Behind the Veil: Fantasy Can Keep You From Real Love, Dreams Can Lead Us Back | Dr. Lauren Dolinsky

Transcript auto-generated from the episode audio; formatting has been cleaned up, but wording is verbatim.

I'm Cynthia Marks, and I head up the Holistic Psychoanalysis Foundation, established by my late husband, Doctor Bernard Bail.. Welcome to And Now Love. I am so happy to have Doctor Lauren Dolinsky. She's back with us today. Let me do that again. I was about to cough. I am so happy to have Doctor Lauren Dolinsky back with us. Lauren is a psychotherapist with a practice here in Los Angeles. Lauren is an avid believer in Doctor Bail’s work and uses his theory in her work with patients. This episode is about how we all create fantasies as a defense against some very painful truths.

Early on in our lives. This results in a great deal of denial and idealization. Once we start to clean that up and see the truth clearly, we can live in reality and have a real shot at building good relationships and a good life. As is often the case for us here. Dreams will guide us. So Lauren, thank you so much again for being here. Oh, absolutely. Thank you for having me back. And this is a great topic and something that I think most of your patients must be confronted with. Every single one, without fail. And all of us. And it's such an important universal topic.

So I thought it would be a really interesting one for us to talk about today. So tell us a little bit about it. What's what's going on? Why are we doing this? Well, I mean, so like you said in the introduction and, well, I think we can jump into the dreams pretty quickly because it's going to really tell us the whole story and the whole picture of what happens during a life and what we all do, which is we come in with so much denial about a lot of the pain that we face. And in this work we talk a lot about an imprint, and that happens long before we remember anything, and we're inundated with a great deal of pain, and we have no idea that that's even happened.

And even beyond that, just dealing with everyday life within a family, there's already such a setup of needing to be in a lot of denial, have a lot of fantasy and a lot of idealization just to survive. And the more that we can start to break that down and come back to reality and get the whole picture, things actually tend to go a lot better in our lives. And we have better relationships, you know, better everything. So that sort of means if you don't have to spend all of your time kind of supporting this fantasy. And you let go of the fantasy, probably not all at once, but you begin to see it and let go of it.

That there is some amount of goodness or love or health that fills that space. Oh, absolutely. You get a real shot at it. You don't have to pretend, because what ends up happening, if we're saying that this one thing is amazing and wonderful, but we're denying everything else that we have unconsciously attached to that, what we're going to do is go out into the world and find partners, bosses, you know, situations, friends who reenact that experience, where maybe that part of it is wonderful or seemingly wonderful. And there's this whole other thing that tends to sneak in and make things hard, you know?

So it's better that we get a real view of the whole story and the whole picture. First of all, it relieves the mind. We free up a lot of energy. It requires so much energy to hold up these fantasies. We have much more space, and we get to see things as we are. And make healthier choices about everything in our lives and the people that we have in our lives. It's just a huge benefit to see the truth and to live in reality. One thing that I so want to instill is this idea of not just thinking the status quo is all you get. I think for many of us, this is my life.

I was born unlucky or. I'm right. And I'm not supposed to be loved or I'm just not that smart. I'm just. That's just how it goes. But what if you said. Yeah, it doesn't have to go that way. Let me think about this. Right. What if I questioned what I think is my appropriate existence? Why have I settled with this? That's. I mean, that's a beginning. That's the beginning. Yeah. Most of us have no idea how small and narrow we've made our lives in so many ways. We just don't know. It's so unconscious. So that's the beauty of starting to revisit all of this and look at everything so that we can grow and expand and our lives get bigger.

And, you know, everything just has a lot more space to it. Do you think that if we are thinking about having a relationship with a, with a new friend and you see them and you're like, wow, I'm kind of in, I really would, you know, so interesting. This person. But wait, they're they're two interesting. I'm not that interesting. I'm not that smart. I'm going to undo this or sabotage it, or walk away from it. If we start to think about that consciously, why am I doing that rather than just doing that? Would you then start to see some of that coming around in your dream?

If you've really made a kind of dent consciously, like, wait a minute, maybe it doesn't have to be that way. I mean, if that is what a particular person has going on in their life and in their unconscious, and this is a situation that is presented in their life, we will start to see a lot of what's getting stirred up in those internal moments in their dreams. Absolutely. And to that then, is it that those things are always sneaking into our dreams, even if we aren't making ourselves consciously aware of it? Like I just said, wait a minute, why am I thinking I don't deserve to have this friend?

