...
to ignore...
like, to pretend otherwise, to...
to speak, to talk with me for hours about...
My beliefs, and then just to act as if that conversation never happened, it's like, then she can see herself as having talked to me about it, and be like, well, I talked to you about it, but it doesn't matter.
Okay, you're having trouble getting to the feelings, which I totally understand.
Do you want to try that again, or do you want to try a roleplay where you play your mother and I play you?
We could try the roleplay. Okay.
So, let's pretend that I got your email, or the email from your mom, and I call you up, and you are your mom, and I say, Mom, why are you asking me to pray for someone?
Oh, you know, I mean, I always say that to people, and...
I just put that in there because I wanted you to know about the neighbors and about what they were going through and just to keep you up to speed with it so you would know what was going on with them.
I didn't mean anything by it in particular.
Well, the issue is not you telling me about the neighbors.
The issue is you instructing me to pray for the neighbors.
Why would you put that in there?
Well, first of all, do you know why I'm asking you this question?
No, not really.
You have no idea why I would ask you, why did you tell me to pray for someone?
No. Okay, well, I'll give you a second to think about why this would be troublesome to me, or why I would ask you about this, so just take a moment...
and think about the conversations that we've had so that you can come to some understanding as to why I'm asking you this question.
Well, I mean, I know that you've said that you don't believe in that stuff, you know, in prayer, but I do.
And, you know, I just I wish that I wish that you could understand how important this was and how how how how important it is and how powerful it is.
Okay, so you do know why I'm asking you the question, right?
Yeah, I guess. Can you tell me why you said that you didn't know?
I'm not criticizing, I'm just genuinely trying to understand what our relationship is like for you.
I just... I really wish that you still believe this.
Okay, I understand that.
Now, if I kept inviting you to an atheist function, Without respecting your religious beliefs and pretending that you had no religious beliefs, how would you feel? I don't know.
I mean, I guess I guess I would go because you want me to go Oh, so if I sent you some podcasts detailing atheist positions, you would listen to those Yeah, I would listen to them.
Okay. Now, if you had listened to these atheist podcasts and you disagreed with the conclusion that there was no God, how would you feel if I kept pretending that you were an atheist?
I don't know. Well, you do know.
I mean, sorry to be annoying, but of course you know, because everyone knows what it feels like When someone pretends that they believe the opposite of what they actually believe, right?
Yeah. So how would you feel?
I guess I would feel invisible.
I mean, like...
Because you know what I believe, and if you pretend that I don't, I mean, we've had this conversation, you know that I haven't changed my mind.
Right, and you know that I haven't changed my mind, right?
Right. So how would you feel...
Invisible is not a feeling, right?
how would you feel if I kept writing to you pretending that you were an atheist, even though I knew that you weren't?
Well, at first, I'd feel confused because it'd be like, well, they just don't understand.
You know, why don't they...
Why doesn't he stop doing this?
What does he think he's going to gain?
So I guess at first I'd feel confused.
I don't think sad, I don't know if sad is the right one.
I mean, I'd be...
I mean, like, me speaking again.
I mean, I'd be angry about it.
I mean, I am angry about it.
Right. So let's jump back into the roleplay and I'll express that because that's what I was going to say next.
So I think you're quite right to say it.
I say, Mom, what I feel when you completely ignore the fact that I'm an atheist and pretend that we've never had any of the conversations, what I feel, I feel frustrated, I feel angry, I feel lonely, I feel sad, and I feel...
A kind of despair.
Like, I don't know what the point is of talking to you if you can just, in your head, magically wish away anything that I've said.
And just make up who I am.
Based on what you want, not on what I say.
It feels like it's pointless to talk.
Yeah.
That's what it feels like.
Yeah.
And what would your mom say to that?
Well, I'm sorry that you're upset.
Sorry that I've done something to hurt you, but I don't know what else to do.
What do you mean you don't know what else to do?
I don't know how to get through to you.
I don't know how to explain this to you.
