0:07 - Dreaming of the Apartment
6:55 - Exploring the Depths
8:43 - Confronting the Past
21:46 - The Weight of Realization
41:16 - The Emptiness of Security
50:50 - Hiding from Truth
54:54 - Exploring Fear and Shame
57:28 - Confronting Parental Power
1:02:24 - Toxic Relationships Unveiled
1:10:46 - The Nature of Emptiness
1:11:20 - Understanding the Abyss
1:26:11 - The Danger of Nothingness
1:43:22 - Embracing Connection Over Corruption
1:48:15 - Reflecting on Growth and Healing
In this engaging call, the caller shares a vivid dream that reveals deep emotional undercurrents and complex family dynamics. The dream begins with the caller finding himself in a tall apartment building, specifically on the eighth floor, which mirrors his family’s layout from childhood. As he watches pornography that triggers a sense of dopamine rush, he becomes aware of a growing tension represented by tremors shaking the building. This tension escalates when his mother, unexpectedly appearing with his baby daughter in a sling, begins to yell at his older brother for gaming for hours, which sparks conflict between the caller and his mother.
The caller expresses frustration with his mother for not addressing the underlying issues that drive his brother's gaming addiction, suggesting that it stems from a deeper dopamine deficiency. The debate reflects a longstanding theme in the caller's life—his struggle to voice his thoughts and feelings in the face of familial turmoil. The mother’s anger seems to symbolize the chaos and dysfunction present in their family dynamic, leading the caller to a realization that perhaps he is merely trying to distract himself through the act of watching porn rather than confronting these issues directly.
As the dream progresses, the caller and a younger boy, who claims to have come from the "negative seventh floor," descend into the building's depths, which evoke feelings of terror and isolation. This descent symbolizes the caller's exploration of his subconscious fears, particularly concerning his family’s history. The boy’s enthusiasm for the navigation through confusing, dark staircases contrasts sharply with the caller's existential dread, reflecting the ongoing tension between youth and maturity, innocence and trauma. Upon reaching the bottom, the setting invokes a womb-like atmosphere—concrete, clean, yet suffocating and devoid of light—symbolizing the caller’s deep-seated fears and unresolved issues related to his mother.
Throughout the analysis, Stefan, provides insightful commentary on the dream's imagery and the underlying emotions it conveys. He challenges the caller to confront the maternal dynamic, suggesting that the mother's behavior is indicative of a profound lack of empathy and connection. The dream, according to Stefan, is not merely a narrative of fear but a poignant instruction manual for the caller to navigate his reality—one that requires acknowledging the gravity of the situation and choosing to act decisively instead of dissociating.
As the conversation unfolds, Stefan probes deeper into the family dynamics, particularly the mother-son relationship and the impact of verbal abuse incurred during childhood. The caller reflects on his experiences, admitting to moments of fear, anger, and the struggle to assert himself against a controlling parent. The discussion leads to recognition of the shame intertwined with feeling fear, particularly regarding the toxic influences of his upbringing. This brings about an important epiphany: while the emptiness and danger presented in the dream symbolize deeper familial issues, it does not represent a void of truth but rather serves as a catalyst for self-discovery and healing.
The call takes a compelling turn as both participants examine the paradox of empathy and emptiness—how the lack of emotional connection from parents can perpetuate a cycle of fear, shame, and desolation in the next generation. Stefan emphasizes that understanding the nature of childhood trauma is crucial. The caller comes to terms with the realization that continually attempting to unearth the root of his parents’ dysfunction may only allow their toxicity to seep into his own life. He learns that these attempts at understanding can inadvertently lead him back to a place of danger and manipulation.
By the end of the conversation, there is a notable shift in the caller's perspective. He begins to distance himself from the notion of needing validation or answers from his mother. Instead, he recognizes his power to choose how to navigate relationships, specifically with his daughter, who represents a chance to break the cycle of dysfunction. The conversation culminates with a message of empowerment, urging the caller to embrace the possibilities of life outside the constraints of his past, emphasizing the importance of maintaining empathy for himself over seeking it from those who have caused him harm.
In summary, this in-depth exploration of the caller's dream serves as a powerful metaphor for his ongoing journey through the complexities of familial relationships, the impact of childhood trauma, and the necessity of breaking free from the cyclical patterns of emotional neglect. Through this rich dialogue, both the caller and Stefan illuminate the path toward understanding, healing, and ultimately, liberation from the shadows of the past.
[0:00] I dreamed I was on the 8th floor of an apartment building, where my family of origin lived in the layout of the first floor of their house.
[0:07] I was watching porn that was providing dopamine. I wanted to find a particular video, but I couldn't and left my room. My older brother wanted to play a strategy game on my PC, and I let him. I went out to the living room and was sitting on the couch thinking about the porn. I wanted to go back to my PC to look at it. There were tremors and the building shook. My mom came out wearing my baby daughter and started yelling at my brother for gaming so much. It was true that he was gaming nonstop for six hours. I got mad at my mom and told her that maybe she should be curious about why he has such a massive hole in his dopamine that he's trying to fill it with gaming and to leave him be. My mom got pissed and stormed off. More tremors shook the tall apartment building. I fled and I went to the first floor and met some kid who said he came up from the negative seventh floor. I was surprised how deep the building went. I asked him to show me. He did. He took me down this concrete staircase down several flights, another staircase, and a few floors. The layout was winding and confusing, going further into the earth. Finally, we were at the bottom. It evoked terror in me. It was concrete, clean, evidence of habitation, deep, isolated, no sunlight, safe, and suffocating.
[1:21] Sorry, sorry. What does evidence of habitation mean?
[1:28] Like mattresses on the.
[1:29] Ground or what do you.
[1:30] Mean okay got it and there's a bed on the floor a desk with a banner behind it and several more rooms I dared not explore he went up and I followed after him right.
[1:45] All right i mean it's a it's a great dream and i mean some of it's fairly obvious so what if what have you got from it.
[1:52] Um the tremors uh in the apartment is this life is going to come crashing down i need to get out of here now this is a madhouse um, my mom would obviously be incredibly upset if i stood up for my brother like that, uh i think the kid who showed me how deep the apartment building goes is is either me or my conscience showing me what's possible and where i come from.
[2:27] Right okay right okay so, your um dad is not in the dream right.
[2:37] No he's not and.
[2:40] Why do you think that is.
[2:41] I am not quite sure my parents um uh we're married still are married uh he doesn't, i he's kind of support peace from mom really he never lets any disagreement come between anyone and his wife right.
[3:05] Okay all right and how long ago did the dream happen.
[3:11] Uh maybe a month ago i can still remember it though oh.
[3:15] Yeah and was there anything that happened the day before or anything you were anticipating the next day.
[3:26] This would be about the time of those roommates for moving out right okay, okay uh and and some uh situations with work and recently started a new job at that point okay.
[3:44] So i mean both you and your brother are dealing with dopamine deficiencies right and your mother of course is blaming you and your brother well not you so much right because she wasn't aware what you were doing is that right.
[3:59] Yes okay.
[4:02] So he was playing it was true that he was gaming non-stop for six hours now is that from the real world, or is that you knew in the dream that he'd been gaming for six hours?
[4:14] This is in a dream, yeah.
[4:16] Alright. There were tremors and the building shook. My mom came out wearing my baby daughter and started yelling at my brother for gaming so much. So do you mean in sort of one of those baby slings that you wear in front?
[4:32] Yeah.
[4:33] So that's a pregnancy thing, right?
[4:37] I don't think so. My wife and I wear our baby like that often.
[4:43] Well, I know I get that, but it's your mom wearing your baby daughter, right? I mean, has she done that?
[4:48] No, never. She has not seen my daughter.
[4:51] Okay, so the fact that she's wearing your baby daughter, she could be carrying, like, in dreams, everything means something, because it's a blank canvas, right? Like, you could do anything, right? Like, your mom could be twirling your baby, could be wearing her as a hat, could be, like, just holding her, but the fact that she's in a baby sling, so the baby sling is to free your hands, right?
[5:10] Yeah.
[5:11] And pregnancy, your hands are free, too, right? So that's why I'm going with the pregnancy thing, and we'll, you know, we'll see if it plays out. If it doesn't, of course, we can circle back. But there is something interesting about that, that she's wearing, which is, I mean, that's as close to pregnancy as you can get in a dream without your mother actually being pregnant, right? Okay. So yelling at my brother for gaming so much. So you got mad at your mom, told her maybe she should be curious why he has such a massive hole in his dopamine that he's trying to fill with gaming and to leave him be. So that's not true, though, to be annoyingly direct. And again, if I get anything wrong, you can certainly push back as much as you want. But you weren't mad at her. You weren't because you weren't being honest with her, right? Because you know exactly why your brother has this dopamine hole, right? Why does he have this dopamine hole?
[6:10] He did not get what he needed when he was an infant and not as a child either.
[6:15] Okay, that's very tentative, and it's also not true, right? Because a child who doesn't get, like, let's say there's some guy locks a woman in his basement and starves her to death. Would he just say, well, she just didn't get what she needed?
[6:32] No.
[6:33] Right? So it's not that he didn't get what he needed. Much, much deeper than that, which is why the flights of stairs keep going down, down, down. Okay. So, why does he have such a dopamine hole?
[6:56] Because he's stuck up there?
[6:58] No, in life, though, right? Because this is about your life. This isn't about a game. Massive hole.
[7:09] Why does he?
