EP49: Let's Normalize Dream-Sharing

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About the Guest
Harry De Bont was born in Rotterdam and educated in Electrical Engineering and Psychology. His unique coaching approach is deeply rooted in evolutionary psychology, specifically understanding the hunter-gatherer instincts that still influence our behaviors today. Harry has made a name for himself in the tech industry, and beyond, by offering valuable guidance to professionals, managers, and individuals seeking personal and career growth. Harry's dedication to aligning personal talents with societal contributions makes him a trusted mentor, coach, and supporter. He has a particular interest in nightmares, lucid dreams, and novel techniques in dream engineering.

Highlights
2:59 Introducing Harry Debont
9:40 Ways to work with your dreams
12:45 Science vs Spirituality of dreams
16:20 What do you hope for the future of dream work?
17:30 What if I cannot remember any dreams?
18:30 Spaghetti method of dream recall
25:15 Why do we dream according to science?
29:45 What are dream archetypes
33:59 Is it possible to dream the same thing as other people?
40:10 Can dreams predict the future?
42:30  Harry's multi-dimensional dream experience

Resources mentioned in this episode
International Association for the Study of dreams
Karl Firston World Model
Stephen Laberge books

Chapters

• 2:59 Introducing Harry De Bont
• 9:40 Ways to work with your dreams
• 12:45 Science vs Spirituality of dreams
• 16:20 What do you hope for the future of dream work?
• 17:30 What if I cannot remember any dreams?
• 18:30 spaghetti method of dream recall
• 25:15 Why do we dream according to science?
• 29:45 What are dream archetypes
• 33:59 Is it possible to dream the same thing as other people?
• 40:10 Can dreams predict the future?
• 42:30 Harry's multi dimensional dream experience

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;16;22
Unknown
So I want to make a promise to all of my listeners, and I need you all to hold me accountable. The Dream World Podcast started off as a hobby of mine because I genuinely fell in love with talking and learning about dreams as the holiday season approaches. I've been really thinking about the future of my podcast and my life.

I've collaborated with so many awesome brands and researchers as content creators and dreamers, and I don't plan on stopping any time soon. To be honest, sometimes I have a hard time seeing if people receive it well or if it has any impact. I know it does, but it's always hard to see the value in our own creations, I guess.

So I want to make a promise to the people who wait for another episode and love the content that we put out there. Well, first I want to apologize. I haven't posted in like a couple of months. Part of it is my own doubts of myself, and part of it is me letting life get in the way. But this is important to me.

So my promise is to commit to posting a new episode every week in 2024. I want to be a consistent podcast host that people can rely on as a part of their weekly routine. If this news makes you excited or if you want to help hold me accountable, there are a few ways you can help me stay on top of it.

If you're listening to this on Spotify or Apple, leave a review. It costs $0 and about 25 seconds of your life, and it helps me tremendously. You can follow me on social media, if that's your thing. Tell a friend. All of these are free things you can do that have a huge impact on my confidence and the growth of this podcast.

Some non-free ways to support the podcast are to sign up to our online course. For $89, you will learn how to become a better lucid dreamer. You can also get personalized one on one coaching sessions with one of our awesome lucid dreaming coaches. We have a 100% success rate with helping people have their first lucid dream. All the links are in the description so you can read about the coaches and sign up.

On another note, I legit and committing to releasing 52 episodes in 2024, which I know I can do. Consistency is the key to achieving anything in life, but I can't do it alone. This podcast is not about me. So if you love talking about dreams, please email me and let's keep the conversation going. It doesn't have to be an interview of the latest dream research.

It can be your own personal story that you want to share with the world the cool dream that you had. This is a new industry and we're setting the stage for how the world views dreams. So I need all perspectives on this. I don't want to be biased to my own beliefs. Last June, I went to the Study of Dreams Conference, which I've talked about on here before.

I met so many cool people and I really want to go back every year. Usually it's in the States, but every few years it's in Europe and they have an entire team of dream researchers in the Netherlands. And today's guest is one of the members that I met from the IAC conference. His name is Harry. He's awesome. So please welcome him to the Dream World podcast.
I'll let you take it away. Harry, tell me about how you got interested in dreams. 

When I was about 19 or 20, I was interested in it because, you know, you do it every evening. But nobody talked about it back then. And I was very curious to know what it meant or what it was for. So I was looking for answers and there was no Internet back then, so I just had to guess.

But the curious thing was that I was on a birthday party with my back then girlfriend and her uncle came to that party and brought a gift for me. And I'm very grateful because it was a book about dreams and we met before and he had like a hunch or intuition that that was important to me. And he was right.
So I started to read that book. You know, in hindsight, it wasn't a very good book. But Carl Jung was mentioned a lot. And so I started reading his works, and that's when the journey started. My interest in dreams and psychology then, you know, took off. I'm schooled in electrical engineering, so a whole other branch of science. But eventually, you know, the interest and the passion for psychology and dreams took over and I switched careers.

