Edition 572 - Theresa Cheung
A catchup with best-selling UK author and researcher Theresa Cheung - we talk dreams and what they might mean, the afterlife, astrology and a lot more...
A catchup with best-selling UK author and researcher Theresa Cheung - we talk dreams and what they might mean, the afterlife, astrology and a lot more...
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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained. | |
Recording these words in, I can't believe it really, after weeks and weeks and weeks of cloud and fairly cool temperatures for summertime. | |
We're moving towards the autumn now and it's like 28 degrees as I record this, 82 Fahrenheit, 28 degrees Celsius. | |
It's boiling. | |
I'm speaking in an airless room at the moment. | |
So if I'm not making any sense, that might explain it. | |
And please forgive me. | |
So weird weather here in London Town. | |
I hope everything is going okay with you. | |
Hope everything is all right with you. | |
We're going to speak with Teresa Chung on this edition of The Unexplained. | |
She's been on the show before, prolific author and researcher into everything paranormal, based at Windsor, home of the famous Windsor Castle and the Queen at the moment, of course. | |
I just want to get into some of your emails and communications too, so we'll do that in just a second. | |
But as ever, thank you to Adam for his work on this show, for getting it out to you, and also to Haley for booking the guests, including the guest we're speaking with today, Teresa Chung. | |
Okay, some of your emails. | |
Always pleased to hear from you. | |
Go to my website, theunexplained.tv. | |
You can email me from there. | |
Hey, Howard, says Steve. | |
We did something about the Havana syndrome recently. | |
Steve says, is Havana syndrome the condition where people find they smoke a lot of cigars? | |
Just wondering, says Steve. | |
Don't think it is, Steve. | |
Thank you for your thought. | |
Janet in Amherst, USA. | |
Thank you for your nice email, Janet. | |
Ian, good to hear from you. | |
Simon in Bracknell, which is not very far from Windsor. | |
I used to live in Binfield. | |
Simon, I might have mentioned that, which is like a mile away from Bracknell. | |
Hello, Howard. | |
This is Billy from Joliet, Illinois. | |
Found your podcast just before COVID. | |
Love your show. | |
Great guests and none of the wackos. | |
And he names another show that that particular show has. | |
Well, no, you know, we have an open mind on this show. | |
We speak to all kinds of people, but thank you very much for your good wishes, Billy, from Joliet. | |
Allie in Wynnham, I think it is, Queensland, Australia, says some lovely things about the show. | |
They mean a lot. | |
Thank you, Ali. | |
Allie's had all kinds of experiences that you would call paranormal in her life, communicating with a full-body apparition. | |
There was an experience with some kind of creature that appeared that looked like one of those wooden artist models, you know, with the strange exaggerated joints. | |
You had that. | |
And your cat was aware of it, I think you were saying too. | |
Thank you very much for telling me all about those things in your life, Ali. | |
It's really good to hear from you. | |
If you want to get in touch with me, go to my website, like I say, theunexplained.tv. | |
Follow the link and you can send me an email from there. | |
And also, if you'd like to be part of the Facebook page, it is the official Facebook page of The Unexplained with Howard Hughes. | |
No other Facebook page will do, the official Facebook page. | |
And please check it out and support it because it needs all the support it can get. | |
If you've made a donation to the show, by the way, recently, thank you very much for doing that. | |
I think that's all I have to say right now in the boiling heat. | |
Now, we're going to have a conversation this time, so I've no idea where it's going to go, but Teresa Chung is very well known in this country, has researched so many subjects. | |
So yes, we will mention at some point astrology. | |
So if you don't like astrology, you can skip that bit. | |
It's not very long. | |
I'm sure it's going to be a couple of minutes. | |
We'll talk about life after this one and dreams in particular, because that is the subject of her current research and a book that's about to come out. | |
So let's get to Windsor, not too far from where I sit and swelter at the moment, and say, Teresa Chung, thank you very much for coming back on my show. | |
I'm delighted to be here, Howard. | |
Thank you for inviting me back. | |
And also, I just want to take this opportunity to thank you for all you do. | |
Oh, that's very kind. | |
That's very, very kind. | |
Thank you for all that you do, Teresa. | |
Well, that's the show finished then, isn't it? | |
And we haven't even started. | |
So how is life in these supposedly post-COVID times in Old Winter? | |
It's been, you know, for everyone, there's been ups and downs, you know, going backwards and forwards and uncertainty and doubt and some pain and grief, as there has been for everyone in this COVID period. | |
But I am a glass half-full person and I have actually found there has been a lot of positive from this contemplative time we've had the last year and a half. | |
And for my work especially, I have never had so much interest in what I do. | |
And for an author, you know, to be getting the opportunity to talk about what I do and to mainstream something which is often considered niche if you're a paranormal or spiritual author, it has literally been a dream come true. | |
And I'm a dream author, so I should know. | |
So, I mean, it really has been incredible this last year and a half, the opportunities I've had ranging from ITV this morning three times to Capitol Radio to a coast to coast in the States. | |
It's been amazing. | |
And it was all because people were dreaming so vividly during the lockdowns. | |
Of course they were. | |
I know why they were because there's so much emotion to process and dreams react to that. | |
And everybody wanted to know why is so many weird and wonderful dreams happening. | |
And I was asked to explain that and then to help people work with their dreams. | |
And for me, that was bliss because dreams are the portal. | |
They're the door that the mainstream will talk to you about. | |
The mainstream is very happy to talk about dreams. | |
But if you sort of go into spirit afterlife, then they get a bit reluctant or not interested or laugh. | |
But dreams, even the most skeptical person will engage in a conversation about that because they want to know what their dreams mean, what they are, why we have them, etc. | |
So it's a great entry point for people into spiritual awakening and all the joys that that can bring. | |
Well, I didn't think it would be, but I think it's a good starting point for us. | |
So why don't we talk about that? | |
You know, most people that I know have been in the midst of some very strange dreams, including myself. | |
I mean, the dreams do not stop as far as I'm concerned, but I go through periods of them. | |
I don't know whether that's common. | |
You know, I'll have a month or so where I don't have as many. | |
And in the last week or so, and maybe it's tied down to the thought of, you know, maybe having to go back into the office and things like that, you know, which I'll be working from home on everything that I do for a year and a half, which was great fun at the beginning and puts an awful lot of strain, I think, upon you, as many people who've done this will know. | |
But the dreams have started full on. | |
And a lot of the stuff, you know, I'm not asking you to analyze them, by the way, but, you know, a lot of the stuff is here I am finding myself talking to people that I've known, who I've let pass through my life. | |
You know, maybe I've lost contact with, you know, some of those things. | |
And there they are in three-dimensional full color in my dreams. | |
And I wake up in a sweat because I've worked out a whole ton of stuff overnight. | |
Now, those things, you know, forget about me, but those things did not quite happen to that extent pre-COVID. | |
It's only in this last year, year and a half. | |
Well, there's a very obvious reason for the lockdown dream phenomenon. | |
That's what researchers called it. | |
First of all, let's talk about the rational logical reason, which is simply people were sleeping more or their sleeping patterns changed. | |