I just don't feel up to the task of explaining to you why you should believe this.
Look, I'm not asking you to convert me.
I have my position.
Right?
You have your position that there's a God that you worship, and I have a position that there's no such thing.
And mom, it's rude!
It's fundamentally, like you say, oh I'm sorry that you're upset, like I just mysteriously got upset for no reason.
It's completely rude to pretend that conversations never happened, and to just...
Blindly impose your preferences on others and not respect their beliefs, right?
I mean, this is not subjective.
This is not, I'm offended because you wore white after Labor Day, right?
It's rude what you're doing.
It's disrespectful, it's manipulative, it's ugly.
Yeah, please. And if you don't have any idea why it's wrong, then I have no guarantee that it's going to stop.
That's true. That's what it feels like.
There's no way for me to...
I mean, if talking with her for hours about this hasn't caused that to stop, then it's like, what could I say?
I mean, now, what could I say that would get it to stop?
Right. Now, this is interesting because this is when you broke out of the roleplay, right?
And I don't criticize you for that.
I mean, I'm sure it was exactly the right thing to do, but there's a lot of information in that.
Why did you break out of the roleplay when I, as you, became assertive about not just my needs, but reasonable, polite values?
Well, I haven't been that assertive with her before, so...
So, I guess...
I don't know, it was kind of disorienting, maybe.
Yeah, you don't...
I mean, the reason you jumped out of the roleplay was because it's not true that you've never been that assertive with her before, and the dream tells you when it happened.
Oh. Wow.
Yeah. When did it happen?
Let's see. I mean, I can't...
I can't remember a specific...
There's not, like, one specific circumstance, but...
I mean, I've had doubts about what I was being taught at church and at school going back to, like, at least...
I mean, consciously, I've got records going back to, like, the third grade where I've written stuff down.
Um... Where I didn't believe the creationism story, that kind of thing.
Right. Sorry to interrupt you.
This is not about religion.
If it were about religion, there would be some religion in your dream, right?
Right. There's no religion in your dream.
There's no church, there's no God, there's no priest, there's no Bible, there's no crosses, right?
So the dream is telling you this is not about religion, right?
Yeah. I mean, I guess the reason I went there is because that's what it seems to be about.
Like, in all the discussions that we have, that seems to be the thing that's the problem.
But I mean, I guess you're right.
Like, if we can't talk about it, and if she's not listening to me, then that's obviously not the only problem.
Sorry to interrupt you.
The dream is saying that your protests against not being heard take the form of a toddler's tantrum, right?
You're crying, you're sobbing, you can't hardly breathe, right?
Right. So the dream is saying that you have been assertive about your needs and who you are as a human being to your parents, and specifically to your mother, But it was in a pre-verbal time, as a toddler.
Okay. Right?
And we all are. We are all born very assertive, in a good way, about our needs, right?
Baby's hungry, baby cries, right?
Right. Baby's unhappy, baby cries.
Baby's happy, baby laughs, right?
Mm-hmm. But if your needs, if your preferences is, if who you are can be willfully erased by your mother, that occurred at an emotional level, at a relational level, as a toddler, and this religious thing is just an abstract, after-the-fact symptom of that fundamental erasure.
Okay.
Because the dream takes this religious erasure of you, of your atheism, and says, look, you think it's about the sky.
That's the only place that anything remotely religious shows up, is you can look through a broken ceiling or a broken roof and see the sky, right?
And the dream is saying, look, it's not about the sky, because it's internal.
It's about a city that is closed off to the outside.
Sorry, are either of your parents European or are they...
No. Now, this is a complete reach, and it may mean nothing, and it may be useless even if it means something.
But you keep talking about the bowels, right?
Of the cave. Now, where inconvenience to a mother shows up is in toilet training, right?
If that makes any sense.
Yeah. I don't know if you remember any of your toilet training or have heard any stories of it.
Do you know how it went? I remember some of it.
Yeah, none of that... No, that doesn't fit.