00;03;57;26 - 00;04;24;17
Unknown
How do you take dream work and turn it into a career in this day and age when it's probably seen as something so new? Well, I try to take it, like normalize it and call it, you know, human interaction and sort of my work feels in that area. So I was like an I.T. professional at some point and I got a promotion offered so I could step up and I didn't want it.

00;04;24;17 - 00;04;52;13
Unknown
And that was really weird. I'm like, Why? So I talked to a friend about it and he said, Yeah, no wonder. In our group of friends, we see you as a hobby psychologist. So what are you doing that's sort of like flipped the switch in my mind. That conversation and I started to study psychology back then and I got so enthusiastic that I wanted to switch careers and just, you know, send out letters to companies before I even was finished.

00;04;52;13 - 00;05;18;09
Unknown
And then at the company where I was working a job opening showed up and I could start to coach my colleagues in their careers and I got to practice from the get go as well. So that was really awesome. Yeah. So were you incorporating dreams in your studies? I didn't have the courage to talk about it at first because it was sort of woo woo, especially in an idea environments like who is talking about that stuff.

00;05;18;12 - 00;05;45;04
Unknown
But at some point, you know, you overcome your shame. There and, and it slowly became normalized that well especially nowadays it's like more normal than ever to talk about it but I remember like 1013 years ago there was like a conference for health professionals about get dreams back in the in the daily practice. And I was like, wow, this is a pivotal point.

00;05;45;06 - 00;06;08;21
Unknown
So I went to that conference, very expensive conference, but I was like, Yeah, I have to be there. And I think it's it's normalized more now, but I try to gain trust with my coaches first. And when I, I thought, you know, there was enough trust, I would mention dreams and they're like, yeah, I had this weird dream and then, you know, before you know, it is about dreams.

00;06;08;27 - 00;06;32;29
Unknown
Yeah, I think it's there's some very important thing to that, to the sharing of dreams, because, you know, we dream about stuff that is important to us at that moment. We have to, you know, solve something and expressing that is very helpful for yourself. But, you know, sometimes it very much so for others as well. So it's like sharing experience or sharing wisdom or something like that.

00;06;32;29 - 00;06;58;18
Unknown
Yeah, I think it's very important to do that. So how did you discover IAC or the International Association for the Study of Dreams, which is how I found you? Yeah, that was a coincidence too. So, you know, luck was on my path, you could say. So let me sketch what happened before that. So I studied a lot. And at some point, you know, there's so much enthusiasm about dream, so I couldn't keep it to myself.

00;06;58;18 - 00;07;19;15
Unknown
And as an I.t guy, I took a chance and put it put a forum on the internet at some point so I couldn't keep up with the enthusiasm on the forum. It was like, Wow, I'm spanning from midnight to 3:00 in the night just answering questions and I, you know, I need to sleep as well. So that was one thing.

00;07;19;18 - 00;07;47;03
Unknown
I was like, there must be more people. And somebody pointed me out to the Dutch Association for the Study of Dreams, which is one rare occasion, a split off of the IAC. I didn't know that. And I got to talk to the board chair, introduced myself, and a week later I got a phone call. Hey, Harry, you got a technical background and somebody on the committee for the International Association preparing the conference.

00;07;47;10 - 00;08;09;10
Unknown
He suddenly died. Can you fill in this position or like. I don't know. Yes. Yes. So I just jumped right into it and I never came loose from it anymore. So. So I'm still doing that. Yeah. Wow. It's great that you were able to connect that with the work that you were already doing. Yeah. Yeah, that is great.

00;08;09;10 - 00;08;36;19
Unknown
And it's important to also have a, you know, a scientific mindset. I really like the mix in the in GSD of science practice, of psychology ists and therapists, but also like the arts that you see there, you know, there's every expression of dreams is there. And I think it's the, the mix makes it really valuable and I think that's really rich to experience.

00;08;36;22 - 00;08;57;03
Unknown
So and I try to do that myself as well. But you know, I'm a better scientist and an artist. But yeah, you do what you can. Yeah, I loved it. I went for the first time this year. Oh, you did? Yeah, I loved that. It was great. I loved all the different perspectives and ways to study dreams from the art to the science to the ancestral to the dance.

00;08;57;03 - 00;09;20;09
Unknown
It was great. Yeah. And I don't shy away of, like, the, you know, the spiritual part either. It's like, okay, what we got? Guess what's in the books and dream about it? Yeah, that's awesome, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. The dream challenges are fun. There's so many different ways to look at dreams. I really, really loved it. How did you come in to In touch with the eye as needed?

00;09;20;12 - 00;09;40;10
Unknown
After I started my podcast, I've always been into dreams and, you know, studying and just writing down my dreams. And then I was online just, I think on clubhouse doing like vingroup and stuff like that. Yeah, I just heard about it on Instagram too, or just people I started to follow once I got into the community of people that are into dreams, you know, it didn't take long for me to hear about it.

