December 13, 2025 • 31 mins
In this illuminating episode, Cynthia Marks and psychotherapist Dr. Lauren Dolinsky zoom in on the unconscious—the vast “unseen” mind that shapes feelings, choices, and relationships. They explore dreams as a nightly bridge from the unconscious to the conscious, and why facing the “swampland” of scary feelings actually frees us. Lauren explains personal vs. collective unconscious, notes why intellect alone can’t heal us, and shares how wisdom is emotional, embodied, and relational. Cynthia brings three striking dreams: a booming “NEVER!” from the dark (don’t look), a designer’s house with misaligned floors and doors (don’t settle), and a final vision of lifting blackness to reveal a warm, triangular light—love as invitation. Together they show how dreamwork realigns the inner “architecture,” syncing heart and mind, and how that inner shift radiates outward. The takeaway is simple and radical: ask your dreams to speak, listen for feeling, and let love lead.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
I'm Cynthia
Marks and I head up the HolisticPsychoanalysis Foundation,
established by my latehusband, Doctor Bernard Bail.
Welcome to And now love and welcome
to Doctor Lauren Dolinsky.
Doctor Dolinsky is a psychotherapistand very passionate about Doctor
(00:27):
Bail's work and your practice is largelybased on Doctor
Bail's methodology and his theoryand wherever.
So lucky to have you with us.
There should be more peoplewho understand this work
and are as passionate as you,and we're working toward that.
Yes we are.
(00:47):
So thank you for being here.
Thank you for having.
And you came up with a great ideato talk about the unconscious.
Yeah.
I mean, we've been talking
about the unconscious on here,and you have quite a bit.
And I thought maybe we could just spendsome time really emphasizing
this part of the mind that it exists,and just talk a little bit about it.
(01:09):
Thank you. Yeah.I mean, I thought that might be help.
It's a huge topic, and I love thatwe would finally be focusing in on it,
because I think it's really unwieldyfor most of us.
It is.
And it's hard to conceptualize.
It's a little bit abstract and so vast.
It's a little bit as if, you know,
we were going to come in and say, well,our topic today is the universe.
(01:30):
I was going to say,
is it more like the universeor like the ocean, I guess, or the ocean?
It's more. Like the universe, though,because there's sort of no.
It's. Boundaries.
Exactly. It's so expansive.
It is so vast.
It's very, you know, it's it's hardto describe and distill and talk about.
And so I just thoughtwe'd talk a little bit about it.
(01:53):
And of course, we tend to focus on itfrom a psychological lens.
I'll probably focusmore on Western psychology.
But really the unconscious,it involves everything.
Everythingoutside of our conscious awareness.
So that that's just hard to even imagine.
It is.
I wonder if actually
(02:13):
now, given the scope of the world,we're actually talking about it less
maybe.
I mean, I think it's a little of both.
I think some people are more interested,maybe collectively less
certainly in our field and psychology.
People have moved away from psychoanalysisthat really,
I think, wantedto put a focus on the unconscious.
(02:36):
So maybe but alsoI do think there's a real interest,
there's an interest in what'sbeyond our conscious understanding.
And a lot of people have the sensethat there's just more
than what we know, and there's morethan just the material world.
A lot of people like to just stickto the material world.
And even when we're thinkingabout our consciousness, people
(02:58):
like to try and sayit's located in the brain,
but we have enoughactual scientific evidence
at this pointthat consciousness is not local
to the brain, and certainlythe unconscious is not either.
We're not talkingabout a part of the brain.
And so when we talk
about the mind, it'snot a physical entity.
(03:20):
And even when we're talkingabout the unconscious,
so manytheorists have tried to map this out.
And some of the popular ways of thinkingabout this are the personal unconscious.
And that's certainlywhere Freud was focused.
And then Jung came in and introducedthe idea of the collective unconscious.
(03:40):
And both are correct.
I think the collective unconsciousis a hard thing
for most of us to wrap our brains around.
Yeah, well, it really showsthat we are all so connected.
But I think my sense iswhen we expand into this,
we get to see what's really possibleand grow our own minds.
(04:02):
And the reason we focus so much onthis is because it happens to be that
what we refer to as the personalunconscious is really this receptacle
for generations of this unprocessed,
unhealed, really painful material,
which is another reason why people don'twant to touch it, because it's whoof.