I like this person. And then maybe I would be in my waking hours more cognizant of the dreams I had about that. But our dreams are always still kind of fishing for these bits, even if we're not consciously aware of the bits. Yeah, I mean, our dreams are always, always, always showing us what we need to know or what we could know, what we could consider in, in the present moment. And, you know, maybe the dream is rooted and based a long time ago, but it's always going to be showing us something relevant for us in this current moment. It's just a matter of whether we're paying attention.

And, you know, hopefully we we have some guidance that helps us understand what we're seeing because as we know, dreams can be very confusing. They can tricky for us if we're not really able to understand them. What we might think is a good message might be the opposite of a good night. Oh yeah. There's still see a little bit of that in the dreams we're talking about today. But until you have a sense of just how this all works and what you're doing a lot of time, there's so much of this fantasy and denial and all of that in the dreams that hopefully we get a chance to start to tease out and get at the truth so that you, you start being more and more clear and then we see over time, the dreams get clearer to like people don't have to disguise quite as much.

Maybe I'm the only one, but sometimes I think, well, if I discover this thing that I've been doing that is my mother, is that enough just to finally know? Oh wait, that's not really me. That's my mother. That is just having that deep acknowledgment is a lot toward undoing that idea that you are that thing that you're not. Yeah. It's it's a fantastic start. Beginning to actually see those things and recognize it is is a really great place to start. So no more wasting time. Let's get into this. Although that wasn't a waste of time. It's very valuable.

Again thank you to your patients for sharing their dreams. And these are marvelous and short. But right to the point. Yes. And the first dream is mine. We are all on a ship on the ocean, covered by a veil. We say I don't care. Everything is all right. Then we say, I have no idea where I'm going. So I thought this was an excellent dream to kick off this conversation. Because it is. It's your dream. So it will have some personal content for you. And I'm very interested to hear your thoughts about the dream, but it's also it's such a universal dream.

This is a really nice starting point for everybody. This is how we all start so we can talk about it. But is there anything you'd like to share about the dream? Do you remember it? Sure. Well, it was a dream of several years ago, and I've written down so many dreams, but when I review them, it's amazing how much comes back. I it's sort of surprising in that, you know, but it's so many dreams and just to pick out one and go, oh I remember. What I was feeling so that in my dream on this ship it was an ancient ship. It wasn't like a cruise ship. It was this old wooden ship like the Mayflower or something, but not the Mayflower.

And we were headed somewhere and it was kind of unwieldy in terms of whether or not we'd be successful getting to wherever it was we needed to go. And then somebody put a veil over this ship, and somehow that made everything safe. Like, now it doesn't matter. Something else is going to help us get there. I don't have to be standing at the bow looking out for something, some guiding something. This veil is like tamping us all down. Yeah, interesting. How interesting. If we were in a session, I'd want to hear all your thoughts and associations. And I'd ask about all these pieces, because you've made a lot of really interesting comments about it.

But for the sake of this conversation, there's so many things that stand out. One of the things I like about this is we have the setting of On the Ocean. Now we have this really old ship that's interesting to you didn't make like this modern thing. This is old. And then we have the veil as somehow protective of keeping you safe. And so this is a really good illustration. The ocean, I think here we're in the unconscious. We're on the unconscious waters with this veil that the cloaks, things you have. We have no idea where we're going. We imagine this is safety.

But ultimately you're saying, but we're lost. We don't know where we're going. And so I would say this is really an illusion of safety. This is an illusion because we need to start looking behind the veil, connecting actually with our unconscious. We all come in with some degree of separation. I mean, we could talk about it depends which origins you want to talk about. I mean, we can talk about a birth. We can talk about separation from the divine. You know, there's a veiling that that happens naturally. It seems to be our job if we want in this lifetime to start to wake up.

And part of what that means is looking behind the veil, really getting to know ourselves so that we can start to guide things. You see, when we have this veil and we might consider, you know, the imprint of veil, it is this, you know, an unconscious emotional atmosphere we're living in dictating with all these rules and limitations we imagine holding on to. This keeps us safe. It doesn't. It makes us lost. We have no idea where we're going. It's a really interesting starting dream. I would say we would want to actually start to lift that veil, take a look into the unconscious and learn how to steer our own ship.