Okay, so there was no anger or disgust about bowel movements or bodily functions on the part of your mother?
Not that I can remember.
I have no emotional association with that.
Okay, no problem. No problem at all.
It could just be a trick of a meaningless coincidence of language, right?
I'm sure that could occur as well.
I think that's what it is, the way that I was writing it.
Right, right. Okay. Now...
What is true, well, as true as psychological theory gets, and well documented, is that children who do not bond with their mothers have intense separation anxiety later on.
I don't know if you've ever heard that theory.
Yeah, I've heard it.
The children, the sons of mothers who do not bond with them, who do not respect, recognize, and treasure their inner life, the inner life of their children and so on, are afraid to leave the orbit of their mothers because they unconsciously feel that if they lose sight of their mothers, their mothers won't be there when they come back.
Yeah, I mean, that's not...
I mean, the way that...
And this may be a symptom of the, like, mistaking the world myself thing, but if...
The way that I see it is, like, that if I left...
Like, I think more about what it would do to her, like, instead of, like, if I left, like, she wouldn't be there if I came back.
and be like if I left then it would like be devastating to her but that's the way that that's that's what I feel about it consciously so well but that but fundamentally that can't be true Because if she would be devastated if you left...
Then the worst conceivable strategy would be to pretend that you never had conversations about atheism and to insult by erasing your deepest values about religion, right?
I mean, that's very provocative, right?
Yeah, it is. So it can't be that she's, you know, completely terrified, because then she wouldn't do the passive-aggressive thing of telling you to pray, right?
That's right, yeah. I mean, that's a total fuck you, right?
Yeah, but in our conversations, she's talked about how afraid she is that I'm going to leave or something.
But then she provokes it, right?
Yeah. And the reason that I'm saying this is that the dream clearly indicates, clearly, I mean, I'll bow to a lot of mistakes in this analysis, but this one I'll stand by.
You have no bond with your mother, and you cannot leave her.
Right. Right? Yeah, I can see that in a dream for sure.
And I know that I'm really struggling with the question of how to handle it and making life too.
So yeah, I can see that.
Well, let me be a little bit more precise about that, if you don't mind me jumping into your mouth, so to speak.
Sure. You are not exactly struggling with it, but you are ambivalent about it because part of you wants to leave, which is you, and part of you wants to stay, which is your mother.
Right. I mean, it's a totally shitty way to treat someone to completely ignore and erase their values and who they are.
I mean, this is vile, right?
It's rude, it's disrespectful, it's manipulative, it's passive-aggressive, it's fucked up, right?
Yeah. And part of you wants to have nothing to do with that.
and probably never has.
Yeah, but then there's the part of me that really wants it to work and wants to stay.
But I think that you're right.
I think that at the minimum, a very large part of that is just me taking on what she wants out of it rather than what I want out of it.
Right.
Now, let's get to this baby deer, because I think you're right.
That's important. Now, what are your mother's...
Sorry to ask these gay questions.
What are your mother's pet names for you or when you were a kid?
Yeah, you're right.
Yeah, because she used to actually sing that song, like, You'll Never Know, Dear How Much I Love You.
Oh, You'll Never Know, Dear How Much I Love You.
Right, okay. Yeah, and it always made me cry when she would sing it.
I would, like, cry. And so...
Well, that's a sad song, right?
Because the song is, you'll never know how much I love you.
That's not necessarily a good thing, right?
Yeah, and it's like, well, the part that made me, that upset me was like, where it's like, please don't take my sunshine away.
Yeah, my son, right?
S-O-N. Right, and so like, yeah, I'd always cry when she'd sing that, so she stopped singing it after a while, but yeah.
Okay, so you say...
And that would be an early, that would be like a really early memory too, probably like younger than four, for sure, like two or three.
Right, which goes to the toddler tantrum thing that we were exploring earlier, right?
Right. So, my deer, of course, is a term of endearment, and baby deer is an infant, in my opinion, right?
Yeah. And...
So you say, in the dream, right?