[7:18] Yeah, you do. I mean, it's an interesting way to put it. You say a massive hole in his dopamine. So you've got a pregnant mom coming out in a way, right? Your mom's coming out, she's pregnant, and now you're talking about a massive hole. That's a vagina when you're a baby, right? You literally come through it like a train, right? Or like a subway. so your mother and your mother is not absent in this dream she's in and she's yelling at him right, so she's yelling while wearing your baby daughter which is frightening to your baby daughter now is your baby daughter was she awake or crying or or what was she in the dream.
[8:10] Uh i think sleeping okay.
[8:14] So the mom has a baby on her belly and is, how loud was she yelling?
[8:22] She was going for it. It was.
[8:25] Like screaming?
[8:26] Yeah, screaming.
[8:27] Okay. So of course you don't scream when there's a baby around, right?
[8:31] Yeah.
[8:33] So she is not, it's not that your brother did not get what he needed. He was verbally abused.
[8:44] You're really distancing yourself from me emotionally, and I'm not sure what to do about that.
[8:56] We'll keep going. I can get more engaged.
[9:03] So it's funny because you're saying that your brother didn't get what he needed. Now you're not providing me what I needed to call. You understand your mom's moving between us, right?
[9:12] Yeah. And it's incredibly frustrating.
[9:15] What do you mean?
[9:17] I actually had a glimpse of this earlier today. Just how much interference there is between myself and the outside world. How much I want to do with it.
[9:30] So, in your dream, if you do something right in a dream, it solves the problem, right? And do you solve the problem in this dream?
[9:51] Well, I might have left it off the end, but the last thing I remember in the dream is walking out with the kid. out of the apartment building and onto the street.
[10:04] Right. But that doesn't solve your mother.
[10:09] Given that my brother's still up there and then my baby daughter's still up there and the building is going to come down, then no.
[10:17] Right. Okay. What does the eighth floor mean? Because you've got eighth and then minus seven, right? Going down.
[10:26] Right?
[10:27] So what does the eighth floor mean to you? Did you ever live on the eighth floor?
[10:33] No, but right before this call, I was thinking about that apartment building, and it was the one my brother lived in when I first went to college, and we visited him.
[10:43] Right. Did anything happen when you were 15 or so?
[10:52] 15.
[10:53] Anything sort of memorable or striking with you guys to your mom?
[10:57] In 7th grade and 8th grade, I got verbally abused. She told me I was going to become a school shooter because I played video games.
[11:05] Sorry, who told you you were going to become a school shooter?
[11:08] My mom.
[11:09] Your mom, okay. So 7th and 8th grade, is that right?
[11:13] Yeah, that's correct.
[11:15] Okay, so here we have a minus 7 and an 8. So we have 7 and 8 in the dream, right? So maybe that's a relationship to your mother, right?
[11:25] Yeah.
[11:27] Okay, so, you come out, and what would be the most powerful thing you could do with regards to your mother in the dream, when she comes in screaming at your brother and wearing your daughter?
[11:50] Get my child back.
[11:57] Go on.
[12:01] She had my child. Right. She took my kids from me.
[12:08] She took your kid from you, right? Right.
[12:14] Okay.
[12:22] And rather than take care of your daughter, what were you doing?
[12:28] Pointlessly trying to stand up for my brother.
[12:30] No before that you were watching porn right yeah okay so you come out now what was the age of your brother in the dream.
[12:42] Probably 15 okay.
[12:44] And how much older than you is is he two years two years okay, okay, so and the only reason that you left the room was because you couldn't find the video you were looking for right yeah.
[13:03] And my brother is coming in.
[13:05] Yeah he's coming in right okay, so you wanted to go back to your pc to look to try and find the sexual video right?
[13:22] Yeah okay.
[13:27] There were tremors and the building shook. Your mom came out. Out from where?
[13:37] Either given the layout of the house, it would have either been the kitchen or from the basement.
[13:43] But this is not a house, right? It's an apartment?
[13:46] Yeah, but the apartment was, it was just directly the layout of the house.
[13:52] Oh, the main floor of a house.
[13:54] Yeah.
[13:55] And that's interesting. So why would it, did you live in an apartment before you lived in the house?
[14:00] No, I grew up in that house my entire childhood.
[14:05] So why would the dream move your house to an apartment? Other than the first two syllables, apart, you and your family are apart. And you're meant to be apart, apartment. I mean, this is the way that dreams play with language. Like, again, there's nothing accidental. Like you could have, the dream could have just put you in your regular house, but it put your house on the eighth floor of an apartment building.
[14:29] Yeah. And it happened to be the one where I remember visiting my brother when I first got independence from my mom and dad.
[14:36] And what age were you then?
[14:38] 18.
[14:41] Okay. Sorry, go ahead.
[14:44] And as my brother, he, probably the last heart-to-heart moment I talked with him, he told me that, uh, basically gave me a talk about how bad porn is and how i had the power to quit and i went cold turkey from that day forth.
[15:00] Right with.
[15:00] Only very few slip-ups okay.
[15:05] I'm sorry just remind me do you you have a baby do you have a baby daughter yeah, and so your mom comes out wearing your baby daughter starts screaming at your brother, so i got mad at my mom but you didn't express your anger at your mother as far as i can see not directly, because you try to engage with her and say maybe she maybe you should be curious why he's got such a massive hole in his dopamine right so in other words you're trying to reason with your mother right yeah have you ever had any luck reasoning with your mother no right so you you want to look at the end of the dream which is not satisfactory in that you've left your daughter behind with your, mother and the whole building might collapse right so you have to look at every decision that led to that bad ending is is the dream is trying to get you to review every decision, So, your mom comes out wearing my baby daughter. So, sorry, the first thing is that you shouldn't be looking at the pornography, of course, especially while your daughter is with your mother.
[16:24] Okay?
[16:25] So, bad decision, right? Your brother wants to play a strategy game on my PC. I let him. Bad decision. Why?
[16:34] He's indulging in something that covers up the problem.
[16:39] And you are not going to take care of your daughter and you're not getting the fuck out of the house.
[16:45] Yeah. Right?
[16:46] So you're engaging in this shit, right?
[16:50] Mm-hmm.
[16:50] Right? You need to find your daughter and you need to get out, right?
[16:55] Yes. And you don't do that.
[17:00] Right? You're watching the porn and your brother's like, I want to play a strategy game. Like, go ahead, right? Like, so you're settling in here for the long haul, right?
[17:08] Yeah.
[17:09] Okay, so you want to go back to your PC to look at the porn, and this is heavy dissociation, right? You're not talking to your brother, you're not thinking about your daughter, you're not trying to figure out how to get out, you're not trying to figure out what you're going to actually do with your mom or anything like that, right? You're just really distracted and dissociated, right? And then your brother is too, right? Okay. Tremors of the building shook. So there's an earthquake here, right?
[17:42] Mm-hmm.
[17:43] Mom comes out wearing my baby daughter, starts yelling at my brother for gaming so much. So in the dream, so it was true that he was gaming nonstop for six hours. So did you sit there on the couch in the dream for six hours? I'm not sure where the six hours comes from.
[17:56] Yeah, there's time dilation there.
[17:59] Okay, got it. I got mad at my mom. But then you try to reason with her, right? So why?
[18:10] It's too scary to confront her directly.
[18:14] Well, why do you need to confront her directly? Why don't you say, oh, you're going to wake my daughter, let me take her off your hands, and then say to your brother, oh, I want to grab something from the store down there, and just get out. Like, I'm trying to understand, and it's not a criticism, of course, right? I'm trying to understand why the engagement in this? Like, why would you start engaging in this bullshit with your mom? You can't reason with someone who's screaming with, like, she's screaming at your brother with your baby daughter's ears, like, six inches from her mouth, right? You can't reason with her.
[18:52] Yeah. Everything. thing. She is a master at manipulating social situations, or so I thought. Upon having more distance and time as an adult, I think that she's pretty average and a lot of people who are even a little bit functional smell her from a long ways away and get clear. She raised me to kind of be the, the poison container where I will try and be reasonable and get people to calm down and never be direct or stand up for myself.
[19:36] And sort of remind me what your current relationship is with your mom.
[19:40] Uh, I haven't seen her in two years.
[19:45] And as she tried to get in touch.
[19:49] Uh, she's, pretended nothing happened a few times. Okay.
[19:53] Good. And did you have, again, not saying whether you should or shouldn't have, but did you have the direct conversation with her where you expressed your anger at how she had mistreated you and your brother in the past?
[20:08] Twice.
[20:09] Okay, and how did that go?
[20:11] The first one is still kind of traumatic for me. I don't know what exactly happened there. I had moved in with my boss at the time, to get out of the house because I was living with my parents and I was visiting on like a weekend and, she was trying to ask why the relationship had gotten bad and I was trying to explain and reason with her and, And eventually, I just started crying and we hugged and nothing was solved.
[20:56] You started crying?
[20:57] Yeah.
[20:58] And why did you cry?
[21:02] I'm not sure.
[21:04] Okay, are you going to keep doing this not sure thing? Because I don't really, I mean, I don't know what this, I don't know what to say about any of that. Like, are you just going to pretend you don't know? I mean, you were there. i'll give you i'll give you two or three i mean honestly like because you're gonna call we're gonna try and dig deep and if you're just gonna keep you're not keep but if you're gonna say on more than one occasion i just don't know about something really important then it's a dead end right why did you cry.
[21:47] I cried, because of how terrifying it was to realize that there was no person behind those eyes. How she's just a language input-output doesn't actually care for me.
