The Dream Team welcomes their first ever guest, Steve Ernenwein of The Dreams that Shape Us, a podcast about the profound impact dreams can have on waking life. Olivia shares a colorful dream about prolific musician and camping dad Tim Mechling before the gang dives into Steve’s journey since the last time they tried to record this episode, when they ran into technical problems. Steve recaps his dream, subsequent revelations, and then shares a new dream featuring the Dream Team themselves. It also involves some ripe-smelling shoes, a cried song, and a crotchety old man. Victor helps Steve embody the old man character through some impromptu hypnotherapy. Zach gives a mini TED Talk on practicing self-love as a bit.
0:28 Olivia's dream of Tim's dolphin porn
4:02 Introducing Steve Ernenwein
12:05 Recap of the lost session
18:29 What is dream incubation?
24:31 Steve's zombie dream
52:38 The stanky shoes blues
1:13 My husband, the hypnotherapist
1:28 Self worth as a bit
ABOUT STEVE
Steven Ernenwein is a dream-inspired hip hop/singer songwriter and has been a dreamworker and avid lucid dreamer for the past 17 years. Steven also cohost’s the storytelling podcast, The Dreams that Shape Us, with J.M. DeBord where they are obliterating the Western myth that dreams mean nothing, by offering up story after story of how dreams have deeply impacted and shaped the dreamer’s inner and outer lives.
The Dreams that Shape Us: https://dreamsshapeus.com/
Check out Steve's music: https://open.spotify.com/artist/07T9qf6X0grTf2BS0DNQzW
About Dream Bible:
Dream Bible is a free online A to Z dream dictionary dedicated to helping people understand the meaning of their dreams. Unlike other dream interpretation websites or books we extensively research dream symbols by interviewing people about the events occurring in their lives at the time of their dreams. Inspired by the work of Gillian Holloway Ph.D, we are using a database of over 350,000 dream reports to create the world's most practical dream dictionary based on the waking life experiences of regular people.
Dream Bible entries used in this episode:
https://www.dreambible.com/search.php?q=Dolphins
https://www.dreambible.com/search.php?q=Pornography
https://www.dreambible.com/search.php?q=Chef%27s+Hat
https://www.dreambible.com/search.php?q=blankets
https://www.dreambible.com/search.php?q=Elderly
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejungandtherestlesspod/
Check out our website for episode transcripts: https://thejungandtherestlesspodcast.com/
Submit your dreams for interpretation to thejungandtherestlesspod@gmail.com
28. Stinky Shoes and the Grief Singing
[00:00:00] Olivia: Welcome to the Jung and the Restless. I'm Olivia.
[00:00:02] Victor: I'm Victor
[00:00:03] Steve: I'm Steve.
[00:00:04] Zach: And I'm Zach. And this is the podcast where? Wait, who the fuck is Steve?
[00:00:29] Olivia: So I had a very silly dream last night that I would love to share with you.
[00:00:34] Zach: Pray, tell. Mm-hmm. On,
[00:00:36] Olivia: oh, you guys remember Tim? Mm-hmm.
[00:00:37] Victor: Love him. Yeah. I. How many albums has he put out
[00:00:40] Olivia: since probably like 27. Um, yeah, I had a Tim Dream and it was that I met Tim in a Q ffc parking lot. For those of you who are not, uh, from Washington.
QFC is our, like Kroger.
[00:00:54] Zach: Um, it's known as Ralphs in Los Angeles. Ah, king Supers in Denver.
[00:00:59] Olivia: Weird. Yeah, it's something
[00:01:00] Zach: different everywhere. Identical stores.
[00:01:03] Olivia: Yeah. Yeah. They have such a monopoly cuz like Safeway is also Kroger and so it was like Fred Meyers
[00:01:09] Zach: Albertons and Fred Meyers. Yeah. No, Albertson's a whole other thing.
Oh, is it
[00:01:13] Victor: really? Yeah. You like a cover of I've been everywhere man. But with like all the different grocery store chains instead of,
[00:01:19] Zach: is it all the different Kroger daughter
[00:01:22] Steve: companies?
[00:01:23] Victor: Yeah. Yeah. All the different brandings for Kroger. Uh,
[00:01:27] Zach: I've been a Q F C man,
[00:01:30] Olivia: so I met Tim in a QFC parking lot and he drove up in a van and I was like, what'd you bring?
And he shows me a stack of like hats that they looked like chef hats, like those silly like poofy chef hats. And, but the, on the front of all of them, it was the text check out my road rash. And I was like, nice. And he goes, there's more. And he pulls out a D V D case and. Shows it to me. And on the front it says, it says dolphin porn, an audiobook that's, and he just says Smut.
And I'm like, wow,
[00:02:13] Zach: that sounds like it would be the name of a Tim album. Yeah, he's got some experimental sensibilities.
[00:02:19] Steve: And then
[00:02:20] Olivia: the last thing he goes, and I have a ton of microfiber blankets and then I like looked over at the Q F C and Hannah, his girlfriend is standing there with her parents. And I know we're like, we're all meeting here cuz we're gonna go somewhere else together, but we're waiting for a guy.
And I remember this guy was called U F O Dave. Ah uh. And everyone kept telling me, you're really gonna like U F O Dave. And that was the
[00:02:51] Zach: whole dream. I wanna be U Ffo Dave. Oh man, that's, um, Tim
[00:02:57] Steve: Macklin. Yes, that's right. Yeah,
[00:02:59] Olivia: we could plug him again. Go check him out. Let's plug him up. Spotify Band
[00:03:02] Victor: Camp,
[00:03:03] Zach: Tim Macklin on, uh, on all those.
And also Hannah Wyatt. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
[00:03:08] Olivia: Is on. Yeah. Check out Hannah Wyatt. She's also very talented.
[00:03:12] Zach: Um, and then you'll be able, then you'll see what I mean by that. Sounds like it could be a Tim release. The whatever, pornography of dolphins or whatever you said it was called
[00:03:22] Olivia: dolphin porn.
[00:03:23] Zach: An audiobook, dolphin porn.
I feel like Tim would call it the pornography of dolphins. That's the difference.
[00:03:27] Victor: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:03:32] Olivia: But he just, he, he held it up and he goes, smut,
[00:03:36] Victor: thank you. That's in a couple of days. We're going on a camping trip with Tim and he is, he's our camp dad. Yeah. Like he knows the camping stuff. He's got the camping stuff and we're just like, okay, show me what to do. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you papa. It's gonna teach, teach
[00:03:50] Olivia: us
[00:03:50] Victor: how
[00:03:50] Steve: to fish.
Yeah. It's gonna get a little weird. I have a feeling.
[00:03:56] Olivia: As long as he leaves the dolphin porn
[00:03:58] Victor: at home,
[00:03:59] Zach: he's gonna get too drunk and fall asleep in the boat.
[00:04:03] Victor: Just like real dad. Just like real dad.
[00:04:08] Olivia: So, uh, yeah Guys, who the fuck is Steve though?
[00:04:13] Victor: Every day I ask myself, who the fuck is Steve?
[00:04:18] Steve: Question. I've been asking my whole I was gonna say,
[00:04:22] Zach: I was gonna say, do you, do you ask yourself that Steve? Who the fuck is Steve?
[00:04:27] Olivia: Yeah. So you guys may have, uh, noticed we have our first guest here on the Young and the Restless, and we're super stoked about it.
Um, you might have, you might remember us mentioning this other Super Dope Dream podcast called The Dreams That Shape Us. Um, And that is, that is Steve's baby. Um, and we're just really stoked to have connected with you on Instagram, Steve, and, um, mm-hmm. Yeah, your, your podcast is just really delightful. Um, little less like goofy and jokey than ours.
So if you want folks, if you wanna get into some like serious, Dream work. Go check out the dreams that shape us. It's delightful. Yeah.
[00:05:17] Zach: They actually do like homework and stuff.
[00:05:19] Victor: Yeah,
[00:05:20] Olivia: no, we're really shooting the shit over here and we're, this is amateur hour, so if you want the real deal, um, go check them out.
But, uh, well
[00:05:30] Steve: I appreciate, I appreciate all of that. I, I don't think you should discredit you guys as jokey amateur hour though. And you guys, you guys dive in real deep and unlike our show, you guys are in real time and I really applaud that cuz most of the dreams they come to us are already, people have been working 'em for some of 'em 20 plus years.
Yeah. So we talked, we talked
[00:05:53] Zach: about that, uh, last time, which by the way, there was a last time we, we've, this is our, this is, uh, attempt two. We had some technical difficulties. Um, And then lost a session. But last, we were talking about that being like a pretty, um, like the, the contrast between our podcasts and years is that we're new to this and we're figuring it out on the fly.
And that's sort of the, that's the podcast is like
[00:06:17] Steve: us.
[00:06:18] Olivia: We might not have done it if we realized that, uh, um, realtime dream work is like hard,
[00:06:24] Victor: hard
[00:06:25] Olivia: and like hard work. So vulnerable. I mean, we're doing it, it's fine, but like we might have chickened out if we had known what we were getting into. So,
[00:06:33] Zach: but by, by contrast, Steve has been doing it dream work for what, what, how many years?
[00:06:39] Steve: 17 and a half. Yeah. So he knows what he is talking about.