(04:23):
You've got a full swampland of just the scariest,
most primitive,most painful stuff in there.
So there's a big push for people to go,no thank you.
And people thinkthat just pushing these thing,
keeping them in the unconscious, keepsthe person safe.
The problemis, as we see, it's not inactive in there.
(04:48):
This is all very alive.
So even when things are just relegatedand pushed away
into the unconscious,there's still up to something in there.
And they end up driving a lot of people'sbehavior and their relationships.
It's going to touch every aspectof a person's life, every aspect.
Truly.
(05:09):
And so the more that
we can start to develop a relationshipwith this part of the mind,
I think, you know, the more we growand the more we can heal.
So many of us either.
I won't be sure.
It's a multitude of reasons,but we end up being satisfied
with our life, with our positionin the world, with our families.
(05:32):
Everything is fine. It's status quo.
We don't series.
And to dive deeper,and I think that goes for so many of us.
And I would love for everyone to just
have an opportunity to say,what if I just explored?
What if there is something more?
We're so interested in doing thatwhen it comes to science and education
(05:55):
and being able to take advantageof those kinds of opportunities, places
we can go to expand ourselvesindividually or communities.
This is an opportunity to really do that.
So I want to say, even if you thinkeverything's fine, just open the door.
What else could there be?
Yeah. Why not, why not?
(06:17):
Look, I think collectivelywe have a lot of work to do.
We look around at the state of the world.
And I think if you're doingan honest evaluation, we go, oh, my gosh,
we as humans have a lot of work to do.
So we're just offering this as an avenueto help all of us.
So let's help everyone better understandthis vast, unconscious.
(06:39):
And you brought some fabulous dreams that
I think really help illustratewhat it might be like
to start to make contactwith this part of the mind.
And I really felt when I read them,I was like, oh my God,
so many peopleare going to relate to this.
Oh good.
Well, I will share those.
And and they are progressive.
(07:00):
Yeah, they tell a nice story.
And these are the dreamsof a few years ago.
Yeah. And thank you so much.
That's so generous and gracious of youto bring your dream.
Thank you. It's my pleasure.
All is dark.
Reminds me of a television screen.
Then a black shape appears.
(07:20):
I'm not sure if it is a big black tiger.
A big human or something in between.
It yells super loud.
Never!
The voice is ominous, deep.
That's the whole dream.
Yeah.
If we were working together,if this were a session,
(07:43):
it would go a little differently.
And I'd want to hear all of your thoughtsabout all the pieces.
And we're not going to do that today.
And there's sort of enoughfamiliar territory in this little bit.
Yeah.
They tap into what we're talking aboutwith that collective experience.
Would you like to share your thoughtsabout this dream first, that you have
(08:03):
ideas about it? I do, I do.
I felt like I was on the edge
of maybeexploring some truth about myself.
But all of this darkness came inand these images of this.
Could it be a big humanor a big black tiger?
Both of them were very scary.
Don't go there.
(08:24):
But I still felt like a little courageous.
And then this voice never in this giant,ominous tone.
Never. Yeah.
That said, okay,just go back to the way things were.
Yes, you open that door a little bitand that didn't go well.
So I thought that was such an interesting
(08:46):
one to start with because there isthis universal quality to it.
I hear so many like this,especially early on in a treatment
where people have the ideathat they're not allowed to go there.
And again, I talked aboutthat might be the protective part
of the mind trying to say, don't,don't touch what's back there.
It's too scary. It's too painful.
(09:08):
Now, you even brought in the ideathat it might be a big white tiger.
Was a big black tiger. A big black tiger.
So that gives us a little cluethat you're probably
talkingabout something in the feeling realm.
A big cat.
Cats oftentimes point to the feminine.
They're very intuitive,instinctual creatures.
(09:29):
So we get a big black tiger.
We know there's going to bea lot of feeling back there.
And the message is no, stay away.
Never. Never.
So some people might hear a dreamlike this and go, forget it.
That's too scary. Why?
Why would I keep going down this road?
And I've just been told never.
I was told never and were very good.
(09:52):
Unconsciously.
Usually we don't think about itlike most people wouldn't
wake up from this dream and go,you know what?