00;09;40;16 - 00;10;00;09
Unknown
Yeah, I made a couple of friends that were members and I had some guests on my podcast and eventually I became a member. I was like, Yeah, for sure. I'm going there and I was like, I don't know, I need to be a part of this. Yeah, great. Do you have any particular dream experiences that really drove your motivation into becoming interested in dreams?

00;10;00;11 - 00;10;20;28
Unknown
I don't recall the first dream experience that was like so awesome. I recall, you know, having the really vivid dreams all the time. Well, there were actually there was one very symbolic as well. So I was dreaming of, you know, being in my it was the dream was set in my parents house where I lived back then as well.

00;10;21;02 - 00;10;37;27
Unknown
And I was in the attic and there was a pot of gold I found in the attic. And I was like, wow. And I sort of became lucid. I didn't know it was lucid back then. I sort of became lucid like, Oh, I need to remember where this pot of gold is when I wake up because, you know, this is valuable.

00;10;37;27 - 00;10;59;27
Unknown
I want to keep it. And then there was a whole way I could remember that and put it in the closet and and put something out of the closet. So I would walk by it and see, you know, this reminder. And when I woke up, I remembered it right away, of course. And I started to look for the pot of gold for for real.

00;11;00;05 - 00;11;22;12
Unknown
And I was sort of in a confusion for a while, like, oh, wait, that was a dream. So that was like a very important dream when I was like a teenager, I guess, And I realized that what is real, what is what is not real, You know, where it was, where's the boundary there? So you start to wonder about the nature of dreams.

00;11;22;14 - 00;11;49;09
Unknown
Yeah. So that was quite influential, I would say. Yeah, Yeah. It's so interesting how dreams can mesh with our waking life, and sometimes it can be hard to differentiate. Do you ever have lucid dreams? I think when I was younger I did it more often. But what happens more now? It's sort of integrated now. Like sometimes I think about the meaning of my dream while I'm dreaming and explaining my dream away like, Oh, this is that.

00;11;49;09 - 00;12;18;10
Unknown
And I should do that without, you know, changing the environment too much or, you know, making a spectacle out of it. It's sort of normalized, I would say. I found it very interesting, gave workshops about it and how can you learn to do it and sort of let go of that. I think the very process of dreaming is more interesting, but lucid dreaming is still part of the experience, but that doesn't happen every night for me anymore.

00;12;18;13 - 00;12;38;16
Unknown
Yeah, it makes sense. I found that sometimes I get more out of the dream when I just let it happen. Yeah. So I tend to appreciate my non lucid dreams as well. And being lucid is fun, but it's not everything I think. I think we dream for a reason. So let's. You shouldn't mess with that. It's like not sleeping is not healthy for you.

00;12;38;18 - 00;13;03;25
Unknown
That's and that's because it has a function, right? So you should just let it roll. Yeah, that's true. So where do you fall in like the dream science versus spirituality spectrum? Oh, that's a good question. I think I'm trying to pave the way between those two. Yeah, trying to find a scientific solution for our spiritual feeling or the other way around.

00;13;03;27 - 00;13;30;18
Unknown
So I ran into this theory about world model, and I don't know if you heard of it, it's like call friston. Have you ever heard of him? No, no, he talks about that. We we have inherently, in our minds, we build a world model. And this world model helps us to be effective and predict, you know, what's happening the next day and make sure that we're healthy and successful.

00;13;30;20 - 00;13;57;19
Unknown
But of course there is like errors in this world model. And so we run into problems. You know, we're not as effective or, you know, we feel bad about it and we dream about stuff that needs to change the world model. So so I come to the conclusion by now that all our dreams are to leave this world model into a more perfect fitting reality, right?

00;13;57;19 - 00;14;26;00
Unknown
So the more you dream, the more it fits. And so I think that's yeah, that's why I say you shouldn't mess with it too much because at some point you get, you get like this balanced. If you if you don't work on that every night. Yeah yeah. That makes sense. Our brain has its own processing to do and I tell people all the time not to just obsess over lucid dreaming because there's so much within dream work itself and so many ways to look at dreams.

00;14;26;03 - 00;14;46;23
Unknown
So how do you begin to analyze your dreams and find meaning in your personal experiences? Do you write down your dreams at all? Not every day. You know, sometimes, yes. You're in a hurry and you have to get somewhere. When I have the time, I sit down and write my dreams and I have this routine about remembering my dreams.

00;14;46;23 - 00;15;11;12
Unknown
If if it's just, you know, bits or a piece. I try to I go the spaghetti method to try to have a string and then wait until the whole plate of spaghetti is clear. And then I write it down and also try to notice the feeling and emotion that I have afterwards. So the accompanying emotion is connected to the dream.

00;15;11;12 - 00;15;32;19
Unknown
I think that's very important as well. And then I try to connected with real life experience of the day before or, you know, something that's been following me my whole life, like struggling for years with some subject that keeps reappearing in my dreams. And then I put a picture, try to make a picture of that. So that's where the artistry comes in.