[00:06:42] Zach: Mm-hmm. And like, like you mentioned, some of his guests have been, they bring one dream to you, right? Yeah.
[00:06:49] Steve: And it's, it's something that they, it can be one or like a series of dreams that all relate to a singular
[00:06:53] Zach: story. And it's some, like, something that had like a profound effect on their life, not just their, like the dream they had that week.
Like us. Right?
[00:07:01] Steve: Yeah. I guess, uh, oh. To, to, to put a bow on it essentially. So the podcast is, Our attempt to bust a Western myth that dreams mean nothing by offering story after story of how dreams have really went to work on people's lives in a really deeply meaningful way that has shaped them in some really beautiful way that yeah, that, that really touched them in, in a certain way.
That was profound. So, yeah, so some of the dreams they, they had like 20 years ago that they can really look back and be like, damn, this is like really what this, this dream, like the profound impact that it had. Not all of 'em are that far in the past, but um, yeah, it's been, it's been a really cool ride to be able to showcase.
Just how potent dream life can be, especially over time. Uh, yeah. So that's basically the gist of it is very deeply human stories. We really dive into what was happening in their life just before the dream, how they worked the dream, and then basically what that looks like for them going forward.
[00:08:05] Olivia: That's really cool.
Like, I feel like that is like, um, like you're pulling back from like what we're doing where you, you can see the whole picture, whereas we're just now starting to realize those patterns in real time with us. Like we do have, like you, our dreams are like telling a, a story. There are threads that you can follow with each of us.
Mm-hmm. And in like,
[00:08:30] Zach: in like 300 episodes of our podcast, we'll have made one episode of the dreams that shape us.
[00:08:37] Steve: Right. Well shoot. Yeah. You guys allowed to come on our show and be like, this is what we learned over the course of two years doing our own podcast. Yeah. Yeah. And
[00:08:45] Zach: we'll have archives where we can, you can see the, the, the dream seed when it, from when it happened when we recorded it.
[00:08:52] Steve: Yeah. Man. Yeah. On this
[00:08:54] Victor: pod, I like, we kind of talk about like, oh, is it just, you know, random brain chemistry stuff happening? Is it like clear psychology, like clear, clearly answered by human psychology or is there maybe something a little spooky going on? I tend to take like a Scully approach to it. Um, but, uh, Steve, like on your podcast, you guys really get into like, Like bizarre synchronicities and really like unexplainable stuff.
Mm-hmm. Um, and just the couple of episodes I've, I've been able to listen to, I've just been like, blown away by, um, just like bizarre, uh, in, in coincidences things that really like can't be explained by coincidence. Yeah. With, in, um, story that really stuck with me, um, was, I can't, I can't remember his name, but he was the gentleman that we got the Bob HOAs.
Bob Hoss. Yeah. We, we have picked up his, um, gestalt method, um, for Dream Interpretation, uh, a few episodes ago. Bob Haas tells this story of how he came to, you know, be a dream expert. And, um, somewhere along the way there's this prof, like bizarre synchronicity where he gets a phone call from someone across the country.
Uh, that told him, uh, that they had had a dream to call this number or something like that and, and had a message specifically for him. So, uh, just, uh, unexplainable stuff.
[00:10:16] Steve: Yeah.
[00:10:17] Zach: Yeah. That's my favorite. Because these aren't, um, you know, wackadoos, you know, these aren't people who are cuckoo for cocoa. This is like a scholar.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. That's, and in any field of anything spooky, that's like, I'm, I'm, I'm sort of a U F O Dave. Myself and those, those are my favorite U f O stories. The ones from the Navy guy that has been holding on his story for 30 years, cuz he's afraid of looking, uh, like a crazy person.
Mm-hmm. Um, so the, yeah, the,
[00:10:48] Steve: the, yeah. And Bob's story in particular, like, he wrote the book, the Science of Dreaming. Like he's a very analytical dude and he, yeah, he had this bizarre string of synchronicities that even extend beyond the email. There was an email that he had, he had received from a woman. Um, she looked them up on Google after she had the dream where she had his name and the state that he lived in.
And first person that popped up on Google was him with his dream working website. And she's like, oh my God, there's a Dr. Bob HOAs that does dream work. And yeah, she sent him the email with the message and the dream and it was pertinent to something that he was actively like dealing with. And so it like brings him, it just really revolutionized the way he looks at dreams because the science man now like has a crash course in the mystery of dreaming.
And yeah, it was totally a really
[00:11:41] Zach: wild story. I want something like that to happen. I, I once had a dream that I could play trumpet and I woke, I woke up and I wrote down like nine trumpet positions that I saw on the dream with like where your fingers should go in the corresponding note. And I, I went to school that I was in high school at the time and I went to a band and I was, I went to one of the trumpet players that I was friends with and I was like, I think I learned how to play trumpet in my sleep.
And he looked at my, I learned, he looked at my chart and he was like, that's not even close,
[00:12:10] Steve: but can you
[00:12:10] Olivia: play it well? So last time we met, um, we, we put Steve in the hot seat and did some real-time dream work here on our show with him. Uh, and. Um, obviously that session is lost, but it sounds like there has been some developments to that story and yeah, we're just thinking, Steve, maybe you can, um, fill the listeners in on the work that we all did here on that dream.
Um, and then we can get into what, what has occurred to you since then. It sounds like there's also maybe a follow up dream.
[00:12:48] Steve: Um, yeah. Do you wanna talk about your dream at all? My
[00:12:52] Olivia: dream? Yeah. The, the one I just told you guys. Yeah.
[00:12:56] Steve: Hmm.
[00:12:57] Olivia: Do you guys think there's anything there or I guess there's always something there,
[00:13:00] Zach: isn't there?
Yeah. Dolphin porn has gotta be loaded
[00:13:03] Victor: with something. Dolphin
[00:13:05] Steve: porn, not to deflect from
[00:13:08] Zach: my skin. Use an inco. Use an incognito browser. Victor, if you're gonna look up dolphin porn.
[00:13:14] Steve: What's your first feelings or like associations that you have when you think of dolphin porn and the audiobook?
[00:13:21] Olivia: Hmm. Like, I, I don't know.
I feel like dolphins are like mischievous. I don't know. Like, Tim,
[00:13:31] Victor: that's a very positive connotation that in the Dream Bible, it's all about, uh, trustworthiness, social altruism, friendliness, cooperation. Um, it's a very, it's a very positive symbol. Mm-hmm. With dolphins. Yeah. What about porn? Also glowing.
[00:13:49] Steve: The neon lights,
[00:13:51] Victor: pornography to dream of a pornography video.
It was represents all pornography experience. Yeah. Okay. Um, porn, audio. I don't know if they have that. No, it,
[00:14:01] Olivia: it's fine. It was, it. What
[00:14:04] Victor: does it say? Um, represents a life experience where you're feeling good doing nothing. Desiring, fantasizing or dreaming about having something you want goals, wishes, or aspirations that feel good, but maybe out of reach.
Pornography may also reflect delusions or unrealistic fantasies and how
[00:14:21] Olivia: they, the three things he showed, he showed me three items. It was. Hat, the dolphin porn, audiobook and blankets.
[00:14:30] Steve: And what did the hat say again? Check out my
[00:14:33] Olivia: road rash.
[00:14:37] Zach: That is some, Tim, if you're listening,
[00:14:39] Steve: and it was a chef's
[00:14:40] Zach: hat too. If you're listening, Tim, start writing this down. This is, this is solid merch. Um, solid merch ideas. Um,
[00:14:48] Victor: to dream of a chef's hat represents a mood or attitude that is adept, powerful or confident in your abilities. An aspect of your personality feels knowledgeable and talented enough to totally control a situation or direct outcomes.
These are all pretty positive symbols. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:03] Zach: That's an untapped market, by the way, porn audiobooks for, for people who want to get one done on the way to work,
[00:15:11] Victor: you'd be surprised. I don't, I don't know if
[00:15:13] Olivia: that's untapped.
[00:15:16] Steve: Oh man. Those are definitely three very interesting symbols to throw at you. Yeah.
Geez. It's
[00:15:23] Victor: about
[00:15:23] Olivia: microfiber. It was specifically a microfiber
[00:15:26] Victor: blanket. I don't think we're gonna get anything from microfiber. Are you sure? I'm not sure, but yeah, you're right. I am
[00:15:32] Olivia: sure. But yeah. Blanket blankets are like
[00:15:35] Steve: probably secure. We, we've done, do you think an audiobook of dolphin porn is narrated by human?
Or do you think it's all squeaks and it's gotta be
[00:15:44] Victor: squeaks? Right.
[00:15:46] Olivia: I remember thinking it was like a joke when I looked at it like that it was gonna be, that it wasn't a serious audiobook, you know? Um,
[00:15:56] Steve: no, it's, it's,
[00:15:57] Zach: yeah, mischievous, like, I
[00:15:59] Olivia: mean, yeah. I don't know.
[00:16:01] Victor: Uh, blankets represent feelings of comfort, security, warmth, and emotional protection.
Yeah. You just got warm fuzzy feelings about going on a camping trip this weekend. Yeah, I think that's gotta be it. Yeah. No further investigation needed.