He appears to be... Sorry, I'll start.
I happen to glance back up the road.
This is after you help move the truck, right?
Right. Which, of course, indicates that you are not helpless in this scene except within your own mind, right?
Because you have the power to lift a truck, for God's sakes, right?
Yeah, yeah. So you have much more power...
I mean, if you can lift a truck, you can fight off some zombies, right?
Yeah, that's true. You're probably impervious to shells.
So it's saying that weakness is not real.
Yeah, if that makes sense.
Right, because it's like, yeah, I mean, if I have the power to move the truck, I also have the power to leave on my own and not be in any danger.
Exactly. So again, it's sort of pointing out that your powerlessness...
It's based on infantile early needs that remain unprocessed, right?
Because when you were an infant, you genuinely were powerless.
But the dream is saying that's not the case now, right?
Yeah. So you say, I happen to glance back up the road.
We have to drive on to leave the area.
And I see a man running out of the woods and onto the road.
His clothes are torn. He has very dirty and ragged hair.
He appears to be carrying a baby deer.
And Mom suggests what?
That he has just caught it and is going to eat it.
Right. So what does that tell you?
I don't know.
Like, what does that tell me about her?
Yeah. Well, she knew, like, just by seeing, she knew immediately, like, what was going on.
Like, with the dirty guy and the deer, because it wasn't like, oh, I wonder why he's carrying that big deer.
Sorry, you just made a supposition there that the dream does not support.
Okay. Because you said she knows immediately what is going on.
Well, she suggested that it was...
But that's a big difference, right? Yeah.
Does that make sense? Do you know why I'm stopping you there?
No. I mean, I see if that was the wrong, like...
That it wasn't supported by the dream, but I don't know why that's...
Well, because you're saying she is accurately saying this guy is going to kill the baby deer and eat it.
Right? And you said, so she gets what's going on, but it's not the case.
She is... Projecting what is going on.
She doesn't know it, right? And the dream does not confirm it, because your mother doesn't say, ooh, he's going to kill and eat this deer, and then in the dream, the guy kills and eats the deer.
Yeah. He doesn't, right?
Yeah, he just runs off into the woods.
Right, so the dream is clearly saying that the murderousness towards the baby deer, the baby boy, you, is your mother's projection.
It's not reality. Sorry, hang on just one sec. I have to just reset my recorder.
Hang tight.
No problem.
Why are you not letting me quit my recording program?
Oh, did I lose the internet?
No, you're still out.
No, I'm still here.
I've tried these other recording programs, but Pamela's fantastic for recording, but it does hiccup from time to time, to say the least. but it does hiccup from time to time, to say Now, I know most of it's been recorded because I just checked two minutes ago, but I just want to make sure we get this part because it's very important for us, I think, if we end up releasing it.
Oh, come on, that would be difficult.
All right, well, hang tight.
Let me just call you back in a sec.
Okay. Thanks. Recorder down, pick up?
Yeah, okay, great. Sorry about that.
Just had to do a reboot. So, the dream, I think, is saying that the conflicts that you think of as occurring in the world are occurring underground.
Underground conflicts is a metaphor usually for passive aggression, if that makes sense.
Like the attacks are not coming from the skies, the attacks are coming internally underground, right?
And let me ask you a question.
I don't know if you can remember this about the dream or in the dream.
Is the deer alive that the man is carrying?
My perception of it in the dream is that the deer is not alive.
Because it wasn't clear, but I sort of saw it hanging limply in his hands.
So it seemed to either it wasn't alive anymore or it wasn't struggling anymore.
Right. Because your mom suggests he has just caught it, right?
Not that he has just killed it.
Yeah, I think that it seems dead in the dream.
In the dream, I feel like it's dead because it makes it feel more creepy.
It's like, oh, that guy just killed every deer and he's running off with it.
Yes, but your mother, and again, I'm not trying to obsess over the details, but I feel that it's important.
Your mother says he's just caught the deer, right?
Not that he's just killed the deer.