00;15;32;21 - 00;15;52;22
Unknown
Make a picture of that. Nowadays, I do it digitally, so I know and they appear on my computer screen as a reminder. So now it now I feel like this multi screen here and I'm looking at my own art. It's like, Oh, I dreamt that. That's amazing. Yeah, super cool. Is the art an accurate reflection of what you saw in the dream?

00;15;52;25 - 00;16;17;14
Unknown
Yeah, sometimes it is, and sometimes continuing the story of your dream in a positive way evokes a very positive emotion as well. Like, wow, you go to in a deeper sense of like understanding. That's something that art can do, that where, you know, knowledge or science stops. It's like, yeah, that's you have to really experience it sometimes. Yeah, Yeah.

00;16;17;15 - 00;16;38;15
Unknown
Honoring your dreams with art is a really good practice. So another question I have for you is where do you see the future of dream research going and what would you like to see studied in this field? So, so this struggle that I has, like what is dreams and how do you use it? And I would like to have that be part of education, right?

00;16;38;15 - 00;17;00;14
Unknown
So like to normalize it in a way that people use it as an everyday tool to just improve themselves, that that would be awesome. And for that to happen, we have to, you know, prove its usefulness and and do research and practice with what works and what doesn't work. So I think being part of the AI is the is is is helping a lot.

00;17;00;14 - 00;17;27;19
Unknown
There that I hope it goes in that direction like that. We realized that we can make this world a better place by, you know, improving ourselves first. And I think the best tool that we have for that is dreaming. I'm convinced of that. Yeah, I love seeing people start to get excited about dreams. I mean, I understand that like five, ten years ago, not a lot of people were talking about this, so maybe we didn't have the language to be able to talk about these things.

00;17;27;22 - 00;17;48;06
Unknown
And we still have skepticism and resistance towards it. Like the people that don't really remember dreams or they're not interested in dream work. And it's quite hard to study scientifically. So I understand that too. Yeah. So if you don't, I don't remember your dreams and it certainly feels like you're not known important or not even a real part of your life.

00;17;48;06 - 00;18;16;02
Unknown
Right. But when people are interested and they don't remember their dreams, I dare them to, you know, try this method, this spaghetti method that I developed. And after maybe sometimes it takes a couple of weeks, but after a couple of days, usually they start remembering their dreams and it's like, wow, you know, start from being not interested at all in a very enthusiastic dreamer because it's such a rich world, right?

00;18;16;07 - 00;18;35;08
Unknown
So I think it's it's the unknown that makes that happen, not the topic itself. It can be really frustrating if, you know, you have dreams and you don't remember them. So maybe you feel left out within this whole conversation. Yeah. Can you walk me through the spaghetti method that you're talking about? Yes. Well, it's I'm you know, I'm.

00;18;35;09 - 00;18;56;01
Unknown
I'm sure I didn't come up with it all by myself, but I sort of made a method of everything that I read about. And the most important thing is like the incubation part where you you start the day before, like, I'm going I'm going to go and remember my dream, right? So make this positive intention and make that practical as well.

00;18;56;01 - 00;19;21;28
Unknown
Of course, everybody knows that into dreaming with having a booklet or your phone next to you so you can write down the first thing that you notice or remember. And then a very important part is you got about 15 minutes to record your dreams because the, you know, forget the process is 15 minutes and in that period it's important not to move too much.

00;19;21;28 - 00;19;43;15
Unknown
So if you woke up in a certain position and but you moved already, it's important to move back because memory seems to be connected to feeling and and also connected to your position of your body. So you remember better what you were dreaming about when you were in the same position. That's the first step. And then do not try to remember the whole story.

00;19;43;15 - 00;20;10;11
Unknown
Like, Oh, I don't know. I don't know, but try to remember the emotion first or the feeling or the sensation. And as that comes without a story and just the sensation, just stay with that sensation at all time. Just be patient until something happens. And you're like, Wow, there was a bucket. And that's, you know, that's the that's the string of spaghetti that comes to you then and just be with that string for a while until the story evolves.

00;20;10;11 - 00;20;31;12
Unknown
And sometimes it's just one sentence that comes to mind, and sometimes it's a whole dream or several dreams. You never know what's what's coming. And I think you don't have to worry about like, Oh, wait, that was my end of my dream. What was I starting to dream at the beginning when you record your dream, doesn't matter what you know, what a sequence is overwriting.

00;20;31;12 - 00;20;55;14
Unknown
You can also always reconstruct your dream later. So don't don't worry about that. Just write it down, whatever you remember. And I also advise people, if nothing comes in, grab your booklets and write down. I dreamt that as if you're going to write what your dream that helps me sometimes to remember something. Even even though I didn't remember anything up till that moment.

00;20;55;16 - 00;21;14;05
Unknown
And I think that's about it. That's. That's what I got so far. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting how that physical act of writing your dream down helps stimulate more of the dream memory. I'm not sure why that is, but yeah, laying there. I do that all the time. Just allowing the dream to come back into my memory right now.