[00:16:16] Olivia: I feel like we could probably, we could really dig into this,
[00:16:18] Victor: but, uh,
[00:16:20] Zach: but yeah, it does sound so however complicated the route to get there may be, if it does, it does feel like a positive, positive dream.
Yeah.
[00:16:29] Victor: Yeah. We could walk through the gestalt method from the perspective of the dolphin porn.
[00:16:37] Olivia: I think Tim had the most energy. Oh, okay. Yeah. He was, he was like dressed kind of wacky too. He was wearing like a tunic.
[00:16:46] Zach: I think he was just inspired by Tim's camping dad energy.
[00:16:49] Victor: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:16:51] Zach: Could be. He's giving you like creative vibes.
Yeah.
[00:16:55] Victor: All right. But enough about our camping trip,
[00:17:00] Olivia: Steve. Yeah. I wanna dig
[00:17:01] Victor: into Steve. Yeah. I think we need to, um, so do you want to, I, I'm thinking like we should kind of reiterate the dream. And then kind of briefly get into where we landed as far as what we thought it might mean. Mm-hmm. And then your journey after.
So, uh, are there parts you wanna tell or are there parts you want us to tell? How do you wanna
[00:17:19] Steve: tackle that? I guess I could start by telling the dream. Sounds good. All right. So yeah, I had this dream. The night after I had tried to incubate a dream, uh, asking my dreams for information around what I thought might be my money story.
I was trying to really dive deep into understanding exactly what my big block was, surrounding money, and yeah, so I had wrote down on a piece of paper what I thought it was. That night, which had a lot to do with like, shame issues around asking for money. Feeling like I had to like overperform or like overgive or overdue just to feel worthy of asking for money.
Um, and I was like, is this it or am I missing something and is there something deeper here that I'm not seeing?
[00:18:09] Victor: It's kinda, and when you say asking for money, um, you, you were talking about, you started kind of an entrepreneurial project and you're trying to figure out how to price it right? And you had some anxiety about Yeah.
Uh, attaching what you felt was a fair price to it cuz you thought people might judge you for charging what you were charging. Yeah, exactly. Um, no, I wasn't asking for money. It was, you know, an exchange. Yeah.
[00:18:30] Zach: So that's what you're trying to incubate and. By the way, we should, do you mind briefly explaining what you mean by incubate?
[00:18:36] Steve: Yeah. So there is, let's just interrupt Steve the whole
[00:18:38] Victor: time. Yeah. Sitting on this Dream egg waiting it for win for it to hatch.
[00:18:43] Zach: I was listening to
[00:18:44] Steve: Incubus. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, there's a term out there called dream incubation where you, it's, there's many different ways you can go about doing it. Um, my little technique of like writing it on a piece of paper, I don't always do that.
Um, sometimes I just get really firm on it or I try to like, reduce what it is that I wanna ask of my dreams that night to like a very core question. Like, if there's like a lot of noise going on and I'm like trying to suss down, like, how can I like get this into a sentence? Um, that I can like really hold onto and that feels most pertinent, that, that's usually like a really good way of doing it.
Um, but yeah, essentially you can ask your dreams to help you understand things or work through things or, um, give you information like what I'm looking for. Like this is something that's very unconscious to me. Like, is this what it is or is there something deeper? Like, if you can help me try to, like, work through this or like have an image that I can hold onto that helps me work it or understand it or get on top of it.
Finally, uh, yeah, there's, there's a lot of application that you can do surrounding that kind of stuff. Um, sometimes That's so cool. Yeah. Sometimes, uh, you don't get responses. Depending on what you're asking for, if it's like, if whatever that wisdom is inside of you is like, I'm not humor in that. Like you have some big fanciful thing.
Like, I don't know what a fanciful question would be right now. Like maybe if there's
[00:20:16] Zach: like, is there a god, right?
[00:20:18] Steve: Yeah. Um, like
[00:20:21] Zach: an above human truth.
[00:20:22] Olivia: What is my life purpose
[00:20:24] Steve: like? Yeah. And I think if, I think if you were really firm and that was really pressing for you at the moment, I, I, I would say you would get something for sure if it's just like you're like, Is there a way that I can like, use telekinesis?
Like, oh
[00:20:38] Zach: well, like literally
[00:20:39] Victor: fanciful.
[00:20:40] Olivia: Okay. I
[00:20:41] Victor: see
[00:20:41] Steve: what you mean. I think I asked one time, uh, how do you see auras? And I had a weird dream that I woke up from. I was like, I don't know how I'm supposed to utilize that information. It didn't make any damn sense. Um, so
[00:20:55] Olivia: is the idea that, um, cuz like that question feel like if you're asking like about your story with money, like that feels like information that is stored in your subconscious mm-hmm.
Like from your life experiences, but something like, how do I see Aura? Like what, where, what's the ideas, right? Like, is that, um, information coming from somewhere else potentially?
[00:21:18] Zach: Yeah. I was gonna add that's along lines of what I was gonna ask is do you see it as you, when you're incubating something, are you asking your own subconscious something or do you see it as asking, uh, something else, whatever
[00:21:29] Steve: that may be, right?
Yeah, I guess, uh, I guess people will have different opinions about that. Some people really believe that our dreams are communications from the divine, however you would identify that. So I would think questions like that would maybe be, you would be posing it to some kind of supernatural force like that.
Um, that maybe, that dream space is kind of like a, a fluid, more direct communication to that kind of thing. Uh, but I would say for you, I would say, I mean, I am a spiritual guy, so partly I do believe that the dreams are connecting me with something much bigger than just myself. Um, I think even Carl Young said that our dreams are the mind of nature itself.
That's our boy. And it's just like, to me, I think that's probably the most beautiful and poetic way to look at it, is that the beautiful things about dreams is that they're, they are a spontaneous human thing that happens just as naturally as your, he beats as you breathe. Um, it's intrinsically human. Not that it's exclusively human, but uh, it's something that arises.
Out of the soup of whatever, you know? So it's like it is connected to something. To me it's connected to something far deeper than me. And if we go back to Bob Haas, something that was told to the woman in the dream that she emailed him about was that he was contacting her through the body unconscious network.
I think that's so cool. And I was like, that is the coolest term. Like, yeah, to think like there's this like, Unconscious network that our bodies are in tune with that. Yeah, we're picking up signals or information from our environment or some greater human connectedness that for whatever reason, she was able to pick up that night and was able to find them.
That's, I mean, this. That's, that's like some real spooky shit. Yeah. That's what
[00:23:30] Zach: I love about that episode, because yeah, there's a, there's a big part of my brain that's like, like Victor is, it's Scully, but mm-hmm. Down here in my guts I'm molder and I want to believe.
[00:23:40] Steve: Yeah, man, I mean there's, I think there's a lot of value in beans Scully, especially when it comes to this kind of stuff, because it can get really like woowoo and like way out there real fast, depending on who you talk to.
Um, the discernment is a, is definitely a pretty solid skill to have. Uh, but yeah, anyways, uh, Jack essentially bare bones, you can ask your dreams questions and depending on how relevant it is to your life. They either like really come to your service in that capacity like that, or they're kind of like, I don't know.
Because the thing is like, so this
[00:24:17] Zach: night it was about money. Mm-hmm. Or specifically, uh, money hangups. Or money shame or what, how, what did you put your money
[00:24:25] Steve: story, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I went to Dr. I went to sleep and I had this dream and I woke up and was like, good god, if this dream is about money, this is, this is very cloaked.
Um, so essentially the dream went that I was, I. In a performance space. It was kind of like a closest representation that I think I could paint it for you is like, um, a theater. Like you would go see a show at a theater. Um, but it was just one level. And I'm kind of standing around talking to a few people who showed up.
A lot of people showed up for it. It was almost a packed house. So like, it was amazing and I, and I was the one who was gonna be performing. It was very undefined what kind of performance I was gonna be doing, whether it was my music or, um, just kind of like a Ted Talk almost. Uh, and then I understood that my daughter, who is only six months old, was down right off of the stage where there was this understood to be like this little v i p section and I am talking to the people, but I, I have my eyes in that area just to make sure that she's safe.
Um, and before anything else can happen, all of a sudden the entire theater space was just overrun by this huge hoard of zombies and they just decimate everybody and just leave like this weird, like glaze of human all over the place. Um, if any of you used to play StarCraft, it was like a creep, just like Yeah.
All over everything. And, uh, I panicked and I, I had hid somewhere and the zombies left the room after they got everybody in that room and they were chasing people down the halls or whatnot. And I almost fled, but then I'm like, ah, may maybe my daughter is, is small enough that they didn't see her and that she's still alive by some freak chance and.
I run down into that area and sure enough she's alive and she's glowing. She's just has like this golden light that's just kind of like shining from her. Just she feels indestructible and I'm just like blown away and like, oh my God, we gotta get the hell outta here. And you can hear the moans of the zombies.
Just echoing throughout the dream and we get outside and I think I'm free, and all of a sudden I look up and there's this huge line of SUVs that are backed behind or that are in front of, that is like a line of these security looking guards who I understand are vampires. And it's kind of this like, Dun dun, dun kind of moment at very, right at the end of the dream where I'm like, fuck.
