[UNKNOWN]: Thank you for watching. [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the coaches rising podcast today. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm delighted to be joined by Martin Boris and this is one of those conversations that I have every once in a while that feels incredibly pertinent to our times and I think points to the deeper field we're being invited to move into as coaches. [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to be exploring today Dreamwork, psychedelics and leadership in coaching.
[SPEAKER_00]: Martin is an executive coach and he's been tapping into the potency of dreams with his clients for many years and he's now creating trainings for coaches to do the same thing with their clients.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we'll explore today why dreams are so efficient and intelligent in a sense they are [SPEAKER_00]: not only to our own maturing, our own unfolding and self-awareness, but actually it can open us into a field of intelligence that we can then bring into our lives that brings creativity and innovation and embodiment. [SPEAKER_00]: So we'll talk about some very different topics today.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll talk about teleology, how dreams are, in a sense, these portals to our future and folding. [SPEAKER_00]: We'll talk about shadow work and dream work. [SPEAKER_00]: We'll talk about trauma work and dreams, the relationship between dreams and psychedelic work, the heroes journey. [SPEAKER_00]: And most importantly, we'll get right into how [SPEAKER_00]: Martin engages in dream works with his clients. [SPEAKER_00]: What actually does he do with his clients?
[SPEAKER_00]: So a little bit more about Martin is a coach and an innovator and pioneer in the field of meditation and mindfulness. [SPEAKER_00]: He distilled his diverse range of experiences and insights into a simple and new form of meditation training, one moment meditation, and this playful technique has helped over one million people start meditating. [SPEAKER_00]: He trained extensively with the legendary Dr. Stanislav Graf.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the past he worked as a psychotherapist, supporting people recover from severe trauma, facilitating retreats using breath work. [SPEAKER_00]: In 2021 he launched the one world-one vote campaign to encourage politicians to take bold action to avert climate catastrophe. [SPEAKER_00]: And his book, one moment meditation stillness for people on the go has been published into 13 languages.
[SPEAKER_00]: As you'll hear, I'm really enthusiastic about the importance of dream work and tapping into the imaginal. [SPEAKER_00]: I feel that this is a frontier in coaching and actually, is a capacity we are being invited to, open into, to perhaps reclaim that could bring new ways of leading and collaborating and creation into this world. [SPEAKER_00]: So let's dive in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Martin, it's a delight to be with you, and I've been particularly looking forward to this conversation after seeing what you're creating in the world. [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to be exploring dreams and psychedelics and leadership and their connection to coaching, which is, I think, a stunning topic. [SPEAKER_00]: So that's an amazing how you're doing today. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm great.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm really nice to connect with you [SPEAKER_02]: Gathering feels almost primed for something, something bigger. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I like that. [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, just maybe could you say in a sentence or two, just what you're up to in the world? [SPEAKER_00]: I know you're working with clients and you just give us a sense of who you are in two or three sentences. [SPEAKER_00]: I know that's a difficult. [SPEAKER_00]: Order. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is difficult. [SPEAKER_02]: And my primary work at the moment is as an executive coach and consultant to leaders and top teams. [SPEAKER_02]: So that would be the calling card. [SPEAKER_02]: But I'm also writing and teaching around meditation and consciousness and politics. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's the underlying activity of the moment. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm looking forward to getting into that, into the, yeah, to the seam that I wasn't going to see in the name.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd love to just begin and by asking you, [SPEAKER_00]: We played around with the title, Dream, Psychedelics and Leadership. [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to go into each of those in a bit more detail. [SPEAKER_00]: But could you say why you think they are an important kind of grouping of topics? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, in a sense, why should coaches listen to this conversation? [SPEAKER_02]: I think great intro question.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's probably we'll probably spend the whole interview talking about why people should listen to this conversation. [SPEAKER_02]: And even to put dreams and psychedelics and leadership in the same title is a bit bold, I think of us. [SPEAKER_02]: So maybe to say a brief version of the answer would be what dreams and psychedelics both do is give us access to what I would call the not yet known, the not yet known.
[SPEAKER_02]: But some people call the unconscious, but I don't really like that word, although I will use it. [SPEAKER_02]: I would just rather say, then not yet known, but already existing the markers to the future or to a future. [SPEAKER_02]: So we're talking about access to the not yet known and dreams and psychedelics are both waste. [SPEAKER_02]: People have found used to get access to the not yet known.
[SPEAKER_02]: I should say not just the not yet known that seems to have meaning and value. [SPEAKER_02]: So then that takes care of the first two terms, dreams, psychedelics, and then the question is, why leadership? [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I've almost answered that because one understanding of leadership is that a leader or the leader in each of us brings us to the not yet known or creates the future or moves forward.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's I think the link and what I'm and many of my colleagues [SPEAKER_02]: the best leaders of the leaders that we need or the ones that are not just inventing or maximizing or optimizing the known or within the known, but they're actually getting access to the not yet known that has huge benefit for us. [SPEAKER_00]: That's nice. [SPEAKER_00]: That's really good. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, okay. [SPEAKER_00]: That's stunning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I just wanted to let that once hang a little bit, because it was a beautiful articulation. [SPEAKER_02]: Even the words psychedelic, a lot of people don't realize this, it actually means mind manifesting. [SPEAKER_02]: That's exactly what the word means, mind manifesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we use the words psychedelic to refer to certain [SPEAKER_02]: medicines or drugs or chemicals that help us manifest our own mind more or more more quickly or more deeply, but even that has a quality of leadership in it too is like, what if leaders are about helping us manifest mind?
[SPEAKER_02]: So I've started to even play with the term psychedelic leadership, which is not about psychedelics necessarily in the drug sense, but to just listen to sense that a [SPEAKER_02]: more and more of the mind that we could access and build worlds from that. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm now even more excited about our conversations. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad I asked you that question. [SPEAKER_00]: Let me just check one little thing before we move into some of these juicy topics.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you said I don't like using the word unconscious. [SPEAKER_00]: How come? [SPEAKER_02]: First of all, it has a slightly archaic quality, it bears a lot of baggage from maybe the early psychoanalysts that used it, and I don't think all of that is up to date or accurate, but the key problem, I think, when people hear unconscious, is that they think the unconscious is like the basement within their own body, that it kind of lives, you know, our basement somewhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we have the idea from Freud that the unconscious is primarily made up of stuff that we forgot more repressed. [SPEAKER_02]: So it has a very personal quality of the basement with all the stuff that you forgot to clear out. [SPEAKER_02]: So there's a couple of problems with that. [SPEAKER_02]: This is all metaphor, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Joe, we don't really know where the unconscious is. [SPEAKER_02]: So we're just saying which metaphor is the most useful for us.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, young advanced that idea by saying there's the personal unconscious, and then there's a strange thing called the collective unconscious, because he started seeing in patient streams, indications of knowledge or wisdom or even images that were beyond their ability to have known them, so clearly weren't personally forgotten, but seemed to be pre-existing or somehow they were getting access to it. [SPEAKER_02]: but he also didn't really know where that was.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think at his, my impression is that his model was still using the basement metaphor. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's like you're going down to your, your basement where you've got all the junk that you've for a no repressed, and then you dig a little further and you find more stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: I think there's a better way of understanding this, which is that [SPEAKER_02]: unconscious or even our mind isn't holding within our body.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a fallacy based on the egoic assumption of our own identity that we are only our body. [SPEAKER_02]: What if we turn it upside down and said, we are in mind, mind is field. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like an intelligent field that we are part of. [SPEAKER_02]: I think Alan Watts called it the skin encapsulated ego, so it's like, but maybe if we're in mind and mind is more of a field, then we can understand how mind has a collective insight.