00;21;14;07 - 00;21;30;25
Unknown
And even that remembering the dream from the last thing I can remember, like the end of the dream. It's actually more helpful, you know, because then I can kind of track back from there. Sometimes I'm just going about my day and I randomly remember a piece of my dream, which is nice. That's true. You can sometimes, like, maybe we'll come back later.

00;21;30;26 - 00;21;49;17
Unknown
And that's true as well, I think mostly. Oh yeah. And I think you shouldn't be, you know, waking up too much in the at a quarter of an hour if you're like, oh, I need to get to the this and that appointment. I need to hurry. That's, that's a no no. So you have to be in this half sleep still at that.

00;21;49;18 - 00;22;14;00
Unknown
That's really important as well. Oh yeah. I dedicate time in the morning just to lay in that hypno Pompeii phase. And it's really interesting just to be there, kind of going in and out of a dream. It's a really interesting state of consciousness. Yeah. And for some people that are, you know, I never remember my dream, I said, Well, just set your alarm clock at a certain time in the middle of your night, in the night, and you'll remember dreams.

00;22;14;01 - 00;22;39;00
Unknown
Then much more often than when you wait until you're totally awake. And that helps sometimes too. But I wouldn't advise it. That's not a good practice to disturb the sleep. Yeah, that's true. And sometimes I tell people to, if they don't remember a lot of dreams to start playing around with, like that hypnotic phase of sleep. Yeah, it's a random dream there and you don't even notice until you start to pay attention to the process of falling asleep.

00;22;39;02 - 00;23;03;14
Unknown
So a lot of people start dreaming just there, which is, you know, accessible pretty much everybody. Yeah. Did you read my method or did you just figure it out yourself as well? Well, I didn't read it, but yeah, I didn't even call it that. I just kind of yeah, I've just been doing that naturally, you know, Like, I know the, you know, the body position make the difference and, you know, just experimenting with that.

00;23;03;14 - 00;23;24;22
Unknown
You see that at work. So, yeah, it's, it's true. If you're focused on it, you'll just discover it. It's not groundbreaking, but it helps when people really want to, You know, do it. And actually that's how I started to do lucid dreaming, you know, on purpose is when I read the book of Stephen Le Birch about lucid dreaming, it's called Creative Dreaming, I think.

00;23;24;26 - 00;23;46;00
Unknown
And the very night I dreamt a lucid dream. So this this power of intention or expectation or whatever you call it is really important as well. Like, Oh, it's possible. So what dream projects have you been working on lately regarding dream research or anything that you've been particularly excited about lately? Yeah, I'm trying to get other people into it.

00;23;46;00 - 00;24;12;22
Unknown
So, you know, even some companies nowadays are interested in in the subject. So I'm, I'm hired to. To help them fill a day about intuition. That's their yearly topic they do in this company. And this, this year it's about dreaming. And so that's my project this week. So how do you start from people that know nothing? They're not, you know, they're just curious.

00;24;12;22 - 00;24;41;13
Unknown
So you start with the remembrance and then, you know, and interest in the psychology and the biology, maybe even sociology. Every every angle that I know of is is there. So it's that's really interesting as well. And I try to end up in this workshop to make it really personal and sort of magical, like, wow, this is a deep wisdom that's that's coming from the night, right?

00;24;41;13 - 00;25;20;06
Unknown
So I try to make it really tangible and and scientific, but also, well, like I said, also sort of spiritual, like this is very meaningful to be doing this. I would say this that's my project at this moment is to bridge that the science and and the spirituality with, you know, the meaningful part is what I mean. If I say spirituality, I mean, you know, this sense of meaning that you're the hairs on your neck go like, wow, yeah, I think people love having these meaningful experiences, but sometimes the science and the evidence helps to really understand it and normalize it.

00;25;20;12 - 00;25;43;29
Unknown
Are there any particular research projects or findings that you like to share with people just to kind of introduce them? Well, sort of my own cocktail is it's this world model that I talk about, and I explain that that every living being has a world model. There's like very small bacteria that has a world's model of the earth turning.

00;25;43;29 - 00;26;05;20
Unknown
It has like a molecule that changes every 24 hours in certain phases to simulate the turning of the earth. So that's its world model. It's very important because it you know, it makes it uses the sunlight to do its processes. So that's very important for it. And so we have a sort of we have a world model as well.

00;26;05;20 - 00;26;35;10
Unknown
And what I explain about our world model is that it's out there. So how does the world work? How does the social interaction work in this world? So, you know, we need to be part of humanity. It's very important that we are part of a tribe, evolutionary from an evolutionary perspective. So that's part of the world model. But also, who am I is also like, you know, knowing who you are and what you are capable of is very important.

00;26;35;10 - 00;26;58;16
Unknown
If you misstep every day overestimating or underestimating what you can do, that's not a good life either. So you have to know who you are and that's your world model. So I start there and then explaining that emotion is are these labels that we put on our neural networks that, you know, don't do not function as well as they could be.