I'm never going to do that,you know, not necessarily.
But we're good at following ordersfrom that part of the mind.
So a lot of people would unconsciouslyjust follow that and go, nope,
nothing to see there. I'm not interested.
If I'd had that, I only I believe
(10:14):
I only got to the placewhere I had that dream
because I had been conscious
of my dreamsfor many months prior to this dream.
I had been paying attention to them,and the little windows and doors
were beginning to open.
And then this was intendedto slam those shut, right? Yes.
And we see that a lot, too. Right.
(10:36):
And you can get a dream like this
at any pointin your exploration of this territory.
Right.
It isn'tjust because we're starting here again.
We're going linear with it.
This part of the mind is not linear.
It could be that because you did startto touch something very sensitive there,
something very emotional that that'swhy you get this message back off.
(11:00):
You never shut it all down.
And it's very truebecause I had formed my truth
based on a complete untruth.
I had turned this thingthat was not reality at all
into my North Star,
and it had misdirected metime and time again.
(11:24):
But I could never straighten that out.
I could never turn that thinginto what it really was.
I still, no matter what,had to support that thing and say,
no, no, no, this is love, this is love.
And every other time I try to find
love, it's got to match that thing.
(11:45):
But it wasn't love.
That's such a brave thingto start to face.
It really rocks people's worlds.
When you start to see thatwhat you imagined
was love was not love.
It's unbelievable.
I mean, just talking about it,
it still gives me goosebumps to thinkthat I held onto this thing for dear.
(12:07):
Life, for survival, for dearlife is the right way to put it.
That's very true.
We all do this initiallybecause we have to imagine that
we came in with all this amazing,wonderful love to survive,
but to start to questionthat and shine a light there and go.
But what's the truth?
What's really happening?
And go,oh my God, I might need to turn everything
(12:27):
on its headand start questioning everything.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's interesting that you use that
first step, this supporting, this untruth.
This is love at the very beginning.
And you find similar situationsthat are your stepping stones.
Yeah.And so that's the unconscious at play.
(12:48):
We've got whatwhere's examples of the unconscious.
Guess what.
Your unconscious is going to magnetizethese experiences
in your waking life to show youwhat's going on there.
And to confirm these ideasthat you're holding
unconsciously about yourself,about your life, about every part of you.
I see why you like doing this. It'sfascinating.
(13:10):
It's so fascinating. And so, yeah.
This one is just a few months later,and I had lots of dreams in between.
I am standing in the foyer of a houseI am working on
as an interior designerbecause I am an interior designer.
The entry door is just behind me.
There is an opening on the second floorthat is to align
(13:32):
with an opening on the first floor.
It doesn't quite align.
There are actual doorsto the right and left of the opening.
On thesecond floor, and on the first floor.
I am decidingif the openings aligning is important
enough to change the whole thing,which would be a really big deal.
(13:54):
I'm also deciding if the door heights
should match as they're slightly off.
I am annoyed that I have to seeif I am willing to settle.
That makes me angry with myself.
This should have just been donecorrectly in the first place,
and I decide that yes,
in fact it all needs to be corrected,which is a big job.
(14:18):
In my dream big job,I have to do some backtracking.
I've got to make sure that this feelsright because this doesn't feel right.
Yes. Again,if we were working with this clinically,
I'd be asking youabout every little piece of this dream.
I want to hear all your thoughts.
Do you want to give me just whatyour initial impressions were? Yes.
(14:40):
So it says if I'm, you know, living a life
where things never feel quite right on
and not right on in terms of a perfectionnot right on.
And it's some kindof tangible meaning, but just
feeling wise, not like an alignment.
Yeah, I feel like I'mgiving something up all the time.
(15:02):
Like I can't get it to a placewhere I'm like, oh yeah, that's it.
And I get that
in order to have that good feeling
all the time,I'm going to have to do a lot of work.
I thought this was a great dreamto follow that first one,
because now you're getting in thereand we've moved past the never
and we're going,okay, this is like an in-process dream.
(15:25):
There's things that have been changing,
but now we have to reassessand reevaluate the whole structure.
Now it's interior design.
I understand this is the work that you do,but this is your interior design.
This is the interior design of your mind.
And you're saying
something's been off kilter, right?