And whenever that happens, you get more REM, which is at rapid eye movement stage sleep, where most, not all, but most of our dreaming happens. | |
So we're simply sleeping more. | |
So you're going to dream more. | |
Also, our mornings were much less stressful because we weren't rushing to work and to-do lists because we're at home. | |
So we had more time for those dreams to recall. | |
That's the reason for the lockdown dream phenomenon. | |
It's very simple. | |
As a spiritual mystical author, I believe the lockdown dream phenomenon was our dreaming mind, which is another word really for our intuition, our inner therapist, if you want to call it that, trying to help us deal with all the chaos and confusion in our lives. | |
And that's why dreams tend to happen often at key points in your life when you're going thinking through a lot of things and there's a lot of change or a new direction. | |
And your dreaming mind responds to that by sending you messages because every dream is a message. | |
You've got to become a detective and learn to decode that message. | |
And that's where I come in to try and give people tools to try and understand their dreams. | |
Because when you understand your dreams, you understand yourself or the part of you that you keep hidden or aren't acknowledging yet. | |
And when you understand yourself, that's the beginning of all wisdom, really. | |
And it's really why people go to therapy and counseling. | |
If you think about it, the counselor will say, well, what did that mean to you? | |
What do you think about that? | |
How do you feel? | |
Your dreams are doing that to you every night, encouraging you to ask questions of yourself, to reflect on what is happening currently in your waking life, because dreams are current. | |
They only reference what is happening right now in your immediate present. | |
And they want you to ask questions about that and to reflect, because a lot of us, our lives are so busy, there isn't that time for reflection. | |
But dreams come in to encourage us to reflect. | |
And that's why sometimes the stories and feelings that dreams inspire are so bizarre. | |
Because when you wake up, you're going to remember them and you're going to want to work out the meaning. | |
And when you're working out the meaning of a dream, pondering it, you're reflecting. | |
You're being contemplative. | |
And that's all that dreams want from you. | |
Think about who you are and what truly matters in your life. | |
That makes sense. | |
All of the stuff that you don't, and this goes for me too, that you don't process, that you would rather went away. | |
You know, sometimes these things are brought to you. | |
I have a theory about life that if you don't deal with a thing, then it will remain undealt with for a period. | |
But after a while, and that may be years, it may be a few weeks, you're going to have to deal with it because it's going to be brought back to you. | |
It always is. | |
Because something in your present triggers a past memory or a past hurt or a past unresolved issue. | |
And I love what you were saying is that about dreams and noticing what you don't notice when you're awake. | |
I always think of them as messages from your heart. | |
Your heart is noticing things that your head, which is running your day, overlooks or doesn't notice or is too busy. | |
But your heart is taking in so much more and storing it and then transforming these feelings, these themes that you need to resolve or deal with or learn from into a kind of symbolic pictorial language because that's how dreams speak to us. | |
A lot of people get frustrated with dreams because they think they don't make sense. | |
And I say, well, go to an art gallery, read poetry. | |
Some of the greatest poetry, I mean, I'll reference something like Kubla Khan, you know, a poem about a dream. | |
That doesn't actually make sense, but somewhere it does make sense from a personal perspective. | |
So when you have a jumbled dream with all these images, you've got to look at your personal associations, what it triggers, and then you will get a moment of illumination and like an aha moment. | |
I get it. | |
And it's the most wonderful feeling when you have a dream that you're puzzling over and you suddenly, it makes sense. | |
You get why you dreamt of your childhood home or someone you haven't met for years or anything or being in a spaceship. | |
Because you start doing all these associations around, say, for example, a spaceship is going to unexplored territories or being bold or being outside the norm, etc. | |
Your childhood home, perhaps something in your present is reminding you of something that happened in your childhood that you still haven't come to terms with. | |
All these things. | |
And when you get that moment, when you've pondered the meaning of your dreams, and I do encourage everyone listening to ponder and savor their dreams, write them down. | |
Look at the associations, the personal ones and the collective universal ones. | |
And then use all that brainstorming to come to your own interpretation. | |
And you'll know when you've got it right because you will just get that relief, that sense of, I get it. | |
And if you don't get it, don't panic. | |
Dreams are like a Netflix series. | |
They shouldn't actually be viewed in isolation. | |
Go back the following night and ask for a dream to clarify. | |
And then another one and another one. | |
Because if you write down your dreams, as I encourage everyone to do, it actually is like an unfolding story or notice recurring themes. | |
And sometimes you need another dream to make sense of a dream that you've had before, if you see what I mean. | |
It's immensely fascinating. | |
If there is no answer, you know, if you're dreaming about something that is maybe unfinished, unresolved business in your life, but there's no way of fixing it now, then what's the point of that? | |
Well, the point is that it's to help you understand that sometimes questions and things being unresolved is life and that you can't tie life up in tidy packages. | |
As I say, it's like the underside of a tapestry. | |
They're loose ends and knots. | |
And maybe it's only in spirit when we go to the afterlife that we can turn it over and see the picture. | |
Everything makes sense. | |
Sometimes you just have to accept and let go that something is unresolved, that you're not going to know the answers. | |
But sometimes not knowing the answer is the answer, if that makes sense. | |
It sounds very paradoxical, but sometimes not knowing is what is meant for you right now. | |
The ability to let it go without that need to control it and completely understand it or tie it all up tidily is what you need to know. | |
You need to go with the flow a bit more. | |
That makes a lot of sense. | |
you're reviewing it and then you can move because you can't deal with it you can move away from it. | |
What about those people who have and we're recording this a few days before 9-11 which was a huge part of my life because I, you know, told the story on air in London and then I was I was on air. | |
In fact, I was coming home, got a phone call from a friend. | |
Her friends were in the towers. | |
She was working in the city of London, but she was American, Wall Street trained, and she phoned up to say a plane's hit the towers. | |
My friends are in those towers. | |
So I went straight back to work, and I was on air through the evening on Capital. | |
I did breakfast news with Chris Tarrant, and I was coming home. | |
I'd had my day. | |
And I went straight back into work and was there until the evening time, then was back on first thing the next morning, trying to connect with anybody in New York. | |
And in the end, I found a guy who worked for the sports network, ESPN, and they're based in Connecticut, which is away from New York. | |
It's across, you know, you've got to go across the river, across state. | |
And he was able to relay news from New York because for a while, New York was not exactly out of communication, but it's very hard to reach New York. | |
So that's how that was. | |
But there were people, I guess the point of this is we're talking about dreams. | |
There were people who had precognitive dreams, and I had one too. | |
I think I've mentioned it once, maybe twice over these 20 years on air. | |
I dreamt a couple of nights before the plane crashed into a field at Shanksville, Pennsylvania, I think it was, and those people had tried valiantly to fight the hijackers, and the plane was crashed in the end. | |