00;26;58;16 - 00;27;35;06
Unknown
And that is put in a stack. So this is really it's talk that's put in a in a stack for tonight. And the most important or intense emotion gets picked first. So what's wrong with that? And this starts to simulate a process of discovery. How can we do better? And that's not just one problem that you experience, but it's it must be a multiple multiple of things because, you know, when something went wrong during the day, I couldn't talk to my boss in a proper way or I didn't have an answer when you asked it.

00;27;35;11 - 00;27;59;12
Unknown
I can't learn to do that during the night and forget about how to do something else, right? So everything has to be stable. So I explained the model of multi objective optimization that's something from science as well as that you try to find a middle ground for a lot of stuff at the same time. And that's and then I explain that dreams are where it's because of that.

00;27;59;12 - 00;28;22;12
Unknown
You know, you don't dream from one subject and suddenly your aunt is there and you don't know why. Because that's an association. That's part of this neural network that's associated with the problem you had during the day. And so so explain that in this way from a scientific standpoint. But also, you know, you can view it from sociology or philosophy.

00;28;22;12 - 00;28;52;16
Unknown
There is a lot of standpoints you can use there. And of course, psychology. And what's very interesting is, is the neuroscience of neuroplasticity and how that works together with with dreams as well. So because, you know, our brain is is mostly formed when we're young and our neuroplasticity is very high when we're young. And that means patterns and habits and behavior is that, you know, are common to us, usually stem from a young age.

00;28;52;18 - 00;29;17;16
Unknown
But when we later on find out that there is a need for change, we need to locate that as as it were, and we our dreams bring us back to that period of time. So that's why I would dream of, you know, doing exams or meeting this girlfriend from 20 years ago or this boyfriend, because, you know, you learn something and that's now you have to unlearn that or do that over again.

00;29;17;19 - 00;29;43;20
Unknown
And I think that's very interesting to look at it from this, you know, systemic perspective. It's called cybernetics. And I like that very much to make it scientific like that. Anyway. So yeah, that's that's where it's interesting. And then I explain what archetypes are, you know, that you dream about. That's like this little mini story in the middle of your dream, you know, that you can find and what you can do with it.

00;29;43;20 - 00;30;04;01
Unknown
And that's really interesting as well. So depending on how much time I have, you know, I can spend a whole day or an hour talking about it. Well, I do want to ask you about the archetypes. What is a dream archetype and how can we identify them? I know that some dreams are more personal and some dreams fit into this larger collective story.

00;30;04;01 - 00;30;32;06
Unknown
So what's that about? Yeah, if your study dreams and you read about evolution, you come to realize that what we know is built on what we inherited from our ancestors, from even from organisms before that. Right. And I think archetypes are sort of a way of passing on knowledge from past generations. It's like, how do you do stuff successfully, right?

00;30;32;06 - 00;30;59;21
Unknown
So how does a mother take care of of a child? Right? That's an archetype. The mother is an archetype, and an archetype is sort of a mini story with an atomic meaning in it. And the archetype of the mother is about care and it's in relation to a child and, and, and it has an action as well. It's like caring and nurturing and soothing and you know, that's the archetype of, of the mother.

00;30;59;21 - 00;31;21;21
Unknown
And then interesting stuff happens when you know, the archetype is not doing that. And what happens then and you know what, you know, things get in this burn and then the story evolves Like that's, that's what an archetype is. I think it's sort of the, the building block of our intuitive knowledge. Yeah. So, so archetypes are really interesting.

00;31;21;21 - 00;31;48;28
Unknown
I think sometimes you can sort of show you can sort of make a difference between everyday dream and a very important dream because of this archetype showing up of an archetype showing up. There's like, Wow, this feels really important in some way. Yeah. So what can we do to start understanding our dreams and learning about these archetypes? I know a lot of people have dreams that might feel important, but they just don't know where to start.

00;31;49;01 - 00;32;13;23
Unknown
Yeah, I think it's like, you know, it's like learning anything. Actually, we've done that. It's just starting to do it and figure it out. Talk to people about it. What I think is is most valuable is sharing. Like I said in the beginning, is sharing dreams with others. And especially like the explanation or sharing in groups like we do at Ainslie Conference in the mornings.

00;32;13;25 - 00;32;36;11
Unknown
The dream groups. That is really valuable because when you consider that your dreaming of your world model and there's like this blindspot of you that you have to fill in, it's really hard to fill in your blindspot, right, because you're not seeing it. And it's so helpful that others that don't necessarily have that blind spot look at your dream and say, Well, I think if it were my dream, I think it would mean this.

00;32;36;11 - 00;32;57;20
Unknown
I think that is really where it starts flowing when you start sharing it. I experience like just studying it and reading about it. That's that's not as valuable as sharing, actually. So I would say if you're interested in read about it a little bit and then as soon as possible, find people to share. Yeah, that's definitely true For my experience.