(15:45):
We have the first floor in the secondfloor to often points to the unconscious.
That's a number that we really associatewith the unconscious part of the mind.
So we go, oh, how interesting.
You're saying you're consciousand you're unconscious.
Have not quite aligned.
Do you have to settle for that?
Do you have to settle?
I think you're very smart. In the dream.You go.
(16:07):
I don't want to settle.
Let's do it all over.
Let's correct this.
That's an amazing attitude to have here.
It's just so interesting.
In the dream how disturbing it is.
Yeah, but I still spend a lot of timethinking about.
Am I willing to accept the disturbor do I have to figure out
(16:28):
how to move on from that?
Exactly.
Well,and we can think about how often people
in their waking lives,you know, we hear about settling
and relationships all the time,but probably so many aspects of life.
How many times the people go,I just have to settle for this
or collectivelywhat our governments are doing
or all the thingsthat are happening in the world.
(16:49):
And we go, I guesswe're just supposed to live like this.
I don't really have a choice.We don't have a choice.
But I think this very wisepart of your mind is going, wait a minute,
it's worth
taking the time to get this right,
to get in there,to do the work, to get things aligned.
If we all did this collectively as humans,
(17:11):
imagine whatwe could get aligned in this world.
Yeah, I actually can't even imagine.
Most of uscan weave really straight off course.
I think the unconscious is always
wanting to get us back on course andit's going to do that for each individual.
First it's
going to go, here's where you're off,here's where you're out of alignment.
(17:33):
You know, it's very humbling goingand getting into this part of the mind.
It is the most humbling experiencebecause you have to go and face all these
things that you have insidethat aren't right,
aren't aligned, aren't even you.
What did you absorb and take in?
That's not you.
(17:53):
That's not ever going to feel good to you
because it's not reallyyou and it's going to create problems.
But the easy path is just to keep doing itthat way.
You see path. I say, it's not so bad.
I can live with it a little off kilterwhen you're considering that in a dream
you go, can I live like this?
Can I just it's not right.
This doesn't feel right to me.
(18:15):
But am I going to settle?
And you have this very,I think, wise response
and you go, I'm not going to settle.
We're going to do itover. Big job critical.
If you want your interior design,your mind,
your inner world, feelinggood to you, feeling aligned,
that means your heartand your mind in sync.
(18:37):
We should all have that.We all deserve, that.
We all deserve to be in syncwith our hearts.
We do.
And so many of us say,I'm just living the life I'm like.
Yeah, we follow directions.
I see it all the time in dreams.
You're just following your orders.
You've got your script,you're on whatever.
You're just you're following your orders.
(18:58):
Here are the steps. Here's what you do.
The problem is oftentimeswhat we see it's not aligned.
Something will keeptelling us this isn't right.
How is it that
we have these dreams and there is so much
fabulous information in them,
but most of us aren't aware.
(19:19):
Do you think that at one point
dreamswere something that humans really valued?
I'm not a historian in this way,so I can't give you
the most accurate picture,but I know that we've had a dance
with that for a long time,and even in ancient Greece
there were these dream temples that youwould go to and really form a connection.
(19:44):
And there's biblical storiesof these dream analysts and Joseph
and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,and we have all these
examples of dreams
having a valuable role in society andknowing that there's something more to it.
This isn't just static,
that the mind is coming upwith the reprocess the day or whatever.
(20:06):
It's not just noise.
But I feel like of late,that being many decades,
that we've really just Poohpoohed that whole thing.
A lot of people have,because a lot of people are listening
to the message from that first dreamand saying, well, never, never.
You know, that's why
I wanted to highlight that for everybody,because I think we all have that.
(20:27):
So I think a lot of people have followedthen go, but there's nothing to this.
It's just noise.
And like you said, when Doctor
Bail, look,I'll just consider it, open it up and see.
I like thatwith people who don't love the idea
some of them are open to, well,we can at least treat it
like a predictive exercise.
Maybe they have nono actual wisdom or meaning,
(20:49):
but we'll treat it like a raw shark,like an inkblot.
And maybe it has some valuethat I'll just come up with my own ideas.
And usually in time, people are blown awaybecause you go,
oh God, this is telling me the truthabout my life in this whole new way.