Probably in time we get a more modern vehicle. This is old and you're talking about a really old voyage of discovery. That all fits. It all feels comfortable to me, and this was a dream that I had when I was first starting to look at my dreams and think about my dreams, and I was living my life based on a fantasy I had created in order to really survive. Yeah. And I was not going to let go of it. Yeah. And that's really a key piece to we can't emphasize enough that these fantasy seas that we build up in the mind are for survival. It's not for fun, you know, it's for survival that really shows up when you start over time.

Dismantle these things. Because that gets very scary if you're unconsciously feeling I. This could kill me if I do it. Yeah. And and in fact subsequent dreams. Many of them were representative of that. Say, for example, I'd be in a beautiful house on a hill with a gorgeous view, and I wouldn't want to go outside. It was perfect inside. And then all kinds of sort of amazing, yet scary wild animals would park themselves in the front yard. But somehow I was now told, you have to leave this house. Yes, but I don't know if when you leave this house you're going to live or die because these animals are hungry, right?

But I had to do it like you just have to step out of. Yeah. This thing that you've been hiding from. That's right. I mean, if you want, you can stay asleep and stay in the house. You can stay on the ship. But the dilemma, if you stay on the ship, covered in the veil, disconnected from the unconscious and from yourself, you'll be lost, right? You have no idea who you are fundamentally, and where you're going in your life. It's a tough place to be. I understand why people choose that. They may not know they're choosing that, but like you say, it's a scary thing.

You have to. If you start stepping outside of this fantasy, what do you have to confront? Right. And what falls in that space? You've spent so much time holding this weight when you let go of that weight. What are you holding now. Yeah. It's hard to imagine that this space that you now have freed up is going to be filled with, you know, goodness and health and. Right. What if it's worse. What if it's. Nothing. And like that we all have to confront that too. Because you know it's so common for people to think why would I go into what's painful like that just leads to suffering.

Why should I suffer to that? We say, well, you're keeping your life very, very small and narrow by keeping all of that out there. And it's not about you should just be in pain and suffer. But if you start confronting the truth and tolerating and bringing in and working through a lot of those feelings and understanding where they're all rooted and what they're about, you actually you you move through the suffering. That's maybe a part of it, but that's that's certainly not the point. The point is you really grow and actually your capacity for love, for real happiness, not fantasy, not Disneyland happiness, but real happiness grows real satisfaction, real connection, real compassion.

You know, the real connection. That's why you do it. It's not to be in pain. It makes me think of this thing that I used to do. And I think a lot of us do this. Whereas there's this idea, let's say, of what the perfect Thanksgiving looks like, the right amount of family, the right looking turkey, the perfect looking table, the greatest photographs being taken. You know, it's fall, the leaves are changing, and you look at that and go, that's that's my Thanksgiving. That's what I'm going to create. And you have your Thanksgiving. It's really not even close.

To that, that. I don't know who really. Gets that. But I like I convinced myself that that's what I was having. But my feelings were saying not so much, not so much. But I still wore that as my truth. And if someone were to ask me about it, that would be the truth. I would say it would be the. Yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of people can probably relate to that. You know, that's quite a predicament. And how do we reconcile it? Yes. In that, in sort of dismantling that postcard and looking at other people for what they really are. Two oh, and you're in Florida and the leaves don't change.

I mean, there is some amount of joy to be found and just the honesty is really there. What a. Relief. Yeah. You know, it's really, really relieving to finally tell the truth to yourself first and foremost. And this you know what? There's a lot here that hasn't felt good. Yeah. And I need a place to figure that out. And if this isn't my postcard. So what, you know, that's that's okay. It's it's it's not anybody's postcard. It's it's a postcard. Yeah. Well, let's deal with the truth first, and then hopefully you can really create your own. And it may not have to be so picture perfect and fanciful, but it can be real and it can be good.

You know? It can be good. We're not saying you can't have this wonderful thing. We just want reality. We want it to be real. That's the whole point of what we're talking about. We want reality. Yeah. And and I think, too, that fantasy keeps you from the joy of your own reality. Somebody set that up as an ideal. Yeah, but there are lots of other wonderful things that you can have. Well, absolutely. And the big point, too, is when it's a fantasy, when it's based in denial and idealization and fantasy, it's it's not actually good. It doesn't actually feel good.

It's coupled with all these other things that we're not addressing. And so you can tell yourself that all you want, your dreams are going to be reflecting what's really going on. And somewhere inside you're going to be feeling that whether you deal with it or not, something's not going to be feeling all that good to you people who come to me, it's not because everything feels amazing. They wouldn't be talking to me. To those of us who say, my life is okay, maybe I would have done things differently had I had more time, or this is the life I was given.

