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Nov. 1, 2022 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes

01:03:48

Edition 675 - Machiel Klerk - Dreams

Author and international "dreamworker" Machiel Klerk on what your dreams are saying to you - and how he believes you can "set" them to help you...

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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.
	Thank you very much for all of your emails and communications.
	And also thank you for, if you have donated to the show recently, for doing that.
	You can do both of those things, contact me and make a donation to the show by going to my official website, theunexplained.tv, designed and created by Adam.
	And thank you to him.
	I had an email recently, one of many, from a guy called Keith who likes the show, but was telling me two things.
	Number one, he was saying that nobody wants to hear the London weather report.
	Okay, well, I mean, if it's true that you really don't want to hear that today has been a lovely, balmy, early autumn day and you could feel the sunshine on your face, 63 degrees, 17 Celsius, if you don't want me telling you that stuff, then please let me know and I'll drop the London weather report.
	He also said that I thank too many people.
	I thank you for sending emails and I thank Adam and, you know, I thank people.
	He said nobody wants to hear the thanks.
	If that is so and I've been quietly doing that for all this time and it's something that you don't want, then, you know, let me know and we'll make changes.
	But one of the things about doing this, one of the things that I have learned is that you have to be true to yourself.
	And if you think there's a way to do something, unless it's completely, utterly, terribly off-beam and wrong, then you just have to do your thing.
	And, you know, I'm coming increasingly to the view that I'm just going to have to increasingly do my thing because it is impossible.
	I started out by wanting to please all the people all the time.
	And you can't.
	All you can do is be honest and yourself.
	And that's all you got.
	That's your currency.
	Guest on this edition of The Unexplained is Machiel Clerk.
	And he's going to talk with us about something I don't think we've discussed here before.
	And that is seeding or incubating your dreams.
	Now, on the TV show, the radio show before, we had various dream analysts on analyzing your dreams.
	And I always found that fascinating.
	So did you.
	We used to get full switchboards doing that.
	And we will do that again on the telly, on the TV.
	But this is about making practical use of your dreams to change your life.
	You don't think that can be done?
	Well, maybe the man we're about to speak with in Utah, USA, can change your mind.
	So he's the guest on this edition.
	Don't forget, when you get in touch with me, and I love to hear from you, tell me about your life.
	Tell me about how you use this show.
	Tell me whereabouts in the world you are and how long you've been listening for.
	It's always nice to hear those things.
	I think that's everything covered, really.
	Um, I'm gonna be...
	And beyond that, when I get back, I want to just take a little bit of time for guest booking and planning where we go with this in 2023.
	Because you've got to agree, the world in 2023 will be a very different place from the world the year that I launched the podcast, which was 2006.
	You know, that's 17 years of life.
	You know, a lot of people have left this plane.
	A lot of people have joined this plane, you know, been born.
	And the world is unrecognizably different.
	I've just got to have a great big think, I think is what I'm saying.
	And, you know, I have to be, for once in my life, I have to be a bit good to myself.
	We should all do that.
	That includes you.
	All right.
	Let's get to the guest then.
	That possessed way too much philosophy.
	And I'm just rambling on now.
	So I'm going to stop.
	Let's get to the U.S. now.
	Utah, USA.
	Machiel Clerk, your dreams.
	Machiel, thank you very much for doing this.
	How are you?
	I am great, Howard.
	I'm excited to be here with you.
	So thank you for the invitation.
	Now, on the software that I'm using here, the geographic locator tells me that you're in Salt Lake City, Utah.
	Is that right?
	That is right.
	That's indeed home for already quite a while.
	I've landed here in Salt Lake, Utah, the United States.
	Very different from your native South Africa.
	It's totally different.
	It's totally different.
	I was born in South Africa.
	I've lived quite a while also in Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
	And then 18 years ago, I came for a job here in Salt Lake.
	And I've grown down, as I like to say.
	You've grown down.
	Now, that is fascinating.
	I'm sure we'll talk around that too.
	Okay, now South Africa, as I know it, is a great place to begin your life, which you did, because of its spirituality, because of the fact that so many cultures meld together.
	And I know that South Africa is the land of the Sangoma, the magic person, and also the shaman, the people of great knowledge.
	Do you feel that you benefited, or perhaps you left too young to have appreciated that, but do you feel that you benefited from that exposure?
	I do think so.
	And I think it's indeed a beautiful, fertile ground for being connected to the other world, the world of ancestors and the beings that live there.
	And about 10 years ago, a little bit longer, I started getting dreams of getting back to South Africa, which in a dream I would be in a plane landing in Johannesburg and being so emotionally and have a sense of coming home.
	So I followed those dreams and then I got back in touch with the Sangoma, the indigenous healer, and I would sit with them and talk with them about healing and they would throw the bones for me, their divination method.
	And they would say, you're one of us.
	We need to teach you this.
	So that I started a journey to learn from them their particular method of healing, which has been very informative to my overall way of seeing the world and being a therapist and working with dreams.
	I have to say that I wasn't aware of what a Sangoma was until I met one.
	I was doing a radio show in South Africa, and part of it involved me going out to a place where you could stay in a rondavel, which is like a hut.