Like you said,you have to revisit what you held
(21:10):
as the truth about yourselfand be willing to drop it and go.
Maybe I was off.
Maybe that wasn't true.
And maybe I'm going to die.
If I discover the truth.
It feels that severe. It does.
We really are getting intothe most primitive,
sensitive, vulnerable material there.
(21:31):
So I really respect the processand what it takes to actually get there
to a place where you even consider it,because you have to revisit
some incredibly sensitiveand vulnerable material.
You had to do this,didn't you? And of. Course.
And it's ongoing, I imagine.
Of course, of course.
Yeah.
I would never take peoplewhere I haven't gone.
(21:53):
And is it for all of us then continuallyongoing that over the course of our lives,
if we listen to pay attentionto our dreams, we'll learn more and more?
Oh, that's the beauty of it.
We don't get to an endpoint.
We don't.I mean, what's the point of being alive?
It's not like we get, oh, I have evolvedcompletely and I'm just done.
(22:14):
We always have more to learn,and we have this wonderful resource
available to us every single night going.
Here's something to consider.Have you thought about this?
And most of uswake up if we remember that and go
and that's it.
Yeah, whatever.
Yeah.
But we're encouraging people to maybegive it a second thought.
(22:36):
Here's the last dream.
This one is about a year and a half later.
All is black space.
I can't see a thing.
Somehow, though,I can lift a corner of it.
This black spaceas if it's tangible with my fingers.
Almost like lifting pagesin a very thick book.
(22:57):
When I do, I see a bright, warm,
glowing light of another dimension.
I see it and I feel the warmth of it.
It's not just light, it'sanother space with things happening.
The openingI see is an equilateral triangle.
(23:17):
So this other dimension, I'mlooking through this triangle to see it.
That's the whole tree.Yeah, that's a really beautiful dream.
I think even without any interpretationor digging in at all,
we go, wow,that's a really beautiful dream.
But do you want to sharesome of your thoughts?
What were your impressionsof having this dream?
It was
as if there
was a bit of a safetyin coming out of the dark.
(23:41):
The dark being the placewhere I misrepresent everything.
I turned things into things they weren't.
And lifting that up a little bit to say,here's the truth.
You're ready to say
you were completely misaligned.
Yeah.
(24:01):
And not think about
what that truth means in termsof how you've lived your life falsely,
let's say, or how you kind of continuedto hurt yourself over and over again
because you were relying on this truth,which wasn't the truth, but to say,
sorry, it makes me emotional.
It doesn't have to be this way.
And it's okay.
You can stop supporting that thing.
(24:24):
It's okay.
And this thing that I'm talking about
was a terrible thing that I turnedinto a bright, beautiful thing.
And along with that came guilt and shame
and a huge amount of fear.
But I put frosting on itand turned it into a pretty cake.
(24:47):
And so to
finally say it's okay, it doesn't meanthat you're not that thing.
You're not this horrible,misconstrued out of alignment thing,
as if there was some unknown value
that I could now find beautiful
(25:07):
about you.
So, you know, you open,you have this space,
there's all this warm, glowing light.
What did you think that was?
It felt like an invitation.
It felt like it was love.
It's hard for me to separatesome of this from Bernard,
because we were talking about our dreamstogether, and I had nothing
(25:29):
but this immense loving support
which I will forever be grateful for.
Knowing that feeling existedand knowing that
this man, that our love for each otherwas so immense.
And to be with this manwho could understand our dreams,
probably before we even spoke them,
(25:50):
made it easier for me.
That little lifting was like,
don't worry, there's love here.
Yeah,I saw that dream and I was like, well,
if this doesn't sum up the entire podcast,it's called End Now, love.
So I think one of the detailsthat I don't know if you mentioned,
(26:12):
but I remember reading it, was thatthat what you lived was six inches.
The triangle, each side was six.
Inches. Yeah. What did you make of that?
I can't say
I mean that everything was equal meantsomething to me,
that it was six inches
I don't know anything about,but it was as if you can't go wrong
when you look at thisfrom a place of love, everything is.
(26:36):
Yeah.
If we use numbers a lot in the analysisbecause there's so much symbolism.
Which I'd love to know more about someday,there's a whole other podcast
to talk about that,
like you mentioned, the numbertwo often refers to the unconscious, but
I have no idea how that coordinates twowith the unconscious.