[SPEAKER_02]: We can get information about other people and other times because we're accessing the field. [SPEAKER_02]: And this is an idea that wouldn't have worked in a young's time, but I think we're much more [SPEAKER_02]: We have a lot more of an understanding that that's maybe what it is. [SPEAKER_02]: We have a metaphor that the internet. [SPEAKER_02]: We know there's a lot of information out there and we can kind of reach up and grab some of it when we need it, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So maybe the mind is like this very intelligent field that helps our history and our future and our potential and many, many futures in it and collected with a minute. [SPEAKER_02]: And maybe it's just that what we call our mind, [SPEAKER_02]: is just the claw, I'm using my hands plus to my head here. [SPEAKER_02]: So listeners will have to just imagine that I'm talking about, like, the nearer part of that field is our own stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: So your personal life, your stories, your beliefs, your history, the things that you've repressed, are the nearer part of mind for you. [SPEAKER_02]: So of course, when you start going into deeper mind, the first stuff generally speaking, you're gonna encounter is yours. [SPEAKER_02]: But then the deeper you go or the wider you go, the more intelligence you can access. [SPEAKER_02]: And it doesn't even have to be in that order.
[SPEAKER_02]: You could get an intrusion of a collective idea. [SPEAKER_02]: So it happens to many people in a kind of spiritual emergency or grace, a moment of grace. [SPEAKER_02]: They get some intelligence kind of cuts through it all and it's them directly. [SPEAKER_02]: But generally speaking people have to first expand a little bit to incorporate and get to know their own [SPEAKER_02]: you know, what coaches work on a lot in limiting beliefs, shadow material, all of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then as they expand, and this is exactly what you're observed in the shadow work is that as you incorporate your shadow, and then other parts of you, you get more and more access to collective intelligence. [SPEAKER_02]: And what young says we do have to go through our own stuff to get there. [SPEAKER_02]: almost ethically we have to go through our own stuff to get there.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's why I'd rather say it's the not yet known rather than the unconscious because even young got into trouble around this because at times he defined the shadow as kind of like what we've repressed and forgotten and then frustration at one point he said it's the shadows just everything you don't know about yourself yet. [SPEAKER_02]: Which is everything, for almost everything, it gives very big.
[SPEAKER_02]: If everything we don't know about ourselves is reshadow, that's all of consciousness pretty much. [SPEAKER_02]: So I just like to turn the metaphor upside down and not use the word unconscious because that just implies a basement and then we get into trouble because we think it'll have to be inside our body somehow. [SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe this is where synchronicity is, that the wider one goes, [SPEAKER_00]: in that field, the more one opens up that possibility for synchronicity? [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I think the wider one goes in that world, the more likely it is to have synchronicity experience, or to realize that there are synchronicity experiences. [SPEAKER_02]: But if you want me to go, tell me what I really believe. [SPEAKER_02]: It's that synchronicity is the nature of the universe, but it's all connected.
[SPEAKER_02]: everything is meaningfully connected. [SPEAKER_02]: So what we call synchronicity is when little or me touches it for a moment. [SPEAKER_02]: And we go, oh my God, you won't believe this coincidence. [SPEAKER_02]: And we get this little glimpse that everything in ourselves and our lives and the world is connected. [SPEAKER_02]: We go, oh my God, let me tell you what happened. [SPEAKER_02]: It's so amazing, which is fantastic, because it isn't opening.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what we're opening to is the fact that this is reality. [SPEAKER_02]: So even when I'm not having those little wonderful sacrednessities, everything is synchronous. [SPEAKER_00]: Beautiful. [SPEAKER_00]: So could you, I mean, in a way you're speaking about this, you, you, you took my next question, which was, but maybe you've got some more to say on this. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was going to ask, in a sense, [SPEAKER_00]: What is this territory that dream work and psychedelics are opening as into this field? [SPEAKER_00]: But maybe you've said this, you know, this field of consciousness, which is instrumentally connected. [SPEAKER_00]: And let me just offer one reflection that comes up actually before you answer that, which is, [SPEAKER_00]: You know, in a sense that your invitation feels like an inverse invitation, it's like, um, we're in mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that, to me, is... [SPEAKER_00]: Um, resonant with what I'm seeing a lot, which is, you know, dispelling the, the hyper-individualistic myth that we've inherited from modernity, where, you know, it's, it's me, I'm, I'm an individual. [SPEAKER_00]: It's all about me maximizing my experience. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm completely cut off from my experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, um, it seems like we're moving into a time of fluid differences, where almost like the relationship between things becomes, [SPEAKER_00]: more primary than the things themselves, or maybe you could say that the, you know, as individuals were arising out of this interconnected field. [SPEAKER_00]: So what you're sharing feels really resonant with that as part of a world view that's opening up.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I wonder if you could say a little bit more about [SPEAKER_02]: If you don't mind what you said so much of there that was so touching in a way, I think that I'm going to just be with that for another minute. [SPEAKER_02]: I think we can look at that maybe two ways. [SPEAKER_02]: One is that in certain cultures, we became excessively or unusually disconnected from the field. [SPEAKER_02]: that would be one way of looking at it.
[SPEAKER_02]: The other way of looking at it is just that every all journeys, all individuals to the extent that we are individuals are about understanding and connecting to the field more deeply. [SPEAKER_02]: But we do seem to be suffering in the western modern western world with extreme disconnection from the field, which could mean [SPEAKER_02]: You know, divine intelligence or the unconscious, whatever, there's a lot of places we're disconnected ourselves, enough.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so if you're a question, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and also a kind of materialist paradigm, you know, like Phil's part of that, that we took the solid world to be all there is. [SPEAKER_00]: And that seems to be changing quickly. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, where's we squeezed the life out of this? [SPEAKER_01]: We've squeezed the life out of that model, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know if there is anything else to add about the this field that in a sense maybe we get into the territory where it's actually about experiencing it, that's really the, you know, you can talk about it so much but actually, you know, the use, the real use is in using psychedelics and dreams to access this field and this intelligence. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I should say that it's just to set the frame a little bit better.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you had talked to me, you know, 30 plus years ago, I would never have spoken like this. [SPEAKER_02]: I've only come to this awareness through hard, hard, um, I've almost, I almost against my better judgements. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I resisted this interpretation. [SPEAKER_02]: I wouldn't have understood it at all, but I kept through my own experiences. [SPEAKER_02]: I kept having it proven to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm not making this up as a nice theory, and I'm always a bit surprised when I hear myself saying it, but I have, I guess like, the individual quest to feel better or no more, which I pursued ruthlessly led me to this inevitable conclusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: What was there any significant moments on that journey that feel particularly important in terms of, you know, shifting your world view, or was it more a series of [SPEAKER_02]: There was definitely a series and levels of layers and falling back and deepening certain late. [SPEAKER_02]: We'll talk about this, I'm sure, like experience was important, but it didn't come out of nowhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say that [SPEAKER_02]: The most important, no, I really can't, I can't give you a starting point. [SPEAKER_02]: No, I can't give you a starting point. [SPEAKER_02]: I can see, I can now look back at my whole life and say, oh, this had to happen for this to happen, this had to happen for this to happen and it's quite a chain all the way back. [SPEAKER_02]: So I don't want to evade your question, but there isn't a single end.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd love to ask you about, you know, dreams now in particular, and how you work with leaders to, you know, to tap and open to this not yet known. [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, just to say that I've seen [SPEAKER_00]: in, you know, the traditional way of dream dreams when I was growing up was like, people would have like a dream diary, you know, a journal and they would, or a dictionary, you know, and they would kind of look up the different symbols.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know you actually place presence or being with the symbols in the dream with importance. [SPEAKER_00]: I see a kind of coaching proliferating now, which is about being with experience, rather than trying to change our experience and get to some, you know, some imagined future. [SPEAKER_00]: It's actually more about being in presence. [SPEAKER_00]: with our experience and then it unfolds and reveals itself, dude.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm curious, which is a bit, which can be a hard cell to a leader. [SPEAKER_02]: I imagine you have experienced that as well. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, in the world, which once self-improvement and quick fixes and answers, but I think when people, once people taste it, then they, the penny drops, that this is the real, you know, I mean, super power is problematic as a phrase, [SPEAKER_00]: it's a, it's a capacity that's very potent.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I wonder, you know, I just wanted to share that to kind of say from me what I've seen to be unfolding in the coaching field and I think it's important. [SPEAKER_00]: And so how do you, how do you invite leaders to work with dreams and does it resonate with that, you know? [SPEAKER_02]: or, in my opinion, they're confused. [SPEAKER_02]: The first of all, people have a dream and they say, oh, it was about X, and they've immediately killed it in my mind.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, because they've assumed they know what it's about. [SPEAKER_02]: So how can you learn something if you more, if you assume it's about X? [SPEAKER_02]: And they usually pick one motif from the dream and say it's about X. So that's the worst thing you can do, say it's about X. But instead say, I wonder what that was about. [SPEAKER_02]: It would be a much better approach.