Like, what now? And for whatever reason, like they feel so much more malicious than the zombies did. They, they feel calculative, like there's a. There was something more menacing about the fact that they like had more faculty to, to get me or something. I don't know. They just like Less, less
[00:27:32] Zach: animalistic, more sinister.
Yeah,
[00:27:34] Steve: exactly. It was buried like a very sinister vibe. And that's pretty much where the dream left off. So I was like, Jesus, if this is, if this is about money. Yikes. Um, and yeah, so we started peeling it back and I was pretty sure by the end of our conversation that it was about money. Um, do you want me to just kind of recap my feelings about it?
[00:28:00] Victor: Well, let me just, uh, if we could go, uh, through like kind of how we got where we got, right? Mm-hmm. I think that, um, some connections we drew w were, um, your daughter being in the audience had to do with, you know, an increased pressure that you might be feeling about being, you know, responsible for taking care of your family at this point.
Mm-hmm. Right? And that's tied into to financial stress as, uh, you being on stage was very much about like your, your need to perform literally as a provider, you know? Mm-hmm. Um, as far as like the zombies, I can't remember if that was concerned over like, you know, you know, the, the, the unseen, uh, you know, market, you know, consumers Yeah.
Out there, right. Possibly being, being between you and your
[00:28:45] Zach: family. I remember I was trying to push that George Romero narrative, but I don't remember if it like, really, really resonated with you or not. I
[00:28:52] Steve: think, I think what I, after we talked, I was thinking about it more and I, I just really feel like, as weird as it sounds like the zombies were doing me a favor, and I think, I think we had kind of stumbled on, like, me thinking that, um, I put too much concern into worrying about the audience or like, especially in the realm of this, uh, one of the developments was like worrying about what they would be willing to pay was like a big thing that came up.
Uh, and so like the zombies dev, like just taking care of the audience was kind of like, to me in some regards, like, we're not thinking about them. They're, you can't think about them. Uh, you just have to worry about the period of what you're trying to offer, um, which was kind of wrapped up in my daughter.
And there's, there's a big thing that happens here with that, that when I work that a little bit further. Um, and yeah, I think, uh, yeah, I don't know. I feel like there's still something more about the zombies, but having a really hard time, like finding my way into that. But it just felt like, yeah, something I remember right.
[00:30:02] Victor: You, um, you kind of pretty easily dealt with them and your daughter almost had like a protective aura or, or some kind of, some kind like, um, the zombies. Were a frightening idea, but they were actually, um, an easily solved problem. Mm. You know? Mm-hmm. Um, so, you know, it could, it could be, you know, in, in some way like, you know, a purely mental barrier.
Right. Yeah.
[00:30:27] Steve: Um, so I think we really started to stumble upon, once we started to look at the vampires, cuz. Then we realized that I've gotten to this place where now I'm buttoned up against this ceiling almost, where like, I, I can't find a way to break through this last line of like, if, if we're looking at these zombies and the vampires as kind of like forces that are like trying to halt me from having the life that I, I wish or like, kind of like, uh, I think it didn't show money in this dream because I, the issue is bigger than money.
It's like, uh, it's a worth issue. And so trying to like get beyond this issue where now I have this line that feels like an actual wall that I can't get beyond, like I have to break through this wall of z of vampires, which we, we kind of stumbled on, was like, what is draining me about this situation?
Like mm-hmm. What is the, the kind of toxic force. A shame issue or whatever, that just sucks the life outta me, essentially. Um, and why can't I get through it? Like, why am I, how am I buttoning up against this thing that is sinister? It, it feels really gross. It feels like. Yeah, because money
[00:31:40] Zach: is, or net worth is one number on one type of quote unquote, worth.
But if the issue is, is beyond that and is about general worth, then they're gonna be inextricably tied. Yeah. Together, right? Mm-hmm.
[00:31:57] Steve: Yeah. So I, uh, I brought this to the men's group that I'm in and, uh, was like, I, I'm trying to do this, this program. And, uh, so basically like the program I'm trying to do right now is like helping musicians integrate dreams into their creative process.
Mm-hmm. And, uh, get sick as hell. Yeah, man. I'm really excited about it. And I was like, I'm trying to figure out what, you know, what the price is set because. I have such a hard time like putting the price on this kind of stuff, and I've want it accessible. I want people to be able to have access to it, but at the same time, this is a lot of my time.
This is a lot of work on my part, and I've had, I have like 17 years worth of experience doing this to offer. I feel like, yeah, that's worse than time. My expertise and my time should be, I should feel, I should feel worthy of asking for money. So this is like what I'm butting up against. Um, and so I brought it to them and I'm like, here's the dream that I had.
Uh, wondering if you guys can look at this with me in relation to this, and if you can just press me hard about certain issues. Cuz we have like this whole really cool interview process where we like use a Socratic method to like really get to the heart of things. And yeah, so they just started like really pressing me and one of 'em was like, uh, so if you didn't have any fear surrounding any of this, like, what do you think you'd wanna price us at?
And I'm like, ah, fuck. Um, and I was like, I don't know. If there was no fear, like, I don't know, 800 bucks would sound pretty good. And he is like, okay, well how do you feel about that? Does that bring anything up for you? And I was like, surprisingly, I don't know. That feels actually okay. And another guy was like, well, let's put you, let's push you outta your comfort zone a little bit.
Uh, how does like 1200 sound? And I'm like, That feels a lot edgier. And they're kinda like, well, why? And I'm like, because I feel like nobody's gonna want to pay that. And I'm like, I do want this accessible. I want people to, to come to it. I'm more concerned about people coming to it than I am to make money, uh, because I just really love the material.
I wanna share it. But I, I am the only income in my household right now, and I really need more money. I have two kids, one's very young. My wife is at home with her right now. And, uh, yeah. So, so anyways, uh, so we work through that, work through that. Um, and the big breakthrough moment that I had with it was, One of the guys was like, well, let's bring it back to the dream real quick.
Uh, what remained in the theater when the zombies killed everything? And I'm like, my daughter. And he goes, what is she worth to you? And I just like, oh, I just got chills right now. I was just like, that could, that could like, really make me cry about this right now. And I like, was getting really choked up.
And they were just like, tell me more. What's, what is, what does that, why does that make you emotional? And I'm like, because if it's trying to make the association that my passion and the value that I have to offer is synonymous with what I feel for my daughter, that I love this work that much, and that this really is like my greatest passion in life.
There's so much value in that. And the, that's almost like my way around this situation is to, is that. I am concerned about what other people are willing to pay, and I'm downplaying the value that I have to bring and I'm downplaying how valuable what I have to offer is and what my time is worth. And that's the fucking wall I keep getting hit about hit I keep running into is that they're like, I think you're, you're hung up over a hangup.
Like your hangup is the fact that you're hung up on worrying about what other people are willing to pay. And it's not so much that you have like, An issue asking for money is that you're like, too worried about, you're like hung up on a hangup and that if you, and basically the way I took, I took away from that was like, yeah, if I can forget about the audience, the audience is dead.
They're gone. Don't have to think about them. Just worry about the purity of what I'm here to bring and to offer and to really truly know it's value. And that if I can honor that, it doesn't matter. Like people will pay it if they want to pay it, and if they don't, they don't. I don't know. I, it's kinda like, it's still a little convoluted in my head, but I mean, that moment was so beautiful and yeah, it just felt like a huge release of like really seen like just how much this really doesn't mean to me.
And, uh, so that, that's.
[00:36:40] Zach: That's what you mean by you feel like the zombies were almost doing you a favor cuz you're, you're talking about cutting out the audience. They did that for you, right? Yeah. We don't worry about this hangup with the audience.
[00:36:53] Steve: Yeah, cuz I mean, as a historically horrid people pleaser, I'm just so geared to like pander to other people and I've always downplayed my own worth and my own sense of.
Self to appease other people. And yeah, I just really feel like seeing my daughter in that moment and the feeling that came through when he asked me what she's worth to me was just like, she was almost like a soul image at that point. Where, Hmm, like, I don't know. It, it was, it's, it's almost like, it's almost like a wordless feeling that I, I don't know if I could really, truly articulate, like, how that just reached into my heart was just like, woo.
Yeah. When you frame it that way. Yeah. Let
[00:37:42] Olivia: me know if this resonates or not, but what, when you were talking about that, what that some of that brings up for me is like rejection, sensitivity, and like the idea that like, well if I price this at like a hundred dollars, then. There's a lot of people who would be like, that's a great deal.
I would love to sign up for that. Whereas if I price it at $1,200, what or what, whatever, I think it's actually worth, there will be people who are like, who, who the fuck does this guy think he is? Right? Like, that's not worth it. And like that, that hurts. Like the idea that people have that reaction is like, because I, I can relate to that, where it's like, Even if enough people signed up to where that was much more worth your time.
The idea that there's like a lot of people who were interested and looked at it and were turned off by the idea that I priced something like that. Yeah. And like had ideas about me, that feels like a rejection to me, and I can be sensitive to that kind of
[00:38:44] Steve: thing. Yeah, no, that's, that's so true. And I think that actually like really ties into the vampire part where Yeah, my, I don't know.