I dreamt of a plane that looked exactly like the one that did come down sliding from the sky, literally sliding smoothly out of the sky and exploding into the ground in a fireball. | |
That was about two or three nights before 9-11. | |
And I swear I had that dream. | |
And, you know, there are many people who had that dream. | |
No, I absolutely believe you. | |
First of all, I want to say if you were on air when that happened, wow, you must have felt like, is this a dream? | |
You know, you must have done a reality check. | |
Am I dreaming this? | |
Because it was so life-changing. | |
But what you're saying about that incredible night vision you had, and I'll call it a night vision rather than a dream, it is consistent with, because I have written a book called The Premonition Code with a neuroscientist, Dr. Julie Mossbridge, about this phenomenon of precognitive dreaming and researched it extensively. | |
And from what I gather, about 99.5 or 6% of our dreams are symbolic and psychological. | |
But there's that tiny percentage of very rare dreams which seem to defy all explanation. | |
And these are, and precognitive, along with telepathic and afterlife dreams fall into this category. | |
And there is a huge database. | |
I have my own database now of people who've written to me about precognitive dreams. | |
And yours sounds very much like that is what you experienced, Howard, which is phenomenal. | |
The hallmark of a precognitive dream is it typically it has to be two or three days later that the event occurs. | |
I've found working with scientists, they're not so interested in people who've dreamt it like years before or months before. | |
It's got to be like within a week. | |
Now, isn't that interesting? | |
Because this was, as I said, I can't remember if it was two nights or three nights before. | |
So does that mean then that huge and impactful events, which undoubtedly, of course it was, in a terrible and tragic way, 9-11 was huge and impactful, have some kind of impact through time and that can ripple out backwards and forwards in time? | |
Oh, absolutely. | |
I mean, it is mind-blowing. | |
Now, I'm sadly not a scientist. | |
Next life, I'm coming back as one because I really want to find out more answers. | |
And working on this book with a neuroscientist, we did a whole chapter on what is time and the physics of time. | |
And by the end of it, I began to realize that everything we think we know about time or science has told us is really, we just don't know. | |
We don't know what time is. | |
And there are experiments to show that the past can influence the future, the future can create the past, and that maybe time is all happening at once in some kind of loop. | |
This is mind-blowing physics concepts that I am not gifted enough to articulate properly. | |
All I know is that we don't know what time is, just as much as we don't know what dreams are, or even why we are on this planet, this Earth, at all. | |
We don't know. | |
But there is a lot of research now, and physics is leading the way. | |
There are scientists researching consciousness to show that it appears, the research shows, it appears to be possible that the mind, whether the mind is awake or dreaming, appears to be able to exist independently of body and brain. | |
And that's a mind-blowing thing to say, quite literally. | |
And you have to be very careful how you say it. | |
But this is where the science of consciousness is now going is what is consciousness? | |
can it exist independent of body and brain? | |
And because if it can, that explains the phenomenon of precognition, of sensing the future before it happens, and all these psychic and paranormal experiences we don't understand. | |
Because another thing I found out is that people who have had an incredible psychic experience, like you mentioned, they are not in the minority. | |
They are actually in the majority. | |
A lot of people have had a sense, a gut instinct that came true, a dream that came true, being able to read someone's mind without apparently knowing. | |
But the thing is, we just dismiss it because we've been told over and over again that this is nonsense and it's imagination. | |
But knowing that you're in the majority and that we have this kind of psychic sort of paranormal gene in us, I think actually is cause for excitement. | |
And I'm so glad now science is finally, neuroscience especially, leading the way in researching paranormal and unexplained experiences, like the one you had, Howard, which is incredible. | |
You know, only one in my life. | |
I haven't had any as far as I know before or since. | |
Of Sir Alec Guinness, I don't know if you've seen it on Michael Parkinson when he talks about the precognition he had about James Dean because he met James Dean for the first time at the Parkinson interview. | |
I think you and I have talked about that before. | |
Didn't he say he bought this new sports car and didn't Alec Guinness say something about that? | |
Don't get in that car. | |
He'd never met James Dean before. | |
He just said it's never happened before and it hasn't happened since to him. | |
But he just had an absolute certain feeling that this car was going to kill James Dean. | |
somebody famous Yeah, exactly. | |
And a few days later as well. | |
And he said it's never happened before. | |
And it was almost like he's never had that experience again. | |
And he simply cannot explain it because he just met James Dean. | |
He was like a puppy bounding up to him, so excited to meet Sir Alec Guinness. | |
And he didn't want to come across as the sort of the stern, don't get in that car. | |
He didn't want to say it. | |
So he fought it, but something made him tell James Dean, you will be dead within a week. | |
Wow. | |
And he said he's never, he doesn't normally talk to people like that. | |
And I urge people to go check that video out. | |
It's still up there on YouTube, you know, the Parkinson interview. | |
And there's a clip specifically about him talking about this impending car crash and how he simply does not understand it. | |
And it's made him believe that there is more to this life than meets the eye. | |
And for my American listeners, Michael Parkinson, famous interviewer, kind of, he was not a comedian, he was a journalist, but he's not actually doing it now. | |
He's retired. | |
But boy, what a library pantheon of work this man has got. | |
They repeated on television a few weeks ago his interviews with Lauren Bacall and Betty Davis and so many of them. | |
I love the Meg Ryan one. | |
You've got to check these things out online. | |
So kind of a Johnny Carson show, but without the gags, which was a staple part of British life. | |
I want to ask something about you. | |
I looked at your agent's website just for some more biographical material than I knew already. | |
And that said something that I wasn't aware of. | |
I'm sure I wasn't. | |
That you come from a lineage of psychics. | |
I do mediums more. | |
I mean, I grew up, you know, going to demonstrate, you know, from the age of three or four. | |
I remember sitting in mediumship demonstrations, hearing, you know, contact allegedly with spirits. | |
And I just believed that the dead, you know, they existed in an invisible plane. | |
That's how I grew up. | |
It was a traveling family and I never caused to question it until, of course, when I went, I was very fortunate because I was home educated. | |
Still don't know how it happened, but I ended up at King's College, Cambridge. | |
I think I was come to kind of experiment for them at the time. | |
You know, I was about the only girl in my year at the time. | |
I read theology because I was so in love with the religion and the meaning of life that I wanted to be the first female vicar. | |
Now, that didn't happen. | |
So I read theology there. | |
But it was in the course of, of course, going to Cambridge for the first time and kind of being with quote unquote normal people because I think everybody's got, you know, nobody, there is no such thing as a normal, people who don't actually believe that. | |
And that led to the rest of my life really questioning the early beliefs I was raised in, writing too many books about it and trying to understand, you know, because I have witnessed extraordinary encounters. | |
I've spoken to extraordinary people who have had connections to the other side that defy chance or defy reason. | |
And in recent years, it's been, I decided I wanted to talk to scientists. | |