[22:08] Okay. Did she win? Because she said nothing got resolved.
[22:24] I think she defined nothing getting resolved as winning, because that's how she prefers life.
[22:29] Okay. So did you continue the relationship after that first interaction?
[22:36] Yeah, the relationship got a little warmer, and then it started getting cold again.
[22:39] Okay, so she won. So you cried because she won.
[22:44] Yeah.
[22:45] Not because of this empty-eyed nonsense. You cried because she won, because she outplayed you. And listen, I'm not criticizing you. I mean, she's your mom, right? So she knows every button you have. she probably installed 99% of them, right?
[22:56] Mm-hmm.
[22:57] So didn't you cry because she won?
[23:00] Yeah. That's a more empirically accurate answer.
[23:06] And the second time?
[23:08] Second incident? Yes. I went with my wife to talk to both my parents, and they were really upset to be having the conversation.
[23:21] Mm-hmm.
[23:22] And, they were obstructing any definitions or productivity in the conversation, and eventually my mom stared at me where this topic was spanking she stared at me with kind of blank eyes and lipped up a book and said that spanking is just a light tapping and there's nothing wrong with it and, I looked horrified at her and she started laughing at me. And I said, I'm not going to stay here for this. And I got up and left. And my mom cackled out, this is not real. And my wife turned around and said to her, this is real and you're going to have to live with it.
[24:15] Your mother said, this is not real.
[24:18] Okay.
[24:22] And what do you think she meant by that?
[24:29] I think she meant to tell me that my life is not real if I go on this path.
[24:35] But that's an odd thing, and I'm not disagreeing that she said it. I'm just trying to figure out. What does that mean? This is not real. Your feelings are not real? What does she mean?
[24:52] Well, from the context, I thought she meant the situation was not real.
[24:57] I'm not sure what that means the situation is not real like you weren't saying what you were saying it wasn't happening I don't understand like.
[25:06] The whole situation me living my life getting married coming to talk about childhood and parenting and having this confrontation at the dinner table, that it wasn't real none of it.
[25:21] No but that doesn't make any sense I mean it was happening right yeah So what does it mean to say it's not real? I mean, if she said, this isn't really you, I could understand that. If she's going to say, your memories are false, they're not real, if she was like, but this is not real, I don't know what it refers to. is she trying to like is it like she's trying to will the whole thing out of existence like the whole conversation is she saying it to herself this is not real what does what does she mean.
[26:15] What I thought she meant was, I guess will out of existence that she didn't, it's most likely to try and hit a button that if she says this is not real i'm just reminded of this comedy sketch but it's like this is not real and i turn around i say yeah you're right none of this is real it was all just a prank i'm gonna come back in the fold and keep getting abused now yeah.
[26:51] I mean it's almost like she would saying this isn't happening this isn't real like vocalizing denial in order to wish something out of existence but that's really crazy right i mean people might say this like i can't believe this is happening but they don't actually not believe this is happening right.
[27:04] Yeah well but then she would like message me later like a month and six months after like nothing ever happened, okay so.
[27:22] What would you have most wanted to say to your mother in terms of being angry with her?
[27:33] Why didn't you love me?
[27:35] No. No. That's not true. That's weak. That's the self-pity. That's the crying. You already had that. You cried in front of her, right? The first time. So you already said you already had the tears And the sadness right.
[27:56] Just get the fuck out of my life And let me live.
[28:00] Okay What else.
[28:07] Fucking if there's one thing she can do, Fucking make things right with my brother Because I don't want anything to do with her But she can't do anything about She's paralyzing me.
[28:20] She's what make things right with your brother i don't know something there and then she's paralyzing you i'm not sure what you mean.
[28:26] She she has no possible ability to help my brother the damage she's done to him.
[28:31] She has no possibility to help your brother the fuck are you talking about, she's she's harming him isn't isn't she yeah so what do you mean she can't help him She's harming him.
[28:47] Yeah.
[28:48] So what does it mean to say, like, if some guy is, like, I don't know, pulling fingernails out of a child, do we say, well, you know, that guy doesn't really have much power to help and heal that child? That would be what they call a non sequitur, right?
[29:10] Mm-hmm.
[29:14] If a lion is tearing a baby zebra in two, we don't say that lion doesn't seem to have much power to help the zebra. Would that make much sense?
[29:27] No, it does not make sense.
[29:29] And I'm not being critical at all. I'm just trying to get to where the dream is. Because in the dream, you run away. Leave your child behind. And the building with your child is going to collapse. Perhaps, right? You brought in that it was going to collapse because of the tremors. And was that your sense, right?
[29:53] Okay. That's how the dream went.
[29:55] Okay. Right? So, the running away and snipping at your mom like she's a reasonable person, like, oh, you should just be curious, well, why aren't you curious about why he doesn't have, why he has this dopamine hole and needs to play a strategy game for six hours straight, right? So rather than find a way to get your daughter away from your mother who's screaming over her little bald head, right? Rather than trying to figure out a way to get you, your daughter, maybe your brother, out, right? Of the building that might collapse. Because even at the beginning, there's shaking and trembling and this and that, right?
[30:46] Right.
[30:48] So you engage in a completely futile way and then kind of run away, right? And listen, brother, just so you know, none of this is any kind of criticism at all. I'm not saying you did anything wrong in the real world. I'm not saying you did anything wrong in the dream. I'm trying to figure out what the dream's telling you, if that makes sense. So none of this is like, oh, you ran away. I'm not trying to paint you as any kind of coward or nothing negative like that. I'm just trying to follow the dream.
[31:25] Yeah, I'm experiencing it as criticism.
[31:29] You are experiencing it as criticism? Yeah, and I completely understand that, and I'm not trying to criticize at all. I'm just trying to say that the dream is telling you that engaging with your mom and running away does not save your daughter. Okay, so your mom gets pissed and so you try, leave him alone. Well, why don't you try and be curious as to why he needs all this dopamine, blah, blah, blah, right? Your mom got pissed and stormed off. So more tremors shook the apartment building, right? So the first tremor is your mom coming in, right? The first tremor, so this is a warning. This is going to collapse, right? Oh, and this is another thing too, of course, that by putting your, by putting the layout of your house on the eighth floor, it raises the danger, right? I mean, if a house collapses, it's bad enough, but if you're on the eighth floor and it collapses, that's terrible, right?
[32:41] Yeah, the warning is increasing.
[32:44] And eight might be a reference to, as you say, grades seven to eight, but eight also could be a reference, especially since you basically call your mother a massive hole in a way, right because you're saying you're the massive hole right so a massive hole uh almost like vagina a vagina with teeth like a to eight it's the eighth floor like you're about the eight you guys or something like that it's a cannibalistic sense in a way and that's that's a stretch but i'll just put it out there for see if we can tie it in with something later all right so my mom got pissed and stormed off now what did you not mention and of course i'm sure this was in the dream but What did you not mention when you were describing the dream? Who doesn't ever come up again?
[33:27] My mom and my baby.
[33:29] Well, your baby.
[33:33] Yeah.
[33:34] So why? Why does your baby vanish from the dream? With your mom?
[33:47] I'm thinking get one shot Thank you. I get one shot to save her.
[34:04] Well, you fled. Now, what did you... So when you said more tremors shook to... There's an earthquake when your mom comes in, and then there's an earthquake when your mom leaves. And that... You know what that strikes me as? And this could be a very, very primal memory. When you're a kid, you lie on the ground, and often your ear is pressed to the ground or pressed to the carpet, and particularly hardwood or tiles or something like that, you can actually feel your parents walking. Is your mom heavy? Okay, so then when she comes in and when she goes out, you could feel the ground almost shake a little. It trembles a little, right?
[34:49] Yeah, and I would put my ear to the ground when my parents would fight, and my mom would make a show of stomping.
[34:55] Right, okay, so this is real early, right? This is real early that when your mom moves around the ground shakes so your mom gets pissed and storms off more tremors shake the tall apartment building i fled and i went to the first floor and met some kid who said he came up from the negative seventh floor now this is an interesting thing right because if you if you think about it in real life obviously if you were in a building uh where's your with your brother goes, right? He vanishes too, right? So you leave your, this is an older brother, right?
[35:32] Okay.
[35:33] So you leave your older brother behind, you leave your mother behind, and you leave your baby behind, right? And you flee. So that means that in a conflict between your, in your mind, in a conflict between your mother and your daughter you will save yourself and leave your daughter and it's not and and and the reason why the dream is putting the ground shaking in is to raise the stakes and to tell you that, you might have a deficiency of loyalty like save yourself and because because it's saying look It's not just that your mother is wearing your daughter, it's that the entire building might collapse, right? So you go to the first floor, and is this a building that you know at all? Because I know you said that the apartment was your house, but is this a building that you know in the first floor? Or was it just some random apartment building?
[36:45] Yeah, I mentioned it was very reminiscent of the one my brother lived in.
[36:53] Oh, yes. Okay. And you meet some kid. Now, who's the kid? How old is he?
[36:59] The kid is going to be, I guess, like 10 or 11.
[37:05] And it's not a kid that you recognize, right?
[37:08] No, but I immediately felt great fondness towards him.
[37:13] All right. So, Mitzum Kitty said he'd come up from the negative 7th floor. I was surprised how deep the building went. And... But you didn't say to the kid, this building could collapse. When did you first, in the dream, when did you first get the thought that the building might collapse?
[37:37] When the dream opened, that first tremor that started off the dream.