	But, you know, a hut that is, this particular one was very nicely equipped, but it was in the middle of nowhere.
	It was in the middle of the bush.
	And the person who looked after the sort of nursing requirements for people, you know, any medical issues they might have on that particular estate, she was also a Sangoma.
	She was also somebody who was very connected to spirituality and magic and things that we would call psychic here.
	And we sat outside that hut with only the southern hemisphere stars to guide us.
	You know, there was no other source of light there.
	And we just talked and talked.
	And I was recording for the radio show about how she was able to help people in various ways, how she was able to detect just by simply meeting somebody what they were all about.
	And I found that, not only did I find that fascinating, I also found it a bit therapeutic too, to think that there were people who were so connected with the earth, with whatever spirits there might be, whatever other dimensions there might be.
	Because you know this in America, our society just ignores a lot of this stuff.
	Yes, we are somewhat disconnected.
	And I've worked with different African shamans or Sangomas who say the problem of the West is that they are no longer in touch with the land of the ancestor, of the realm of the ancestor.
	They identify our culture as the lack of connection to ancestor, and that causes all the problems that we have.
	I think it, you know, I've come to feeling this.
	I think there's a very strong argument for that.
	I just think that we tend to think in this first world, whatever that might be that we exist in, and it is replete with problems at the moment.
	But a lot of us tend to think that we're too cool for school.
	And anybody else who's got anything else to say about where we came from and what we know is obviously backwards compared with us.
	Yes, I agree.
	And of course, the West made phenomenal developments in technology and medicine and in all kinds of arenas that maybe has blinded us from the fact that this inspiration comes from somewhere and that there is some larger force supporting us.
	And we've claimed too much the responsibility for the progress and disconnected from the deeper layers of our own being, who are really fundamental to sustain us and give a sense of purpose and meaning and a larger sense of living in a world that is alive and even what is the world about.
	And there is a lot to be said for the philosophy that if you believe it, you can achieve it.
	I am a great believer in the thought that if you want to make something happen, if you want something to happen in your life and it's good for your life plan, by and large, then it probably will happen for you.
	But again, we'll get into that.
	You are described in your biography as a social entrepreneur, a licensed mental health therapist, international speaker, obviously, dream worker, which we're going to talk about, published author, which we also know about.
	How do all of those things work together?
	They look separate, yet they come out of more or less the same source.
	And I've really been interested in psychology from early on, but especially early 20s, to give some sense of meaning and purpose to my life.
	And I studied psychology, then became a therapist, and I worked with dreams.
	And in one of the dreams that I had, I got a suggestion to build a platform for this type of psychology, Jungian psychology, spiritual psychology, which I listened to and gave form to.
	So then I built a non-profit and a regular company with online courses on this topic.
	And then I started writing a book about it and doing talks and courses and workshops and consultancy.
	So it all comes back to a certain connection to the other world, listening to one's dreams, and then being guided by the other world and dreams.
	And they form themselves in this way in my life.
	And they do the same thing for other people in their unique lives.
	And yet, a lot of us, Machio, and certainly until recently, this is how I thought, I tended to think, and a lot of us do think, that dreams are sort of a laundromat for the psyche.
	You know, they're kind of a washing machine for what goes on during your life.
	Some of the stuff that comes into our minds today, it's also fast, it's also complicated.
	You know, we've got our personal lives and our professional lives, and it's all going at a thousand miles an hour.
	And so when you go to sleep, if you can get off to sleep these days, then when you dream, even if the dreams seem a bit wacky and crazy, all that is doing is just kind of making sense of the experiences you've had as your brain stores them.
	Yes, that is probably part of what happens.
	Yet we could also see that the psyche or the soul or our spirit within is moving in a certain direction.
	It's almost like a river that flows somewhere.
	And so it's not only digesting the day-to-day content, but it's also anticipating the development of where we're heading towards.
	Just like the rose seed becomes a rose and the acorn becomes an oak, the human psyche tries to realize its own potential.
	And by looking at our dreams, we can see where we are in our journey, as almost like a psychological x-ray, but also we can see where our life is heading towards.
	So it anticipates the future.
	It's not only a laundry mat, but it looks at the future where it's heading towards.
	And so you will get characters and figures in the dream that embody states of consciousness or talents that would be good for us to integrate, and then our life flow can be easier.
	So it also has that quality.
	So do you believe that dreams are at least partly controlled by something that is not within us but is without us?
	In other words, destiny, I guess you might call it.
	Yeah, I think if we would think in some form of a metaphor about it, we, the human, would be a wave on the ocean.
	And each wave is connected to the ocean and actually made of the same substance as the ocean and could even be seen as an expression of that ocean.
	And so all these waves or all these humans have a personal element, the wave itself, but also have a collective element, the ocean.
	And the ocean and the wave together give form to that individual life.
	But it is definitely that that ocean is much larger and its direction and its current direct where a person is going.
	And we could call that destiny or fate, because the wave that grows out of that ocean is just confronted with this larger phenomenon and has to learn what are its specific unique features.
	And how does these features try to realize themselves in this world?
	So you're telling me that when I sleep, when we sleep, not only are we doing things within our minds, but we're also connecting to something outside us.