So about six or seven years ago, I think that's when we first got in touch, Howard, I started to reach out to scientists who are researching psychic paranormal phenomena because I wanted, you know, the people who wrote to me and said, you know, there's no proof, it's all imagination. | |
I wanted something better than, well, I believe sometimes that isn't enough. | |
I wanted to show that there are still credible studies out there and that science is actually moving closer towards spirituality than any of us realize. | |
I think that that's true. | |
I think the two fields, even if the practitioners of both sometimes don't realize it, are beginning to harmonize. | |
A lot of things are beginning to harmonize. | |
A lot of knowledge about these subjects, things that we thought were not connected. | |
I was actually interviewing somebody in Australia about Yaoi, the Bigfoot version in Australia. | |
And we were kind of talking about the mystical aspects of these things, which I've talked with other cryptozoologists about before. | |
But there is seemingly an increasing confluence of thought that some of these things that appear to be mystical and the aliens and UFOs and the ghosts and the spirits may all be manifestations of the same thing. | |
Now, we're not quite sure what that same thing is, but I think we're coming to a view, and it would be very helpful, wouldn't it, for an awful lot of people, that there is some kind of unified explanation to it all. | |
I think that's where we're headed, and that's exciting. | |
I think the science of consciousness, that is where it's heading. | |
The scientists I work with researching consciousness, I think it is this unified sort of psychic, invisible place where perhaps we go where we die, or where we can tap into through telepathy or through dreaming or through intuition or through feelings. | |
I think that's where I'm increasingly going. | |
It's all one and the same. | |
And people get frustrated with me, especially people who believe in angels, for example. | |
And then they want to ask me about specific angels. | |
And I just can't go there because for me, angels are just part of this force of unconditional love. | |
Do we have guardian angels, do you think? | |
Yes, I think that's our intuition, though. | |
I think there's an angel within. | |
And, you know, and that we need to meet and embrace first. | |
And when we connect with that angel within, which is our intuition, then life starts to fall in place and you start seeing angels all around you. | |
I think people make the mistake of trying to find it outside themselves through a guru, through a system, through a spiritual hierarchy, through a religion, rather than the place to go, first of all, is within and to find the angel within, tap into that force of kindness, unconditional love and strength and deep meaning, looking beneath the surface for the meanings underneath the surface, not what's obvious. | |
Once you can tap into that and really know that you have got your own back, if you know what I mean, not a guardian angel, you have, then I think heaven can be seen in a grain of sand. | |
But a lot of people miss out that first important step of the inside-out approach to spirituality is very much where I'm going as I get more and more mature. | |
I think it's a much more of a younger thing to do than when you're younger to think, well, if I sign up to this, this psychic course or if I follow this teacher or if I do this ritual, then I'm spiritual. | |
Oh, no, no, no. | |
That's all window dressing. | |
You know, that's just all to help focus your thoughts. | |
Unless you do the inner work, reconnect with who you truly are, even the shadow parts of you, I think meeting your own shadow, acknowledging your shadow and choosing not to act on it is the most important thing. | |
And that's where true inner strength comes, because humans are a mixture of both dark and light. | |
But it's knowing you have that potential for darkness within you, but not acting on it, choosing, knowing you have choice, that's true inner strength, I think. | |
Okay, no, I was interested in the way that you were putting that. | |
I've never heard it put that way before. | |
Your shadow. | |
That's the side of yourself you may not like, the one that dares you to do things that you don't, that wouldn't necessarily be good for you. | |
Yeah, the shadow is not a good idea. | |
Sometimes you have to work, you have to meet your shadow. | |
You have to face it and you have to understand it. | |
But then you have to come to a point when you choose not to express it. | |
Because if you aren't aware of that shadow side, it's not really strong, is it? | |
It's just naivety. | |
I always try and talk to people because I love talking about movies and something. | |
For example, an iconic movie franchise like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. | |
It's like if all of Lord of the Rings was in the Shire, if all of Harry Potter, there was no Voldemort, where would be the growth? | |
Voldemort's the shadow, the rings the shadow. | |
You've got to go on a journey to understand it and then choose to conquer it and deal with it. | |
But no, it's always there inside you. | |
It's like Harry hears the scar, which is his shadow side. | |
And that's where I think true personal growth and transformation begins through acknowledging your shadow, not fearing it anymore, but just simply understanding it. | |
It wants to be heard. | |
I think a lot of our shadows, we don't allow it to speak. | |
It wants to be heard. | |
We need to hear what it's got to say because sometimes the shadow side can really propel people towards greatness. | |
You know, sometimes it's the pain and the hurt that can actually, you can really create amazing things from because it gives you that impetus, that meaning, that purpose. | |
I think too many of us are chasing bliss all the time when bliss actually isn't all that good for us because no progress is ever made in your comfort zone. | |
You've got to face the tough times sometimes and grow through them and grow stronger. | |
I think that's a beautiful way of putting things. | |
That's actually helped me to an extent. | |
You know, the broadcasting world and anything that involves working in the media, we're all privileged to do it and to use whatever skills we might have to do it. | |
But sometimes there is a price to be paid and sometimes the experiences you have are marvelous and the awards, I've had those, I'm looking at a couple of them now. | |
And, you know, sometimes you get the most appalling kicks and you come across the most awful people on occasions. | |
And that's a great way of looking at it, that you have to encounter and embrace the bad stuff in order to be able to march forward. | |
The bad stuff is necessary. | |
It really is necessary. | |
Otherwise, we just stay stuck and we don't grow. | |
You know, it's sad to say, but often the loss of a loved one for many people is their biggest impetus to say, well, why am I here on this planet? | |
What really matters to me? | |
Who really matters? | |
What's the meaning of my life? | |
It's like the shock of having to deal with that because it forces you to really think about what is this life all about? | |
Why are we here? | |
What's my meaning and purpose? | |
Who am I? | |
And gradually over time, you begin to Realize that you can't attach yourself to other people, to success, to material things, to money, to your Instagram followers, because all of that's great, but it's never, ever going to bring you fulfillment unless you know you're okay in this present moment. | |
Because if you're not happy right here, right now, in the present moment with what you've got, why do you think you're going to be happy when something else happens? | |
It won't. | |
It's an illusion. | |
And that is, I think, from all the research I've done, why we're here. | |
We are to really just truly be happy in the present moment. | |
The power of now, Erkhart Tolle's wonderful book, resonated so powerfully for a reason. | |
And it's all about, I am complete. | |
I am enough right here, right now. | |
And the wonderful thing is when you get to that point in your life when you feel like that, somehow it's like the universe understands and things do start happening that you want to happen. | |
But if you're operating from a position of need or lack, it doesn't happen. | |
Yeah, I think, I mean, just as we leave this topic behind, I think it is important. | |
And I think there's a lot of wisdom there. | |