[SPEAKER_02]: Another mistake people make, I think, is that they assume that symbols in a dream and I would say everything in a dream's symbol has a one-to-one relationship with something else. [SPEAKER_02]: X means Y. So then you say, I wonder what this means, the tree, and you look at a dictionary, say what tree is a symbol of X, so it must mean that. [SPEAKER_02]: That's also very reductive.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you'd be really with those two things you've really killed any possibility of getting any insight from your dream. [SPEAKER_02]: And I think young was really helpful in changing the conversation and approach around this, but even he, because he knew so much about mythology and anthropology and comparative religion and literature, and you know, like, could have so much understanding of what things might mean, that
[SPEAKER_02]: people got a little even further intimidated by his work, where the essence of my understanding of his method was to be very present with the actual dream and help the client feel into it. [SPEAKER_02]: and notice when they got very careful and slow, speaking about when he called this bounded association.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he's like, you talk about, you come talk around something in the dream, but he didn't have these words and put in a very mindful way, a very somatically aware way. [SPEAKER_02]: And as you talk about it, and you always, I'm like, Freud, you don't want it to keep the people right near the actual dream image, because you don't took the dream as a print out from your doctor. [SPEAKER_02]: It was like, you listen, if you start there, I stay there, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're not getting too far away. [SPEAKER_02]: You wander around that symbol a little bit. [SPEAKER_02]: And essentially, again, he didn't use this language. [SPEAKER_02]: You look for the aha. [SPEAKER_02]: So as coaches, we not to do this. [SPEAKER_02]: This is what we do. [SPEAKER_02]: but we help somebody pay attention to what they're saying and bring their attention to the issue and notice the aha and then we get even more curious about the aha.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's the thing we want to do with the drink. [SPEAKER_02]: Not know what it's about and just explore it paying attention for what starts to resonate to us. [SPEAKER_02]: And then what happens if you can hold that space with somebody, then connections start being made, [SPEAKER_02]: meaning becomes obvious, but it's always verified by two sources, the client and their dream.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like if you will use the client will know that there's something in that what you just said. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't have to know that. [SPEAKER_02]: I just have to help you know that. [SPEAKER_02]: Find that. [SPEAKER_02]: But then we also have to check the dream that you haven't wandered too far away into something that you'd [SPEAKER_02]: but it was actually a green dog in the dream, not a cat, like, and not a blue cat. [SPEAKER_02]: It was a green dog.
[SPEAKER_02]: So stay with greens. [SPEAKER_02]: Stay with dog. [SPEAKER_02]: And like, we want to keep it close to the actual dream. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's the biggest part of being present with dream work. [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that if you can do that with a dream. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's not always easy. [SPEAKER_02]: But if you can do that with a dream, you've gotten so much value from it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And because then you're thinking about things differently and you're connecting things in your [SPEAKER_02]: The whole focus of your day is change because the dream has brought those things to light. [SPEAKER_02]: And what you find as well, I'm probably talking about the market you're interested in, symbolism, is that what young said that I love is that this dream is the best possible expression of a relatively unknown set of facts.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not a garbled communication. [SPEAKER_02]: Just because we don't, it's like, if somebody is speaking Chinese to you, they're not garbled. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm assuming you don't know how to speak Chinese, but you wouldn't say they're garbled. [SPEAKER_02]: You just say, I don't understand Chinese, I need to learn Chinese, and then I'll know that what they're saying is coherent.
[SPEAKER_02]: If we, the dream isn't garbled, nor is it hiding anything, it's the best way of expressing something. [SPEAKER_02]: But we have to learn that, learn why that's true. [SPEAKER_02]: Then you start to realize, oh, like that. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm just going to make something up here. [SPEAKER_02]: That person was crossed between my aunt and my client. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, how can that be? [SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't make sense in the material world.
[SPEAKER_02]: That there could be two people at once. [SPEAKER_02]: But then you start to explore what's similar about your aunt and your client. [SPEAKER_02]: And what was that character in the dream actually like? [SPEAKER_02]: And you start to realize that there's some truth that's common to both of them and more. [SPEAKER_02]: And the dream set it perfectly by putting them, this is the very simple example, putting them together in one being.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because if you had given you your aunt or given you your client, you wouldn't have realized that. [SPEAKER_00]: I want to ask you in a moment, just if we can go zoom in on this process a bit more, but what you shared just was striking to me because I was doing an exercise this last couple of days where I was going back in my life to memories that felt particularly vivid and pertinent.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was just going into the memory very viscerally, you know, and just writing what was happening, what was I feeling, what was striking. [SPEAKER_00]: And I did it with like five or six different experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I started to notice, [SPEAKER_00]: um what you just described actually I was like wow there are actually patterns between these experiences that I have never noticed before and it was like it was like a uh uh wow um like a revelation and um even though you know in a way I know [SPEAKER_00]: those memories are probably, I'm not remembering them exactly how they were. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a kind of dream like quality to them, which is fine, which is great.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's one thing I just wanted to reflect, yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I think if you [SPEAKER_02]: If you take a dream and I have dreams that I've had 20 years ago, I'm still learning things from them. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that's connected to that or oh, that there was another level in there. [SPEAKER_02]: So again, we're back to the synchronicity concept, everything's connected and meaningful.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that memory is connected to a whole set of beliefs that you have since then, it has [SPEAKER_02]: It's probably related to something in your body. [SPEAKER_02]: It was probably set up by something in your story, even if you didn't cause that event to happen. [SPEAKER_02]: On some level, psychologically you, the pattern was there that manifested us that experience. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's very, it's quite complex and it's like, I mean, it's like everything is related.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what a better language than poetry. [SPEAKER_02]: to communicate that. [SPEAKER_02]: That's why the dream, it just can't give you a printout that says do X or you should turn right here. [SPEAKER_02]: Like it can't be that literal because everything, the nature of everything isn't that literal. [SPEAKER_02]: It's never just one thing. [SPEAKER_02]: Nothing is just one thing from a perspective of mind or the unconscious.