	We're also connected.
	We're not in a sort of, you know, like putting your television on to standby mode.
	You're not in standby mode.
	You are actually connected.
	Yeah, we are always connected.
	And in sleep, especially, we're even in deeper layers connected to this larger source.
	And that influences our life.
	And that gives a sense of you could look at where's the current heading towards and what kind of qualities seem I to embody in this life.
	Because we all, whether you want to call it DNA or karma or something, we are a bundle of qualities that try to become itself over time.
	And that is why dreams can be so helpful, because dreams portray that in a clearer way than we usually get access to in our day-to-day life.
	Do you believe that dreams are more than just a collection of brain waves?
	Yes, because I don't take the brain as the central origin of the dream.
	I think that the brain might be even closer to maybe the radio station that broadcasts the frequencies that lie behind the dream in some form of a larger spirit or energy field, of which the brain is just a manifestation, a dense manifestation that broadcasts them further, by which we experience these frequencies.
	I know we're not here to talk about dream analysis, but myself and a lot of my colleagues in broadcasting, because there is a certain amount of stress involved, a certain amount of exertion involved in broadcasting, a lot of us have dreams that are connected with that.
	Quite often, I have dreams quite often, and they're all similar but different, if you know what I'm saying.
	But I would say 20% of my dreams are about me going back in time when I worked on news desks, which I did for an awful lot of my time.
	And we haven't got any computers, and I'm trying to use old typewriters, and I can't find the source of the news, and then I can't find the studio to go on air.
	And if I do find the studio to go on air, there's something wrong with it.
	And either I can't speak, or I do speak, and the scripts in front of me make no sense.
	Now, I always thought they were just kind of anxiety dreams.
	Yeah, definitely.
	And one way for people to work with their dream is instead of asking the question, what does this mean?
	Start with the question, what is happening?
	Or what is the experience?
	And then you see in your dream the experiences.
	You try to arrange things, it's not working, you can't read it, you can't speak.
	So they embody the anxieties that you have.
	And so it's indeed an anxiety dream and gives a psychic x-ray exactly which type of anxieties you experience and when they come up.
	It's very interesting.
	Because I'm sorry to jump in, but it's very interesting, but I and other people get those dreams, you know, not at times when we're particularly under professional stress.
	So I think you're saying that dreams like that, and again, I know that we're not here specifically to talk about dream analysis, dreams like that, though, are metaphors for things that are going on elsewhere.
	So the fact that I'm having a dream or a friend of mine is having a dream about finding broadcasting difficult may be just a metaphor for finding something else difficult.
	Yes, he might just have that same kind of, he almost always will have in the 24 hours before an experience or he's living the experience of not being able to formulate himself well, not feeling prepared.
	And that could very well have to do with his work, where he knows that experience from his past.
	That's why the dream grabs back to an existing experience to portray a current emotional state.
	But that current emotional state might also very well have to do with he's trying to enter a new activity in another field that has nothing to do with the literal, with the literally broadcasting.
	It just has to do with the experience of not being prepared, not being able to formulate yourself.
	Do you know?
	I've never thought of it that way.
	And I'm glad that you said that because I'll think about them more differently.
	And yet, that's not what you do, is it?
	You actually, the thing that interests you and the thing that you work in is being able to plant or seed your dreams with things that you want to achieve, things that you want to happen, maybe even healing yourself, but maybe making some other positive outcome present itself for you.
	So a dream is much more, and this is news to me now, but a dream is much more, you think, than just a tableau of stuff presented on a movie screen in front of you while you're sleeping.
	It's actually a tool.
	Well, actually, it is not a movie in front of you.
	A dream is an environment in which you participate.
	So the movie metaphor is too passive, as if you're watching a movie.
	But if you go back to a dream, you will see, oh, I'm sitting at this desk and I'm going through these papers and where's the microphone?
	You're in an imaginal world having an experience.
	Why do I have dreams that involve very well-defined people who I could describe to you?
	The next morning I could wake up and describe how they spoke and how they looked.
	But I don't know these people.
	I've never seen them before.
	How does that happen?
	Well, the dream sometimes uses real-life people.
	Then you could dream about your partner, and then maybe it has something really to do with your partner or a colleague.
	Then sometimes the dream picks up a figure that you haven't thought about in 30 years from your high school or whenever you were there.
	And then it is more symbolic.
	Then you would ask the question, what do I associate to this figure?
	And then it's like, oh, that figure was always really good in standing up for himself, or he was very loud, or he was a bully.
	Then the dream uses that energy of standing up for yourself by presenting that in the figure that you still knew from 30 years ago.
	And then the dream comes up with completely new dream figures that we don't know.
	And they are usually sometimes thought forms.
	They just present a thought that you have and they do something.
	And I think once in a while we encounter others in the dream as well who are just living in the ocean and we're just connecting with them.
	It's like seeing the fish that is under the wave and it doesn't belong to the wave, but it's in its proximity and in the shared experience.
	But that heightens the idea that we're connecting to something because those people who I don't know and those people who I've never seen before, they're in that ocean, they're in that greater context.
	It could be either your mind, the wave makes it up, or they're in the ocean living there, and they're real figures living in the ocean.