Every so often, if you worry a thing too much because you want it so much or you're feeling the lack of whatever it is so much, it's almost like you're blocking traffic coming through to you. | |
It's so hard because when you let it go, you've got to want something, but not too much, because if you get your identity from it, that's toxic for you. | |
Because who are you? | |
You've got to be enough without all these things you think you want. | |
It's very wise in so many ways. | |
Now, we are going to talk about astrology now. | |
And that instantly, when we say the word astrology, I can tell you that it divides my audience because there's a, I'd say 40%, maybe 30%. | |
I'm not sure. | |
I've never looked at it systematically, but there's a portion of my audience that when I say that word, and if I put an astrologer on, they say, I'm going to come back later. | |
I'm not going to listen to anything about astrology because it's bunk. | |
I have written books about astrology, but I write many other books, so please don't switch off, everybody. | |
I have written about astrology because my thinking is that it's a tool. | |
Again, it's another psychological growth tool. | |
Because if you think about it, we're about 70% water. | |
The moon rules the tides. | |
So think of it that way. | |
The moon rules the tides. | |
Every human being has so much water, consists of so much water. | |
So that's a way of thinking as above, so below, to help you understand that the planets and the stars, I mean, our ancestors understood this. | |
They would align their lives with the planets and what was happening above. | |
That's what it is. | |
If you can just think of it like that, it's really just going back to ancient times and being more in tune with nature. | |
If you think of it that way. | |
And if you actually look at the 12 signs of the zodiac, they are the journey through life. | |
We start with Aries, the baby, and we end up with Pisces, the wise man and woman. | |
And as you go through the zodiac, this will help you for a very basic understanding of the zodiac signs. | |
If someone says they, for example, they're an Aries, they're going to have that very youthful energy. | |
If someone says they're a Scorpio, which is sort of halfway through the zodiac, it's going to be sort of like more adults, more intenser energy. | |
And then as you go towards the end of the zodiac, you're going to get people who are a bit more dreamy and a bit more mystical. | |
I mean, this is generalizing, of course, but it's certain themes and trends. | |
And it really can help. | |
If you know the sign of someone you're going to work with or you're in a relationship with or you have children, just knowing their sun sign can really give you a psychological head start. | |
Increasingly, I use astrology as a psychological tool, not predictive, more psychological to understand yourself better. | |
Because that's, there's a theme with me. | |
It's all about understanding ourselves better. | |
And anything that can help you do that, and astrology certainly can, for me is a plus because life is a journey towards understanding ourselves. | |
So many of us go through life not really knowing who we are at all. | |
And anything that, you know, and why not these ancient divination systems, which actually now are remarkably popular with millennials, astrology has had a real rebirth in the last couple of years. | |
Maybe actually it was starting about five or six years ago. | |
And it's being used as, as I say, to understand yourself better. | |
That's all. | |
And what career would suit me better? | |
You know, where am I going to find my purpose? | |
And also knowing other people who are your sun sign, what they're doing with their lives, looking at that, you will see similarities. | |
I mean, did you know that there's so many footballers born on the same day, for example, like Neymar and Ronaldo? | |
Same day, same birthday. | |
I didn't know that. | |
I know that a lot of broadcasters. | |
Elvis Presley and Shirley Bassey, same day. | |
Now, I don't know what that means for me because I was born on the date of birth of the Duke of Edinburgh. | |
The Duke of Edinburgh, Liz Hurley. | |
The Duke of Edinburgh, Liz Hurley, and Judy Garland. | |
Oh, how wonderful people are. | |
We're all born on the same day. | |
Actually, when you know the birthday of someone very famous and you share that birthday, as long as it's not, you know, of course, there will be people who are born on the day of Hitler, but of course, there's always, but what I say again, don't panic, doesn't mean you're going to be a horrible person. | |
It simply means that, as I've been saying before, there's a shadow side and a light side to everyone. | |
And in the case of the likes of Hitler and Charles Manson, they let their shadow take over. | |
They didn't have that control. | |
But you always have free will. | |
That's what I say. | |
You have free will. | |
Look at the positives. | |
Other people born on that day who did extraordinary things. | |
And you can actually, it can be quite a revelation finding out people who are born on your birthday. | |
Look At their life themes, look at how they've dealt with crisis, and you know, because everybody, everybody has times in their life that are difficult and how they overcome it. | |
Learn from it, learn from them, it can be really helpful. | |
Well, those three people, I mean, I'm actually the same day as Buddha, I love that those three people that I cited to you, I think they were all charismatic. | |
The Duke of Edinburgh, certainly. | |
Elizabeth Hurley seems to be ageless. | |
And Judy Garland, of course, although she was troubled, as we know, enormous talent and hugely charismatic. | |
Enormous talent and huge intuition and empathy. | |
And that's why the world loved her, because when she was on stage, she just put her heart right out there. | |
I mean, that's what I think of with Julie Garland. | |
And what I guess she needed to learn, too, was to take better care of her heart. | |
With someone like Liz Hurley, it's interesting with her. | |
It's gone more towards all style, hasn't it? | |
I think it has. | |
I mean, just before we leave, just for my listener here, if you don't like astrology, don't worry. | |
Another couple of minutes and we'll be away from this topic. | |
But you know, she's living. | |
They're all people who are doing it their own way. | |
They don't really care about what other things, people think, really. | |
No, that's absolutely true. | |
Listen, do you know that I was actually, I've never shared this on air before. | |
I was actually in Liz Hurley's first movie. | |
I don't think she's been in very many. | |
That wasn't the airplane one, was it? | |
No, it was Mad Dog. | |
It was called Mad. | |
You've probably never seen it. | |
Mad Dog's an Englishman. | |
I heard of it. | |
It was a crime. | |
What did you? | |
Oh, go and watch it now, Howard. | |
Well, there's a famous British actor with a wonderful voice called Joss Acklund. | |
And he played the cop who had problems, let's put it that way, in the show and a dark secret. | |
And the revelatory moment of the movie, where a truth is revealed, it's revealed in a radio news bulletin, and guess who's reading it? | |
So I was in a movie with Liz Herdie. | |
Did you meet her? | |
I didn't actually have the guts to go and speak to her, but I went to the cast and crew screening, if you really want to know. | |
Somewhere. | |
It was a Sunday morning. | |
We all had to get up early on a Sunday morning, and we had to go to Acton, was it, I think, maybe? | |
Or maybe Hammersmith. | |
And there was a cinema there, and everybody turned up. | |
And the director addressed everybody and said, Mad Dog's an Englishman, a great British prospect. | |
This is going to be such a success. | |
I don't think it was a massively successful film, but it's the only time I've seen my name on film credits. | |
Just before we leave astrology behind, then, Teresa, this is probably going to be heard across the weekend of the 11th, 12th of September. | |
Apparently, astrologically, and those who don't like astrology, don't worry, two more minutes and then we are done. | |
Astrologically, something is going to happen. | |
Is it Jupiter that is retrograde? | |
Well, no, I mean, Jupiter's been retrograde for a while, but I think on Monday, the 14th, it goes retrograde in Capricorn, which isn't, you know, because Jupiter's the lucky planet. | |