[SPEAKER_00]: It reminds me a little bit of reading Cynthia Boeja, Boejo's work on the Imaginal, and I think she used this phrase, chaotic.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like there was a kind of patterning to experiences with a kind of a center to that patterning, but with experiences and symbols, [SPEAKER_00]: circulating around that patterning and that one could kind of begin to develop a kind of sensibility and intelligence to kind of feel into those patterns and they would reveal their deeper intelligence and meaning. [SPEAKER_00]: And in a sense, you know, plug one back in more deeply to the [SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just, as I'm listening to you, I think we could turn this all upside down and make it much more practical for coaches and leaders because we're talking to you as beautiful and poetic integrated way, but everybody is aware, they'll say to you, why do I keep doing this? [SPEAKER_02]: Why do these things keep happening to me? [SPEAKER_02]: And it's a really important moment psychologically, because you're starting to say these aren't random.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is some kind of repetitive pattern or connection here, and the connection is held in me, meaning I can maybe do something about changing the creation of this pattern. [SPEAKER_02]: So even though we've been talking this for a very mystical way, people experience it. [SPEAKER_02]: In ordinary everyday life, why does this keep happening to me? [SPEAKER_02]: Why do I keep meeting the same people? [SPEAKER_02]: Why am I still keeping showing up like this?
[SPEAKER_02]: And then with the coach, you might start looking at the ideas and beliefs or mindsets that you're bringing to situations. [SPEAKER_02]: You might go a bit deeper and say, well, where did those come from? [SPEAKER_02]: And then from with our generally limited psychological understanding, we might look at, you know, our personal history, our childhood history, which is all really, really important, but it's not the only creation of the pattern.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think everybody has a sense that the universe is more patterned or our lives are more patterned than our understanding allows us to know. [SPEAKER_02]: And you know what I mean, it's like that we don't have a model that says life is all pattern. [SPEAKER_02]: And we can change our relationship to the patterns. [SPEAKER_02]: And yet we do experience it. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's kind of look at that process.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you started to explain how you support clients to be with dreams that it's about being in relationship in presence with these dreams and the symbols and dreams. [SPEAKER_00]: In a very focused way, that's just be super clear about that. [SPEAKER_00]: Could you describe this place?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you have them imagine the dream go back into the dream or [SPEAKER_02]: Well, the process that I bring people through, and again, I want to honor this comes from young and was very beautifully simplified, I think, by a young and unlisted Robert Johnson in his book, Inner Work, which is a great manual. [SPEAKER_02]: I would first, and take some time, I would first hear the dream more than once.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I would ask the person telling me the drink to be super precise, especially can remember, not make anything up, not assume anything. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, if they're in one room, if they're in a skyscraper and then all of a sudden during the garden, don't assume they went downstairs. [SPEAKER_02]: That's, dreams don't need to bring you down the stairs. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, just, no, don't make anything up.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I would hear it a few times to make sure I wasn't imagining things that weren't there, because it's their dream, not my dream. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's amazing how many assumptions we would bring. [SPEAKER_02]: to someone else's dream. [SPEAKER_02]: And how much we would bring to our own dreams too. [SPEAKER_02]: So let's get the actual dream on the table.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I would just pick some elements of the dream and to some extent my expertise might, if we have limited time, I'd love to do every single element of the dream. [SPEAKER_02]: But if we have limited time, I might as I'm in on one or two or ask them, what's the most, what's the part that's most curious, your most curious about or has some energy for you? [SPEAKER_02]: And then we would do this process where we call bound to dissociation.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, explore this, tell me about it. [SPEAKER_02]: You'll use the term to play with it a little bit. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like turning it over and around in your mind. [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, this lots of the young essentially invented expressive arts therapies. [SPEAKER_02]: So you could paint it, you could dance it, you could, [SPEAKER_02]: You know, journal about it. [SPEAKER_02]: You just play with it because the play opens up again. [SPEAKER_02]: That poetic consciousness.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it also means we can loosen our assumptions a little bit so that the memories and meaning can connect to it. [SPEAKER_02]: And then we're just holding space for that. [SPEAKER_02]: And you can go this way and go this way and then, oh, there's a little aha. [SPEAKER_02]: Let's pause and notice that. [SPEAKER_02]: What's in that? [SPEAKER_02]: What are you remembering? [SPEAKER_02]: What are you becoming aware of now?
[SPEAKER_02]: Stop. [SPEAKER_02]: That's the most important thing. [SPEAKER_02]: So we're kind of do that for one symbol. [SPEAKER_02]: And then we might do it for another symbol. [SPEAKER_02]: And again, you could think of really long time what this is a lot in one every dream. [SPEAKER_02]: But we would do that, you know, as long as we could time permitting, but by that point already, you can see there's been a major psychological shift in the person just because they're aware of those things.
[SPEAKER_02]: and you can go much further, you can start and sort of kind of weaving it all together and saying the dream is pointing your in this direction and this is connected to that and look how you're behaving. [SPEAKER_02]: You can learn a lot of conclusions from the dream, but I really do believe the heart of it is just zeroing in on these aha. [SPEAKER_02]: Finding these aha.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the reason I said focused is because it is about picking a piece of the dream and my essay assembly could be a feeling [SPEAKER_02]: a sense could be a symbol or it's like anything in the dream we could call a symbol and just being really present with that. [SPEAKER_02]: Not deviating being really present with that. [SPEAKER_02]: It's focused and it's relaxed, it's a curious way to be. [SPEAKER_02]: but also kind of letting your boundaries go a little bit.
[SPEAKER_02]: Does that make sense? [SPEAKER_00]: So presumably the client is kind of [SPEAKER_00]: getting quite in a quite a focus, or maybe even altered state inside of this process. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's visceral, you know, it's not just a kind of rational process, but it's like a whole but embodied experience. [SPEAKER_00]: And one question I have is, do you, because I've noticed in dreams, sometimes like this, it's very powerful to kind of go back into the dream several times.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the dream itself can unfold as I do that. [SPEAKER_00]: So for example, so for example, [SPEAKER_00]: I won't share the dream, I won't share the dream, but I dream I had as a child, you said, [SPEAKER_00]: was stayed with me and it's very vivid and so the first telling of this dream was kind of like how I remembered it, but then going in again, it had much more definition to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were aspects of the dream that weren't there the first time and but it wasn't me, I wasn't trying to do that, you know, there wasn't like, oh, I'm going to make this [SPEAKER_00]: just going back into the dream, but it felt very meaningful. [SPEAKER_00]: It didn't feel like I was just making it up. [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, this is what I said to the person afterwards.
[SPEAKER_00]: We worked with a stream for an hour and a half, but after I came out, I said, that was a peak life experience. [SPEAKER_00]: It was a [SPEAKER_00]: truly profound, and I could share more about the details of why, but it, yeah, I didn't, it was had a life of its own, you know, and it was like I was tapping into the intelligence of the dream and it wanted to reveal more to me. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so much in what you said, so glad you shared that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Start with the biggest thing is I think one of the reasons why it's so important to go into the dream work, not knowing anything, or acting as if you don't know and you're there to receive wisdom and not constrain the options by saying that you know what it's about or insisting that it be related to something that happened to you in the past means that you're open to the transcendent essence of every dream. [SPEAKER_02]: which most people aren't aware is there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the dream may not flash it to you. [SPEAKER_02]: But if you've assumed the dream is coming from what we could call source, then it's the path to source. [SPEAKER_02]: So you'll find in a dream if you're really honest and open and humble. [SPEAKER_02]: Lots of challenges to your reality, [SPEAKER_02]: as you have been carrying it, which is essentially an invitation to the transcendent. [SPEAKER_02]: Right? [SPEAKER_02]: So yes, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think there's that potential on any dream we work with to lead us all the way or point you know, move us toward there. [SPEAKER_02]: So that's the, for me, that was the most important thing to you. [SPEAKER_02]: Said the biggest thing you said. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: This brings up a question about the not yet known and, you know, teleology is a word I've seen you use.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like for me that dream, [SPEAKER_00]: I came away with a kind of alchemical imprint from the dream, and I sat with that for days and weeks afterwards, you know, as if it was actually a, almost as if the dream was still alive on top of my kind of, [SPEAKER_00]: physical reality. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, not all the time, you know, I was going about my day.