[37:40] Oh, so you thought. It was more than just a little tremble, right? Okay. So if you go down in the basement of a building that is going to collapse, that's suicidal, isn't it?
[37:56] Yeah. You get either crushed by incredible weight or suffocated and never to be rescued.
[38:01] Right. And you don't try to save the kid. So you say you feel affection for the kid, but you don't say, hey, kid, this building's going to collapse. We've got to get out.
[38:13] No, I just immediately forget about everything that went on up there.
[38:16] Okay, so why? Why? Why do you think that is? Why do you think, I mean, the dream is telling you the whole shit show's coming down, and you're like, hey, let's go explore the basement.
[38:24] I think you experienced that in this call, that I have a tendency to not engage emotionally with stuff and just put it out on my mind as quickly as it disappears. Okay.
[38:39] So, you took me down this concrete staircase, down several flights another staircase another few floors the layout was winding and confusing now what was down there i mean we get to the bottom but do you remember was it just the staircase like you didn't like you know when you go into those back staircases you just go down these concrete stairs and there are doors but you don't know what's on the other side necessarily.
[38:59] There'd be like it was a couple flights one staircase and it's just all concrete and comes out and there's like a lobby and offices and then another one and some more offices and lobbies and And then the last one's the one that's all concrete and kind of looks.
[39:14] Like... No, no, but lobbies aren't... Like, you're now underground, aren't you? Like, from... You're on the ground floor, and then he's like, it's minus seven floors. I've come up from the negative seven floor, right?
[39:23] Yeah. So we could say, like, negative one to negative four are all kind of office-type layouts with lobbies and glass doors and glass windows that separate everything.
[39:38] How could there be glass windows? It's underground.
[39:42] Well, interior glass windows, like instead of an office being surrounded by drywall, it'd be surrounded by glass, like kind of this open layout type stuff.
[39:50] Oh, okay. So there's just walls all around, but it's glass in the offices. Okay.
[39:54] Yeah. And I obviously, because it's underground, I can't tell how far these layouts go into the earth.
[39:59] Yeah. Okay. All right. So you're at the bottom. It evoked terror in you. It was concrete, clean, evidence of habitation, deep, isolated, no sunlight, safe, suffocating. Okay. There was a bed on the floor, a desk with a banner behind it, and you don't remember what the banner was, do you?
[40:20] It was red.
[40:26] Oh, just a red banner, that's it?
[40:29] It could it would my impression is that it represents some sort of government movement or politics or no that's.
[40:43] Your umbilical cord.
[40:46] It's my umbilical cord yeah.
[40:48] It's your umbilical cord so you're at the bottom, clean evidence of habitation Deep, isolated, no sunlight, safe, suffocating. That's exactly what a womb is. A bed on the floor. Babies lie on the bottom of the womb, right?
[41:08] Mm-hmm.
[41:16] And this is the emptiness of your mother.
[41:23] Yeah all concrete no decoration.
[41:25] Yeah yeah so deep isolated no sunlight safe suffocating I mean you literally can't breathe in the womb right, are you safe absolutely no sunlight absolutely, clean well it has to be clean or you don't make it right isolated sure deep yep um you weren't born prematurely were you.
[41:55] Uh yeah i was i was a c-section baby.
[41:59] Do you know what month.
[42:01] I i don't know.
[42:04] If you were born prematurely then like.
[42:07] I'm not like a preemie but i don't know like if it been full term.
[42:10] Right right You know.
[42:11] Because they have a tendency to want to pluck babies out a week or two early.
[42:15] Right, right. Yeah. So you weren't a preemie, because, I mean, if you were a preemie, then the minus seven would be pretty obvious, right?
[42:23] Yeah, no, I wasn't a preemie like that.
[42:25] Right, okay. So what was terrifying about the bottom for you? because that's not so when the dream like if the dream wants to give you terror it'll give you like I don't know some old bear down there with like three heads or something right, some monster chasing you something with spider arms and you know like giant teeth or something right but it's not giving you anything down there that's terrifying.
[43:00] Yeah but I had the sense of existential terror.
[43:03] I know but of what existential doesn't answer much right.
[43:08] The impression I had was that if I were to stay down there for even a minute or two minutes longer that some sort of shadow lovecraft beast would come out and end my life instantaneously.
[43:25] Okay but there was no evidence of that.
[43:27] No no evidence of that at all.
[43:31] Okay so So, when you see something in a dream that is not frightening, but it's terrifying with no evidence, the dream is telling you that what you're afraid of is the fear.
[43:47] That what I'm afraid of is the fear?
[43:49] Yeah.
[43:50] Yeah.
[43:50] Because, I mean, if you get chased by a bear, right, and you barely get away, then you'll have a whole bunch of dreams about being chased by a bear to make sure that you don't get chased by a bear again or try and avoid it as much as possible, right?
[44:02] Yeah.
[44:03] So it's saying that dissociation, trying to get to the root of your mother, is putting you and your child in danger. Into the earth is mother, right? It's mother earth in general, right? Father sky, mother earth, right? Because the earth is where we get our food and our life and we grow things, right? So the earth is like the mother, right?
[44:32] And sky is infinite possibility.
[44:35] Yes, yes, for sure. And we grow up, right? So we grow out of our mother and up to our father. So we grow out of, right? So surprised at how deep the building went. but there's no one down there right.
[44:48] No as we're going through all these floors that look like they could easily handle hundreds of people there's not a single person right right ostensibly everyone else abandoned it because of the tremors.
[45:03] Oh so you think everybody was out because of the tremors okay got.
[45:07] It it gave me very much the vibes of being in a building on like a weekend or at midnight or something when no one's there.
[45:17] Okay. Now, why did you want to see how deep the building goes? Do you remember? Because you said you asked him to show you. Why do you want to see that? And again, it's not a criticism. I'm just genuinely curious why.
[45:31] Curiosity. It was sort of in the spirit of, you know, I got nothing better to do, kid. Let's go exploring together.
[45:39] Well, except what's down there is terrifying.
[45:43] I didn't know it until I got down there.
[45:45] So you didn't feel any uneasiness going down? I'm not saying you should. I'm really trying to figure it out.
[45:56] I'm recalling if I did feel anxiety going down. probably the last few floors I started to get cold feet about it.
[46:11] And when you got cold feet about it did you want to go back up.
[46:17] No I wanted to stay closer to the kid and finish the exploration and get back up why.
[46:22] Did you want to finish the exploration what was your.
[46:24] Thought about that I needed to know I was down there why, I don't have a reason off the top of my head.
[46:43] How did the kids seem exploring the basement? Enthusiastic, interested, curious? Did he have any unease, or did he want to turn back?
[46:53] Completely enthusiastic. He knows the entire layout of this building, and all he does is goof around and have a great time going all throughout it.
[47:01] Okay, so he's having a blast, right?
[47:03] Yeah, it looked like he was coming out from the negative 7th floor to go to the park at midnight.
[47:10] Sorry, what do you mean?
[47:13] Like he was like he was going to go outside and go to like a playground and play at midnight. Like this was he was having a great time.
[47:25] I don't understand because he wasn't doing that. He was going into the basement with you.
[47:29] Yes, but when I first encountered him.
[47:31] Oh, he was heading out.
[47:33] Yes.
[47:33] Okay. So this is his home, right?
[47:37] Yeah.
[47:39] So is this his bed? So where does he live?
[47:45] I don't know.
[47:47] Well, you said he's from the minus seventh floor, right?
[47:50] No, he just said he was coming up on the minus seventh floor. Perhaps that means he lives there, but I didn't get that impression at the time. It just sounded like, oh, I was just exploring down there.
[48:06] So he's coming up but he's coming up from down here so he's not scared of this, no he's not you are yeah okay, so what that and he's he's an expert down here right so he knows there's no beast, right you think there's a beast he knows there's no beast, so he's the you who's not terrified of your mom, yeah and you said he was 10 or 11 years old okay was there anything that your mom did that provoked more fear in you at about that age.
[48:57] Yeah, and 6th, 7th, 8th grade, middle school years, there was, I kind of have a lot of amnesia from that time. The verbal abuse was staggering.
[49:13] So that's when she really terrified you, right?
[49:17] Yeah.
[49:18] Okay, so this is the part of you before your mom totally terrified you. that is telling you there's nothing dangerous down here. You're terrified there's a beast, but the kid is like, like, why would, how, you said you're sort of 15 or so in the dream, is that right?
[49:40] Uh, put me at 13 in the dream.
[49:42] 13 in the dream. Okay. Okay. So you're going back sort of three years if this is you in a younger phase.
[49:58] Yeah. It would be me roughly at the end of middle school, meaning me roughly at the start of middle school.
[50:05] So you just hit the end of middle... Oh, okay, sorry, got it, got it. Okay, yep. Okay. Seven more rooms I dared not explore. He went up and I followed right after him. So you were far less... Now, you were far less scared than... the kid, but you were scared of all the wrong things. You weren't scared of your mother screaming with your daughter on her belly. You weren't scared of your brother being trapped in a collapsing building or your daughter being trapped in a collapsing building or your mother.
[50:51] Yeah, but I was scared of my better self's clean room.
[50:56] Your better self's clean room well not a better self it's just an earlier unharmed self right or sorry not unharmed less harmed.
[51:06] Yeah that's really fascinating you correct me like that.
[51:12] Yeah he's not better.
[51:14] No he's just.
[51:15] You know if some guy gets stabbed at night the guy like who he was before he was stabbed wasn't better it just was pre-stabbed right.