And whenever, you know, planets are in retrograde, it suggests struggle and, you know, coming face to face with reality. | |
So, you know, and it will stay retrograde until I think the end of November or sometime in November. | |
So, you know, that could explain a lot of how we're feeling at bit at the moment, like we're making progress, but we're not. | |
That's how it very much feels. | |
So just, I think Monday, when Jupiter goes retrograde in Capricorn is a time for reflection again and to maybe focus on getting that inner strength to cope with the uncertainty because it's going to be uncertain till November. | |
Well, as I say, the planets very much at the moment are similar to the planetary alignments during World War II. | |
And that was five, six years. | |
So, because it basically, it's all cycles. | |
You know, that's what astrology is. | |
It's studying patterns in the heavens. | |
And everything comes back and repeats. | |
So, you know, I think it's going to be a while. | |
Of course, we're going to all have to learn to live with COVID. | |
And there are going to be many battles before the war's won. | |
That's what I look, just looking at it. | |
But as I say, I don't delve into astrology from predictive. | |
It's dangerous to do that because there's so many factors at play. | |
And I very much believe the future is fixed, but you can also change it. | |
I know that sounds, again, paradoxical, but it's like if you drop a plate, it will smash on the floor. | |
That's the future of that plate is to smash on the floor. | |
However, you have free will. | |
With your other hand, you can catch the plate before it drops. | |
So, you know, the future's fixed, but it can also be changed through our actions in the present moment. | |
You can glue it back together. | |
Okay. | |
Your publisher is going to be very upset with me if I don't talk about your latest book that is not out yet. | |
So we're doing the first interview about this. | |
And this is a sort of directory, a compendium, an A to Z, an encyclopedia. | |
Oh, no, no, no, no. | |
That was my HarperCollins Dream Dictionary from A to Z. It's Barnes and Obama exclusive if you're in the States. | |
And it's in Every Waterstones in the UK and available on Amazon. | |
And that was published actually in about 2006. | |
Oh, hold on, Ben. | |
Well, what's this one that's coming out then in the autumn? | |
Well, I mean, because, you know, the last couple of years, because of COVID and everybody dreaming so much, and I found myself suddenly propelled into the spotlight, which for a fairly introverted mystical writer, that was, you know, a surprise, a beautiful surprise. | |
And I've cherished it as an opportunity to talk about spirituality and mysticism and dreaming. | |
Because of all this renewed interest in dreaming and also in my work, I was very blessed earlier this year that HarperCollins, my publisher, signed me for a book which helps people who struggle to recall their dreams because everybody dreams, but you just don't recall them. | |
It's not that you're not dreaming when you wake up and you have no dream on your mind. | |
You just haven't got into the habit of recalling them. | |
So this book is called How to Catch a Dream: 21 Ways to Dream and Live Bigger and Better. | |
And it's 21 things you can do, practical and proven by science, things you can do to increase your dream recall. | |
And then maybe right at the end, try some lucid dreaming techniques. | |
Now, lucid dreaming is when you're in a dream that you suddenly know you're dreaming while you're dreaming. | |
It's very much, you know, the Leonardo DiCaprio Inception movie. | |
You know, if you've watched that movie Inception, which is all about lucid dreaming, people who've watched that will know what I mean. | |
And it's something that most of us experience once or twice in our lives, that we suddenly know we're in a dream. | |
But you can actually train that ability and do it more often. | |
And it's a wonderful, wonderful thing to do because literally you can be or do anything then in your the world of the dream that you've created. | |
And the title of 21 Ways to Dream and Live Bigger and Better is from my love of Inception. | |
There's that wonderful line in the movie when one of the characters played by Tom Hardy says, you need to dream a little bigger, darling. | |
And look, you know, physician, heal thyself. | |
Have you used this technique yourself and how? | |
I have, but as I said, I dream decoding is something I just grew up doing. | |
When I got up in the morning, you know, it was commonplace that the first thing you talk about with my family was the dream and decode the dream. | |
It's just something I've done. | |
And throughout my life, I have found that my dreams have been kind of like running parallel to my life, like a commentary, occasionally predicting, but always giving me new perspectives and creative solutions to problems that I'm dealing with. | |
But it wasn't actually until Inception in 2010 when I saw that movie about lucid dreaming that I decided I wanted more of that. | |
Please, it looks so exciting because I couldn't do it. | |
So I've really, for the last 10 years, I've been experimenting with lucid dreaming techniques to see if I can do it. | |
And I have managed to have partial success. | |
And I write about this in my upcoming book, The Things I Do to Increase My Ability to Know I'm in a Dream When I'm Dreaming, because that is so exciting and magical. | |
I think I'm already doing it. | |
I do have occasional dreams where I know that I'm thinking my responses to old bosses and people like that that I come across in dreams. | |
and I'm actually rationally working out what I'm going to say to them. | |
And usually those points I don't want you to think about work. | |
I want you to go and grow wings and go up to space and go and do something away beyond. | |
That's what I'm saying. | |
People in their dreams, in your dreams, there are no limits. | |
So you don't need to dream about work. | |
You can go and dream about anything. | |
Meet historical figures, you know. | |
I mean, can you talk to Einstein? | |
Quite seriously, if I, I don't know, as a journalist, if I wanted to go and meet somebody from history who was famous, maybe somebody who died in circumstances that we haven't quite been able to explain or something like that, and try and get a handle on what really happened, are you saying that we can do that? | |
There are some people who claim to be able to incubate dreams, you know, set the intention to dream and incubate a dream. | |
I haven't yet managed to do, I have had partial success with that, but not 100% success, because let me compare the dreaming mind to an ocean. | |
You can influence the ocean by building a ship and trying to sail on it, but you can't control the ocean. | |
And it's a mistake to think that lucid dreaming is the ability to control your dreams because your dreams can't be controlled no more than the ocean or the wind can. | |
However, you can sort of, when you go to sleep, say, I want to meet X, Y, and Z character. | |
And potentially that could happen. | |
I can't guarantee that it will, but some people claim that they can do that. | |
And how do you know that you're really meeting that person? | |
Well, it's the world of the dream, isn't it? | |
It's like we go back right to the beginning when we talked about what is a dream. | |
What is this world we're creating? | |
It's an alternate reality. | |
Is it that person's essence? | |
Is it you projecting and imagining what that person would be? | |
We don't know. | |
As I said, it's impossible to know the answers. | |
And I do think the older I get, the more comfortable I am with ambiguity. | |
And it's been a tremendous relief when I've just sort of let go of my desire to know all the answers because I feel I make more progress that way. | |
I just don't think I'm going to know exactly what a dream is. | |
I just love studying them and introducing people to the joys of them and seeing how dreams can really be healing, empowering and transformative by what you experience in them. | |
If you approach them not with fear or thinking they're nonsense, but approach them as a precious gift. | |
I love that quote from the Talmud, which says that a dream not decoded is like a letter written by someone who knows you better than you know yourself and not reading that letter. | |
Okay. | |
Well, I'm going to give this a go and as they say, I will report back. | |