I've always, like with the people pleasing thing, it's, it is, It's been such a sinister thing in my life. It really has. Where like, I moved around a lot as a kid. I've lived in eight states and like five of 'em were like before I was like 13. And I was constantly, I people pleasing, became my like survival mechanism to make friends quick and to not have to feel like such an outcast.
Um, and I have a pretty easygoing personality, so I do make friends quickly, but being a people pleaser just like made it all easier. And I, I think I am absolutely terrified. Something that I've had to work on the last. However many years, five years or so is that you don't need everybody to love you, to feel like you can love yourself.
Like what a shitty recipe for self worth to think that if one person out of a group does not like you, that it like spoils everything else. That's like the mentality that I've had my whole life of feeling like if I don't have unit. Unanimous, unanimous love from people that, uh, somehow I'm, I'm not worthy of love at all.
And so I think, I think that has a lot to do with it, that if, if I price it at even 800 and nobody shows up, then I'm going to, I'm gonna like, it is gonna like, suck the life out of me to where I feel like. That rejection has something to say about me when it shouldn't necessarily, you know? Um, and if I did price it at a hundred bucks and nobody still showed up, you know, it's like there's such like a, yeah.
I don't know. It's a, it's a really bad recipe for being a creative person to have such steep worth issues, but I think most of us probably have them. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
[00:40:48] Olivia: No, it's like a necessity for being a creative person.
[00:40:52] Zach: Yeah. You should come down here to LA and see what people are charging for, for the most main bullshit, if this helps put it in perspective.
I just looked up, uh, the Goop Summit.
[00:41:04] Steve: Oh boy. Yeah. How
[00:41:05] Olivia: much are paying, are people paying
[00:41:07] Zach: to do Gwyneth to do yoga and then go to a, a cocktail party hosted like Gwyneth Paltrow, $1,500. Oh wow.
[00:41:15] Steve: Wow. For
[00:41:15] Zach: one day. That's one day. Yeah. Granted, granted you haven't been in shallow how. But
[00:41:24] Victor: you know, like, um, whatever you end up pricing it and, and whether that initial attempt, you know, succeeds or fails or anything like that, like the, like you're saying, the real trap is like pinning yourself worth on it, or like pinning the idea that it has failed as like a reflection upon you as, um, you know, a guy that people like or don't like or anything like that.
You know, that's just gonna get in your way of, of, um, honestly evaluating the project, you know? Mm-hmm. And, and letting that thing stand on its own legs. Yeah. Um, and then, you know, if it's succeeding, leaning into that, and if it's failing, you know, walking away and moving on to the next thing without being burdened by it, you know?
Yeah. Like, um, like I, uh, I haven't put music out for. Uh, like seven or eight years. Right. I just like went, went dead quiet cuz I was like all fucked up in my head about, uh, um, releasing new stuff. It was like, the longer I went without putting out music, the more it had to be like amazing when I released stuff.
Mm-hmm. Finally got to a place where I, I put stuff out, like all excited about it. Uh, and I've had to, I've had to like, Sit, um, comfortably with like the, like, you know, 10 Spotify listeners, you know, or like, you know, the, like the 15 streams on the thing I finally released after like eight years, you know?
Mm-hmm. And it's like, that's okay. Like, I need, I need to be okay with that, otherwise I'm gonna go fucking crazy, you know? Yeah. Because, um, like work, I'm working on a thing, working on any one thing is not like the thing that defines you, you know? And also like no success or failure, um, ultimately, um, sums you up as a person.
[00:43:11] Zach: Yeah. At this point I kind of put out music as a matter of, uh, posterity. Yeah. I, I, I, when I put music out, it, it's almost like, well, this is in case my laptop shit's the bed. Mm. Yeah. Like, it's still out there on the internet.
[00:43:27] Steve: Nice. Yeah. Yeah, man.
[00:43:29] Victor: Yeah. But I, I mean, I, I got so in my own way, being fucked up in my head about putting music out for years and years and years, and I'm just finally getting to where I'm doing that, you know?
Um, cuz I, I was putting too much of my self worth on it. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[00:43:43] Olivia: I, I think, I think anywhere, any part of your life or part of yourself where you hang your hat Yeah. Is gonna be the place where you're the most insecure. And the place where you've got like the most hangups that are gonna hold you back, like mm-hmm.
Yeah. Um, it's a trap. It is. Yeah. And it's like, uh, you, you see it all the time where it's like, if somebody sees their value as that, they're beautiful. Like they're physical beauty. Those are the people who are the most insecure about, they've really, I've been trying to, this is not a go through that barrier, not a blanket statement, but like oftentimes people, that's a personal, people who are just like,
[00:44:26] Steve: oh man, peop, thank you for saying the word barrier, that like, this self worth issue is a barrier to me.
Moving forward.
[00:44:34] Victor: I think it is important to remember like the price isn't the only factor here. Yeah. On whether the thing succeeds or fails, right. There's all sorts of stuff. Mm-hmm. It's like you do a thing, uh, or you put something out on the wrong day or in the wrong environment, you don't push the right way or you don't post the right flyer on the right poll or whatever.
Is the whole fucking difference between it being a massive success and a massive failure and a lot of that stuff is kinda outta your control. Mm-hmm. You just gotta shoot your shot and um, and then keep moving, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Don't let it slow you down.
[00:45:05] Steve: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Cause I think I've, I've allowed that.
I've always put stuff out, but I've. Put stuff outta sheepishly, like bracing myself for due to the vampire wall. Uh, so yeah, I, that isn't, I did have a, a follow up dream after, had this big breakthrough with the guys and, uh, it seemed to, seemed to be like a huge encouragement for me to go forward with strength, which now, if we're looking at the vampire line as like this barrier, this self-worth barrier, where until I break through that fucker, the vampires are gonna suck me dead and they're gonna suck.
They're gonna train me, train my, train. The life out of me, uh, was basically, I had a lucid dream and I, uh, the guys that I was with when I became lucid started running really fast in a very specific direction, and I was trying to follow them. And it was like we were trying to get to a certain point, like a certain place, and it was like we were running towards this place, which is kind of what I feel like I'm doing right now where I'm, I'm trying to get to this place of like having my creative work be more of a financially supportive kind of thing in my life.
And, uh, supplemental at least. And you're
[00:46:27] Zach: backpedaling, you're doing, you're doing the artist thing where you're like, well, it's supplemental. At least you're like, you're not going all in.
[00:46:33] Steve: Oh, that's so true. And I kept doing that with the guys where I was just like, I would backpedal on thinking that 800 was enough or like that I was worthy of that.
And I fought with that for a few days after that too. I was just like, and I'm like, I broke it down one time. I was like, all right, that's a hundred bucks a week. I think my time is worth a hundred bucks a week. And I was able to kind of work myself around it that way. And, um,
[00:46:57] Zach: and the Goop Summits one day.
Oh,
[00:46:59] Steve: fucking one day. Just remember the Goop summit. That'll be really helpful. And the Goop that was in the theater. Yeah, man. Let's, it's all connected. The human
[00:47:08] Olivia: goop. That was the Goop Summit.
[00:47:11] Victor: Uh, I do think, like, you know, It, there's a difference between like, you know, it's not like the, the more self-worth you have, the higher you're gonna Right.
Price your product. Right? Yeah. It's not like, oh, now I really believe in myself, so now I'm gonna charge $2,000. Right. $5,000. That's, that's not it. It's that, um, there's an objective kind of value to the thing that you're doing. Mm-hmm. And you're just trying to see that clearly. Right. You know? Yeah. And, um, there's a relationship between price and like how many people are gonna sign up and all you should care about is getting, like, finding that price point that's like the best deal for you.
And then all where like, you know, the difference between five people and 10 people signing up, the math adds up. You're ending up in a better position than you were if you priced it differently, right? Mm-hmm. Um, that's all you should care about, right? And like separating that from, oh, but am I, am I a good boy?
Did I do a good job? Do these people like me? Are, are people judging me for what I price the thing at getting all of that, like, emotional baggage outta there. Yeah, that's true. And just like treating as a project, you know? Mm-hmm. Like maybe $800 is the right price. Maybe $400 is the right price. Right. But that is separate from your worth as a person.
[00:48:30] Zach: Yeah, that's true. Because when you can separate those two, then your, your response to whatever the outcome is, is like, well, those are the numbers.
[00:48:37] Victor: Right, right. You know, try 800 or like, try 1200. See how many people bite. Mm-hmm. And then do it again and try 800 and see how many people That's a information for you.
Yeah. It's just data points, you know? Yeah, definitely. But none of it is a reflection of your self worth, right?
[00:48:53] Steve: Yeah, definitely. Thank you for that. Yeah. So that dream of the running, I'm running, but I'm like running in quicksand. I'm almost like I can't run to save my life and I'm lucid, but I can't like will myself to go faster no matter how much I try.
And a couple of the guys noticed that I'm not hacking it. And I, they come back and they're like, what's going on man? And I'm like, I don't know, I can't run at all. And they're like, well what, what do you think your hangup is with this? And I'm like, I don't know. I guess I've been kind of just like leaving myself open for, it was kind of like an idea that, uh, how do you say this?
Kinda like the wind would propel me forward or like God would like, I think, I think I actually said the words, I was hoping that God would just, you know, propel me forward or something like that. Um, this is in
[00:49:41] Zach: the dream you're having this dialectic?