(26:57):
Yes. Or six with whatever. There.
We always have to look at the context to.
So I'm not saying that a certain numberalways means a certain thing,
but we look at the context.
I want to hear associations becauseperhaps you're talking about an age,
maybe something at agesix here, knowing what
I know, having donethis work, six is the number of love.
(27:21):
So I go, yeah,
that's the other thingthat really struck me.
And we're cross-referencing a little bit.
I listened to another
one of your recent podcasts where you hadmentioned The Book of Suffering.
Yes, that's right, I the book of torture,I think torture. Yes.
Life is torture. Right.
So I thought it was so interesting.
(27:42):
It's like a little wink
to because in this dreamyou say it's like lifting pages of a book.
So we get past the big lie thatlife is torture, that life is suffering.
And you go, there's love available.
I see, I would think my feeling isthis is the divine coming through.
This is divine love.
I think Doctor Vale really opensyou up to that part inside.
(28:06):
I think you did.
I mean, there's things I've never felt that I didn't even know a human could feel.
And it's interesting, when I
was reading to you just now,the first stream where it just never
it reminded me ofalso the book of torture. Yes.
And I imagine if we were to look throughall the dreams, we'd get
(28:26):
lots of flavors of that throughout.
But what an amazing transformationjust in these three dreams.
And this is what, over the courseof a couple of years,
I mean, you were in very closeproximity to Doctor Bail
and you were talkingabout dreams all the time, but you know,
as far as I know,it wasn't a formal analysis.
Yeah.
(28:47):
You know,I think that's also hopeful for people,
maybe that if you really start to developa, a closer relationship
and curiosity with this part of the mind,look at what's possible.
We don't do it because it's greatto have your dreams changed.
Yes, that's lovely, but it changes you.
It changes your life.
(29:08):
Yeah.
If we can all let more love
and light in a true way,not in this kind of bypass.
It sounds great.
Nice in theory.
And we all talk about this kumbaya thing,
but really let it inand let it change you.
Who knows what we could do?
And for me,I don't feel as if I'm a different person.
(29:32):
I'm the same person I've always been.
But even peopleI've known for a long time,
whom I've been friendswith, have said to me,
Cynthia, it's like a light has come on in.
You and you're still you.
But the way you walk through the world
with such happiness and loveand this kind of glow, it's unbelievable
(29:58):
to have someone on the outsideactually notice something like that.
Oh, it's so validating.
Because I feel like it's all,you know, internal.
But the idea is that it's not internal.
The idea is that we come to a placewhere we as humans
operate from loveand spread that out to the people we know.
Let it show, let it lead,let it show, let that light shine.
(30:22):
Really.
But I was told always,as many of us just be insulated.
You have nothing to share.
What you have to say is of no value.
Well, so many of us have this light dimmedor blown out completely.
So really that'sour work is is revitalizing.
This is turning the light back onfor people.
(30:44):
It's awesome. It really works.
It does.
I really felt that people could probably
relate to some of these dreams.
And you could inspire peoplebecause people can see what's possible.
The way you speak about these thingsand the knowledge you have, the feeling
you have,and the investment you've made in
(31:07):
the process is clearly comingfrom a place of pure love.
So I can't thank you enough.
Thank you so, and we'll see you soon.
Yeah, absolutely.
Please follow us.
Rate and share the podcastif you will, and pass this episode
along to all of those peopleyou think might be it.
(31:31):
This is and now love.
Listen to your dreamsand live from your heart.
Thank you.
And look.
I'm Cynthia
Marks and I head up the HolisticPsychoanalysis Foundation,
established by my latehusband, Doctor Bernard Bail.
Welcome to And now love and welcome
to Doctor Lauren Dolinsky.
Doctor Dolinsky is a psychotherapistand very passionate about Doctor
(00:27):
Bail's work and your practice is largelybased on Doctor
Bail's methodology and his theoryand wherever.
So lucky to have you with us.
There should be more peoplewho understand this work
and are as passionate as you,and we're working toward that.
Yes we are.
(00:47):
So thank you for being here.
Thank you for having.
And you came up with a great ideato talk about the unconscious.
Yeah.
I mean, we've been talking
about the unconscious on here,and you have quite a bit.