I was just born this way. I'm just unlucky. What if you just took a step back and said, Maybe I'm not unlucky? What does that mean if I start to look at things that way. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So now we're talking about your patients dreams This is simple. The rock is my boyfriend. He is sweet and tender with me. So for all of these next dreams I wanted to pick very simple and clear ones. They don't always come in so simple at all. And in practice. And you know, when you start listening to your own dreams at home, like they can be so confusing, so convoluted, but for the purpose of this conversation, so we can understand what happens over time was possible over time.

I wanted to pick these very simple ones. Thank you. And it could be to that something like this, this little gem could be mushed into a bigger group. And I'm sure it was. I'm sure at the time there was, you know, there was probably a lot of other little fragments going on. But this piece was so important for that dreamer and really showed. I thought it was a nice one to follow. So we have this idea generally of being, you know, a ship on the ocean with a veil and protected, but we don't know where we're going. So now we get to see, you know, what that means in practice.

What does that mean in a person's life? The first part's a little more theoretical and out there. This is more in someone's life. What does that fantasy look like? So this was an interesting one because. So the rock that they're referring to is the actor Dwayne Johnson. Who and this is why it could be an interesting, tricky dream. And especially now this this dream was many years ago. He as a person. So we're not talking about the guy. And I'm sure he's probably a very lovely guy. And I think his persona these days is as a real sweetheart. So it's not about him, but the unconscious is so interesting and specific with how it chooses things.

So it didn't come in as Dwayne Johnson. It came in as the Rock, right? And we have to consider this person's life and history and why that? And how do we make sense of the Rock now again, I'm highlighting that because those and we talked earlier and your initial sense was, oh, they're referring to an actual rock. Yes. Dwayne didn't it did not enter my mind. Yeah. But I think that's the point. And it's an important one because this person didn't have warm, fuzzy, tender, sweet, caring parents. And so we get to see a little bit about the fantasy and the idealization and the lie that they had to tell themselves to survive, that they had to turn a rock.

Again, not about the actor, but a rock, a cold, unfeeling, stony, inanimate object with no feeling, and to something really sweet, tender and caring. And so you really get to see how the mind twists things and takes something and makes it into something totally different, something that it is just fundamental. Ali, not this is great to have analyzed and interpreted because that might be hard to hear for that person. That goes, what do you mean? In the dream they were so sweet. This was such a nice dream. But you have the dream for a reason, so you can start.

You sneak it in, but you made it the rock. So your mind wants to start to make sense of this a little more and go. That can't really be true. That can't really be true. A rock can't do that for you. A rock wouldn't be sweet and tender and kind and caring. Again, not the actor a rock. Yes. Right. So this is a really important dream to show the way. A fantasy can work, and the way we can listen to dreams that just. We get a sense and and you have to know who you're talking to. Know their history, know all the content to really feel in the room what's going on here.

And it was very clear here that this this was part of the fantasy that needed to be teased out so that this person could get very honest about their life and not have to go out and get into relationship with rocks and pretend that that feels really good. But for any of us, if we're thinking about our dreams well enough to remember them, if there's something like this, let's say not this, I'm not sure what it would be a rock is about is inanimate. I could think of. Yeah, and you're giving it this sweetness. And these loving feelings mean that would be not easy to decipher, but a place to kind of be curious.

Why am I giving this? Yeah, hard. We can see monsters are scary. They're. You know, it can show up in so many ways in a dream. There's so many ways that these fantasies come in. But yeah, if they're. And we usually get a little hint that it's not quite right, there's something in the dream that gives us a clue that it's fantasy. So yeah, we should just start to think about that and go, oh, that's it. I wonder what I'm telling myself here. You know, I wonder what I need to look at. Is this real? Okay. Someone helping to clean my fridge. Moldy wine and rotten milk thrown away.

So the next couple dreams, including this one I thought were great follow ups because we see a clean up process happening. We see the therapy at work and we see the mind becoming clearer about the reality. So this is a good improv process dream. So the fridge here would be the unconscious. And we get a really good look and we've got a cleanup happening. So the therapy is brought into the dream. Because what we do in therapy is clean up the mind and we clean up the unconscious, because it is so filled with garbage that no one's. That's why we're blind ships at sea not knowing what's going on.