Now, of all of the topics then that you've investigated, which it sounds to me like the dreams are going to be the answer to this question, but maybe not. | |
Which is the one that has intrigued you the most? | |
Which is the one that you would want to come back to time and time again? | |
Oh, how long have you got? | |
I mean, but the thing is, I think I found the one. | |
As I say, dreams is what I'm most well known for and what the media will often now get my expert opinion on because of my dream dictionary and all I've done. | |
So I'm in love with dreams, but then I've also written about the afterlife. | |
I know you had my friend, the lovely medium Claire Broad on several times. | |
I worked on a book with her. | |
I'm fascinated by people who say that they can potentially communicate with the afterlife. | |
I'm not sure completely whether they are doing that or it's some wonderful form of telepathy. | |
But either telepathy or afterlife communication are so worthy of study. | |
I'm passionate about people developing their own intuition and not relying so much on psychics or gurus, etc. | |
I'm actually getting interested in UFOs now. | |
The whole area. | |
I mean, you have the best job in the world because you get to talk about it all the time. | |
Oh, you know, UFOs, I think, obviously are a hot-button topic at the moment because of that report that's gone in in Washington, because of the number of people who are coming out of the woodwork. | |
I think it's a fascinating time. | |
I think we are. | |
I mean, how can we be so arrogant to believe that we're the only, only species, you know, only planet that has lie? | |
I mean, you know, it's infinity out there. | |
I firmly believe that there are other worlds, maybe parallel worlds. | |
And, you know, I guess I'll only find out when I've crossed over to the other side. | |
But how can we believe that we are the only ones? | |
But what fascinates me are the number of people who I've spoken with over the years. | |
People in this country, one guy who I'm sure you've seen on television, who was a local councillor, a local politician, who was claimed to have encounters with aliens all his life, constantly. | |
They're always coming to him and taking him to wherever they take him and putting him back at the end of it. | |
The number of people who say that they've had encounters with these things. | |
Now, they can't all be, in my small brain, they can't all be wrong, I would think. | |
They can't all be wrong. | |
I think some of them, they're probably very vivid dreamers and sometimes dreams can feel so real. | |
I mean, alien dreams are very common. | |
Sometimes dreams can feel so real as if you've actually been there. | |
I think some of them may be confusing a particularly vivid dream. | |
And I'd love them actually to write to me and send me their alien dreams because I could help them work through them and understand why this is happening. | |
But yeah, I agree. | |
You know, throughout time, we've had stories, just as we've had stories of near-death experiences, people seeing spirits, seeing angels. | |
You know, not everybody can be wrong. | |
And I know that because I'm in a privileged position as an author to get people to write to me. | |
And so often the letters start. | |
I haven't told anyone this. | |
I'm really not mad, I promise. | |
You know, I've got a very responsible job. | |
I'm a solicitor or I'm a teacher. | |
I'm a lawyer. | |
I'm a doctor. | |
But this happened to me. | |
I don't understand it. | |
You know, I am skeptical. | |
Even I don't understand it. | |
Can you explain? | |
You know, there's so many people who've had these experiences, but are reluctant to share them for fear of what other people will say. | |
And I'm glad that they feel they can write to me, actually. | |
And I say, look, you're not mad. | |
And I usually connect them actually to scientists who are researching this, who crave their stories because it's for their database. | |
And that can be quite healing and helpful. | |
What is the most amazing story to you that you've received from somebody who's communicated with you? | |
I would say every single one. | |
I cannot choose. | |
I have had angel saved my life stories of people having visions of angels who've pointed to parts of their bodies and say, go to the doctor, get that checked. | |
And the doctor says, yes, it is cancer and their life has been saved. | |
I've had stories about people who've had dreams of meeting their children and then their children are born and their children look exactly like the dream. | |
I have, honestly, it's endless of stunning coincidences. | |
You know, the chance, the odds are so impossible that I can't really choose because every time I get a letter or a story or a message, I mean, a lot of them I've gathered in my books. | |
They form the basis of many of my books. | |
They are a collection of incredible stories. | |
I'm just left in awe. | |
And I love it because everyone reminds me that there's so much more to our lives than we acknowledge or are aware of. | |
And there's so much hidden potential within each one of us. | |
And when people start opening themselves up to that and acknowledging that the impossible sometimes can be possible, miracles truly do happen and lives can be changed. | |
But it's still hard because there is this very much like, you know, if you say something like that or you share an experience like that, you know, you have to be careful who you share it with because people are frightened of what they don't understand. | |
And it is just fear. | |
But, you know, if you go back, you know, to the medieval times and, you know, us speaking as we are now on a phone would have been considered a miracle and impossible. | |
I think it's just in time, I think these paranormal experiences are going to become normalized, supernormal, as Dr. Dean Radin, I've talked to him many times, his book, Real Magic. | |
In time, I think science will find answers, more answers, and show that these paranormal experiences and encounters and experiences, psychic abilities are part of the human experience. | |
And it's so sad that we shut ourselves down from them. | |
Why would we do that? | |
You know, it's magical. | |
It's exciting. | |
I think for a feeling of security and safety, I think there are things that people don't want to confront. | |
And that's the reason. | |
I mean, that's just my ballpark suggestion. | |
I want to do one thing. | |
You talked a lot about dreams. | |
And I know that's your thing. | |
And I'm glad that it is because it fascinates me too. | |
I've never shared this on the radio or anywhere else before. | |
And I'd love to get your thoughts on this. | |
And I don't know why this has come into my mind now. | |
But it is probably for me. | |
I mean, there are two dreams. | |
One of them is about, and I had that one interpreted on the radio last year. | |
One of them is about living at my parents' home in Crosby near Liverpool, where I had a home studio in their front room. | |
God bless my parents. | |
They let me give up the front room to a recording studio, which is where I made all my demos as a teenager. | |
But the dream is always that somebody's breaking in, and I get up in the middle of the night, and I'm catching these people with all of my stuff boxed up, and they're about to leave my parents' home. | |
And, you know, there's a bay window, so it's all piled up in the bay window. | |
And I run down the stairs and I see them. | |
And I want to call my dad, and I can't speak. | |
Now, that's that one. | |
The one I want to talk about, because we talked about that on the radio. | |
I had a car, a Nissan Micro. | |
It was the original, what do they call it? | |
I think it's the K11. | |
Anybody who's into Nissan Micros will know the very first one. | |
And this is like late 80s, early 90s model. | |
The one that I got, I think, was in 1991. | |
A red one. | |
And it had alloy wheels. | |
And I bought it from brand new. | |
It cost me what was a lot of money for me back then in Portsmouth. | |
No, Chichester. | |
It was a garage in Chichester. | |
And I had this car for years. | |
And I nearly lost this car. | |
When I started at Capital Radio in London, somebody ran into the back of it in a truck carrying concrete. | |
I was left with half a car. | |
But they rebuilt it. | |
And I had it for years later. | |
I owned that car for, I think, 12 years. | |
And I loved it. | |
But part of me, and I've owned quite a few cars, nothing expensive, usually secondhand. | |
I still feel that I own that car. | |