[SPEAKER_00]: But at moments when I paused, it would kind of come back to the foreground as, and I didn't really even need to make sense of it. [SPEAKER_00]: I just knew on a fundamental level that this was significant and incredibly fulfilling. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I felt healing quality to it. [SPEAKER_00]: initiation is the word actually, that would be the most accurate word to describe it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, what could you tell us more about the process you do in clients where, you know, you've got them in the dream, they're going to these moments that feel pertinent or these symbols, and then you're, you know, you're moving in different directions, maybe you could say something about that, how do you know where to go, and then what happens [SPEAKER_00]: What's the value that comes from it? [SPEAKER_00]: I know you've been speaking into that, but could you say more about that?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I'm sorry, Joey. [SPEAKER_02]: You've say so much. [SPEAKER_02]: There's so much in what you said that I feel that I'm tracking. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm tracking some things I want to come back to before we get to your question. [SPEAKER_02]: So I'll leave it to you to remind me of your question. [SPEAKER_02]: But I think, first of all, not every dream. [SPEAKER_02]: There are some dreams that feel overwhelmingly spiritual, you know, magnificence, life-changing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would want people to get disappointed if they're not experiencing that immediately in their dreams. [SPEAKER_02]: I would say that the most dreams are like giving you the next step. [SPEAKER_02]: They're pointing you in the next step, the next step toward that.
[SPEAKER_02]: and I would say that many dreams, if you go deeply deeply deeply into just the one dream, it can take you all the way, but it may not be obvious, from the dream, but it's still valuable, even if it just gives you a really good nudge in the right direction. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, um, the second thing you said that I really wanted to come back to is, [SPEAKER_02]: You used a big word, teleology, and I'm wondering if we could unpack that. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I can answer my question as well. [SPEAKER_02]: So could you give me your working definition of teleology? [SPEAKER_02]: Because I don't know if it gets a common understood. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's a new word to me, so through reading your posts, I mean, I, my understanding is it's the, it's a kind of future caught beckoning, you know, that beckoning future, or the imprint of the future, or as it comes to us in this moment. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know that much about the kind of philosophical concept of the teleology. [SPEAKER_02]: But my understanding is that it's like, this is leading us somewhere. [SPEAKER_02]: There's a goal implicit in this. [SPEAKER_02]: There's a goal implicit in this. [SPEAKER_02]: So, yes, I like the way you describe it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this kind of gets back to our, some of the things we said earlier, but the young believes in the dream where the unconscious is, he called it purposeive, meaning it's leading us towards something. [SPEAKER_02]: Now, you can believe that or not, he was kind of, [SPEAKER_02]: Contrasting that with Freudian view and his understanding was that the dream was reductive, it was bringing you down and reducing and back.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you saw the dream as like an acorn, it could unfold with the oak tree is implicit in the acorn. [SPEAKER_02]: So in the symbol and the dream and in the whole construction of your dream world is the idea that there is something that is implied that could be unfolded through engagement with it. [SPEAKER_02]: So, what does that mean for us? [SPEAKER_02]: It gets back to this point of like, there's not yet known that has wisdom and insight.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, there's something out there that we're moving toward or could move toward. [SPEAKER_02]: I would actually say there's multiple versions of it. [SPEAKER_02]: It needs choice we make sort of altered that a little bit. [SPEAKER_02]: But there's definitely a sense that the tree is not that it knows the future in a psychic way, but it's more like the acorn in the oak. [SPEAKER_02]: It has something implied that we could become.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that the dream is always giving us, it's like, what's the difference of approaching something the dream, and saying, oh, this is just about something that I know. [SPEAKER_02]: Versus, every dream is telling me something that I don't yet know. [SPEAKER_02]: That it knows that I don't know. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, if you want to get inside, that's a better attitude. [SPEAKER_02]: You're at least to have the open mind enough to say, maybe it knows something that I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe I don't know everything even about me. [SPEAKER_02]: Like that's a really good starting point. [SPEAKER_02]: And then see if it does give you something that feels meaningful and helpful. [SPEAKER_02]: And then you're, well, it gave me something meaningful and helpful about me. [SPEAKER_02]: So there's something in me or around me that knows more about me.
[SPEAKER_02]: then I do and it seems to know a good way for me to get there and it seems to have the feeling that it seems to be a feeling that it will be better when I get there and it's a whole different relationship to the not yet known so it's it's it's got a it's leading us somewhere individually and collectively with some room from the new ver. [SPEAKER_00]: Then we get a sense of benevolence of the not yet known in that sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you have an example of [SPEAKER_00]: you know, working with a dream and receiving guidance or, you know, accessing this intelligence at the not yet known in a way that, and I would lead you or a client to, you know, I don't know, make a decision or create something or maybe it shifted some of the, you know, the patterning we discussed earlier like these repeating patterns.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's a lot of questions in there, but so many examples, you could get a dream that actually does solve a problem for you and gives you an answer to a problem that you're working on. [SPEAKER_02]: And again, it might be in a metaphorical form, but it leads you to look to invent something or try a different combination of things that you're working on. [SPEAKER_02]: Because when you're sleeping, your brain can process things for sure differently.
[SPEAKER_02]: But most of the time the insight from Dream's par, I consider them to be nudges, psychological nudges. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, look this way, don't look that way. [SPEAKER_02]: You're not track this level of the situation. [SPEAKER_02]: You're missing this piece. [SPEAKER_02]: This is the dimension where there's really great growth. [SPEAKER_02]: This is how you're behaving, that isn't helpful.
[SPEAKER_02]: can give you a very startling picture of yourself, you know, like if you were, if you had your desk up against a wall and the dream you're working in a really stressed out way and maybe your current problem is stressed on the level of work life balance issues. [SPEAKER_02]: But the, on the other side of your desk is this doorway that's scary. [SPEAKER_02]: and your desk is kind of blocking your access to this doorway that's scary.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, this is a really simplistic example, just for the sake of answering your question. [SPEAKER_02]: But you could interpret from that dream or understand from that dream that your pattern of overwork, which is indicated in the dream by the way you're working, is stopping you or in the way of you opening
[SPEAKER_02]: So then you get some very interesting information that maybe the door that's scaring you, the unknown within you, the fears that you have, maybe it's the trauma that you haven't dealt with, is actually keeping you in the pattern of overwork at your desk blocking the door.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you start to see that maybe the reason, I mean, if somebody comes to you with a stress problem, you could do lots of stress management tools and time management tools [SPEAKER_02]: You know, all of you teach them mindful breathing and get them to the gem, you can do all these things. [SPEAKER_02]: But the dream would show them that the reason they're perpetuating this dynamic is because they're afraid of something within themselves.
[SPEAKER_02]: Very common pattern, which is why I've given you this example. [SPEAKER_02]: And in ourselves, we had to be don't know or just kind of pushing at us. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, we throw ourselves into work. [SPEAKER_02]: and we can't stop working because if we stop working, we'd have to open the door. [SPEAKER_02]: So if you really want to unlock the pattern, you need to have some understanding of where it's coming from.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or you might, it helps to have some understanding where it's coming from. [SPEAKER_02]: And that dream in just that one tiny little vignette is showing you how you're behaving. [SPEAKER_02]: Conscious and unconscious. [SPEAKER_02]: you'd be starting a conversation if you had that dream, the client who may not have been interested in, not even known that they were hiding, they were afraid of certain things in themselves.