If that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, that's what she says.
So, your mother, I think we can take that as an indication that the deer is alive.
It's not dead yet.
Yeah, I mean, and my image of it, there's not, like, blood everywhere.
I mean, there's just... It's hanging limply and he's running with it.
Right. There's no confirmation that it's dead.
And, of course, since you don't know, even if the deer were injured...
The guy may not have killed.
I mean, he came from the woods, right?
He might be trying to save the deer.
We don't know, right? But your mother brings this murderous cannibalism into the story, right?
If that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense.
Now, I'm getting the sense, tell me if I'm completely wrong, that this...
This murderousness, this erasure aspect is not comfortable for you or is not resonating for you?
Well, I mean, rephrase the question.
Well, my thesis, of course, is that this dream is about an early attempted spiritual murder on the part of your mother towards you Which continues through erasure of who you are as an adult.
Okay. Yeah, I mean, that does...
I mean, I guess that feels like that does feel true.
I just don't want it to be true.
Right. And so, I mean, it's either false, which I don't think it is, because the dream is all about murder.
And your mother, baby dear, being you, it's dead, but she's bringing that to the scene.
It's not in the scene. The fact that you feel in imminent danger of being killed, and yet you cling to your parents.
And your parents are the source of the danger, because they're not listening to you.
But in reality, given that the dream is saying, you are now an adult who's so strong he can lift up a truck...
That it is your attachment to your parents that keeps you in danger, right?
Yeah. I mean, to me, that's what the dream is sort of talking about.
Yeah, I can definitely see that.
So, why are they still in your life?
And again, I'm not saying they shouldn't be.
I'm just, you know, help me understand the case.
And by that, I don't mean a defu or anything dramatic, but what's the plus here for you?
Well, my perspective on my mom is that she herself is very emotionally immature.
It doesn't seem to me that she's doing what she's doing intentionally to hurt me.
It's like that she can't figure out any other way to deal with it.
Okay, okay.
And what's your supporting evidence for that thesis?
Because evidence is what separates wish fulfillment from reality, right?
Yeah, I know. And I've been trying to think about that, like why I feel that way, why I think that...
I mean, for instance, you say that she doesn't know any other way to deal with it and so on, right?
What is the evidence that she has explored alternate ways to deal with it that has failed?
Well, but it's like that she doesn't even know that there...
Could be, I mean, it's like if you're so damaged yourself, it's like you don't even think to look for other ways.
Like you get to the point that you're so damaged you don't even look for other alternatives.
Well, but see, okay, let me give you an example so we can depersonalize it a little bit.
So you say, well, okay, it's true that my dad is a hitman, but he couldn't make it in any other profession, right?
Yeah. Well, the evidence for that would be what other professions did he try?
Yeah. And if he never did try any other professions, then the thesis that he's a hitman because he failed in other professions is not true, right?
Or at least there's no evidence for it.
Right. So, if your mother doesn't know of any other way to deal with things, then we would assume that she has tried other ways of dealing with things, and she has the example of you, right?
Yeah. So she's been exposed to different ways of dealing with things, right?
Right. And also, let me ask you, if you went to your mother and...
I mean, this is the untruth argument, right?
So, if you went to your mother and treated her as if she was already an out-and-out atheist, how would she react?
Um... I mean, if she said, sorry, if she said, I'm going to church, and you said, well, what do you mean you're going to church?
You're an atheist. Right. Oh, that's kind of ridiculous that you're saying.
I don't think that she would like, she wouldn't get angry.
She would just be kind of like, what?
That doesn't make any sense.
You'd have to find the right passive-aggressive way to do it.
I don't know exactly how you do it.
I can't figure out. Right, because atheism is all about not doing stuff, right?
So it's hard to be passive-aggressively atheist, if that makes sense.
Well, okay, what if you were over at her house and you took all her books on religion and you gave them to the Salvation Army?
You took her Bibles and books on religion.
Well, I wouldn't give them to the Salvation Army because I don't want anybody to read them.