	The idea of being able to make use of dreams goes back a long way, doesn't it?
	Yes, it's since the beginning of mankind.
	In all the first written text, you already see that people feel that they get messages or communication from the divine or God or another world or a spirit in their dream.
	And most religious traditions refer in some form or fashion to that.
	Other works of art do refer to dreams being helpful in some form and fashion.
	But all the way up until now, people do have dreams that either portray the plot in a book, give them a business idea like I had in a dream, or get an idea for a painting, or tell them something like, hey, your niece is pregnant, or something weird that's being revealed in the dream.
	And that has been a kind of a common knowledge around all cultures in all times, around the world.
	And when a business idea suggested itself to you through a dream, you're sure that it isn't something that you've been thinking about anyway?
	Well, in my case, I wasn't.
	I definitely wasn't.
	It was the idea to start a platform for Jungian psychology and spiritual psychology.
	And that hadn't been in my mind.
	You traveled the world to do this research, didn't you?
	To find out more about it and how different traditions and different peoples used dreams.
	Yes, I traveled, of course, a lot to South Africa and to Greece, where there were temples where people would go in the old days.
	They would travel to the temple in order to have a dream that would help them with their health.
	So dreams and healing was a big part of our culture.
	I've been in Asia and in North America, South America, and talked to mainly indigenous healers and looked at their traditions to see how do they engage with the world of dream and how do they elicit help.
	And some common thread that all these traditions do is they ask the dream a question or the God or the spirit or whatever they imagine to be out there.
	They ask it a question before they go to bed in order for them to have a dream that reveals the answer to their question.
	And they have a whole elaborate system to do that.
	That's what I also digested into that book that I've wrote to how can we All ask the dream a question for help with either relationships or health or creativity or whatever is on one's mind or in one's heart.
	That sounds great.
	It sounds fascinating.
	It sounds wonderful.
	The problem with it is that, of course, most of us don't remember our dreams.
	We only remember some of our dreams.
	I know that it is said that we all dream every night, but we mostly don't recall them.
	I can tell you that I didn't dream last night.
	The last time I dreamt was probably four or five nights ago, and I can barely remember what that was about.
	You're telling me that I could sit by my bedside tonight, write down some idea, something that I, I mean, there are loads of things that I'd like to achieve and make happen, that I could select one of those, program myself to dream about it, and I'll get the answer to the problem or the issue, conundrum, whatever it might be, presented to me in the dream.
	Yes, it's wild.
	And yes, it is indeed possible.
	And it hinges on a couple of elements, such as asking the right question to identify what is really important for me and figure out a way to engage the dream that is most likely to trigger a response.
	And yes, we all dream several hours each night, but because our short-term memory goes offline at night, we don't remember the dreams.
	And the main trick for dream recall is get a journal and a pen, tell the dream before you go to bed, dream, I would like to remember you.
	I know, we haven't been in touch much, but if you come tonight, I'll write you down.
	And the next day, you have to write it down upon waking because these dreams evaporate.
	But that helps to store it in the short-term and the long-term memory.
	So you will also remember them.
	And that is the main trick for dream recall.
	And when you start engaging with the dream to get help for any question that's relevant to your life, you already engage with the dream and you will see that the dream responds to interest and curiosity.
	It almost shows the same face to us that we show it.
	How well defined, how clear must the question you pose before going into the dream state be?
	Well, it's strange that the dream seems to be a bit of a stickler on how you ask the question.
	So it seems to respond to the question.
	And it already starts with the step before that, and then it is identifying what you want to ask.
	And they did some research at Harvard University where they noticed they had 65 people go through this process.
	And they noticed that the people that would get an helpful response asked a question that was either of medical nature or emotionally irrelevant to their life.
	People that didn't get a good response often asked a question that was too theoretical or not relevant to their life.
	So if I asked the question, what did my neighbor have for dinner last night?
	The dream might think, ah, that doesn't have anything to do with your life.
	But if I ask a question as, how can I be more kind to myself?
	Or I'm stuck with this business problem and I thought about it.
	Can you give me a suggestion on how to solve this?
	Then the dream will come.
	So the dream seems to be interested in helping and educating you with the realization of who you truly are.
	So if you ask questions that are relevant to you, those are answered.
	And then the next step is, how do you formulate those questions?
	And that's also important.
	But first, ask a question that's really on your mind.
	Well, one of the things that would be on my mind would be, I know it sounds trite and trivial because it is, you know, how come I never win the lottery?
	What have I got to do to win the national lottery?
	I mean, I know it sounds crazy and it sounds silly, but I've known people.
	In fact, a relative of mine has just won a little bit of money on the lottery, and I never do.
	Now, that sounds trite and trivial, and maybe that's not worthy enough as a question, but I'd love to get the answer to why I do not win.
	Well, if this is really a question that you're working with, you could ask the dream, why am I not winning the lottery?
	And that's more a diagnostic question, and you will get an answer.
	And I've seen people try to ask the dream also the question, can I get the lottery numbers?
	And the dream seems almost never be interested in providing that.
	And it looks like for most people, winning the lottery is not really relevant to their life journey.