[51:22] Yeah just before the damage.
[51:27] Now, you also weren't... So you weren't honest with your mom?
[51:31] Nope.
[51:32] You weren't honest with your brother?
[51:34] Nope.
[51:35] You weren't honest with this kid because you didn't say, I'm scared. You covered it up, right?
[51:44] Yeah, maybe if I said, I'm scared there's tremors, he would have told me. No, no, sorry.
[51:49] Yes, about that, for sure. But if you... Like, if you said... kid, this concrete room is freaking me out. Like, my heart's pounding here.
[52:01] Yeah.
[52:02] Right? So you're hiding everything. You're hiding the porn. You're hiding your anger at your mother. You're trying to engage with her. You're hiding from your own fear of the building collapsing. You're not rescuing your brother or your daughter. And you're then dissociating to the point where you want to go and explore a basement in a building that might collapse. And then you just keep going down. and then you don't tell the kid about how frightened you are and then you don't, you know, the kid's fine and you don't say, well, I don't want to go explore these other rooms, So you're hiding everything about you from everyone there is?
[52:40] Yeah. That's accurate.
[52:43] Okay. So why? Why would you hide everything you are from everyone that is?
[52:55] There is no one. Doesn't do me any good. Didn't get my daughter back for me. sorry you'll.
[53:05] Have to say that again i couldn't follow the sentence.
[53:07] It didn't do many good it didn't i wasn't using it for diplomacy my daughter back from my mom, the one in the basement being scared of the monster or shadows that weren't there or yeah well and in the dream you don't.
[53:27] Get out of the building, Do you?
[53:36] The dream ends with me and the kid stepping out of the front door of the apartment building out onto the street.
[53:47] Oh, okay, sorry. It just says he went up and I followed right after him. Okay, so you and the kid go out of the building, right? Right.
[53:59] And then that's the end.
[54:05] And do you remember if the boy says anything to you? I mean, does he chatter? Does he, yes, this is cool, or are we going to go, it's just another flight or two, or what does he?
[54:20] No, he doesn't say a word.
[54:22] Oh, he's silent the whole time.
[54:25] Yes.
[54:28] But there's a gap, right? It's a gap between you and your younger self. Because he's also not empathizing with you, right?
[54:37] No, he's kind of playing, and it's kind of novel to show a new kid, all the cool stuff, but he doesn't talk to me.
[54:47] And do you have a sense, because I was trying to sort of figure out where he lives, not in the basement, or so you don't have a sense of where he lives, right?
[54:54] No. Okay. Well, it makes sense that maybe he'd be, well, the time's all, not confused but broken from reality in the dream it's possible that he's, that he's just not from or maybe he's imagination or he's not from that dream what?
[55:22] No he's in the dream what do you mean he's not from the dream.
[55:27] Ugh I appreciate you keeping my language precise.
[55:32] Because he doesn't notice that you're frightened no so he's not empathizing with you and you're not trusting him, so to you sorry my apologies to him you look like a crazy coward don't you I'm frightened of this bed in the basement right yeah.
[55:57] I look like a weird older kid that's not nearly as courageous or playful.
[56:03] Right. So, this must be part of you that looks at your fear as shameful.
[56:15] Looks at my fear is shameful. That's another dominant personality in me.
[56:23] Because you're ashamed of the porn, you are frightened of your mother, you're ashamed of your fear in the basement, and you hide it from everyone. So do you view your fear regarding your mother and your father is shameful.
[56:48] Yeah.
[56:50] Why?
[56:54] Because they have no more power to hurt me now.
[57:05] Okay. That's not true. That's not true. No, hang on. That's not true. They could show up at your house. Hang on. Hang on. they could show up at your house tomorrow. What do you mean they have no more power to hurt you? I mean, it's still in your head, right?
[57:21] I'm letting that thoughts flow out of my head. After I said it, I agree with you. You don't need to convince me. I already agree with you. I just need to say it out loud.
[57:28] No, that's fine. That's fine. Okay, so why is it shameful?
[57:42] Why is it shameful if you'll fear like that?
[57:44] Yeah, why is it shameful? Your mother said she thought you could be a school shooter, right?
[57:50] Yeah.
[57:50] Do you know what that means? It means she's pictured killing people. And she's projecting it onto you. So, if you had a kind of murderous mother, why would you be ashamed of being terrified of that?
[58:19] I want to make sense of it. The verbal abuse I got from my mom is, as usual, very difficult to cipher through and figure out what's true and what's not.
[58:35] Sorry, but what do you mean what's true and what's not?
[58:40] A lot of her control and verbal abuse would be to construct a narrative of how relationships work, of how the world works, and to...
[58:53] No, no, it's all false because she's evil. because if she's screaming you know horrible phrases and words and definitions at you was she physically violent as well.
[59:07] Physically violent no she got my dad to do that.
[59:11] So she instigated physical violence from your dad right and how violent was your dad.
[59:22] The worst incident was getting spanked with a wooden board out of anger and out of control.
[59:33] And how old were you.
[59:36] Six or seven.
[59:37] So you got beat with a wooden board when your dad was out of control and you were six years old or seven years old yeah so why would it be shameful to be terrified of this insane and evil environment?
[59:54] They made it seem normal. They made it seem like I had it better than everybody else.
[1:00:02] But the body doesn't lie. I mean, you can bullshit the brain, but not the body, right?
[1:00:08] Yeah.
[1:00:10] I mean, fat positivity doesn't make you slender, right? so why would you feel ashamed of being frightened with that level of verbal and physical abuse, and I'm not criticizing I genuinely want to know how how could you justify feeling shame at that level of fear when you were at that level of danger.
[1:00:47] I don't know what else to say but i have high standards for myself but this is this is killing me.
[1:00:53] You have high standards for yourself yeah fuck does that mean i'm sorry i don't know what that, I mean, you're a baby zebra, for God's sakes, and you've got all the fucking lions in the known universe drooling and running at you, and you're like, well, I'm going to, my fear is shameful because I have very high standards, like, I don't know what that means.
[1:01:29] I don't either. I'm trying to piece this out. I don't.
[1:01:35] Okay, let's make it easy. Let's make it easy.
[1:01:39] I'd love to make it easy.
[1:01:40] Does it serve you or your parents for you to believe that your fear is shameful?
[1:01:50] It benefits my parents.
[1:01:53] Of course it does. the lion doesn't want the baby zebra to run away no.
[1:02:00] They would they would uh really enjoy if i had a inflated view of how good i am at handling conflicts and came back into their grasp.
[1:02:09] Right your parents will highly benefit from you trying to reason with them mom why don't you try to figure out why my brother has this massive hole of dopamine and needs to play six hours strategy games. I'm going to reason with you.
[1:02:24] And that's how you get stuck like a fly in a web.
[1:02:43] Yeah, it benefits them.
[1:02:46] So the toxicity is just another thread of bullshit to keep you stuck to the web so they can feast, so to speak, in my view.
[1:03:00] Yeah. They've made it clear that they kind of enjoy stealing my spirit, as Ayn Rand might put it. That's the thing they want to loot the most. It's it's a level of evil that's hard for me to comprehend that they just want to steal my spirit by having me around.
[1:03:26] Well you absolutely comprehend it, because what is keeping you in danger over the course of this dream is your dissociation from the imminent danger, and it could be that you're so angry in the dream obviously that you're so angry at your mother, that you will even abandon your brother and your daughter so that a building comes down around her ears and she stays in.
[1:04:14] Yeah, that's something I hadn't thought about.
[1:04:16] Because that's the net result, right? You don't confront your mother. You don't say, give me my daughter. This building's coming down around her ears. Let's get the hell out. You don't try and save your brother. You do save the kid. No, but that's just an accident. The building just happens to not fall, right?
[1:04:34] Yeah, and he was going to be out of the building anyway.
[1:04:37] Well, he was, and then you took him to the basement, which put him in massive danger.
[1:04:43] Yeah, I'm going off the assumption that after we leave, the building might still collapse.
[1:04:49] I mean, was there... So there are two tremors that you talk about in the dream. What happens... Are those the only two tremors that you remember?
[1:05:03] Yeah. No, in the dream, I had the sense that it would come down eventually. There'd be more tremors that eventually get it. But, you know, I had time to screw around for 15 minutes.
[1:05:15] Well, if you're going down seven flights.
[1:05:19] We're kids, man.
[1:05:20] You're fast, right? Yeah. Sorry, I'm thinking of my 58-year-old legs. All right. All right.
[1:05:26] Okay.
[1:05:28] So, what's your feeling when you leave the building?
[1:05:37] Ambivalent.
[1:05:38] Go on.
[1:05:40] There's a great possibility out there, but to go for that would be to abandon something.
[1:05:49] It's very abstract. What does that mean? To abandon something. Yeah, I can work with that. No, spoiler, I can't work with that. Sorry, go ahead.
[1:05:59] I have difficulty.
[1:06:01] No, no, don't give me excuses or reasons.
[1:06:04] It's just a problem. No excuses.
[1:06:07] Yeah.
[1:06:10] I wanted to run away, but I knew that would be abandoning my daughter, and I kind of didn't want to do that.
[1:06:16] Ah, so your daughter did come back into your mind, at the end of the dream or at some point before that?
[1:06:24] No, this is me transposing logic to the motion.
[1:06:27] No, no, no, just stay in the dream. Stay in the dream.
[1:06:30] In the dream, the emotions were not clear enough. Okay. I had vague feelings with no associated actions with them.