[SPEAKER_02]: Once you start talking about the dream, well, you'd say, okay, let's talk about the door. [SPEAKER_02]: And they'd say, oh, well, this is funny door. [SPEAKER_02]: It was like really scary. [SPEAKER_02]: How could a door be scary? [SPEAKER_02]: So, we'll tell me about your fear. [SPEAKER_02]: What was the feeling of fear? [SPEAKER_02]: And then you start to be, you're talking, so suddenly you're talking about fears.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you might say, well, tell me about the door. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, oh, again, I'm really simplifying here. [SPEAKER_02]: The door, it was like a door in my office. [SPEAKER_02]: There's no door in front of my desk. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like a door, I'm gonna think now. [SPEAKER_02]: It was like a door in this house we had for when I was age four, we lived in this really unusual house. [SPEAKER_02]: It was like that door.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he said, well, tell me about that time in your life. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, this is what I'm just really happy. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, and then so the third memories of that door, then what happened? [SPEAKER_02]: And you start to explore that. [SPEAKER_02]: So suddenly they're talking about their childhood. [SPEAKER_02]: And you see, so just by having had the dream and talking about it, they've started to explore what they've been afraid of exploring.
[SPEAKER_02]: But then if you go further, and you actually have done that work, and they feel they feel connected to the meaning of the drink, because you would never impose meaning on the dream, then you can say, oh, let's look at how the dream is saying [SPEAKER_02]: Oh my gosh, I'm working so, you know, then they would get it. [SPEAKER_02]: The pattern would become clear.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then they would understand, maybe if I spent more time opening the door, I wouldn't be compulsively working. [SPEAKER_02]: Ah, yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_02]: But the great thing about it is that A, no therapist needed to tell them that they figured it out themselves. [SPEAKER_02]: Because they wouldn't have believed it if a therapist told them that. [SPEAKER_02]: And therapists might be wrong, but the dream isn't wrong.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that must might be making it up from what they learned in therapy school, you know, like this causes that, but they may be right. [SPEAKER_02]: They may be wrong, but the dream isn't wrong. [SPEAKER_02]: The dream is giving that person a picture of how they're behaving and an indication of where to go to shift it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's beautiful because it does feel very different than if you're imposing a kind of therapeutic or you know pathological, whatever notion of what was happening on onto the client and therefore this needs to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels very different and I wonder [SPEAKER_00]: What's powerful about the working with the dream in this way, opposed to something like internal family systems, which, you know, the coach may say, maybe there's some parts here that are keeping you from, you know, that are keeping you stuck at the desk. [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, internal family systems, by the way, also just as I know, is also very imaginable in its, um, [SPEAKER_00]: you know, that can also get quite.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once you let the guard rails off of, you know, having predefined types of parts, it can get very archetypal and, um, imagine. [SPEAKER_00]: But I wonder what do you feel is the, the value of bringing with the dream, you know, as opposed to something that [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know that enough about IFS to say what benefits or what would be superior or inferior, it's probably just another way of accessing the unconscious, or they're not yet conscious.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think there are many ways to do it to access the not yet conscious. [SPEAKER_02]: We chose to talk about the two. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm most familiar with which is dreams and psychedelics, but there are many other ways. [SPEAKER_02]: And I want to, I respect them. [SPEAKER_02]: The only thing that we could say was different about dreams and psychedelics too. [SPEAKER_02]: They are different.
[SPEAKER_02]: Every technique, every road, I believe is accessing the same raw bank, the same mind, but through slightly different means and maybe slayvers. [SPEAKER_02]: But the thing I'll say about dreams that I think is quite remarkable is that they're just given to us. [SPEAKER_02]: We don't have to go do a technique or take a drug. [SPEAKER_02]: It's just given to us every [SPEAKER_02]: We go to sleep, we have a dream. [SPEAKER_02]: So there's a beauty for me in that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I've got more information. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_02]: I've got more information. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's what sort of the special thing I think about dreams are one of the special things. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Do you find there are similarities and differences between [SPEAKER_00]: dream work and psychedelic work.
[SPEAKER_00]: In particular, the integration of psychedelic experiences which I think is maybe an area of psychedelic work which seems a bit more less well developed. [SPEAKER_02]: Gosh, that's a very big question. [SPEAKER_02]: And also, let's be super clear. [SPEAKER_02]: There's many, many different ways of working with psychedelics, even more variation in that than with dreams. [SPEAKER_02]: And I don't think that they're all equal at all. [SPEAKER_02]: Now, be very strong on that.
[SPEAKER_02]: The context and the way in which you work with a psychedelic has a huge impact on the healthiness and value of the experience. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's not all created equal, or I'm speaking about that. [SPEAKER_02]: But I would say generally speaking, my understanding, my experience is that we're accessing the same mind through different doorways. [SPEAKER_02]: But generally speaking, the psychedelic doorway is just a million times more powerful and deeper and faster.
[SPEAKER_02]: Potentially too much, sometimes, but it's the same material. [SPEAKER_02]: And if you work with your own symbolic language over time, you can feel the connections. [SPEAKER_02]: It would be almost like the story that you told about the work that you did with the dream, which was seems like a very potent dream and you're very blessed to have that consciousness and support to go into it more deeply.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it was almost as if the dream, which was at this level, I'm just indicating a shallow level level here, [SPEAKER_02]: because of the attention and ability and whatever grace that you use to access the dream, you were nearly moved it into a psychedelic experience. [SPEAKER_02]: It was like at that, you'd deep in the level of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I don't think they're really accessing different places, just in different ways, [SPEAKER_00]: It did feel psychedelic, you know, that it's really a student comment and what I appreciate it about it is it feels like, you know, it's another way into this field we're talking about and psychedelics are great, but they also have a potential to, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, like you said, they're incredibly potent. [SPEAKER_00]: So they're not for everyone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And therefore it's great dreams are there. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not, I'm not kind of saying, oh, you know, dreams are like the things that people who can't handle psychedelics should do. [SPEAKER_00]: I, I'm, I'm, I'm like, [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like a marginal, I don't know you use this phrase, the poetic imagination.
[SPEAKER_00]: My sense is a marginal practice, not even dreams, but moving into an imaginal experience that is not just daydreaming, but as intentional, I've also had incredibly powerful [SPEAKER_00]: revelations and not only that, but every time I did it, I was struck by how good I felt afterwards. [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I just feel fantastic right now. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, it's like my well-being would just be off the charts. [SPEAKER_00]: So I think it's inversely undertapped capacity.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and you don't call that active imagination. [SPEAKER_02]: The book you consciously engage your unconscious [SPEAKER_02]: voice dialogue, any number of techniques. [SPEAKER_02]: So absolutely, I think that's completely valid. [SPEAKER_02]: And then the thing about dreams that I really like, even better than that, is that it really... Nice way to dream the same. [SPEAKER_02]: Look at this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Look at this, whereas there's other techniques that you're talking about, including things like shamanic journey, you might have a question that you're going to explore, you know, you might have a particular framework you're going into, it's great that you're consciously engaging with it and I use those techniques. [SPEAKER_02]: But the dream is saying, like, whatever your ego is thinking about now. [SPEAKER_02]: Look at this. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the next step. [SPEAKER_02]: So I like the kind of objectivity of that. [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, I feel like, okay, I didn't, I didn't constrain this, I didn't manipulate it, I didn't influence it, this is like, if the stream says it, I better listen. [SPEAKER_02]: So that's what I like, I want to do, want to go back to what something you said was psychedelics, because I think it's like so important these days to be clear about this.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would never say that not everybody can handle psychedelics. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't, that's not my experience. [SPEAKER_02]: I've seen psychedelics used well for people who were in extreme distress or unstable. [SPEAKER_02]: The issue is much more about the way we're using them. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, says, I'm setting safety, intention, the right kind of facilitation. [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm actually more concerned about the people who are using psychedelics casually.