	It's almost like we come into the world with certain qualities and talents.
	And the realization of those qualities and talents and engagement with our wounds, that seems to be really relevant.
	That seems also to be that what the larger ocean or soul or spirit is interested in helping.
	So it is not so much interested in a person winning the lottery and then doing nothing for the rest of their lives.
	They're interested in that person that maybe has a talent for cooking and has some challenges in relationships to work those out in this life.
	And it will help that person realize those things.
	So does this tie in with the notion of your higher self?
	If it's good for your higher self, then you'll get the answer.
	Yes, that seems to be the main criteria in identifying the question And what the dream wants to answer.
	So, the dream is not really like a genie that is a wish-fulfilling spirit.
	It's almost like as if there is a wise counselor on standby who is interested in helping and educating you become you, or you bring into the world your talents and deal with your wounds.
	And if you ask it questions around that, it helps.
	But if you ask questions as, how can I be rich without any relevance to your life?
	It doesn't answer that usually, or 99% of the time.
	If you were to ask, sorry, you were saying.
	Well, if you were to ask a question as, for example, with you and your program, how can I reach more people that would benefit from listening to this material?
	There it wants to help.
	If you say, hey, I just want to have more money, it lacks an underpinning of purpose and meaning where it seems not to respond well to.
	If I was to ask for myself something that I wanted, and my listener knows this, the greatest problem in my life at the moment, and I've never afraid to admit it, is that I live in an apartment that desperately needs to be renovated.
	But the problem with it is with the property market, the rental market and everything else.
	I can't just go out and rent a place because I couldn't afford to do that.
	I have to find an artful solution to being able to vacate where I live for long enough to have a nice builder come in and do a few things that desperately need to be done.
	And when I consciously think about that conundrum for me personally, maybe other people are in this situation too, you know, I freak out.
	It panics me.
	I worry about it.
	I can't think of an answer.
	Are you saying that if I tonight had a little notepad by the side of me and formulated a way to ask that question, please, can you help me to find an answer to this that I haven't thought of consciously?
	Might I get an answer?
	This is very selfish.
	I'm sorry for asking this.
	No, no, no, this is a great, and I love that you make it personal because here it shows that you want to go to a question that is relevant in your life, a burning question, because that is where the dream wants to help you.
	And so you could ask a question such as, dream, please show me a way I can deal with this apartment challenge.
	Or how can I best engage with this?
	And that would be a great question.
	It's one question at a time.
	It's an open-ended question.
	So you allow the dream to respond from any angle it thinks it would be helpful for you.
	And it's short and simple.
	So if I make it that clear and I ask that question, it is likely that I will get an answer in a dream and then I need to write that down as soon as I wake up.
	Yes, that is very, very important.
	Write down the dream because as you mentioned before, dreams evaporate upon waking.
	Several days later, you just don't remember exactly what it was and then you lose the suggestion of the dream.
	And the other element that seems to be really beneficial to trigger a positive response is engaging in some form of friendship or relationship or almost treated as if in this ocean or the ocean itself, it's an intelligence that is interested in helping and educating.
	And so how would you talk to this intelligence?
	How would you talk to this creative force?
	And what I've seen in all these traditions, they did rituals.
	Everything was ritualized.
	And that seems to be a way of engaging with the other world, the spirit world.
	And it is not so much all these traditions that I studied, they said, oh, first you need to sleep on your right side.
	You need to drink milk before bed.
	You need to light a candle.
	And the next one was, no, sleep on your back, eat grass.
	All kinds of different rituals, which made me realize and see, it's not about which ritual you do, but that you do a ritual.
	And that the ritual has elements as intention, desire, wanting to know an answer.
	And that you're honest.
	You could say, of course, I've been listening to this Machil figure today and it sounds interesting, but I have really no clue if this works, dream.
	But I would love to experiment.
	So that you approach it with an open mind, but you can be skeptical.
	You don't have to blindly believe.
	Better not.
	Engage it and tell it what you think and how excited you would be if the dream comes up with a solution for the apartment.
	And that will help.
	So you can make a drawing, you can light a candle, you can dance, you can just talk to it, you can pray, some form of engagement that I summarize as ritual.
	That is the other really important element that makes this technique successful.
	So the question is important.
	We've said that.
	Yes.
	Do I approach it, though, or does anybody approach whatever question they ask?
	Let's leave me and my apartment dilemmas out of it.
	Do people approach it with the thought that there is an answer out there?
	That answer already exists.
	All I've got to do is find it.
	Or is the dream actually creating it?
	Well, that's a great question.
	I think sometimes the dream might, yeah, I think it responds in the moment.
	So with the best information at that time, it will give an answer.
	Yeah, I think That is what happens.
	Right.
	So there isn't a ready-made solution already out there.
	I'm paging the Oracle, and the Oracle is going to give me, hopefully, he's going to give me the answer.
	Yes.
	And the Oracle is a, because it's a really great counselor, advisor, it sometimes, well, even if you have the right type of question, like, I know, I want to find a partner.
	And maybe I would say, I want to find a partner.
	And then I don't get the best answer.
	Then I also sometimes need to think, maybe I need to shift my question.