And I thought maybe we could just spendsome time really emphasizing
this part of the mind that it exists,and just talk a little bit about it.
(01:09):
Thank you. Yeah.I mean, I thought that might be help.
It's a huge topic, and I love thatwe would finally be focusing in on it,
because I think it's really unwieldyfor most of us.
It is.
And it's hard to conceptualize.
It's a little bit abstract and so vast.
It's a little bit as if, you know,
we were going to come in and say, well,our topic today is the universe.
(01:30):
I was going to say,
is it more like the universeor like the ocean, I guess, or the ocean?
It's more. Like the universe, though,because there's sort of no.
It's. Boundaries.
Exactly. It's so expansive.
It is so vast.
It's very, you know, it's it's hardto describe and distill and talk about.
And so I just thoughtwe'd talk a little bit about it.
(01:53):
And of course, we tend to focus on itfrom a psychological lens.
I'll probably focusmore on Western psychology.
But really the unconscious,it involves everything.
Everythingoutside of our conscious awareness.
So that that's just hard to even imagine.
It is.
I wonder if actually
(02:13):
now, given the scope of the world,we're actually talking about it less
maybe.
I mean, I think it's a little of both.
I think some people are more interested,maybe collectively less
certainly in our field and psychology.
People have moved away from psychoanalysisthat really,
I think, wantedto put a focus on the unconscious.
(02:36):
So maybe but alsoI do think there's a real interest,
there's an interest in what'sbeyond our conscious understanding.
And a lot of people have the sensethat there's just more
than what we know, and there's morethan just the material world.
A lot of people like to just stickto the material world.
And even when we're thinkingabout our consciousness, people
(02:58):
like to try and sayit's located in the brain,
but we have enoughactual scientific evidence
at this pointthat consciousness is not local
to the brain, and certainlythe unconscious is not either.
We're not talkingabout a part of the brain.
And so when we talk
about the mind, it'snot a physical entity.
(03:20):
And even when we're talkingabout the unconscious,
so manytheorists have tried to map this out.
And some of the popular ways of thinkingabout this are the personal unconscious.
And that's certainlywhere Freud was focused.
And then Jung came in and introducedthe idea of the collective unconscious.
(03:40):
And both are correct.
I think the collective unconsciousis a hard thing
for most of us to wrap our brains around.
Yeah, well, it really showsthat we are all so connected.
But I think my sense iswhen we expand into this,
we get to see what's really possibleand grow our own minds.
(04:02):
And the reason we focus so much onthis is because it happens to be that
what we refer to as the personalunconscious is really this receptacle
for generations of this unprocessed,
unhealed, really painful material,
which is another reason why people don'twant to touch it, because it's whoof.
(04:23):
You've got a full swampland of just the scariest,
most primitive,most painful stuff in there.
So there's a big push for people to go,no thank you.
And people thinkthat just pushing these thing,
keeping them in the unconscious, keepsthe person safe.
The problemis, as we see, it's not inactive in there.
(04:48):
This is all very alive.
So even when things are just relegatedand pushed away
into the unconscious,there's still up to something in there.
And they end up driving a lot of people'sbehavior and their relationships.
It's going to touch every aspectof a person's life, every aspect.
Truly.
(05:09):
And so the more that
we can start to develop a relationshipwith this part of the mind,
I think, you know, the more we growand the more we can heal.
So many of us either.
I won't be sure.
It's a multitude of reasons,but we end up being satisfied
with our life, with our positionin the world, with our families.
(05:32):
Everything is fine. It's status quo.
We don't series.
And to dive deeper,and I think that goes for so many of us.
And I would love for everyone to just
have an opportunity to say,what if I just explored?
What if there is something more?
We're so interested in doing thatwhen it comes to science and education
(05:55):
and being able to take advantageof those kinds of opportunities, places
we can go to expand ourselvesindividually or communities.
This is an opportunity to really do that.
So I want to say, even if you thinkeverything's fine, just open the door.
What else could there be?
Yeah. Why not, why not?
(06:17):
Look, I think collectivelywe have a lot of work to do.
We look around at the state of the world.
And I think if you're doingan honest evaluation, we go, oh, my gosh,
we as humans have a lot of work to do.