So when this can be cleaned up, we start to see more clearly. And what we see is that what was in the fridge is moldy wine. So if you've been drinking wine, I think here the alcohol of the wine keeps the mind drunk. And when the mind's drunk, guess what you can do? You can turn a rock into a really soft, loving, sensitive person. Yeah, not the actor, but yeah that's what, what the alcohol I think symbolizes here is, you know, for all of us to, we've had to be drunk to the truth to various degrees. And so we want to know for every single person what does that look like.

How have you had to be drunk and be emotionally out of it? So you're not seeing the truth clearly. So here we have a little more truth in that. It's moldy. It's not appetizing anymore. It's it's not looking good and it needs to be thrown out. If we throw out the moldy wine, then we get to sober up and be more in reality. So that's great. The other piece is we've got rotten milk. This is almost even more telling, right? Because where where does our milk come from? And it comes from mom. We all had to imagine. We got like the most delicious, sweet, amazing milk from her.

And a lot of times, even with her best efforts and we're not speaking ill of mothers, it's just that women, all of us, all humans, have so much in our unconscious that we have no idea we're we're feeding to our babies that that's what's happening and that's what we're all taking in. And so we want to get very honest about the state of the milk. If the milk was rotten, throw it out, get rid of it. We have so many dreams and we'll get to one later. You know, elimination and getting rid of toxic material. Lots of bathroom dreams. They're so common because it's on everybody's mind that we want to get rid of and eliminate this toxic stuff, and it's all these terrible feelings.

So this then is connected to the rotten milk. So this person was fed wine and rotten milk. Now that would make anybody live in a fantasy world. We get to see a clean up process happening, which tells us the therapy's working. All right. So it's a great dream. And that these dreams of elimination are so common is also fascinating to me. That there's this commonality, this thread that we typically don't reference because we don't share our dreams. Sure. That you, you know, get to see these things coming up again and again is really amazing. Yes, I get to hear lots of potty dreams.

Yeah. All the time. You know, people are often embarrassed. They don't want to, you know, they think it's embarrassing, but it is so common. And it's really, really, really important because it's telling a really important message. Okay. Woman is really angry because her earrings are falling apart. They were made of honeycomb and pearls. The honeycomb is old and dry and disintegrating. The pearls remain. So this is another in-process dream, and it's a really great one because it ties right back to that rock dream. And that was the same person having these dreams.

So over time and again, just to highlight, it's not like these dreams happen in a perfect sequence. And the whole process is very linear. We jump all around all the time. I just wanted to pull these dreams because we can zoom out and see over time the general direction of of what happens during the therapy process and people clearing up their minds and being more in reality. So this person now has to reconcile the fact that what the honeycomb in the earrings. So the honeycomb, the sweetness, the honey, it's decaying. It wasn't real. It wasn't real is disintegrating.

But the pearls, the wisdom they stay another great in-process dream telling us that it's working and the mind's clearing up and this person gets to be more in reality and not have to lie to themselves about sweetness that wasn't there. And it's not that there can't be sweetness in this person's life. There absolutely can be. We just want it real. We want it real. And by telling the truth, now we actually have room for real sweetness, real love, real tenderness, that that's not a fantasy tied to all this other stuff that if we, you know, pick it apart, it's probably pretty cold and just not true so much better that we get a dream like this.

And it also highlights some of the emotional process. The dreamers angry about this, we see that a lot. It's not like we easily let go of these fantasies and go, oh, you know what? It's so much better that I let this go and we hold on to them. It's like your first dream said, and your associations. It keeps you safe. Yes, it keeps you safe. What do you mean that's not true? Yeah. Where am I going to go with I? Of course. That was love. Of course it was real. Course it was sweet. Why are you taking that away from me? There's a big upset there. And do you think that the idea of giving up this fantasy can at some point.

Well, it must be at some point we either forgive ourselves or forgive those that we think put this upon us and get away from that anger. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that happens naturally over time. I think the anger is necessary because the anger was actually there all along, because some part of you knew the deeper part of you always knew it was a lie. And, and you were probably really angry about having to lie to yourself. Yeah. So much so. Deep in your own. Deep in your unconscious, you know, and more or less conscious to different degrees for different people.