[00:49:42] Steve: Yeah. Yeah. And they kind of looked at me like, I dunno if that's quite how that works.
Um, Which in Lucid Dreams previous, I have opened myself to the dream, uh, and have asked for the dream to show me things or stuff like that. And this force does come up and grabs me and takes me somewhere. So that's like what I'm kind of like banking on as I'm trying to do this. And, uh, they kind of were like, nah, I don't think that's quite how that works.
And so then I tried running again and I was coaching myself and was kind of like, I can do this. I can do this. I know I can do this. This is easy, and I could run. And then as soon as I got good at that, like the guys jumped in the air and they started flying. And I'm like, okay. And I jumped in the air and I've flown many times in the lucid dream.
Couldn't fly this time. Just kept lowering back down to the ground softly. And again, realized instantly what I was doing again, was just hoping that if I jump in the air, like it'll happen. And I started coaching myself again, was like, we know how to do this. We've flown many times, we can do this, we can do this, we can do this.
And, uh, was able to fly. And I think it was just like a really beautiful encouragement, uh, for me to recognize like a lot of this is out of my hands. But the things that I can't control, like to really have belief in myself that this is important to me, this is beautiful. I have to go at it with like a, a warrior like spirit, not like afraid that this is gonna fall flat on his face and I've damned myself before I can even begin.
Um, so that was like really, really helpful.
[00:51:23] Zach: Yeah. You can't put, you can't put one thing sheepishly out and hope that God takes it from there. You have to, yeah. Yeah,
[00:51:31] Victor: yeah. That's right. Yeah. There's, there's, there's another trap that, that you can fall into. And I, I say that cuz like I've struggled with all mm-hmm.
The same stuff. All the same stuff. I, I feel like I've, I've had to work on and still work on Yeah. You're speaking Victor's an eye language. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but there, there's another trap you can fall into where you can tell yourself that if you didn't go all in on something, And you didn't really try, then it's not a reflection of your self-worth, you know?
Uh, and it's a way to try and shield yourself from those feelings. Right. You know, it's like, oh, well I didn't, I I didn't really try the thing, you know, I just, I, I, you know, I threw it out there, but I didn't really care about it and I moved on, you know? Right. And it's just all like, emotional self sh shielding, you know?
Right. And, um, it's, it just gets in your way, you know, and it doesn't help you. And like, ultimately it doesn't change anything other than, um, you know, you tried less hard, you put less of yourself into something. Yeah. Um, you made yourself less likely to succeed. Mm-hmm.
[00:52:35] Steve: Yeah, man, damn, dude.
[00:52:39] Zach: Blew my mind with that one.
[00:52:43] Steve: Hell yeah. Well, do you wanna get to the dream I was bringing with you, with you guys?
[00:52:47] Olivia: Yeah, I wanna hear that. Yeah, see, maybe that ties in here. We can wrap up the episode with that.
[00:52:53] Victor: Do you guys ever
[00:52:54] Steve: name your dreams?
[00:52:55] Olivia: No, but I actually
[00:52:56] Zach: sometimes, I mean, kind of the way we name our episodes sometimes. Yeah,
[00:53:00] Olivia: yeah, yeah, I do in my notes, but it's usually gibberish.
[00:53:07] Steve: Uh, so this one I named Stinky Shoes and Grief Singing. Uh, so yeah, this was, uh, beautiful.
[00:53:15] Zach: I named my Dreams like Friends episodes, the one with the pocket pussy.
[00:53:24] Steve: So yeah. So this was on May 6th. Um, so yeah, I'm in a bedroom, like room in a house with you three, and we're trying to work on our episode together. And when I entered the room, so this is kind of like your guys' house. Essentially. Um, and I walk into the room that you guys are all in. We got the recording gear out, and I take my shoes off on the inside of the door and I leave them there and they stink really bad.
Like really bad. Like almost like you can see the smell in the air, like, and I'm like very, very embarrassed about it. And the scene shifts really quickly. And I'm outside a house, probably that house, and I begin singing a song that kind of rises up in the dream. It's, it's like guitar riff, but I don't, I seem to know it in the dream, but I couldn't tell you what it is now.
And instead of singing words to it, I'm just wailing, crying. And so like, it's, but it's, autotune is a bad word, but it's like the whales are like trying to be melodic. Like, I'm trying to like cry in a way that is like, I think I can hear this. Yeah, yeah. Instead of words, it's like cry. Like, I don't know how to, I might have to try to attempt to write a song like that to have it make any sense.
Um, and yeah. And so then I continue, it's, it's a weird neighborhood. Like it's, it's farm like, but the farm plots are really small and there's almost no crops in them. And the layout is. Not very country-like, they're just like small little square plots in a grid like fashion, kind of like in a suburban neighborhood.
Um, so if you imagine like the size of a house was like the size of each of these plots, and there was really only one, there was only like one or two houses in this neighborhood and one of 'em I walked by, I'm still kind of crying to myself and. I walked by this one house that I know there's this old crotch chicken man that lives in there, and it's a small white house, and I almost know that he's like looking through his blinds at me and I have this really sharp feeling that, oh, I gotta, I gotta, you know, stop crying.
I gotta, I can't look like a little wissy in front of this guy. And yeah, then I come to this final plot at the end of one of these streets, and it has this new garden that's growing in it. It has almost like this like trellis um, opening where like you would walk through the trellis opening and like you'd be in the garden and it felt very inviting.
It felt almost nourishing to be there. There was like a bit of magic, like I felt like I was home almost. And that's pretty much where that dream ended off. But I told my son that dream and he really liked the stinky shoe part.
[00:56:25] Zach: Yeah. What, what is that
[00:56:26] Victor: first
[00:56:27] Olivia: whole scene to, to me, made me think? It was about like your recording equipment shitting the bed last time, and like you worrying that you came into our house and stunk up the place.
[00:56:42] Zach: What, what did you, what did you name it? The stanky shoes. Blues or
[00:56:45] Steve: what? Uh, the stinky shoes and the grief singing. Uh, what was it? Stinky shoes. Stinky shoes In the grief. Singing.
[00:56:53] Zach: That sounds like a Motown band.
[00:56:58] Olivia: I wonder if there's something in the shoe entry about Stinky
[00:57:02] Zach: shoes. I love the idea of us having a young and the restless studio where we can record in person. That would be sick. Yeah, but
[00:57:11] Olivia: it was just a bedroom still. Like, we're like, we're actually recording. We were just together in a bedroom.
[00:57:18] Steve: Yeah. Well, my first associations with the stinky shoes was feeling like, you know, our feet.
Are the place in our body that releases a lot of toxins. Mm. And uh, I think I, I came across whatever the statistic on like how many toxins your feet release like a couple years ago. I can't, I couldn't tell you what it is now, but it was like, damn. Um, was that your root chakra? Yeah. And so, yeah, I was like, Hmm, what kind of weird, nasty shit do I need to release on this episode?
[00:57:56] Victor: Yeah. I mean, it could be just a reflection of, um, you know, it, it's real uncomfortable to get vulnerable on the pod and do like the live dream interpretation thing. It's weird.
[00:58:06] Olivia: We know. Trust
[00:58:07] Victor: us. Yeah. Yeah. Might have felt some feelings about that.
[00:58:12] Zach: Um, and then yeah, like Olivia was saying, to have, yeah. Yeah.
To have the technical difficulties.
[00:58:18] Steve: Mm.
[00:58:18] Victor: Um, but then it led you to a garden and a sense of peace. Right. So it's like, you know, maybe ultimately constructive. Yeah. It does
[00:58:26] Olivia: kind of sound like if you walk through this dream piece by piece, it sounds like the process, it's like telling the story of you processing this dream, right?
Yeah. Like you brought it to us, uh, and spank up the place, spank up the place you went outside and then the wailing, like, uh, you said you ha you like had like an e emotional Yeah. Reaction processing that with your men's group. Um, and then like ultimately the garden, um, Yeah, the Dream Bible says something meaningful that is developing in your life.
Um, so like, yeah, maybe that is like the ultimate end of this, the process of you doing the work on this
[00:59:07] Zach: dream. I'm not looking at the dream Bible, but I assume in addition to meaningful, it also uses the word fertile.
[00:59:14] Victor: Let, let me read this whole paragraph cuz it, it's exactly what we're talking about. The dream of a garden represents something meaningful that is developing in your life, developing in new ways, or growing as a person you are cultivating or slowly growing some new area of your life.
A garden may also reflect a learning experience or teaching others something that takes time, new ideas that take time to develop. Mm-hmm.
[00:59:37] Zach: Didn't say fertile once. No dude, not once, not eternity.
[00:59:42] Olivia: There's an evil garden.
[00:59:44] Zach: Well,
[00:59:45] Victor: how evil was this garden?
[00:59:48] Steve: That guy felt pretty evil. He felt like, uh, if you've seen that animated movie up, the old Crotchety Man.
Yeah.
[00:59:56] Olivia: What we've old men have come up in, in on our podcast quite a bit actually.
[01:00:02] Zach: Um mm-hmm. I dream about them all the time. Yeah.