[1:06:43] I had vague feelings with no associative action with them.
[1:06:47] Oh my gosh.
[1:06:48] What? Okay, explain it to me like I'm your 10-year-old self.
[1:06:56] I'm trying to fight the fog.
[1:06:57] I know. So you didn't have any particular feelings of relief of getting out of the building or concern about maybe people you'd left behind? And again, no criticism. I'm just, what was the emotions you're walking out of the building? You're obviously relieved to be out of the basement, right?
[1:07:26] Drawing in a breath of fresh air and enjoying it.
[1:07:29] Right.
[1:07:35] Nothing beyond that.
[1:07:37] Okay.
[1:07:38] So.
[1:07:40] Did you feel when you were climbing back up the stairs from the very bottom of the basement, did you feel like you might be chased or once you got off the minus seven floor, you felt better or safe or okay?
[1:07:53] Yeah, immediately after getting off minus seven. Okay.
[1:08:03] And was there anybody else in the building on your way back up or on the ground floor as you were heading out?
[1:08:10] No, I think there are some kids at the park outside, but no other kids.
[1:08:22] So, there was grave danger in the basement, but the basement was utterly empty. what that says and it's a very true and profound thing that your dream is saying I think outside of violence evil only has the power we give it, outside of violence evil only has the power we give it, right obviously if some guy stabs you well you're not giving power like you're being stabbed right so but outside of violence evil only has the power we give it, Because there's nothing down there. You're not attacked. It's empty. There's no threatening object or thing or person or smell or anything. It's empty. There's nothing down there, right?
[1:09:40] Nothing.
[1:09:41] Right. So what that means is you're afraid of nothing. because the kid's not scared. But by being afraid of nothing, the nothingness in, say, your mother, because evil is a void, right? Evil narcissism, evil whatever. Like, it's that level of selfishness is a void. There's nothing down there. Just manipulation, maybe some strange sorrow, but emptiness, it's empty, right? And the emptiness is terrifying. And emptiness is terrifying. Because people who are empty don't have any empathy. And the dream is woven through with this lack of empathy. Right? Lack of pornography is based on a lack of empathy. Video games is a lack of empathy because you're not actually dealing with your problems. Your mom's screaming right over the eardrums of your daughter, right?
[1:10:46] You don't care about your daughter. you try to engage with your mom which shows a lack of empathy to her emptiness and manipulation you abandon your brother and your younger self if that's who he is doesn't have empathy for you lack of empathy emptiness.
[1:11:09] Seven more rooms, several more rooms, you say, I dare not explore. But the boy had explored them, because he knew this area well, right?
[1:11:20] Yeah.
[1:11:31] So what's down there is empty, it's nothing. if it's your womb, if it's the core of your mother, the heart of your mother. Because you're dealing with your mother after you were born as a conscious entity, but the dream is saying if this is your mother's womb, then this is before you were even conscious.
[1:12:03] It's also interesting i kind of feel terror even sort of remembering myself as as a infant or a toddler it makes me just feel icky to think that my mom would have that sort of power over me, go on, because of my own daughter knowing how she is I would never want my mom to be around, my daughter but she was around me with no supervision doing whatever she pleased I just hate imagining it, I think, I think I avoid I think this is very much that fear what's down there and I'm very afraid of it and I feel I feel ashamed for being afraid of it.
[1:13:11] You know, it's funny because if you think of the phrase, there's nothing to be afraid of, it actually has two meanings, right?
[1:13:18] Yeah, there's nothing to be afraid of, and there's one thing to be afraid of, and that's nothing.
[1:13:25] That's right. That's right. The emptiest people are the most dangerous people. Because they're empty and they have no restraint on their behavior and they have no empathy for their victims. it's like the most dangerous yeah, okay, maybe, it's like the gravest danger to the prey is the empty belly of the predator, that's primal it is.
[1:14:07] The emptiness around you is a.
[1:14:10] This is the npc shit right this is all the fucking 80 percent of people lining up to get jabbed with mrna mystery juice right i mean it is it is just yeah i i absolutely we should do this and and anybody who disagrees is is is my enemy and and right this is emptiness right, all the people who well i i want to vote for the left because I want to make sure that I retain the right to kill a baby in my womb, empty, all the people who claim to have knowledge or who claim to have compassion when they just want the government to get more and more power, It's like, well, I mean, I've had this for like 40 years. People say they care about the children, they care about education, they care about the next generation. And I say, well, why is there a national debt? And they're caught, trapped, right?
[1:15:20] Because there's nothing there to answer it.
[1:15:24] And if you go to explore this depth, right? Trying to figure, oh, what's going on deep down in my mother? Holy shit, man. That is a hole with no bottom. I'm not kidding about that. And I've been subject to this temptation many times over the course of my life. You cannot figure out what's going on with your mom or your dad. You can't.
[1:15:50] Mm-hmm.
[1:15:51] Because you're going down, and there's nothing there.
[1:15:55] That opens up another dimension to the dream.
[1:15:57] Go on.
[1:15:59] That kid I ran into has no empathy either. He's just kind of nihilistic, happy-go-lucky hedonist. Maybe that's exploring it all.
[1:16:11] Happy-go-lucky hedonist.
[1:16:13] Yeah. That kid's beyond time, and that was obvious in the dream.
[1:16:19] Beyond time? Go on.
[1:16:23] He's like a mortal. He can afford to just dilly-dally in those depths and go play in the park at midnight.
[1:16:30] Oh, he's neglected?
[1:16:32] Yeah, he's never going to grow up.
[1:16:34] Oh, he's the part of you that knows the neglect. Because he's got no parents.
[1:16:39] Yeah, he doesn't have any parents.
[1:16:41] So he's the part of you that understands the neglect. So I'll tell you where a lot of parental violence comes from. A lot of parental violence comes from when the children begin to first figure out that their parents are empty bullshitters. if your parents are, right? Well, there's no objective standards. They're just infants. They're dangerous, tall infants. If you've ever confronted someone directly with their emptiness, the rage that's right there is chilling.
[1:17:24] Yeah, I've done this a few times.
[1:17:26] Right. If you corner someone and point out that what they're saying doesn't make any sense, and you've seen me do this sometimes with the media, sometimes with trolls, Like, if you confront the emptiness that people have, it's a powder keg. So a lot of times, if you realize, if your parents are sort of false and manipulative and empty, as a kid, and it often is around the age of six or seven, or eight, right? Which is maybe minus seven to eight or whatever, right? So, it is often around the mid to late single digits where you first begin to look at your parents if they're really dysfunctional. And you say, oh my god, they're crazy. They have no standards. They have no, like, I mean, I remember my mother, this was before I went to boarding school. So, I was probably like, I don't know, five years old or whatever. And maybe six. No, boarding school, I was in, so, no, because it could have been summers, could have been summers, because I was home during the summers, although I did spend one really long, dismal Christmas at boarding school, but I remember my mother would be.
[1:18:47] Running up and down the hallway of her little apartment, and she'd be late for work. She had a job as a secretary, and she'd be late for work, but she'd always be forgetting something. And I remember these, like, tick, tick, tick, these little heels, like these little, she'd wear these long, thin heels, right? And she'd be, like, running up and down the hardwood floors, and she would be just late, and she'd forget something, and, oh, where's this? And she'd forget her wallet, or she couldn't find her keys, like something, right? Couldn't find the bus fare or something like that. And then we had a little bowl. It actually had a sign of, don't forget diner money. it was misspelled it should have been dinner i think my brother did the sign don't forget don't forget your diner money and we had to bring in i don't know 10 10 cents or so 10 pennies for for lunch at school and you know but half the time there'd be no money in it right and it wasn't because we were that broke maybe my mom still had a job at that time and so i i just remember like those two things like she she's always stressed and and forgetting things in the morning and, And although we have enough money.
[1:20:01] There's no money in the lunch for school, right? Money. And those kinds of things where you say, well, how does this person who can't even get out of the house and get to work? And look, it happens to everyone once in a while. I'm sure you've had it, you know, where you're just like, okay, this is the fourth thing I've forgotten. Every now and then it's going to cluster and you just take forever to get out. But normally, you know, you should be able to get out of the house pretty. And I just remember thinking like, so she's not really very competent. like she's not really a very competent person she's not a person of like she's not really trustworthy she's not very competent she's kind of stressed she's kind of freaked out panicked a lot and and all of that and i just remember thinking like so she i don't i don't have much to look up to here if that makes sense there's no no credibility here how's she gonna how am i gonna think that she can raise me when she can't put a 10 cent piece in in a lunch bowl or get out of the house at any reasonable hour. It's like almost every morning, just, oh God, where's the, get this and all of that, right? And so, sort of maybe at some point, and I assume it was around the beatings, right? Well, you know, you're getting beaten by your father at the age of six or seven with a wooden board, and you're like, this asshole's out of control.
[1:21:24] Like, he's angry at me, and he's out of control. So how am I going to respect him? How am I going to listen to him about anything? I don't know. I don't want to put words into your mouth, but.
[1:21:37] Yeah, I remember that after that incident, like he came and apologized and I very distinctly felt this apology is not real, but I need to guard that secret in my life.
[1:21:49] Right. So you have to hide your parents emptiness from them. There's a huge burden that the kids of highly dysfunctional parents have to carry is we have to pretend. They're not completely screwed up and crazy and immoral.
[1:22:04] Yeah, and that's a terrible thing to get good at.
