Momma, if I start a cult, it'll be about dreams.

I've caught 23 the past 12 days (don't worry, we catch and release over here).

We all dream every night. I think the fact most people don't know that, don't notice that, is one of the loudest invisible signals that our culture is profoundly disoriented.

Specifically, our attentional systems are dull, distracted, and disillusioned.

Sleep research finds we all dream 6 to 7 dreams per night. So, it's not that you don't dream, it's only whether you notice.

*meditation chimes ding*

Tibetan Buddhism has been cultivating dream yoga for more than 1,000 years. They see it as an obvious part of awakening.

I agree with them. It's not that I don't trust you if you don't remember and can't recall your dreams, but it is true that I trust you more if you can and do.

Then, last week, I discovered this study, and I've been in one of my mini mania marathons downloading lucid dreaming into my operating system.

Take-away: I'm learning lucid dreaming like my dharma depends on it.

It's been 12 days since I've started trying to lucid dream, and while I've had 3 gleefully/frustratingly near lucid moments, I haven't gone lucid yet.

However, as a result of trying, I've 23x my dream recall.

I had gotten lazy the past year. I was catching (remembering and recording) about 1 dream per two weeks (hello weed gummies). Since becoming a born again lucid looner, I've caught 23 dreams in 12 days.

Words betray how much my life is enriched when I'm catching a dream a night. I'm a better man when I remember more dreams.

How would a nation behave if it was mainstream to lucid dream? That we just knew that we could speak our ancestors, inspect and defrag our subconscious, visit the world of our favorite book or movie, and call on angels or aliens for debate and council?

Anyways, I had a dream last night that reflects what I want to talk about today.

The Father and The SEAL

I am in a neighborhood that feels like the famous neighborhood scene in the first season of True Detective. There is a feeling of immediate life-threatening danger. I am with someone I don't know in waking life, but in the dream, he feels like a close friend. He is a Navy SEAL operator, and we are on a team together. We are conducting some mission.

As we are walking along the side of a house, a van rolls up and he is black bagged in front of me by 3 people in all tactical gear, faces covered, the full show of force. Brother SEAL says something to invoke his rights and they laugh at him. The lead figure is clearly female from her movements, and she does an elegant mime-like mocking of Brother SEAL's protest. Brother SEAL then tells me the code to his house and what I need to go look for. He is dragged into a van and because of dream logic I am left alone.

Scene changes and I am now in an opulently large feasting hall. It kind of feels like the interior of the Arrakis palace from Dune, but instead of stone, everything is polished granite or marble. It is a formal and fancy occasion. I’m in a suit, and it feels like my friend circle is there although the only person I can pick out is *******. She is in a shimmering white dress and needs to go to the bathroom or something and I walk with her. The building is huge and labyrinthine, I go as her personal detail, and I still feel like I am in the operator role I was in in the previous scene. We don’t know where we are going and I start to lament not bringing my phone.

The feeling of the dream begins to get dark and ominous the way you start to feel when it dawns on you that you’re lost in the woods, or a cave or something. ****** starts to feel fear and I start getting vigilant, but with the help of a random Father who was carrying his son with him, I am able to get ****** back to the dining hall and I feel proud of myself for being able to get her back after having gotten lost.

As ***** goes into the dining hall, I’m still in the hallway and I notice Brother SEAL is back. He has bruises on his face, but it is clear he was able to get away because of his skill. The energy he brings with him is revolution/espionage-esque. He is operating like we are in a mission and our lives are under threat. He sees the Father and son and takes the son like he is going to use the son in some kind of ploy.

Both I and the Father, bewildered, tell Brother SEAL no, he can’t do that. This son is the man’s. Brother SEAL puts the boy down and looks the Father in the face. Stare down. In this moment I notice the Father is much larger/taller than Brother SEAL. After a few moments of intensity, Brother SEAL rips off the fathers (fake?) mustache. The feeling is that B. SEAL knows he has to find a different path for dealing with the problems he sees. He can't take the child. Both me and the father laugh in a kind of perplexed incredulity at Brother SEAL for snatching off the Father's mustache, and as Brother SEAL walks past me, he says:

"The Father wasn’t going to move. I can see these kinds of things quickly.”

then I wake up

What This Dream Means To Me

A good friend reminded me that the best way to face evil is in the reflection of a shield.

Nietzsche said it another way:

Brother SEAL is the part of me that looks for the monsters in our world. He read 'A Child Called It' in 6th grade. He found Rotten.com at 12 and watched men electrocuted, shot, and beheaded. He studies horror and genocide, tries to understand the psychology of mass-murders, rapists, and pedophiles.

I've seen him in ayahuasca. He looks a bit like this:

SEAL kidnapping the boy is a symbol for the voice in me that whispers:

This dream gave a definitive answer.

The answer back is No. That voice does not get to lead our interior we.

The King of my psyche is a Father. No response to the monsters of the world justify throwing away the symbol of the child.