[SPEAKER_02]: and don't think they had a problem, because I think they may have more of them, they may have had more of a problem on them, they may be less. [SPEAKER_02]: So I think it's a big subject, but it's more about the way they're used than who's using them. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, for me. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, and you know, there's certainly their here right now. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, these psychedelic conferences in the US have thousands of people at them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, we could have it spend a whole podcast on that, you know, they're going to big farmer coming in trying to capitalize on that move and the health of it. [SPEAKER_00]: I feel drawn to ask you about two things as we move into the last period of our conversation. [SPEAKER_00]: So let's see which one you feel called to pick up first. [SPEAKER_00]: One is how this work with dreams and psychedelics can connect to the heroes journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the other topic is... [SPEAKER_00]: you know, particularly, I know you work with corporate clients, you know, people in leadership roles, teams. [SPEAKER_00]: If you could say more about how people receive that work and the benefit it has there, and maybe those two topics we've together, but which, you know, we could pick up one first and then.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me say something briefly about the first one and then we're talking about the second one about leadership because I think that's maybe the part we haven't touched on as much in this conversation of the three words and the title.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here as journey is simply, as I understand it, largely comes from Joseph Campbell's wonderful work which was very influenced by young and he basically looked at world mythology and came up with common themes that describe the journey of an individual to enlightenment and the process of bringing that awareness back into the world. [SPEAKER_02]: Um, so he, he both gave us a really wonderful structure for understanding imagery and then not yet conscious.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we could do lots of, we could look at how the here as journey manifests in each dream. [SPEAKER_02]: Like certain stage of the journey is appearing in this dream. [SPEAKER_02]: I sometimes say there's dreams that I sometimes say the dreams that are initially, or are you meaning they set out the challenge? [SPEAKER_02]: And then this dreams that give the answer to the conclusion, [SPEAKER_02]: and then most of the James are sort of in the middle as you're working it out.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's like a, that's like a mark of a journey, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, they don't come in in linear order. [SPEAKER_02]: But so Campbell's work is super important to help us understand the dreams and, but it's not different than that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we could define the, one of the definitions I like, again, it's all a metaphor of a dream is that [SPEAKER_02]: The dream is like a film, written, directed and produced by the self, by which I mean your deeper self or your truth or source or god would have you want to call that Omega point. [SPEAKER_02]: So the dream is written, directed, produced by the self. [SPEAKER_02]: It stars the ego and the point of the dream is to show the ego how it's doing on its journey.
[SPEAKER_02]: So as it puts us, make it very simple. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like God's saying, over here, over here, this way, this way, this way, this way, no, don't go that way, go this way. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, if you're going that way, then we're going to have to do this piece, come over here, over here, over here, so it's like it's like a hide and seek. [SPEAKER_02]: And the dream is just giving you the next stage of your journey.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whether you know you're on that journey or not, I believe that journey is implicit and our being. [SPEAKER_02]: Again. [SPEAKER_02]: to my belief, but this is how I approach a dream and it seems to help people get meaning from it. [SPEAKER_02]: That we're all on a hero's journey and the dream is just giving us the next installment. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like the next set of clues on the treasure hunt. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, here's a clue.
[SPEAKER_02]: You think it's over there, but it's actually over here. [SPEAKER_02]: So that's very efficient, Joel. [SPEAKER_02]: It's really, I shouldn't say this, maybe this is the title leadership. [SPEAKER_02]: It's really efficient. [SPEAKER_02]: I said it was objective, but it's like we can go off and do all of these things that are fun and exciting and try this workshop in that workshop. [SPEAKER_02]: But I believe the dream is telling you, do this next.
[SPEAKER_02]: And as coaches, where we are, [SPEAKER_02]: where I hope make it paramount to honor what that individual needs next, not what we think they need next or what some people might need next, but we're there at. [SPEAKER_02]: The dream is right and line with that by giving us a bit more information about the next step for them that they will understand and get. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's super efficient. [SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's so I'm so glad you highlighted that again, because it's, you know, the difference between, oh, I, this is what I think I need and not to say we should just wipe that out, but you know, so often, well, where's that really coming out? [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we should wipe it out. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, it's a good introduction. [SPEAKER_02]: This is what I think I need. [SPEAKER_02]: But then the dream says, well, what's this?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you're talking a little about your mother, but it's actually about your father. [SPEAKER_02]: Like, talk about your father. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, never thought of that. [SPEAKER_02]: That wasn't in my model. [SPEAKER_02]: The dream is correcting my perception. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, or, you know, you think you want to be more authoritative as a leader. [SPEAKER_02]: So you work up with a coach.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm developing your strength and your command and your presence and the dream is saying, well, it's a good way. [SPEAKER_02]: Your dream gives you this image of this frail little mouth. [SPEAKER_02]: And you go, oh, maybe not the dream by exploring that you go. [SPEAKER_02]: This is all this tenderness or fragility in me. [SPEAKER_02]: And let's explore that a little bit more. [SPEAKER_02]: And then they're exploring the tenderness and fragility.
[SPEAKER_02]: You find your authority from a very different place. [SPEAKER_02]: But the coach and the client could easily kind of co-conspire to reinforce the client's ego [SPEAKER_02]: And again, you have to have a contract, it has to be over it. [SPEAKER_02]: But if the client's ego is saying, I need to be more authoritative and this is what I want to do in there. [SPEAKER_02]: I want to learn how to give presentations and be commander-room. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's great.
[SPEAKER_02]: But maybe there's a different way, at least two that, or maybe the next step for them is somewhere else. [SPEAKER_02]: So let's balance that egoic need with what they're not yet conscious as saying the need is. [SPEAKER_00]: you teed up leadership there. [SPEAKER_00]: What's the most important way in this topic of leadership in the context of this conversation? [SPEAKER_02]: Let's start with efficiency.
[SPEAKER_02]: The leader comes to a coach wanting to change in some way or learn something or develop in some way. [SPEAKER_02]: So I think the dream is a really useful [SPEAKER_02]: because it shows what's efficient and it helps both the coach and the client get out of their mind traps or their their egoic biases. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's just simply efficient. [SPEAKER_02]: I also think the dreams can help a leader access dimensions of self that their have trouble accessing.
[SPEAKER_02]: It might be particularly about the imaginal. [SPEAKER_02]: a lot of leaders aren't proficient in what we might call the imagination, and yet they they kind of know they need it to get new ideas, but they're not having grown up. [SPEAKER_02]: You don't learn writing poetry in business school.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it gives them immediate access to the imaginal, and it also seems to give us very direct access to feelings, emotions, and the body, which is also a problem of challenge for many leaders. [SPEAKER_02]: Um, the often the emotion or the access to the emotion is right there in the train. [SPEAKER_02]: So it makes it very easy to open those other dimensions that is probably critical for the leaders development. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's, it's efficient.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, it's, and it's objective and it's easy access to these other realms. [SPEAKER_02]: But I think at the deeper level and what excites me about this work now, you know, when I launch this dream training for coaches, [SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't prepared for the response that it got. [SPEAKER_02]: I thought I'm bringing this skill to coaches and it's really useful for leaders. [SPEAKER_02]: But a lot of people said, we need this now. [SPEAKER_02]: We need this now.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've been doing this for years. [SPEAKER_02]: I think why are people saying we need this now? [SPEAKER_02]: And I think we need this now. [SPEAKER_02]: What I'm hearing is that people feel we need this now because we need a new vision. [SPEAKER_02]: Like we need, we better access our mind or wisdom. [SPEAKER_02]: Like we're kind of depleted in our solutions.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if we have leaders or people in leadership or powerful roles, we need, we hope that they will be [SPEAKER_02]: So anything we can do to help leaders access of their wisdom will help all of us.