Yeah. But the anger is necessary and it's it's actually healthy and we want it there. And that will get work through and resolved naturally. You know, as we continue this process, it's again, it's not that this person is now going to go around to being angry person out in the world. Quite the opposite. It's very relieving. And they get to have a clear sense of themselves and the world around them. I know I spoke with you about this earlier, but for me, you know as a teenager I had a relationship that was one of sexual abuse. You know, it's even hard for me to say it makes me choke up.

But I turned it into something that it wasn't. I completely turned it into something. It wasn't. It was love. I made this the North Star of love have this fantasy that I created, then led me in my relationships with friends and and romantic relationships. And nothing could hold up to it. Nothing. Because this was not ever a reality and what I had created was an impossibility. And to, you know, have dreams that led me to sort of get to that place that was so, so hard and I was so defended. I am not letting go of that. I'm just not. And how dare you unconscious, you know, say otherwise and you know.

So there again, you know, even the ship with the veil. But to finally say, okay, what if I change my perception of that? What if I say that that isn't truth? What happens? And to begin to dismantle that? Yeah. And to live without that false thing changed everything. That's right, that's right. Everything. It was an amazing gift to be able to undo that. And in the process of that, I remember thinking, am I going to be so angry that I lived most of most of my life believing this, that I won't be able to sort of lead a good life from here on out because of that anger, but not at all.

Yeah, some of that anger is necessary. Yeah. It was always there, you know, and it it's surfacing now for good reason. And the feelings that are being walled off there tend to be very scary and primitive. So when, when we start to let that wall down and reality come in and the truth come in, it's it's hard. It is. And, you know, you just think, am I just going to be. Yeah. Even more ashamed of myself. Am I in this anyway? Okay, so here we go. Hole in the ground war toilet used to be in parents bathroom. Can we all relate to this? Yeah. So the just a simple thing.

There is a hole in the ground where the toilet used to be in the parents bathroom. So I thought this was a great one to to end on for a dream, because first of all, it's not glamorous at all. And it's very typical of dreams. I hear a lot of the time. But what's wonderful about this dream is now we have the dreamer in reality and telling the truth because all of us, in different ways, had to imagine that our parents had this very fancy, high functioning toilet. And what that means is that we could bring them all of our upset, difficult feelings, and they would take it in and metabolize and digest and get rid and eliminate and get rid of it for us.

And the problem is usually that's not true. And so we tend to see dreams where things are overflowing or there's, you know, all kinds of plumbing problems or there's no bathroom to use or whatever. And then here what the person did is they removed the toilet. There's no longer a toilet, there's just a hole in the ground. Now, the truth they're telling is that the parents were far more primitive than they had imagined emotionally, so they were not as emotionally evolved as as the little one had to imagine that they were. So this dream really puts us squarely in reality, in the truth.

And it's a wonderful place to be. Because even though not not the prettiest dream, and it's not like this happily ever after, we don't have things wrapped up with a bow and that sort of thing. In a way we do, because now that we're in reality, we have a real chance at building something based on reality. We always want to build our relationships and and everything that goes from there the communities, everything else grounded in reality. And we don't have a lot of that right now. Collectively, we just don't. We don't have enough people living in reality.

So everything has to be built on lies and it won't hold up. The foundation doesn't work that way. Now you can see we're in trouble. We're in trouble, right? So if everyone were able to get to a place of being able to see their own personal foundation in a very honest way, and we get a very, very clear and honest picture of the truth and of reality, then we can start to build. Then everything can get better. It doesn't have to be, oh, you're just stuck with holes in the crapper. No, no, no. Now we can build something. Now we are dealing with the truth and we need that.

So if we're now dealing with the truth, with truth, if we've gone through our dreams and we've gotten to this point, is that truth? Love is that truth. Goodness. The truth always has those things in there. Yeah. Being able to be honest, I think pairs very well with actual love. It is a very loving thing to be able to, to be honest with our. So we're actually loving ourselves in a whole different way when we can tell ourselves the truth in a compassionate and loving way, you know, not beating anybody's head. With what? The truth. You know, people like to do that.

That's that's not loving. There is nothing about our authenticity that is bad or mean or amoral. That is not our authenticity. I fear that a lot of us think if I uncover my truth, I'm going to find out that I am bad. Yeah, no, pretty much always. That is part of that veil of fantasy, you know, or that's that's something you had to take in to try and help mom survive or whatever it is that not yours. And it's not. That's not true. If that is where you feel you've uncovered and you've landed and, I don't think you've gotten far enough to the truth.