For me, Fatherhood doesn't have to be literal, though I'd like to literally be a father. For me, Fatherhood is a developmental orientation we're all eventually called to (for a limited time).

The symbol of Fatherhood says:

The SEAL isn't exiled, he just doesn't get to grab the child.

The integration of SEAL with the Father is what's happening in me this year.

And SEAL's mission, on behalf of serving The Father, is:

cultivate a vocation that spreads dharma and generates enough wealth that no man can tell me where I have to be when I'd rather be with my child.

Announcing My Retirement

I'll be teaching my last Mentally Fit class in October, something I've been doing almost continually the last two years, and this last class is a goodbye.

As an writer and teacher, I have been speaking to a certain level of development most of my life. Different models give it different names, but at it's core, I've been speaking to the 25 year old me. The one that knows something is deeply wrong with his culture, who wants to help, but doesn't really know what to do, and honestly, isn't sure he should really try at all.

I've been speaking to him:

It has taken 10 years, but I finally have an answer to that young man who cracked his psyche:

Refining Mentally Fit the last 2 years has been a kind of therapy to this part of me.

After watching 300+ people go through the MF protocol, I know it works. People leave with a living relationship to soul and a burning desire to be of service to the next generation.

The MotherFather Leader for the next generation comes online.

I'm retiring from trying to convince the 25 year old in me that if he wants to help build the future, he is going to have to learn how to be an entrepreneur. I've spent 10 years trying to help the entitled artist in me see the brutal facts of our world and to grow up.

I am no longer an artist who wants to hide from the world and fiddle with his craft. I don't want to be featured in a museum or lauded on stage for my performance. I used to be that artist.

I'm an artist that lives in time of genocide and civilizational collapse. I'm an artist that would rather be a present father than a famous icon.

I am trying to do one thing as an artist, and it is to inspire you to join the renaissance.

And as I see it, it is either renaissance or cataclysm.

I've been studying the dynamics needed to produce a renaissance. You might be surprised but the first ingredient is significant social and cultural unrest (Inventing The Renaissance).

Check.

Some of the others are:

1. Reviving and remixing ancient knowledge
2. Revolutionary communication technology
3. Thriving Guilds (schools cultivating mastery)
4. Large financial investment in master artists
5. Myths about what could be, not fixation on what once was

Our time is ripe for a renaissance. We have the social turmoil, the reviving and remixing of ancient knowledge, and the revolutionary communication technology.

The internet is at the center of all of it. The Renaissance is here, in our hands; we only need to learn how to use it.

What we are missing are thriving guilds, large financial investment in master artists, and myths about what could be.

Phase 1 of this 'Renaissance, or Cataclysm' project was to create a psychotechnology that activated people's souls and got them in the game of living their dharma.

The last Mentally Fit class completes phase 1.

Phase 2 is to create a training ground for dharma artists ready to grow and deploy DEVAs.

A DEVA is a dharma-infused corporation. A corporation is an egregore, and egregores are the sub-structures that make up cultures.

​BridgeUSA is a DEVA. Panda Express is not.
​SpiritRock is a DEVA. Blackrock is not.

.001% of visionary artists will change a culture without learning how to play the games of the culture (they will probably die young too).

For everyone else, we can help change the culture by learning how to play it's games well. Growing and deploying DEVAs is the game I'm moving into.

The next arc of my life is going to focus on helping those on the field find and build guilds, and learn to generate and direct money into the hands of artists, artisans, and regenerative companies.

The richest .001% aren't going to finance the renaissance.

We're going to have to do it ourselves.

Which means learning how to be a dangerously effective DEVA pilot.

If you want to get in on the last Mentally Fit class, we start October 28th.

I'll share more on phase 2 as we get closer to 2026.

In the mean time, notice your dreams.

Ask them the burning question.

Tell us what they say.

Magick is afoot.

God is alive.

Song I'm Listening on Repeat

​I Can't Stop (Flux Version) - Flux Pavilion​

Dream Metric I'm Tracking

If you like measuring (I do), you can track your dreamcatching rate.

Multiply the span of days by 6 than divide the total by the number of dreams you had.

Because we're all dreaming 6 to 7 times a night.

For example, my dreamcatching rate the past 12 days has been 31.9%

12 days x 6 dreams a night = 72 total dreams dreamt

Of the 72 possible dreams I could have remember, I recorded 23.

23 is 31.9% of 72.

so my dreamcatching rate for the past 12 days was 31.9%

Dreamcatching: Recalling and physically recording a dream

The Podcast Is Back and Bumping

The Myths That Make Us is back in the swing of things (thank you Graham and to the listeners who urged me to get back to it even though I was self-conscious about my whisper.

Check it out on Spotify.

Weekly Journal Prompt

If I became lucid in the dreamtime, what would I do?

For real.

Write it out. Give it detail. Imagine it.

Whatever it is, you could actually do it if you learned to notice when you're dreaming.

It's one thing to notice the Shimmer.

It's a whole other thing to notice the Dreamer.