	Like I recently had a client who wanted to find a partner and then a little later came up with, well, what I really need to figure out is what is my biggest obstacle in dating?
	And he thought, if I figure out that obstacle, I'm probably will be able to connect.
	And so he then asked the dream, what's my biggest obstacle in my dating life?
	And he made a ritual in which he made a drawing of a heart with a question mark on it.
	And he wrote to the dream.
	And that was his ritual.
	And then in bed, you want to lay for a minute or two and contemplate on the question so that you let the dream once again know, this is really important to me.
	And then he woke up, wrote down the dream, and he had the following dream.
	And he says, in the dream, I'm driving in a tunnel in my car, and I think I see a mountain lion in the distance.
	When I get closer, I see it's a beautiful tiger.
	I get really scared.
	I slam on the brakes and I back out.
	That was the dream.
	And then instead of asking the question, what does this mean?
	He asked the question, what is happening?
	Then you get in structure.
	He said, oh, I'm moving along.
	And when I see something that's really beautiful, I get scared.
	And then I slam on the brakes and I back out.
	He said, if I read that back against my question, I get a good sense of where in my dating life I encounter this issue.
	I sometimes see a beautiful woman and I back out.
	Sometimes I get vulnerable and I get scared and I slam on the brakes and I'm out.
	Instead of engaging with that experience, I'm gone.
	And that's my biggest obstacle.
	Then it can work that issue of, oh, when you get afraid, you have a tendency to run.
	And then the next question is, how can I sustain the fear?
	Because it's not about not having fear when you meet this tiger or this beautiful person, but how do I sustain the fear that I can stay in a relationship with this person?
	When you say, how can I sustain the fear?
	In other words, how can I tolerate the fear?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And because it is fearful to meet a person that you're really interested in, that you find really attractive.
	If you wouldn't be afraid, it would almost not be the right person initially.
	Hopefully that settles over time.
	But initially, there's some tension or you get vulnerable and open.
	And some people, and probably all of us, has a part that just clamps down and that wants to back out.
	And we need to stay open so that we can be vulnerable and connect.
	Did it actually practically help this guy?
	Was he able to solve his problem?
	Well, this was relatively recent.
	So step one was that he knew, okay, this is my fear.
	And now he's working at how can I sustain this fear and practice that when he's around a person he likes and practice being open.
	So it's a journey, this where he is.
	But he finds it very helpful to at least know where his fear is and how he can better engage with it so that this dating life doesn't become an unbouncing of potential candidates because he's too afraid to engage.
	So a lot of it is framing the question.
	And the question for him wasn't, you know, why am I unsuccessful?
	Why am I unlucky in love?
	The question isn't that.
	The question is, you know, rather, I've got that the wrong way around.
	The question is, not why can't I, I want a partner.
	The question is, why can't I find a partner and why am I unlucky?
	Why have I, you know, what's the obstacle?
	What am I doing to myself that is giving me this issue?
	That's better.
	Yeah.
	And there you see also that this counselor inside is interested in a kind of a psychological process, a process of developing more awareness.
	So it's interesting of, hey, you dreamer, you have this issue of not being able to be vulnerable and open and follow your heart.
	And you have to learn that.
	So it's not going to solve that issue for you like, boom, here's the partner.
	Now it's going to help you solve the issue of becoming more aware and connecting then with the partner.
	And also all the questions need to be framed around the growth of the individual.
	How is this supporting its life path?
	And that's why Please Dream Give Me the lottery is not going to work so well because that 99 million times out of the 9 million and one times is not supportive for their life path.
	Their challenge doesn't lie around having money and how to engage with it.
	Their challenge lies in how can I be vulnerable?
	How can I be following my heart?
	How can I be more aware?
	How can I create a fun home for myself where I feel at home and do good work?
	Those are things that are more important for the internal counselor and when and why this process works.
	You believe that we all have a soul, don't you?
	And that we can access that and get guidance from it.
	Yes, I do.
	Yes, I do.
	How does that work?
	Well, I think that Back to the metaphor of the wave, that the ocean could be seen as the large soul, the larger awareness.
	There's a form of larger, creative, intelligent awareness that we're all connected to.
	And then I also think that there are fish in this ocean that are particular close to our wave and that can give us support.
	Like in the African tradition, some of these fish might be our ancestors or a form of a guide that knows more about our life and that is interested in helping us realize our contribution to the world.
	And I think we all have that and that we especially meet them in our dreams, but they're also around right now.
	We're always connected to it.
	We just not necessarily see them, but they communicate in intuitions, in synchronicities, in particular strong feelings or thoughts.
	And if we listen more to our own experience, we find the GPS or the guiding navigation tool for our own life.
	With the dreams, you have a five-step method, don't you?
	I mean, it sounds nice and compact.
	A five-step method to being able to achieve that, to being able to get guidance from your dreams.
	What are those five steps?
	Step one is identify the right question.
	So just take a question that's really relevant to you and your life.
	So anyone that is listening to this, you can take a piece of paper and just write down what am I really engaged with?
	And be honest with yourself.
	Sometimes questions that we don't really want to ask, like, am I in the right relationship?
	Or is this the best job for me?
	Or how can I be more happy?