00;32;57;20 - 00;33;22;20
Unknown
Once I met a community of people and started sharing my dreams with other people, it just really grew from there. And studies show that you gain empathy for people when you share dreams together, and I think that's connected to these archetypes. If you if you at a certain point start to think that way, like symbolically and and associative lead, you start to understand yourself better even during the day, right?

00;33;22;20 - 00;33;43;17
Unknown
It's like, oh, this has to do with that. And, and you understand like your own psychology in a better way and you can practice that. So my advice would be start just writing down and remembering and reading about it, but start sharing and learning. It's a lifelong journey. Yeah, it really is. I think that like all the time.

00;33;43;19 - 00;34;05;17
Unknown
Yeah, it's a lifelong journey. You can't really say, Well, I'm done. I love doing dream share groups and things like that and I started online, but now I'm doing more things in person when you start to share dreams. So when I'm in the committee preparing the conference for next year and in this meeting we share dreams. Just it's a weird meeting, right?

00;34;05;19 - 00;34;28;09
Unknown
It starts with sharing dreams for us. And and when we do that, sometimes it's about the conference itself. And that's, you know, it's is it in a good state or is it in a bad state or whatever? And and the last time that we did that, we had something in common. So some people dreamed a dreamt about the same stuff.

00;34;28;09 - 00;34;53;25
Unknown
And that's really I think that's really intriguing as well as that we can do that sort of collective dreaming. I don't know answers there, but it's super intriguing. How does that work? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, do you have any personal theories? Because I know that dreams come from our subconscious and our daily processing, but how would it be possible for us to share a dream space with other people that changes the whole game?

00;34;53;28 - 00;35;18;20
Unknown
Yeah, I don't know. I'm just guessing. So let me guess. There are. You don't have to make any hard claims here. All right, So but this, you know, there is like, what obviously we share is the real world to get it right. But we we we experience it in a very subjective way, our own world model. And and sometimes something is off in in in the world around us for everybody to see.

00;35;18;20 - 00;35;47;21
Unknown
Right. So we're experiencing that together. You know, you can see that around in a war situations or when there's like hunger or disasters. So so as with this example of mine, if you're doing a conference together, you're you have a shared reality that you're talking talking about doing stuff in. So that sort of resonates, I think, through your dreams.

00;35;47;28 - 00;36;13;07
Unknown
Like you noticed the same things. And so I think, yeah, I can't explain it better than resonance, like it's something is resonating, but the very explanation that you dream about, the exact same symbol as we did last time, it was like my colleague dreamt about my mind control. I dreamt about mind control. And the other colleague of the committee that wasn't there.

00;36;13;07 - 00;36;41;24
Unknown
I talked to her about it and she said, Oh, she got eyes wide open. Oh, really? I dreamt about that. To think how similar, where like the aspects of the dreams and the Oh no, they were not similar at all. So this, this first colleague dreamt about a guy and a and a lady being in a boat and the lady was pulling the boat forward like an Egyptian shell, like an ancient scene.

00;36;41;26 - 00;37;09;21
Unknown
And the guy in the front of the boats had a steer to the boat with his mind. So that was, you know, and then there was some symbolism of ancient history. So that was the thing that triggered me. And I dreamt about mind figuring out how what is the program of mind control and how robust is it, and does it withstand, you know, challenges?

00;37;09;21 - 00;37;35;21
Unknown
And I was testing it out like a good IT programmer. And then this this lady that I shared later about she dreamt that see woke up from this dream like realizing somebody connected with her through mind's control. And she looked at me, Oh, are we a team now? And this lady and this guy on the boat, I'm like, Is that a reference to me and her?

00;37;35;21 - 00;38;01;29
Unknown
Because we're both the hosts of next year's conference and I'm like a see pulling the boat and I'm doing something with mind control either. Now. It's very fascinating. Yeah, yeah, that's really cool. I mean, there's definitely like a strong similar theme in all the dreams and yeah, it seems like, you know, everybody can receive a message in a certain way and it come out in different ways depending on the dreamer, especially if you guys are all working on the same project together.

00;38;01;29 - 00;38;26;11
Unknown
You know, you all have the shared interest in it. Yeah, definitely true. Yeah. Although, you know, we live on different continents. It's like it's amazing that you have that you ever have experiences like that, like collective dreaming or similar dreams as well. Yeah, I've had some interesting ones. So my brother is also has vivid dreams and he's a lucid dreamer as well, and so am I.

00;38;26;16 - 00;38;41;19
Unknown
And so we have like this thing that when we get lucid, we try to find each other and try to. Oh, yeah. So we kind of, you know, try to do it intentional dream meet up. So it's an ongoing project of ours. But there was one time specifically that I was lucid and I found him in my dream.