And the recurring dream is this. | |
That I go to my dad's place. | |
And the car is under a cloth in the garage, the red Nissan Micra, which I part-exchanged for another car years ago. | |
But it's still in the dream. | |
My dad's still alive. | |
We go to the garage. | |
And the point is always, hey, dad, we've got to put that car back on the road. | |
You know, we've got to put my little Nissan Micra back on the road. | |
And I had that dream a few nights ago. | |
I've been having that dream for more than a decade. | |
I don't understand what it means. | |
But it's a dream that recurs with me. | |
This car that I loved. | |
I went everywhere in that car. | |
You know, I went all over the country. | |
I went to Scotland in that car. | |
Cornwall in that car. | |
It was part of my life. | |
And I did love it. | |
And it never, ever let me down. | |
It was the most amazing car that I've ever owned. | |
It cost nothing to maintain. | |
The only thing it ever needed was after 11 years, the gearbox gave out. | |
And Keith, who looks after my car at Longford Service Station in Hampton, Keith was able to find a secondhand gearbox. | |
And off we went again. | |
So the question is this. | |
That is the strangest dream about a car that I don't own anymore and haven't owned for more than 10 years. | |
But I still have that dream about the car. | |
And I want my dad to take the covers off it, get it taxed and MOT'd and get it on the road again. | |
What the hell is that about? | |
Well, cars in dreams are symbols of your journey in life, your direction. | |
And it also represents how you control your life. | |
I'm just trying to think. | |
So I think it's encouraging you to ask because dreams are always present. | |
This isn't about your past. | |
This is about your present moment. | |
Your dreams wanting you to think about who or what is currently controlling your life and how in control you feel and how clear you feel about your own current goals. | |
And it's referencing that time in the past where maybe that was a more pleasant time in your life when you feel you had it more sorted or there was more excitement. | |
And it's asking you to go back in your mind to that how you felt then about the direction you have in your life and pull that energy into your present. | |
If you see what I mean. | |
I do. | |
I've never thought of it that way. | |
It's all about direction in life and how you control your life. | |
This is a dream about control and direction. | |
And yet in my head. | |
In 1991 when you got that car, what was your, how were you feeling about the direction in your life? | |
Were you excited? | |
Did you feel in control? | |
Yeah, totally. | |
I had, in 1991, I was a young, thin guy and probably, although I never made a lot of money out of it, that was because I never, employers never paid me what, you know, I was later told I was worth. | |
That's a whole other issue. | |
But I felt that I had the world at my feet back then when I owned that car. | |
That's very interesting. | |
But your dad is telling you to pull off the car cover, right? | |
And get going. | |
No, I'm telling him. | |
I'm asking, I'm saying, Dad, we've got, you know, we've got that. | |
And, you know, it hasn't even been taxed or insured or MOT'd for years. | |
We've got to, we've got to do something about it. | |
Yeah, yeah. | |
That's what it's you telling you, get that feeling back. | |
Gee whiz. | |
Do whatever you've got to do to feel like that again, rather than not coasting is not the word. | |
Because at the moment, because you're not in the car in your dream. | |
I'd love you to have a dream when you get in that car again and you drive it again. | |
You're outside that car, a car that you loved and during a time when you felt very much in control and that anything was possible. | |
That makes sense. | |
So this dream is saying, look, here's this car that symbolizes all this to you. | |
Get in it. | |
Get in the driver's seat. | |
What is it doing not being driven anymore? | |
God. | |
So as I say, the best person to interpret it is you. | |
So that, you know, you've got to ponder that. | |
But it's saying to you, you've got to get that feeling back. | |
Because when you do, that's going to make you happier and feel more fulfilled. | |
That makes a lot of sense. | |
And yet in my, the reason I reference this, and apologies to my listener who say, I don't really hear that story. | |
I'm not interested in that or you. | |
But that's been on my mind for such a long time. | |
And I've, part of me believes I still own it. | |
It's a super important, you know, dream. | |
Because recurring dreams happen, keep recurring until you get the message. | |
You will keep having that dream until you understand it. | |
Now, you said the car was red. | |
Red, yeah. | |
Yeah, well, I mean, look at the, that's, that's the, I often ask people to not look at so much. | |
Because sometimes it's very confusing. | |
There's so many things in a dream. | |
Choose something that stands out like the car and the car. | |
the color red now the color red the symbolism associated with that um it's energy isn't it sense of danger passion power um just pulling words out impulsiveness maybe a bit more of that well thank you very much for that and again for listeners who don't want to hear stories about uh about the presenter and their life share their dreams you know it it can get very deep very fast and um I'm always deeply privileged. | |
And I'm thank you so much because when people share their dreams, they all do it for a laugh and they think it's nonsense. | |
But what they don't realize is they're sharing a piece of their soul and what's hidden. | |
So, you know, whenever anybody shares dreams, I always treat it with utmost respect. | |
I hope everybody does too, listening, that when you have a dream tomorrow morning, when you wake up, and I'm sure you will, because actually the more attention you pay to dreams, the more likely you are to have them. | |
So just talking about dreams now, chances are a lot of your listeners will dream tonight because dreams on their mind. | |
To actually treasure it. | |
Don't try to understand it. | |
Remember, it's like a work of art. | |
The meanings will come when you ponder them. | |
So just write the dream down and then come back to it a few hours later and start pondering. | |
There's going to be standout symbols like in your dream, it was the red and the car, a card that you loved and a time in your life. | |
And just brainstorm around them. | |
And it's like opening a treasure chest. | |
It really is. | |
And you actually also realize how darn interesting you are when you do dream decoding. | |
You realize, God, I'm deep. | |
God, well, I've never thought of it that way. | |
I will report back to you on that. | |
And again, apologies to my listener. | |
I don't know why I let that one slip out, but I've been having that recurring dream for years and even had it about three or four nights ago. | |
Anything that we haven't talked about, we should have? | |
No, I'm just super grateful to have the opportunity to talk to you, Howard. | |
I really am very, very grateful. | |
Thank you. | |
And you too. | |
Now, let's get it absolutely clear to keep your publisher happy. | |
The latest book is called What and Is Out When? | |
Oh, it's out on January the 6th, 2022. | |
It's called How to Catch a Dream, 21 Ways to Live, no, to dream, and then in brackets, and live bigger and better. | |
So if you're fascinated by your dreams or want to know more about them and want to dream bigger and better, because when you start dreaming bigger and better, you actually find that your life follows suits because your dreams and your waking life are not separate. | |
They are one. | |
You don't stop being you when you fall asleep. | |
So when you start enhancing your dreams, you will find that your life transforms as well. | |
Don't think of dreams and waking life as separate. | |
Think of them as continuous. | |
Good luck in all your work, Teresa Chung. | |
We'll talk again. | |
Thank you. | |
Teresa Chung, thank you to her. | |
I'm sure we'll talk again. | |
More great guests in the pipeline here at the online home of the unexplained. | |
So until next we meet, as I swelter, I'm about to go get myself a cold drink because I need one and I've earned it. | |
Till next we meet, my name is Howard Hughes. | |
This has been The Unexplained Online. | |
And please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch. | |
Thank you very much. | |
Take care. |