[1:22:06] Oh, it's a terrible burden. And here's the thing, too. It's not just like you can't say it. It's like you can't even give them one skeptical look.
[1:22:20] Yeah. Yeah, my brother would be endlessly tormented for, what do they call it, with the eyes that no adult ever says, but they say it to kids. Rolling your eyes. Yeah, that.
[1:22:34] Yeah, yeah. Or you better drop that attitude.
[1:22:40] It's thought crime.
[1:22:41] Like child abuse in its most pervasive aspect in some ways is about the permanent thought crime. You can't even think. You can't even look with scorn. You can't even roll your eyes. You can't even, like, you can't express to the parent how little respect they've engendered in you, if they're that dysfunctional, you've got to just pretend. Just pretend that they have something of value to say. You have to just pretend that they have some credibility, or a lot of credibility, that they're just wonderful, and they're wise, and they know what's what, and they should instruct you in morals and virtue and courage. You have to just lie, continually. and and and not just lie like but like you you can't even like sometimes one scornful look will be enough to be right.
[1:23:38] Yeah i remember when i was 15 uh that's when i found your show and i didn't get into any childhood stuff yet it was politics at that point, and all of a sudden my mom started nagging me for rolling my eyes i had no idea where it came from because I didn't change my behavior in any other way. I really don't, I would not be surprised if just like that 1% uptick in critical thinking, she recognized that and started trying to push that back out of me.
[1:24:21] Oh, yeah. My mother hated the philosophers that I got into in my teens. I was about your age, got into philosophy about 15. And my mom hated them. Oh, Ayn Rand, she just raised you. And it's like, well, somebody had to, mom. Somebody had to. And it's going to be that or it's going to be some gang, right? Somebody had to. So, you're going...
[1:24:49] So, hang on. So, I think it's really important that you go to the bottom and you're terrified at seeing nothing. That's because when you go to the bottom of really screwed up people's personalities, there's nothing there. Just nothing. It's like this terrifying thing that Dostoevsky talks about. It's like, well, what if the afterlife isn't heaven or it's hell? It's just like some dingy change room in a bathhouse with spiders forever. Right? That's nothing. There's nothing there. There's no true self. There's no empathy. There's no authenticity. There's no original thought. It's just emptiness and programming. and pretense and domination and submission in necessary circumstances. So you get down to the bottom, and there's nothing, and that's terrifying. I don't want to over sell this, but I feel that, I feel, it's a feeling, it's not a proof, but I think that's really important.
[1:26:01] That was the most fear I felt in a long time in that journey.
[1:26:12] And so, yeah, at the heart of your mother, if it's the depths of your mother, if it's the womb or something, there's nothing there. And the real question, though, is, and this is the last thing that we can focus on, how has this been for you as a whole so far?
[1:26:37] It is like pulling teeth getting through that fog. I really want to know what the deal with that is, but perhaps we can get there now.
[1:26:45] Yeah. So here's the problem. The problem is you go deep into nothing and it infects you. because you leave the building without thinking about your daughter or your brother or your mother. So earlier, when I said, what could you really say to your mother, and you said, why didn't you love me, or whatever it is, right? It's like, the reason I got a bit snappy there, sorry about that, but the reason I got a bit snappy is because you know that there's nothing there. You don't have that capacity. so are you still i mean i don't mean to say are you still because i mean i'm pretty sure i was older than you and i'm still occasionally trying to puzzle out my uh family members who are messed messed up but are you still trying to figure out your mother and your father.
[1:28:00] No i'm not making any inquiries and talking to family members or anything.
[1:28:04] But what about in your head.
[1:28:06] In my head.
[1:28:07] Because i said when i said you were like why didn't you why didn't you love me like when i said what would you say to your mother you said why didn't you love me which means that you're still that's still a question for you, because that's like saying well why don't you ask why don't you ever ask yourself why your first born son needs so much video gaming, right so are you and it's not an accusation i mean i'm genuinely curious are you still trying to figure out what went wrong with your parents, or why they didn't love you, or that sort of stuff. right because going down to the bottom of the building right you again your dream could have done anything right your dream could have been like well i don't want to go explore those other rooms right because if you had explored all the other rooms you'd have realized there's absolutely nothing down there like when you leave it's like well maybe there was something down there that was scary or maybe there was something down there that i can't understand.
[1:29:24] Yeah and there's like this i can go back down and look again, which there was that in the dream.
[1:29:29] Oh, you wanted to go back down and look again and check out the other rooms that you didn't see yet, right?
[1:29:34] Yeah, it was kind of like, oh, let's bookmark that and it's an adventure for later.
[1:29:37] Right, right. So, I'm telling you that there's just emptiness down there. There's nothing. The other rooms have nothing else.
[1:29:52] Yeah.
[1:29:52] Now, you could, sorry, you could say, Well, but, you know, I mean, with regards to my own mother, yes, I'm absolutely positive. She went through terrible traumas, through the war, through the end of the war, no doubt, no question. But it's all inaccessible to me, because I'll never get the truth. So there's, I'm not, with my mother's trauma and dysfunction and so on, I'm not saying there's nothing there, but there's nothing there for me. because by acting out her abuses against me, she's cut herself off from empathy for me and therefore the only way she'll answer me with anything is with manipulation. So it's all inaccessible to me. It's like that big diamond or whatever that Rose drops off at the end of Titanic. It's like, is there a diamond? Yes, but it's inaccessible. It's now in the ocean. Nobody can find it. It's covered up under sand. It's been swallowed by a shark. whatever right.
[1:30:51] It's inaccessible. So, I mean, without a doubt, I mean, what happened to your mother and your father when they were children and babies, toddlers, whatever, right, was, I'm sure, terrible. And if we had some time-traveling drone that we would all—if I had a time-traveling drone that could go back and see what happened to my mother before and during the war, right, I mean, it's a pretty bad place to be born into Germany in 1937, right? I mean, you wouldn't want to wish that on your worst enemy. So if I could have some time-traveling drone and go back in time and see all of the absolutely terrible things, unholy, unimaginably terrible things that were done to my mother, right? I mean, they were raping every woman, especially when the Soviet troops came in, raping every female from the age of 8 to 80, repeatedly. I have no doubt that she was assaulted as a girl, and my heart would break and her life would make sense, right? Or at least be much more understandable. but that's all inaccessible to me because she doesn't have empathy for me.
[1:31:57] For her own history, experience choices to some degree, but also because of the cruelty that she enacted against me. She doesn't have empathy for me, therefore I can't get the truth from her because telling the truth is an act of empathy. If somebody really needs the truth from you and you tell them the truth, and this is why I think throughout the dream, you don't tell the truth to anyone about anything. And the prizes you walk out leaving your baby girl behind. You walk out leaving your brother behind and not even giving a second thought to your mother. And you want to go back and explore these dangerous depths. But you see, you went down and you explored the dangerous depths. You got terror. You thought there was something down there, right? Oh God, there's some beast that's going to emerge and kill me, right? So you thought there's something down there, but there's not. The dream is very clear. There's nothing down there. Not only is there no monster, there's not even a sign of a monster it's not like big piles of like there's not like claw marks on the wall or bones in the corner or you know whatever a foul smell it's just an empty dead nothing spot right yeah.
[1:32:58] And what the thing i was afraid of was i think was the nothingness.
[1:33:02] Right but that's because the nothingness is dangerous like this old thing from nietzsche where he says be careful that if you stare into the abyss the abyss also stares into you right that's a a beautifully phrased but not well-explained reality, that the more you explore nothingness, the more it infects you. The more you explore the void at the heart of corruption, the more you imperil your own empathy. Because those of us who have empathy, we can only sense the danger of the void. We cannot perceive it directly. It's like a black hole. You can only see the effects. You can't see the thing itself. If you have a personality, you have original thought, you have empathy, you have sensitivity, you have emotions, you cannot comprehend the icy intergalactic emptiness at the heart of truly corrupt people. You know, people who say, will scream verbal abuse at a helpless and defenseless child or beat that child at the age of six or seven with a big wooden board and then provide an apology that doesn't solve anything. and I assume he didn't go to therapy or anger management or anything like that to really try and get to the heart of these issues, right?
[1:34:22] No.
[1:34:23] Right. I mean, the people who just pathologically lie about things in politics and so on, like, we can't, like, if we, the only way we can really understand that void is by losing everything about us that makes us human, to ourselves. So trying to figure out what was motivating her, why did she do this, why did she do that, you can't get an answer, except by becoming like them, which you don't want to do. It's sort of like saying, hey, I wonder what it's like to be demonically possessed. I think I'll keep summoning demons until it happens. Well, that's kind of what the devil would want, you know? So corruption wants you to study corruption, because that's how it spreads.
[1:35:17] Yeah, that's, I'm starting to grasp it now. So how do you...
[1:35:22] Sorry, go ahead.
[1:35:23] So how do you know when you're staring into the abyss, you're studying corruption?
[1:35:33] Well, if your mother comes out wearing your baby daughter and starts screaming at your brother, thus traumatizing your daughter... what would be the most healthy and sane thing you could do in that situation? Because the dream is, by telling you what doesn't work, the dream is also telling you what does work. So what's the most sane and healthy thing you can do in that situation?
[1:36:02] The effect of the most sane, healthy thing is to get my daughter and leave, but I don't know how I would navigate that situation to do that. She's got my daughter hostage, pretty much.
[1:36:15] Well, but the dream is telling you what not to do. Because you got mad at your mom, and you tried to fight with her. Like, she's a rational person. You can talk into growing empathy.