00;38;41;25 - 00;39;01;20
Unknown
And in my dream I kept trying to tell him it's my dream so I could like wake him up and see if he would get lucid. And there were a lot of like big city buildings around that was the dreamscape. And I didn't even say anything to him, but he texted me the next day that he had a dream about me and he described a similar dreamscape and he said that he was kind of lucid, like in and out of lucidity.

00;39;01;26 - 00;39;29;06
Unknown
And he specifically said that I was trying to help him become lucid, which was interesting. That's cool. Yeah. And I think that's the that's the fascinating part. Is that interconnecting? So you asked about it, right? So what's fascinating to me is like how do we find meaning in that in that collective experience? That's interesting. Well, that's the next level because, you know, it's hard enough to figure out what's what does it mean for myself?

00;39;29;09 - 00;39;52;22
Unknown
I mean, I think all these stories come up. It's really going to like shake up the science world because it's something that's so hard to explain and there's like so much resistance to, like the concept of shared dreaming. But I think it's so fascinating and I think it's possible. Like I've heard some incredible stories. Yeah, but it's so elusive as well, because if you put it into a, you know, a level little laboratory setting, it just Exactly.

00;39;52;22 - 00;40;15;10
Unknown
It's not there, right? Yeah, that's true. I mean, you can't really create this type of dream experience on command in a lab setting, so it's really hard to research it. What about, like, premonitions? Have you ever dreamt something that happened later on in your waking life similar to how you dreamt it? Yeah, well, you know, when I lost my shyness about dreaming, I was like a manager.

00;40;15;10 - 00;40;41;18
Unknown
At some point in this tech company. And a dream really upset me that morning about dreaming about my team that was responsible for. And, you know, I said, like, I dream then and explain my dream while dreaming. That happened to me then as well. Like, oh my God, like I'm dreaming this. That must mean that. So what I was dreaming is like, we are my team was at the root of a river.

00;40;41;24 - 00;41;11;04
Unknown
And as the river branched in different directions, this team scattered in different directions as well. And I was like, you know, flying over this river and seeing the people disperse in all directions and we were a very tight team, very committed to our jobs. And and I shared our dream with the team. And two years later, you know, economical circumstances, we were all fired.

00;41;11;11 - 00;41;35;17
Unknown
We dispersed throughout our companies. And, you know, a lot of emotional impact and lost sight of each other, actually. And that's that dream came true. And everybody was like, Oh, this must mean that's that's bad news. And it was true. We didn't foresee, you know, nothing happened that pointed in that direction at that point. But yeah, that came through for sure.

00;41;35;20 - 00;41;56;24
Unknown
Wow. So how is it possible that your dream or your brain was able to predict that? And it's it's like, again, it's like this resonance that you if you think about it, you don't notice it, but it's maybe the way the director talked to me about the company, maybe the way he insinuated stuff, because he knew what his plan was.

00;41;56;24 - 00;42;20;26
Unknown
Right. And so maybe you pick up stuff that is unconscious, but when you are calm and and you are in this sleep state and you're very susceptible to these nuances, I think you're a very sensitive instrument at that point. Yeah, I think that's that's how it works. I can't make anything out of it. But yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

00;42;20;26 - 00;42;44;04
Unknown
And I mean, we we do know that our brain is always computing possibilities for things and making predictions for things, especially the things you pick up subconsciously, you know? And then the spiritual side of me says that, well, dreams don't have time, there's no linear time. So that's why they're able to see the future. Yeah, that was this amazing dream talking about like, I don't know what to do with that yet.

00;42;44;06 - 00;43;11;00
Unknown
There was an amazing dream that I heard about sitting on a lotus flower in a pond, like a Buddhist thinking about stuff. And I was in my dream experiencing eight lives at the same time. So there's no time. And I got, you know, sort of lucid and like, Oh, this is amazing. I should wake up and write this down.

00;43;11;03 - 00;43;30;24
Unknown
And then I'm No, no, no, I shouldn't wake up because I won't remember. So I should rehearse my dream right now. And it's like soaking in all these lives and sort of rehearsing. I'm dreaming this life. I'm dreaming that life all at the same time. Like, how's that possible? So I woke up and wrote down the first life.

00;43;30;24 - 00;43;54;16
Unknown
I remembered. And with that, the other lives were gone. I couldn't. I couldn't recall it anymore. It's like this amazing sensitivity that you have in dreams that is sort of gone when the mind awakens. I don't know. Yeah. Wow, that's incredible. When did you have that dream? That was maybe 15 years ago. Yeah, I think that it was close.

00;43;54;16 - 00;44;18;12
Unknown
As close as it gets to spiritual experience in dreams for me. Thank You so much from the bottom of my heart for making it this far and listening to another one of my podcast episodes. If you support the Dream World podcast, please, please, please leave a review comment, share whatever you want to do, and help motivate me to continue to grow this community and support other Dreamers out there.

00;44;18;12 - 00;44;39;06
Unknown
You can expect new episodes every week, so definitely follow, subscribe and tune in Sweet Dreams. Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it. All right. All right. Have a good evening. Bye bye.