You're just. We're not there yet, I see. Yeah, that's not real. I think to a lot of us have a fear that if we start to look at some of the things that we were given or things we were doing to protect ourselves within our imprint that was given to us mostly by our mother and then again by our caregivers and our fathers. If we start to to look at the truth of that, I think we're afraid that we're then going to look at our parents as being bad, and we don't want to do that at any point because we want to keep them up here. Are you then also saying, then we haven't gotten far enough if we're still thinking in those terms.

That that also is like a very primitive black and white way to look at things. Right? And, and what we want to do is just be able to, to tell the whole truth. Usually, you know, there's exceptions to this, of course, unfortunately. But most parents mean well with their kids. They really do. And for so many reasons, based on what they had to deal with with their own families, there's just a whole lot that got in the way of having a real loving, like period. All the things that we fantasize that we got, like just that pure love connection. Humans aren't very good at that.

At this point in time. We're just not we've got too much garbage in our unconscious that all of that comes through, and it gets in the way of a truly pure love connection. And so to be able to to tell the whole truth about what one experience, usually over time, builds compassion for the parents because you have a better understanding of what these humans went through in their own lives. And there may be a period where you are really upset about some of these things that you had to lie to yourself about. And, you know, and that's okay. Again, we want to just keep going.

It's not about making mom bad or dad bad. It's not making them the bad guys. That's not it at all. It's truly setting the record straight about everything that happened and what you went through emotionally, especially from the perspective of your unconscious, because your conscious mind had to do so much protecting and defending of everything that we want, the whole story, we just want the whole story. We want our all of the truth. And that's not not to make the parents bad. And I think getting to the bottom of this, to finding that authenticity which opens you up to be more loving and more lovable, I think then that innately creates compassion.

Oh yeah. So that compassion can absolutely fall to your parents. You can let them be human and let them have their frailties and let them have their history and understand that, you know, they were, like you said, in most cases, no harm is consciously being done right. Not not intended, not intended, and obviously case by case. And we want to always consider everything and it's proper context. But a lot of the time those parental relationships heal. There's a lot of healing that can happen when we can hold the whole picture and not have to hold them up as these perfect, untouchable beings.

It's not reality. Now, and I think we what do we recognize it or not, that comes through to us often in a conscious way, sort of like you're you are existing in your world with your parents being your parents, and you accept certain things and you do that without question. But those things that you're accepting maybe don't need to be accepted. And maybe that is not the that is not the reality. You're you're unconsciously saying, I'm accepting this as my reality. Sure. Yeah. So it feels like in our world today where we're really struggling and many of us are frightened and most of us are more than confused.

I feel like many of us are thinking, what now? I feel like I've lost total control. I don't see where I can make a dent. I don't see how I can help change the course of humanity. Yeah, but I feel like many people are saying that and then thinking, what about me? Maybe I need to look at how I can make myself feel a little whole, because it's certainly not happening. If I look at the outside. We're not seeing it outside. Yeah, we're not seeing it outside. And and there's truthfully very little we can do to change things there. And God bless the people that are called to work on things in that way.

That's fantastic. I'm not saying that shouldn't happen. But also, and critically, we all get to look inside because when things inside change, when we get to change the way it goes inside, that's when we see our external realities start to shift, and we see it individually in a person's life. So a person going through this process might go from, you know, a lot of problems in their lives, in their relationships, at work, with their boss, with their friends to things get a lot easier and smoother, and relationships are more fulfilling and satisfying and things are a lot more connected.

And if all of us get the opportunity to do that and all live in reality and can deal with that, we would have a much different looking world. So it's not a selfish act to go, oh, you know, forget the problems that or, you know, if you're overwhelmed with the problems, it's not selfish to start looking inside and dealing with things inside first. It's a gift to the world. It really is. So thank you so much for sharing these dreams. They really wonderful and I think they create a curiosity for all of us and hopefully and excitement to, you know, what happens when I start to look inside.

Yeah. And I do dream and my dreams are this gift that I get every time I close my eyes and sleep. Maybe I if I don't believe it to be true. What if I just said, maybe it's true? What if there's just a whole universe in there that we get to start exploring? And it's worth just just thinking about that? Well, thank you for helping us get there. Yeah. And I can't wait to talk with you again. On another topic. In this beautiful realm of the human being. Thank you for joining us. Please follow rate and share the podcast and pass this episode along to someone who might need it.

This is and now love listen to your dreams and live from your heart. And.