	Or how can I be more loving?
	Or how can I solve whatever issue I have?
	Write it down.
	And if it's multiple, write multiple down and take the one with the most energy.
	One with the most energy is the most pressing.
	It's very often the first one that pops up and take that one.
	So then you identify the topic.
	And step two is identify the question.
	So like I want to have the relationship or I want to make my house more homey.
	Then asking the right question is crucial.
	Like Einstein already said, if I have a problem that I have 60 minutes, the time to solve, I will spend the first 50 minutes to figure out the right question.
	Because once I have the right question, I will be able to solve the problem.
	And think a little bit about what do I really want to know?
	And what is it that I really want?
	And how would this help me on my life path?
	How do I become more conscious by asking this question or more loving or more kind or more giving?
	And then ask that question.
	Make it simple, one question at a time, open-ended, so that the dream can respond.
	Sometimes think through, can I even imagine an answer to this question?
	Like if I would ask the question, what would it look like for me to move to New York?
	And then I have a dream in which I see a car crash.
	All right, that doesn't bode well.
	Or I see a dream in which I see the sun rise and flowers.
	Oh, that's a nice experience.
	I could do this.
	Then step three is engage in rituals.
	You want to do that all along.
	But step three is really the ritual, make a drawing or dance, do something to communicate to the counselor inside that you're interested and that you need and want help.
	Four, go to bed, meditate in bed, sleep so you can dream.
	And then five, write down the dream, whether you understand it or not, and then work on it.
	And those are the five steps.
	Well, sounds good.
	Five steps to heaven.
	Five steps to being able to realize those things that are good for you.
	Let's put it that way.
	Yes, yes.
	Can you think of one instance, one you don't have to name anybody's name here, but one instance, one case, one person who has been helped the most, a case of which you are proudest?
	Well, I really enjoy that example of the man that found his big obstacle in life.
	But what I've seen a lot is that people with health issues seem to also get really good and surprisingly accurate results.
	So also very recent there was this man who is a music teacher who had stomach problems.
	And it became one night so terrible that he couldn't sleep and decided, now it must be over.
	I go out of the bed and he wrote down, dream, please show me how I can solve this issue.
	Did a little ritual, made a drawing, went back to bed, fell asleep and then reported the next day that he had a dream in which he was sitting at a table with someone who had a face that was made of cabbage.
	And the person was sweating profusely.
	And then he was in another restaurant where someone was eating a hamburger and it didn't fall well for that person.
	And then he saw something about eggs that were there and were not eaten.
	Then he woke up and he thought, gosh, this cabbage seems to be an issue.
	Meat and this fermented hamburger is not good for me.
	And let me refrain from eating eggs.
	And he did that, and two weeks later, his whole problem was solved.
	So, information is the key, and the idea is maybe you have the answer, the answer is there in this instance.
	All you've got to do is find it.
	And the process of dreaming and seeding his dream, incubating his dream, led him to the answer.
	That's right.
	Yes.
	And we all have this counselor, and you can have never asked your dream a question.
	I've seen many instances of people say, I don't remember my dreams.
	Ask a question that's relevant to their life, and it works.
	I even worked at a large Fortune 100 company recently with a creative team on how to improve their dreams and innovation.
	And there were people that weren't particularly used to dreams and creativity and dreams in their life.
	And they were blown away by the answers that they got.
	Do you think some of the people who make headlines for their prowess in business and industry, commerce, really successful people, do you think a lot of them are actually using this?
	They're just not saying so.
	Well, some of them, for sure, a lot of artists will credit their dreams to contributions.
	Like Paul McCartney got the song Yesterday in a Dream.
	There's many authors that say that the plot of their book comes out of a dream.
	So especially in the creative field, but in business, it also happens.
	The largest oil field in the world in 1937 was found based on a dream.
	So the message from all of this is don't regard dreams as trivial.
	Don't regard them as a little bit of cinema in the night that you don't have to be that bothered about.
	You know, just forget it.
	Actually, the message is that these are very relevant things.
	They're very important and you can actually make use of them as people in ancient history did, as you said.
	You can actually benefit from them.
	What an astonishing thing.
	Final question then is around this.
	We're doing a lot of work with the mind, the brain, and the interface between technology and the brain.
	You know, the idea that perhaps we will quite soon be able to implant things in the brain to make it work better, certainly connect with the human brain to make that fun.
	Do you think that we will get a bigger handle, a better handle on all of this that you're talking about with the appliance of science and technology?
	Do you think that might happen?
	Do you think it's all organic?
	Yeah, I do think that the relevance of dreams will be more, that there will be more scientific evidence for it.
	By studying the dream, like now with lucid dreaming, dreams in which you know that you're dreaming, they can just see that there are different areas of the brain lighting up when a person becomes lucid.
	The frontal cortex goes again online.
	So it's somewhat of an awareness practice that, and you can just see, oh yes, this person wasn't lucid and now is lucid, and this area of the brain goes on.
	And then in that lucid state, people can do all kinds of experiments in the dream state to just learn how does it work and what kind of intelligence can I trigger.
	And we see more and more scientific evidence coming up of these different states of consciousness that are really close to the dream states, like plant medicine, that are helpful.