[01:00:06] Olivia: Um, old,
[01:00:08] Victor: old men may reflect, experiencing, asserting yourself or embarrassing others. Hmm. Yeah. So maybe a reflection of like, discomfort with asserting yourself, you know, and as reflected by these business decisions you're making.
I dunno, to dream of elderly people represents experience or wisdom to know better. Having been there and done that, re-experiencing a similar situation. Sound advice coming from experience may also reflect boredom was something you know too well. Hmm.
[01:00:38] Zach: But you were concerned about this old man seeing you cry, right?
[01:00:42] Steve: Yeah. That was a big thing about it.
[01:00:44] Olivia: That's, um, the men entry kind of has some stuff about, it's all about like dominance and like typical like macho bullshit. Um, so that kind
[01:00:55] Zach: of, all right, Olivia, we get it.
[01:01:01] Olivia: Assertive,
[01:01:01] Victor: aggressive, rational, practical or
[01:01:04] Steve: insensitive.
[01:01:07] Victor: So what were we doing while you were taking off your stinky shoes? Like were we, were we cool about it or were we like making faces
[01:01:14] Steve: or? Yeah, I think you guys were mostly fine. I don't remember. Like, you guys were being like, damn, dude, get the fuck outta here.
Right. So you just
[01:01:24] Zach: immediately left in embarrassment.
[01:01:27] Steve: Um, I was really embarrassed, but I think the scene just shifted. Mm-hmm. So I didn't actually, yeah, I didn't, didn't show me there very long.
[01:01:36] Victor: Did you have your shoes back on when you were back on the road?
[01:01:38] Steve: Barefoot? Don't remember specifically, but I don't remember being barefoot.
[01:01:43] Zach: I relate by, I have pre naturally stinky feet.
[01:01:49] Olivia: You're releasing a lot of toxins.
[01:01:51] Victor: Yeah.
[01:01:51] Steve: Gotcha. You know, I just feel like, uh, the, the old man there was, there's something there that it, it kind of felt like he. In some other more specific way is maybe kind of like tied to the vampires? Well, like where it was kind of like, it was kind of like, uh, I don't know.
It felt very patriarchal in that way of like, oh fuck, I look like a total fucking wooy right now. I like, uh, I better shape up and this guy's gonna yell at me for being such a, and yeah. So I felt like in some way, like, I don't know. I would almo, I, I was thinking about it last couple days and I'm like, maybe I could, we could either do like a role playing with the guy or we could do, they could just stall the Bob's.
Either, either like one of you or I could be the old man and I would dialogue with one of you guys. Oh, role playing. Could
[01:02:49] Victor: do real
[01:02:50] Olivia: gestalt. Yeah,
[01:02:51] Victor: that's like
[01:02:51] Steve: therapy gestalts. Or we could do like a, just do the gestalt. I'm, I'm not good at improv, but I'm not sure if I would want be the old man if it would be more powerful if I was the old man.
Or I've, I've
[01:03:03] Zach: tried to do role playing in therapy and I revert to being funny and that's not how it's supposed to work. That's,
[01:03:10] Victor: that's
[01:03:10] Olivia: your discomfort
[01:03:11] Zach: in the situation. Can I get a suggestion from the audience?
[01:03:16] Victor: I think it makes sense for you to be the old man, right? Yeah. Because the old man is, uh, an aspect of yourself, you know, that you're not connecting with yet, you know?
Um, so none of us have any way to channel that for you. Right, right. You know? But, um, we can like semi represent your conscious mind and ask some questions based on our conversation.
[01:03:36] Steve: Wonder if we should do the gestalt. I'll get into character and then Yeah, maybe let's try, maybe we can do role play at that point.
[01:03:43] Victor: Let's get it to go. Let's just, let's just take crack at it. See where we get, we get bored. We'll do something else.
[01:03:49] Steve: We'll pop on the dolphin porn. Squeak,
[01:03:54] Victor: squeak, squeak. We're we're a dolphin. That's my dolphin impression book. Okay. Shake off Steve. Get Steve outta your body. Good. Yeah. There you go.
[01:04:05] Steve: Yeah. All, hold on.
Let me, uh, I give you, lemme walk in the house here. Yeah.
[01:04:10] Zach: You are the old man. Okay.
[01:04:14] Steve: All right.
[01:04:15] Victor: My purpose is
[01:04:18] Steve: to make him pay.
All
[01:04:23] Victor: right. My goal is
[01:04:29] Steve: to kind of be a stick in the mud. That's not the best way I can describe the feeling that just came over me.
[01:04:35] Victor: No, first that best thought. Yeah. My biggest fear is that I'm not enough.
I love
[01:04:48] Steve: oof. Uh, there was a similar kind of soulful feeling that just ripped through his body. Mm. Like I had when I made that connection with my daughter.
But it's like he's, I hate he stuffed it down. Mm. What was that next prompt? I hate, yeah. I hate the fact I do this to myself
[01:05:17] Victor: and I desire, or
[01:05:19] Steve: I wish, I wish to be like that young man outside crying. Brave enough at least to, yeah. I wish I was that brave.
[01:05:34] Victor: What do you think of the young man?
[01:05:39] Steve: I think he's beautiful. I think he's a wonderful person
and I, yeah, like there's this deep wish to be like that. To be that open and honest.
Do you
[01:05:59] Victor: know the garden?
[01:06:04] Steve: I know the garden in front of my house, which has basically nothing growing in it.
Can you
[01:06:13] Victor: be like the young man?
[01:06:17] Steve: I'd have to walk out of this house and that feels really scary.
[01:06:25] Victor: What's holding you back?
[01:06:29] Steve: Putting myself out there,
being vulnerable. I'm very safe inside this little house that I just peeked through the window,
but it doesn't really feel safe at the same time.
What's the worst that could happen?
It feels really liberating. The thought of walking out that door. So I don't know why I resist it so deeply. There's only beauty on the other side of this threshold.
[01:07:11] Victor: Are you your only barrier?
[01:07:16] Steve: Yeah, and it feels, it feels like there. There's a for, it feels like there's a force field and I don't know how to break through that.
[01:07:28] Victor: Why do you hold yourself
[01:07:30] Steve: back?
I don't know. The more I think around it, the, the, the less strength that that forest field certainly has, and I think I've just concocted this, this whole story inside of my head that
I don't know. Keep going. I don't know. I think I'm gonna try to walk out the door. Okay. My
[01:08:04] Olivia: husband is the hypnotherapist.
[01:08:08] Zach: Yeah. Damn dude. Really? Off-roading with the gestalt method. Dude,
[01:08:12] Steve: bro, that was fucking amazing. You
[01:08:16] Olivia: fully just did a hypnotherapy session. Cool. You
[01:08:19] Victor: fully
[01:08:20] Zach: did that Htic. Cool.
[01:08:23] Olivia: Wow. That was cool.
[01:08:25] Steve: Damn, dude. Thank you for that. You just fucking crushed that. That was exactly what I needed. Holy fuck.
[01:08:31] Victor: That was powerful, man. You really, you dove into that and it was really cool where you went
[01:08:36] Steve: with it. I really felt him in me. I like was man. Yeah. I just like, really, I walk, I imagined myself walking in the house and sitting into his body and then like I asked that energy that was in the dream to just like move into me and to like speak and it was like, whoa.
Like all the feelings just instantly and just like knowing exactly how he feels and the thing that was so like tragic as I was going through it was like, these are all my feelings. Yeah.
[01:09:06] Zach: Like, yeah. That was a really interesting flip of the perspective from Yeah. Yeah. From you to him.
[01:09:12] Victor: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[01:09:14] Olivia: You know my like.
My one, um, complaint about the Gestalt method so far has been that it takes a minute to get into Yeah. To embody that other being. Right. And I, I've always found that like around question three or four, something shifts in me and the first few felt like I was just kind of warming up.
[01:09:35] Zach: Yeah. We, yeah. We've found that it's almost helpful to do it again, so Yeah.
Yeah. To, to, maybe it's even better to just keep going with the Yeah. Maybe the questions that come to mind like Victor was just doing. Mm-hmm.
[01:09:46] Steve: Well, damn, dude, you got Victor on your team. That's
[01:09:50] Olivia: Yeah. Holy cow. What
[01:09:51] Steve: bro? Holy folks. I was
[01:09:53] Victor: like, it's a really powerful technique. It's very cool. Yeah. Thank you Bob Hoss,
[01:09:59] Steve: man, those are just the most choice questions, man.
They like were exactly what I needed, dude. Thank you.
[01:10:05] Victor: I'm so glad. Cool experiment. I'm glad we, we tried it. Yeah. Well, shit, what do we talk about now? Well, I was gonna say, how do you,
[01:10:14] Zach: yeah. How do you sum up what just happened? Like how do you re Yeah.
[01:10:17] Steve: Did you guys possibly can't write any of that down? Yeah,
[01:10:20] Victor: he wrote it down, wrote it all down.
Let's, let's email that to him. So my purpose is to make him pay. My goal is to kind of be a stick in the mud. My biggest fear is that I'm not enough. I love, and this is where you really connected to your feelings about your daughter. Mm-hmm. I hate the fact I do this to myself. I wish to be like that young man outside crying.
What do you think of the young man? I think he's beautiful. I think he's wonderful. I wish to be like that.