Okay, you burned them or you threw them out.
Let's say I threw them away. She would dig them out of the trash.
No, you threw them away.
You drove them straight to the dump.
You threw them right there. They're gone.
And you said, well, from our conversations, you're an atheist.
So you don't need these books.
She'd probably start crying.
Right. So she would be upset.
Yeah. Right.
So she knows what she's doing, because if it were down to her, she would feel upset.
Right? Yeah. Yeah.
So it's not that she doesn't know what she's doing.
Okay. Yeah, I can see that.
That would be the evidence that she didn't know what she was doing, if it happened to her and she was just like, what's going on?
That doesn't make any sense. Because if she's hurt by it, then she shouldn't be surprised that other people will be hurt by it.
Yeah, then she knows that it's hurtful and so on, right?
Right. What if you began telling her friends that she had forsworn the Holy Ghost and become an atheist and you told her priest and you told the congregation?
She'd probably get even more upset then.
That might be when she'd start life.
Well then there's social humiliation which would be most likely to provoke rage.
Social humiliation provokes the most rage in a narcissist, right?
Because they're all about shallow status.
Yeah.
So she's perfectly capable of understanding how offensive and upsetting it is, right?
To completely, flatly, and openly contradict somebody else's core beliefs.
Yeah. And the same thing happens, like, this isn't just like an isolated incident, because, like, when, um...
Whenever I'm over at her house, and they pray before eating and stuff, and they expect me to hold hands in the circle kind of thing, and it's like, oh my goodness!
I would think that by now, if I knew how strongly somebody else felt about something like that, and I wanted them to be around, I wouldn't just repeatedly Ignore their, and there's the ignore word again, but I wouldn't just repeatedly...
You wouldn't raise who they are.
Right, if I knew that pretending that...
Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't do that.
Just put it that way. Right.
So here's what I think the dream is telling you.
The dream is telling you that your internal attachment to your parents is the cause of enormous danger to you.
The danger no longer comes from the outside, not from the skies, but from within yourself, from your inner city, from your ecosystem, from your unconscious, whatever you want to call it.
Maybe your false self, right?
But the danger no longer comes from anywhere outside yourself, because you're an adult, right?
the danger comes from your unwillingness to let go of that which is destructive to you.
And the dream is also telling you, I think, this one's a little more subjective, but murderous impulses are coming from your mother, and that is the erasure, that is a kind of murder that has occurred for you throughout your, quote, that is a kind of murder that has occurred for you throughout your, quote, But most importantly, the dream is telling you that you don't even need these people, you only think you do, because you're strong enough to lift a truck, right?
Right. And that you were helpless when you were a toddler and could only cry and scream to try to be visible, and you still weren't visible, right? But now you're strong enough to lift a truck, you don't need them anymore, and you're staying, and the danger is coming from your illusion of an attachment.
Because you're staying to help these people who don't give a shit about you or themselves.
In fact, they're completely willing to erase who you are to continue to put you in a situation of hysterical, terrifying, mortal danger.
They don't give a shit about you.
In fact, they kind of hate you.
Because you never do that to someone you love, right?
Yeah, I mean, it's ridiculous, and it just keeps happening in its life.
It's not ridiculous that they do it.
It's ridiculous that you're staying.
Yeah. If that makes sense.
Yeah, that makes sense. Oh, and then, after being ignored for hours, at the end of the dream you get impatient, right?
Right. After being ignored and erased and manipulated and controlled for hours, in a state of mortal hysteria, you raise your voice, suddenly, oh my god, that's bad, right?
Yeah, like, it's like, yeah, she gets upset with me for yelling at her, and it's like, but I've been trying to get us to leave for three or four hours now.
Well, that's not the issue.
The fundamental issue is that it's like, well, you're ignoring me when I'm crying and deadly afraid.
That's fine. But then if I raise my voice after hours of being patient and trying to help you people, suddenly I'm bad, right?
Well, that means that your mother is perfectly aware of ethics and politeness and reasonable standards of behavior in relationships, right?