	And so I think there will be more research that will show its efficacy, which will give more people the confidence or the encouragement, the inspiration to try this.
	But it hinges, of course, in one's own experience that this is helpful and one's own relationship to this counselor.
	This is the last question, and it's a real left-field one.
	You may have heard it before.
	Do you think that we can...
	It's a real hot topic and seems to be getting hotter all the time.
	Do you think it's possible to access, if they're out there, aliens through dreams?
	Well, another way of potentially thinking about it, this is more a way of imagining it than it necessarily be true.
	But what if there's different explanation models of where these spaceships and aliens come from?
	One is they're literally out there.
	Another is they exist in a different frequency or in a different world.
	Just like the world of dream is a different world.
	So a different dimension.
	Yeah, it's a different dimension that is interconnected.
	And sometimes these states, they merge and people see an UFO or an alien, where they in the other days would see an ancestor or a spirit or a fairy or the monster of Loch Ness.
	They might not be literally out there.
	They might be in another frequency when these frequencies merge, you see them.
	That's another way of thinking about it.
	But then it would also be possible to, if you see one, to ask in your dream if the being has a message for you.
	You could say, I've seen this spaceship or this alien or this fairy.
	And then I do a dream incubation and ask, fairy, do you have a message for me?
	And then just see.
	Or you could even say, whether you see it or not, my deceased grandfather, do you have a message for me?
	And then see what the dream says and look at it pragmatically and see if you feel it makes sense to you.
	A lot of people, when they lose a loved one, happened to me when I lost my mother, have a dream experience very close to the time of the passing of the person on the night my mother died.
	She came to me in a dream and she asked if I was okay.
	And as soon as I told her I was okay, and I said, But what about you?
	Where are you?
	And as soon as I started asking her questions, she faded away.
	And I thought that was just an artifact of the traumatic day that I'd had.
	You might think there's more to that.
	Well, it could be.
	And it could also very well be that it is a real experience that happens in your dream where mom, let's say that if we work from the assumption that mom would live on in the ocean in a different frequency or dimension, and that mom just comes to say goodbye.
	And very often when people have these dreams, they're very clear.
	They often have the sense of, hey, this really looks like mom.
	This person behaves like mom.
	It is very often things like, are you okay?
	Just giving the notion that things are okay, that they live on.
	Sometimes a message in it, like, I love you or care about you.
	And then they seem to move to their own world.
	Well, you know, I hope that that is what happened on that particular night.
	Machiel, I've found this fascinating.
	I will try it, especially with my apartment dilemmas.
	I see your book, the front of your book, Dream Guidance, has a picture of the ocean on it.
	Now I understand why that is so, because we talked a lot about connecting with the ocean.
	If people want to learn about you and your work, do you have a website they can reference?
	Yes, and maybe you can put it in the show notes because it's my name, Machiel Klerk, which is way too difficult for most people.
	M-A-C-H-I-E-L-K-L-E-R-K, Machiel Klerk.
	That's right.
	And also if you type in Google or on a browser, Dream Guidance, most likely my name will show up, DreamGuidance, Machiel or Clerk, K-L-E-R-K.
	I will show up.
	You can go to my website.
	You can learn more about me as a therapist and dream worker or if people want to engage in this process.
	And also people can go to the JUNG platform, that's J-U-N-G platform.
	And that's the manifestation of this nighttime dream that I had in this reality where we have a lot of great programs on synchronicity, shadow, dreams, gift and purpose for the beginners and intermediate in the world.
	And if anybody asked you, just before we say goodbye, if anybody asked you, sum up for me in a couple of words, what difference to your life this has made.
	How would you sum it up?
	How has it enhanced your life?
	Well, I think that if I hadn't connected to the world of dream, I would have lived in an enclosed, dense world that was so devoid of meaning and purpose that I might have become an alcoholic and would have died by now because I hadn't dealt well with big existential topics such as death, grief.
	I lost my father at an early age and I would just have a lack of meaning.
	And I think this other world provides a sense of purpose, a contribution one can give to the world, which is very enjoyable, and a sense of guidance and a knowledge that we're not alone in this world.
	We have a whole support system and it's willing to help.
	It doesn't take away that we can get diseases or loved ones will die.
	But we have support on navigating through territory here on Earth.
	And so it made all the difference and life is more colorful, enjoyable for me this way.
	Right.
	You know, I was going to say that driving on the auto route, the motorway, the freeway, whatever, it's easier when you've got a sat-nav because you've got some help with the navigation.
	Sounds like that's what this is.
	Machiel, thank you so much for your time.
	Thank you so much, Howard.
	It was a delight to be with you.
	Well, very fascinating, deep stuff, don't you think?
	Machiel Clerk, and the answers that are within and the answers that come from without and your dreams cover both of those.
	What did you think about that?
	You know, I know it's very deep stuff, but, you know, sometimes it's good to really dive into a subject like that.
	Ah, well, your thoughts always welcome.
	You know, my website is theunexplained.tv.
	More great guests in the pipeline here at the home of the unexplained.
	So until we meet next, my name is Howard Hughes.
	I've just checked.
	Please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.
	Thank you very much.
	Take care.

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