[1:36:30] Yeah.
[1:36:30] And everything goes bad after that, right?
[1:36:33] Well, yeah. I'm starting to engage my empirical brain now. This is wonderful. Yeah, what I could do is I could play like nothing's wrong and kind of take my mother's side tacitly and say I want to hold my daughter for a little bit. And then once I got my daughter, get it out of there.
[1:36:54] Right.
[1:36:55] Right. And that would work. That would work every single time.
[1:36:58] You deal with it like it's a war because it's a war yeah there's right you don't reason with the enemy troops right sorry go ahead.
[1:37:05] It's just beyond any doubt like i don't i don't owe her reasonability like there's nothing i can do to get her to be reasonable i can fight like a war yeah yeah yep.
[1:37:19] You say whatever you need to say with no pride and no engagement because what happens is you start fighting with your mom or reasoning with your mom or saying, oh, mom, you should just have all of this empathy. It's like the dream is telling you she doesn't have empathy. She raised you and your brother, and one of you is dissociating with, well, you're both dissociating with screens, right? So you're trying to fight with her like, oh, I'm so frustrated. Why don't you love me here? I'm going to give you reason. You should ask this. And everything goes badly. because she storms off and the building's collapsing and then you right so her emptiness, switches to you because you no longer think about your brother and your daughter yeah.
[1:38:11] I had a concern for my brother and it evaporated when i made the wrong choice.
[1:38:14] Well made the wrong choice it's just an instruction manual right you know you know when when it's like do this you know you see the put put put the mask in your face not your armpit in the plane when like it did tick and then x right so the dream is just saying x don't do this it's not like you made the wrong choice the dream is trying to help you make the right choice by saying this is they're not the right choice gotcha your mom got pissed and stormed off and you fled now her emptiness then transferred to you because you lost your empathy for your daughter you didn't say oh my god my daughter's in danger, my brother's in danger, my mother's in danger, but maybe you don't care about her that much at the moment, and you don't say, oh my god, I'm terrified.
[1:39:02] Of this earthquake and the building collapsing, and we're all going to die, my daughter's going to die, my brother's going to die, right? So you engage with your mother without empathy. Now, empathy, again, we can feel around the edges of a lack of empathy, but we cannot experience it directly. I cannot experience what it's like to walk around the world and look at other human beings like they're just half inanimate tools that I use to satisfy my own needs and pleasures. I can't do it. I can't, I can't get there. I can't, like, the closest I can imagine is to imagine that I'm the only human being, like, this is like the narcissist view, right? I'm the only human being, and everyone else is like a robot that has been programmed to serve my needs, and anytime they don't serve my needs, I'm just going to hit them until they do. Like, you know, how you thump maybe a printer in frustration if it's not printing or something like that, right? You just get annoyed. Like, this shit is supposed to work for me. And that's just your relationship. You're the only person, everyone else is like a robot that's supposed to serve your needs, and when they don't, you have every right to get enraged at them.
[1:40:11] That's just an analogy. I can't get into that mindset. I can't inhabit that mindset. Because people are real, and I care about people. So I can't undo that any more than I can listen to somebody speaking English and not understand what they're saying. Assuming they're not from Scotland. it so so you you want to figure out your mother but you can't because you have empathy and she doesn't you want to figure out your father but the more you try to figure them out or why didn't you love me or you need to think about why the your son needs all this dopamine and right, that just makes you empty it doesn't fill them up it just empties you out and you wanting to figure them out is the primary mechanism by which they're still trying to steal your soul in a way. Oh, I went to the basement, man. It was really empty and terrifying, but I'll be back. I'll figure this out. God help you if you do. It means you're like them. Which you're not, right?
[1:41:19] Mm-hmm. As a way of making it seem more complicated than it is to try and draw me in.
[1:41:28] You know i i i see the because i used to do all these videos like the the truth about, uh the truth uh the untruths about donald trump but like i've done a whole bunch of like media takedowns like back in the day when i was doing politics right a whole bunch of media takedowns which were all about um you know there's just telling these lies right and i i'm telling you man, I cannot fathom what I have in common with people who just tell lies. Now, I mean, look, I'm not going to say, oh, I've never told a lie. I mean, yeah, okay, little white lies here and there, whatever it is, maybe fudge a little story to make it funnier. But, you know, just in terms of like, pathologically trashing people's reputation in order just to get political power, you know, this kind of Wikipedia stuff, I can't get that. I just, I can't get that. And, So, but that's everywhere.
[1:42:25] There's never, like, they never say, well, you know, we want someone to sit behind this desk and lie for, like, five hours straight. And they never say, oh, nobody's showing up. There's always just this lineup, right? Just lineup. Right? Think of all the people who knew what the hell was going on at these P. Diddy parties, right? For decades, right? Lie. Lying. Lying, lying, lying. Cover up, cover up, cover up. Lying, lying, lying. So, I mean, there's a lot of them out there. It is kind of a battle. It's a spiritual battle, right? It's a psychological battle. It's a moral battle.
[1:43:06] But if your first question was, well, why don't you love me? Then you're still trying to understand your mother. And I think the dream is saying, there's nothing down there. You can go back as many times as you want. There's nothing down there. And that is terrifying.
[1:43:22] And that terror should have you treasure the people in your life who you connect with and stop trying to jump down an endless hole to reach the bottom.
[1:43:35] Yeah after this conversation i do not feel any curiosity about her.
[1:43:41] Yeah i mean my dad died like four years ago and i i never knew what happened to him as a child you know he was in boarding school when he was younger and boarding schools can be pretty rough and uh i don't know what else could have happened i'm sure terrible things happened to him no question but i was never going to find the map there's there's nothing down there, that is accessible to me right i mean it's it's a gold bar dropped in the ocean right like 40 years ago is it there yeah i guess but it's functionally inaccessible like it's there somewhere it didn't just vanish into another dimension but it's completely it's like it's under like half a mile of silt in some unknown location right so it's functionally inaccessible it's like the Voyager spaceship that went out the solar system some years ago. Do they know where it is? Yep. Can they touch it? Nope. It's functionally inaccessible. And that's what, so the terrible secrets that forged people's cold hearts, the terrible histories that destroyed the capacity to genuinely feel for others, it's all there. It happened objectively, and if we had the magic time-traveling drone, we could see it, but it is functionally inaccessible. to us. We'll never know it.
[1:45:03] And I try not to try to I try not to puzzle out things that are impossible to puzzle out.
[1:45:15] I don't bring people to the stand who I know are pathological liars. That's just making a mockery of justice.
[1:45:25] All you need to know about your parents is how cruel they are. how cruel they were, and how cruel they continue to be. And that's all you need to know. There's no other answers. Because the only answers are locked in their own history. And they will never tell you the truth. Because if you go to people who are cruel and you say, I need the truth from you, you're giving them power over you, which they will inevitably misuse. It literally is like going to the guy who wants to torture you and saying, well, it really hurts when you do this. I really need you to not do this. He's like, oh, well, then that's what I'll do. That's what I mean. Like, it's inaccessible. If I went to my mother, I'm pretty sure she's still alive, but if I went to my mother with a desperate need to find out X, Y, and Z about her past, her childhood, her decisions, her choices, I would then be in a position of needing something from my mother. which i know from how badly that went when i was a kid and needed love or affection or security or whatever it is or or 10 10 pennies to buy some lunch right just couldn't get it so this is why it's functionally inaccessible the only way you can get the truth from people is to be vulnerable but cruel people will always abuse your vulnerability so you'll never get the truth from them it's nothing down there i'm telling you well i'm i'm telling you like i think the dream is telling you if that makes sense.
[1:46:49] And i've i've taken the lid off uh the empty people and seeing how aggressive they get and i'm really scared to ever do that again.
[1:47:02] Oh yeah it is it is a pit of hell it's like a flaming pit of hell and this is why this is why the npcs have such power is that everyone knows if you if you take that robot mask off it's just a it's a feral mask behind and and very very very aggressive.
[1:47:18] Yeah and the thing that makes it all the worse is it doesn't even anyone who is in there's no one in doubt anyone who knows already knows and no one's going to be convinced by the display of the that aggression.
[1:47:30] Well they'll just be scared of unmasking anyone else right so.
[1:47:34] Yeah it doesn't.
[1:47:35] I mean you've seen the meme like that npc mask and underneath is that snarling face and like that's that's a real thing that's a that's a So, yeah, how do you think we did?
[1:47:49] Uh, I found it pretty frustrating. I'm not sure exactly what the disconnect was while I was fogging you.
[1:47:59] Well, no, so you were trying to get me down into the empty room, right?
[1:48:04] Yeah, that could make sense. Maybe I've just found myself just, like, agreeing too much and then not having anything to add.
[1:48:16] No, I don't know. It wasn't the agreement stuff. it's what I was saying well you'll listen back to it and you'll listen to it right but you'll listen back and you'll hear that sort of disconnect at the beginning is that you were taking me to a place of emptiness and, I just had to fight that right because either I empty out or you fill up and I think you filled up a little, definitely alright okay good well listen I really really appreciate that it's really nice to do a dream haven't done them for a while and this is a fantastic dream and you know I just really do want to say how proud I am to know you and just what an amazing thing you're doing in your family line and with your daughter and all of that. It's beautiful, and I can't tell you how much I truly admire and respect what it is that you're doing.
[1:49:05] Thank you.
[1:49:06] All right. Stay in touch, man. All the best.
[1:49:09] All right.
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