She only uses them to control and manipulate others, though.
She is not subjected to the same rules herself.
And the dream is also saying that, yeah, your mother will be upset if you take a break from the relationship. your mother will be upset if you take a break But she's perfectly willing to ignore your upset, so you're not bound to respect hers.
That's a really good point.
I mean, if you crying and screaming and being afraid for your life means nothing to her, then what is her whiny, crying, self-pitying, what should it mean to you?
Yeah, that's a good point.
It's interesting how I didn't think of that.
That's so obvious, but I didn't think of it.
Well, sure, because your mother doesn't want you to think of it, right?
The issue is not your mother in the real world.
That's not the issue. And the dream is very clear about that in my opinion.
Saying it's an internal struggle.
It's an underground struggle.
It is within the unconscious that you have the problem.
It's got nothing to do with your mother in the real world.
It is to do with your attachment to your mother within your own mind.
Which is a very strong quote attachment because there is no bonding.
Right.
It is the guard who will beat you randomly that you have to watch every moment to become obsessed by it.
Right.
In other words, you have the strongest, quote, relationship with the most brutal and abusive guard, right?
The guard who's predictable and reasonable, you can forget about him, so to speak, right?
So we are the most strongly attached to that which is the greatest danger to us as children.
Okay.
Now, I have a feeling that you're kind of coming and going emotionally with this.
Like, you go like, yeah! And then, okay.
So, what's it like for you, this aspect of the discussion?
Well, like, the part...
Like what you said about, like, since there's a pretty severe lack of Reciprocity going on in terms of like I'm really worried about hurting her feelings like every step of the way and then Obviously she's put it mildly not nearly so concerned about me Not at all,
right? So like that like that really Like thinking about it that way like it really makes it a lot clearer But yeah, emotionally...
I guess it's hard to express exactly what...
I mean...
Well, try this, because I know it's hard to access pre-verbal emotions, obviously, because we're so linguistically experienced by this time in our lives, but...
Try this, if you don't mind.
You know there's that meditation that's floating around?
Yeah. Have you tried it at all yet?
Yeah, I tried it twice.
And what happened? First time...
Both times I really haven't had a whole lot of success with it.
I can make it down the stairs and all that, and then I just kind of...
Like, I have trouble concentrating enough on it.
Like, I don't know if I'm supposed to actually get an image that's really clear.
No, it's not hallucination.
I mean, it's not designed to have you visions or anything, right?
It's not that, right?
But do me a favor if you don't mind.
If you have time now, I hope that you do, because we're sort of unearthing a lot of stuff here, so to speak.
Try it now, because there's that aspect of the meditation where your kid is in the same environment with your parents, right?
And, of course, when you were a baby and a toddler and a little kid, you had an intense hunger for intimacy, for closeness, for...
Respect, for love, for people being curious about what you thought and felt, for people listening to and being delighted by who you were.
Not in a showy kind of way, but just in who you were.
And those needs remain, I believe, unfulfilled within you, but you keep hanging around hoping that this desert is going to bloom into a forest or a wet jungle or something.
So try the meditation, see if you can, and work on physical relaxation and work on not self-censoring.
I mean, we can be shocked by some of the stuff that comes up from our unconscious, right?
As you were to some degree in this dream, right?
Right. So the lack of self-censorship is essential to authenticity.
There is nothing in you that is trying to get you or make you crazy or kill you or, you know, make you deranged or anything.
So try doing the meditation and really closely observe, if you can, how the boy looks at your mom.
And what his emotional state is when he's in her present.
Does he feel pleasure?
Does he feel pain? Does he feel satisfaction?
Does he feel hunger? Does he feel attachment?
Or does he feel fear? Well, I know definitely now, or in recent times, especially when I've It's been more like this constant stress because I don't feel any kind of particular intimacy.
Even if we have long discussions about stuff, it doesn't seem to change anything.
Well, it's not that it doesn't seem to change anything.