[01:10:53] Zach: Can I interrupt right here? Yeah. I, I, that was the interesting Yeah. Shift. I, this is before you started Offroading, I think, right? Yeah. This is still within the, yeah, it's right around there. The confines.
Because that, yeah. That, that shift right there, uh, seemed really pivotal to me because when you were first talking about the old man, you were like, you, you were concerned about him seeing you as a woosie, which I initially laughed at because I could see you like not using other words that wouldn't maybe not be pc, that the old, maybe the old man would use.
Right. And land in landing on Woosie and then embodying him. Uh, it's not about that at all. It's, it's not about, uh, judgment. It's about envy.
[01:11:39] Olivia: Yeah. Um, when you said that I'm not enough, that struck me as like mm-hmm. A shift.
[01:11:44] Steve: Yeah. That, that was, yeah. That was definitely where it was like, oh fuck, this isn't about him being like this macho man that like wants, cause at first, like with the make him pay, I was like, yeah, this feels like he's like this strong alpha fucking douche bag wanting to like continue the story of patriarchy or like uphold that in some way.
When the,
[01:12:08] Zach: the thing that, that you're like doing the the grief song. The stinky shoes grief song is what you're initially worried about being like, panned for, but it's actually what he is seemingly like the, the most envious of, like, I wish I could express myself like that. I wish I was that sense. I wish I could go outside and, and be that
[01:12:27] Steve: free.
Yeah. I, I make, I want him to pay because I can't, I, I don't allow myself to feel that. It's like a really bad shadow projection on his part. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like if, yeah, it's
[01:12:39] Zach: like a resentment. If I never did that out of fear of consequence, then he shouldn't get to do that without consequence.
[01:12:46] Steve: Yeah, yeah,
[01:12:47] Victor: exactly.
Which is so true. You know, I mean that, that plays out a lot, um, in like just day to day dealing with other people, you know? Um,
[01:12:56] Steve: yeah, man, lemme see if I can pull this up. Okay. Yeah. So because right around I'm not enough was a huge shift for me. And then one. Felt that same, like what he really loved was, was feeling that true expression of himself come up.
Yeah. And it felt so soulful and beautiful and yeah. Then I, I hate, I hate the fact that I do this to myself was just like, bam, we're like really pulling back the layers here. Like Jesus Christ. Oh man. So yeah, there's, there's so much there for me to work with and like seeing that as like a really deep reflection of myself in this.
And that maybe some of the vampire energy that drains me is the fact that there is this, this part of me, maybe it's an old man, because it's an old story, it's something that hangs on me like a tired old story. And it it, there's some kind of self-deprecating aspect to this of like making me want to pay for being bigger, for allowing myself to dream bigger or to allow my way of expressing myself in this world to be bigger and to be that, that there's, uh, that there's some part of me that still wants to be a stick in the mud and not do that.
And it's, it's fighting me on it, but really all he wants to do is to join me and that we can be together in it, that I can be truly unified within myself. And I, it wasn't until, uh, You just said it again that I realized that the grief singing like that kind of ties into the pro the what I'm trying to do, like this musician dreamwork chorus is all about us, like allowing the dreams to inspire music that kind of comes from your depths, that helps you to work through things in a very dream working kind of way.
Where like the music that you're writing is your creative way of working the dream essentially, and processing and working through the point that it brings up for you to write about. So offering you songs that help you to have a creative avenue into that grief space or that wound that you carry, or you know, it's just a deep way of doing healing work.
Creatively as a musician, writing something truly vulnerable, that the act of creating something out of your grief, metabolizes it in a way that offers it beauty, um, is essentially what the whole gist of the course is supposed to be about. So like the, the wailing is essentially it pretty apropo. Yeah. So him, him wanting to be like me.
I mean, all of that just plays into that. I have to, like, this is all really fresh and it's hard to like really suss out exactly how this is all landing for me right now. But man,
[01:15:48] Olivia: that's okay. We, you don't need to tie it up. It's, it's really cool to see how this has evolved in the two times we've talked about it.
Yeah. Yeah.
[01:15:59] Victor: Yeah. I think it's really beautiful that, you know, you found, um, this. This creative technique of synthesizing your dreams with your, your music in a way that is enriching to your life and helps you feel like able to, to connect, uh, to the parts of you that are, that are most important, you know?
Mm-hmm. Um, and that you're taking that and that you, you wanna share that with other people and find a way to make that practice and the sharing of that practice, you know, central to your life and, um, to make it a part of other people's lives. I think that's really beautiful, man, and I wish you all the success in
[01:16:34] Zach: the world with that.
Thank you.
[01:16:35] Steve: Yeah. Hell yeah, brother. Thank you so much. We gotta
[01:16:37] Olivia: start, uh, expanding our. Gestalt method.
[01:16:42] Victor: Oh man, that makes me nervous.
[01:16:46] Steve: Well, you did a beautiful job, man. I mean, that's kind of like what our interview process is on our men's calls is like just really hitting those open-ended like, but really poignant questions that like force you to like, oh fuck,
[01:17:03] Victor: I'm, I'm really, um, amazed at how, how you were able to just like, be so vulnerable and, and connect to that. Um, just to, just to drop right into that and really be free, you know? Yeah. And, um, yeah, I, I, I think it's. I'm just glad that, um, glad that you were able to do that cuz it seems like it took you to a place that you needed to be.
Yeah.
[01:17:28] Olivia: Thank you for like, feeling safe to do that. Yeah. With us here. That's, yeah. Um, it's really cool to
[01:17:35] Zach: be able to, thanks for taking off your shoes, and I don't think they were
[01:17:38] Victor: stinky at all. Yeah, thanks. That really is. Thanks for
[01:17:42] Steve: letting us smell your feet. They smell just fine indeed. Mm-hmm. They smelled like ours.
Mm-hmm. Exactly.
[01:17:49] Victor: Yeah. No, we, we really do try and bring that, that kind of vulnerability Yeah. To this. And so, yeah.
[01:17:55] Steve: I think that's why, I mean, I've, I've listened. Wouldn't say I've, I've heard all of your episodes, but the majority of 'em and yeah, I think, I think seeing how deeply you guys dive. I was like, yeah, this is, and now that it's the second time that we've done this, I feel more like, I think the first time I was getting to know you a little bit.
Kinda awkward. Yeah. A little bit. And so this was like, we just picked up like, yeah, we've been friends for weeks now. Yeah. It almost,
[01:18:20] Zach: it almost felt like the, it almost felt like the technical difficult difficulties happened for a reason. Yeah,
[01:18:26] Steve: that's what
[01:18:27] Olivia: you said in your message to me. Um, on Instagram, you're like, it feels like that was how that was supposed to
[01:18:32] Victor: go.
Yeah. Yeah. We wouldn't have done this like this if that mm-hmm. Hadn't have gone how it had gone, so. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. For
[01:18:40] Steve: sure.
[01:18:41] Zach: One thing I wanted to say about, I'll just on the topic of self-worth, uh, cuz it's been an ongoing theme and I, I had a pseudo epiphany about self-worth recently, cuz that's, you know, we're all artists here.
It's, it's a, it's a unanimous theme. Um, I, I had a revelation recently where I was, I was recalling that in high school I had this big, I had this bit where like, to make my friends laugh, I did this character that was like this very ego-driven guy. Like, I was just constantly like, I'm awesome, you suck. Like I, I was just like, I was the shit that was the character and it was just to make my friends laugh.
And, but I do remember like having a higher self-esteem, like more self-worth at the at, at the, at the time. And I mean, part of that is, you know, I was just a young, cocky piece of shit. But, but also that voice came up in my head recently that I'm the man kind of voice. And I was like, well, maybe let's listen to this guy for a second.
Like, he's, he's, he's kind of making sense. Like he's def he's definitely more fun to listen to than the other voice that is going, you suck, you're not worth anything, so let's, let's give this guy a shot for the day. And so I did, I did that for the day. I did self-worth as a bit and, and I wasn't trying to like actually believe it.
I was just trying to recreate the bit I did in high school where I was just for fun, pretending like I was awesome and I had a great fucking day.
[01:20:14] Olivia: Yeah. It's kind of like how if you force yourself to laugh, you like yeah, get those happy dopamine brain chemicals like you. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me that that would work that way.
Does
[01:20:26] Victor: Jeff Bazo laugh?
[01:20:28] Olivia: Fake it.
[01:20:31] Steve: Haha.
[01:20:34] Zach: But you know, that's like if, if I were to do a Ted Talk, I think that's what it would be on self-worth is a bit. Um, you don't have to believe it right away, just. Start doing it. Just, yeah, just price your class. Like just, just put yourself up there. Even if you don't believe it, just go for it. Yeah,
[01:20:53] Victor: I try that.
I'll report that. I was gonna say, you
[01:20:55] Olivia: should try that.
[01:21:00] Steve: That's awesome.
[01:21:03] Olivia: Thank you for listening to the Jung and the
[01:21:04] Victor: Restless. You can follow us on social media at the Jung and the Restless Pod and submit your dreams for interpretation to the Jung and the restless. Pod Gmail,
[01:21:13] Steve: and as we always say, you can't hang your
[01:21:16] Victor: hat on. Hang
[01:21:19] Steve: tiger.