[SPEAKER_02]: And many leaders that you and I work with are, you know, they're suffering, they're struggling, they're anxious, they're lost, they're overwhelmed, they're, um, it's like, you know, young believed a crisis gives birth to a new symbol, it gives birth to a, and I got transcendent awareness. [SPEAKER_02]: Right? [SPEAKER_02]: It's something you've experienced. [SPEAKER_02]: But if you don't know that, all you can do, you look for the novelty in it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You just get caught in the conflict, which is okay, maybe the conflict needs to happen in the crisis, or the chaos has to happen. [SPEAKER_02]: But someone who has a kind of leadership mindset to wisdom, if that makes sense, is always [SPEAKER_02]: the new birth or the new paradigm or the radically new idea that might come from this. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's something we have to, I think it helps to learn how to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it helps to have access to where the wisdom will come from and it helps to be curious [SPEAKER_02]: And it helps to have some skills at harvesting, or, you know, this, speaking that language. [SPEAKER_02]: But I think we were at the moment, we really need to be very alert for new shoots of life that we haven't. [SPEAKER_02]: And new paradigms, new models, because things are moving fast and people are very scared.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I get the sense of leaders who are kind of imbued with an imaginal poetic sensibility, so that they can hold space for this not yet known to emerge more fully because they're not kind of contracted or [SPEAKER_00]: which feels like, mostly, that's what's the abundant in leadership, you know, and that this imaginal sensibility, these intelligence and wisdom can be shared as well, that it's not just coming through a leader's ego, and it's like competitive,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's about winning the game, but it's actually coming through this kind of collective evolutionary intelligence of what does what does life want to manifest in our times in response to the challenges we face and that that feels potent to our person.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, really glad you said that there are coaches and consultants who help [SPEAKER_02]: teams and systems access that collective intelligence because again there are ways to be more tuned to that there are ways to facilitate that but there aren't that many leaders who are willing to let that happen because they're holding on to it I have to know best I have to be right I have to find the solution.
[SPEAKER_02]: and then they'll go into space is even when we set them up to maximize collective intelligence. [SPEAKER_02]: I see this over and over and over again. [SPEAKER_02]: The leader will go into that space, so anxious and so needing to take charge because their anxious or people expect them to take charge that they will kill the possibility of emergence.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, that same attitude we spoke about to the dream of curiosity and openness and humility, I could learn here, I could, this is the thing that I would have to first coach a leader before we create a space like that, is that you have to come in here as the most curious person, and the biggest, the best listener, and that's how you lead in this space.
[SPEAKER_02]: looking you have to be the one really listening and looking for the saw help you, but you have to be looking for the something that's new and something that's challenging and something that's disruptive and something that's a bit weird and not conforming to expectations and that it could come from anywhere, it could come from anywhere in the system, not just your ex co, but it's not many leaders who are
[SPEAKER_02]: have achieved that amount of humility, and there's still value, still roll for leader, the leader has plenty of things to do still, but I do think the solution needs to be listened for, to get back to what you're saying about teleology. [SPEAKER_02]: It's like a future, a healthy future is whispering to us, but we need to hear it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want to share something that strikes me, which is, I'm thinking of Martin Luther King, you know, and his famous speech, where he keeps repeating, I have a dream. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, obviously, that speech is incredibly famous and it touches me so deeply when I listen to him speak. [SPEAKER_00]: And I wonder if that's what's coming through him in that moment. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he's using that those words literally.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a dream, but it's like it feels like he's tapping into a kind of collective. [SPEAKER_00]: wisdom. [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know if this is true, but I seemed to remember hearing that he had a whole speech prepared, but he kind of, the last minute decided to change some of it. [SPEAKER_00]: And well, what where did that come from?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, but at the least, I'm struck by him saying those words [SPEAKER_02]: And comment on one is, I have heard that story about that speech, by the way, but it reminds me of, is that when people get more comfortable and trusting of the not yet conscious and their access to their access to it, they become more comfortable at just opening their mouths and not knowing what's going to come out, which is an interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think one of the most inspiring people or the people who do that and what comes out is better than what their ego could have figured out. [SPEAKER_02]: So I have heard that story and I think there's something in that about our familiarity and our trust in our access to the not yet conscious and that there's inspiration there. [SPEAKER_02]: So many leaders are working with they want to be more inspiring, but they're not accessing their own source of inspiration.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the only I wanted to say is isn't it interesting that we use the same word in English for the night time dream and dream in the sense of vision or purpose? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think I'm curious about how they relate. [SPEAKER_00]: That's what I mean. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like I'm struck by that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, he meant a vision, but [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, everything you share about the level of inspiration and spontaneity, I don't know what you're speaking with, the truth and freshness, resonate so much. [SPEAKER_00]: Martin, this has been a really wonderful conversation. [SPEAKER_00]: And I thought, I feel it's been in viewed for me with a kind of a magical, imaginal inspiration, actually. [SPEAKER_00]: There's been this kind of a few of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And is there anything you'd like to share? [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you've shared so much, so maybe there is nothing, but in closing, and I'm going to ask you in a moment where we can find out more about your work, but I don't know. [SPEAKER_02]: I think we sort of so many things that are like doors we could open further, but I haven't I feel complete in the overview and thank you Joel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Where can we find out, I know you're putting on trainings for coaches, as you mentioned. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think we'll put something in the comments to your podcast about where Evan announced the dates yet for 2026, but we'll put them there. [SPEAKER_02]: Because the core idea is that I've realized that coaches can actually be so afraid of this territory.
[SPEAKER_02]: And assuming they have the certain level of self-awareness and death, and they're committed to being humble and mindful and respectful, we can help our clients by meaning from their dreams, safely and ethically, and get huge amounts of information from that. [SPEAKER_02]: kind of afraid to go there. [SPEAKER_02]: But I think there are ways we can go there. [SPEAKER_02]: They'll be hugely helpful. [SPEAKER_02]: So the course is about getting coaches started doing that with dreams.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, amazing. [SPEAKER_00]: I hope people listening to this feeling inspired and come your way and thank you, I'm hot in. [SPEAKER_00]: I know people can find your LinkedIn as well. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much for joining us. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and maybe this is, you've just teed up her part two at some point. [SPEAKER_00]: I love to.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just want to thank you, Joel, as well, because I've brought such a quality of warmth and like a tender, moist wisdom to the conversation that just [SPEAKER_02]: makes me feel more at ease. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_03]: Hmm. [SPEAKER_00]: You're welcome. [SPEAKER_00]: Here we are. [SPEAKER_00]: We're at the end of the podcast. [SPEAKER_00]: Just a heads up again.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're not on our mailing list and you want to stay in the loop about other things we create, then head to coaches rising.com. [SPEAKER_00]: Put your name in the sign up box there. [SPEAKER_00]: You'll also find some of our other offerings online trainings for coaches there. [SPEAKER_00]: And just want to end by wishing you well. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'll see you again next time.