It changes nothing, but at the same time, it changes everything.
Because when you try to make yourself visible to your parents, after a long time of hiding and not trying to, and that's what philosophy does, it deepens our experience to the point where we see, for the first time in many, many years, where we are not visible to others, particularly our family members, right? So you are, through this process of deepening and enriching your own thoughts and feelings, You are going back in time to an earlier stage with your mother.
She says that she wants me to tell her stuff, and she says that since I stopped, apparently, or at some point that I stopped telling her things, and she doesn't know why, and she would like me to tell her everything, but that's not the way that I experienced it growing up.
It was like there was a reason why I... Well, and look, to be perfectly frank, and this is going to sound brutal, but I definitely put it forward as a strong possibility.
If your mother is a sadist and you stop exposing your nerve endings to her, what's she going to say?
That... That it's my fault?
No, she's going to say, listen, I want you to start exposing your nerve endings to me again.
Because I miss inflicting pain.
Right?
I miss inflicting pain.
I miss denying your needs.
I'm very glad that you told me that you were an atheist, so now I can pretend that you're not an atheist, which hurts you.
I'm very glad that you told me what you care about so I can ignore and erase that aspect of you because that makes me feel powerful and gives me pleasure.
Yeah, I can see how that could fit, like looking at it from the outside, but like it doesn't.
Thank you.
Well, it's an easy test, though, and of course, I mean, you don't listen to anything that I say, right?
Because I don't know, right?
This is just the theories, but it's easy.
It's easy to test, which is just to talk to your mother face-to-face if you can, and tell her how much it Hurts and upsets you when she pretends that you're not an atheist.
And just keep talking about your feelings in the real-time relationship model.
Keep talking about the things that have happened that are upsetting or scary or angering or frightening or whatever.
And see what happens.
I mean, it's all about empirical evidence, not about theory, right?
And be assertive.
And say, no, it's rude what you're doing.
It's rude. Because it is, right?
Yeah, it is.
And see what happens.
Yep, I'll do that.
Yep.
I was thinking about it for a couple days.
I guess I was trying to plan it, but that's probably not a good idea.
No, I think it's good to write down what you think and feel for sure.
It's not good to plan her responses, but it's, you know, I would say that there's nothing...
Because you're so ambivalent about this, right?
I think there's nothing more important for you at the moment than having the convo, right?
The talk. The open-your-heart talk, right?
Yeah, I think you're right.
Now, the dream is predicting which way it's going to go, but...
Nothing beats evidence, right?
Right. Yeah, definitely.
That's what I was thinking. I can see how a lot of the stuff that we were talking about earlier really fits with what the dream is saying, but that doesn't mean that the dream is right.
Well, I think it does.
I think it does.
Because it was so strong.
It's not trying to run you off a cliff.
But the important thing is that you believe that it's right.
And there's no way that you can do that at the moment without the conversation.
I mean, I've never had a dream that says my wife is my enemy.
I have had dreams about people who are, in fact, my enemies, who I think are my friends.
But again, the important thing is to have the real world conversation.
Right.
Yeah. Okay.
How was the interpretation for you as a whole?
I know it wasn't perfectly satisfying because there's some stuff that you're skeptical about, which of course is perfectly valid.
But how was the approach or the analysis as a whole for you?
I think that it was good, because there were several specific things that you pointed out that I hadn't seen.
I think that I had already kind of figured out most of it, and I got the emotional tones for sure.
I knew where they were heading, but yeah, there was some good stuff that you pointed out that I hadn't thought of.
Okay, well, I will send you a copy of this.
I think it's important to listen to it again before you have the convo with your mom.
Or your parents, I guess, as a whole.
Although I would suggest your mom first, but it's always up to you.
And then you can let me know what you think, whether it's worth the requested donation, and whether you would feel comfortable with it going out to a wider audience.
All right. All right.
Well, thanks, man. I really do appreciate it.
I thought you did some fantastic work here, in my humble opinion, and I will talk to you soon.
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