So we're just offering this as an avenueto help all of us.
So let's help everyone better understandthis vast, unconscious.
(06:39):
And you brought some fabulous dreams that
I think really help illustratewhat it might be like
to start to make contactwith this part of the mind.
And I really felt when I read them,I was like, oh my God,
so many peopleare going to relate to this.
Oh good.
Well, I will share those.
And and they are progressive.
(07:00):
Yeah, they tell a nice story.
And these are the dreamsof a few years ago.
Yeah. And thank you so much.
That's so generous and gracious of youto bring your dream.
Thank you. It's my pleasure.
All is dark.
Reminds me of a television screen.
Then a black shape appears.
(07:20):
I'm not sure if it is a big black tiger.
A big human or something in between.
It yells super loud.
Never!
The voice is ominous, deep.
That's the whole dream.
Yeah.
If we were working together,if this were a session,
(07:43):
it would go a little differently.
And I'd want to hear all of your thoughtsabout all the pieces.
And we're not going to do that today.
And there's sort of enoughfamiliar territory in this little bit.
Yeah.
They tap into what we're talking aboutwith that collective experience.
Would you like to share your thoughtsabout this dream first, that you have
(08:03):
ideas about it? I do, I do.
I felt like I was on the edge
of maybeexploring some truth about myself.
But all of this darkness came inand these images of this.
Could it be a big humanor a big black tiger?
Both of them were very scary.
Don't go there.
(08:24):
But I still felt like a little courageous.
And then this voice never in this giant,ominous tone.
Never. Yeah.
That said, okay,just go back to the way things were.
Yes, you open that door a little bitand that didn't go well.
So I thought that was such an interesting
(08:46):
one to start with because there isthis universal quality to it.
I hear so many like this,especially early on in a treatment
where people have the ideathat they're not allowed to go there.
And again, I talked aboutthat might be the protective part
of the mind trying to say, don't,don't touch what's back there.
It's too scary. It's too painful.
(09:08):
Now, you even brought in the ideathat it might be a big white tiger.
Was a big black tiger. A big black tiger.
So that gives us a little cluethat you're probably
talkingabout something in the feeling realm.
A big cat.
Cats oftentimes point to the feminine.
They're very intuitive,instinctual creatures.
(09:29):
So we get a big black tiger.
We know there's going to bea lot of feeling back there.
And the message is no, stay away.
Never. Never.
So some people might hear a dreamlike this and go, forget it.
That's too scary. Why?
Why would I keep going down this road?
And I've just been told never.
I was told never and were very good.
(09:52):
Unconsciously.
Usually we don't think about itlike most people wouldn't
wake up from this dream and go,you know what?
I'm never going to do that,you know, not necessarily.
But we're good at following ordersfrom that part of the mind.
So a lot of people would unconsciouslyjust follow that and go, nope,
nothing to see there. I'm not interested.
If I'd had that, I only I believe
(10:14):
I only got to the placewhere I had that dream
because I had been conscious
of my dreamsfor many months prior to this dream.
I had been paying attention to them,and the little windows and doors
were beginning to open.
And then this was intendedto slam those shut, right? Yes.
And we see that a lot, too. Right.
(10:36):
And you can get a dream like this
at any pointin your exploration of this territory.
Right.
It isn'tjust because we're starting here again.
We're going linear with it.
This part of the mind is not linear.
It could be that because you did startto touch something very sensitive there,
something very emotional that that'swhy you get this message back off.
(11:00):
You never shut it all down.
And it's very truebecause I had formed my truth
based on a complete untruth.
I had turned this thingthat was not reality at all
into my North Star,
and it had misdirected metime and time again.
(11:24):
But I could never straighten that out.
I could never turn that thinginto what it really was.
I still, no matter what,had to support that thing and say,
no, no, no, this is love, this is love.
And every other time I try to find
love, it's got to match that thing.
(11:45):
But it wasn't love.
That's such a brave thingto start to face.
It really rocks people's worlds.
When you start to see thatwhat you imagined
was love was not love.
It's unbelievable.
I mean, just talking about it,
it still gives me goosebumps to thinkthat I held onto this thing for dear.
(12:07):
Life, for survival, for dearlife is the right way to put it.
That's very true.
We all do this initiallybecause we have to imagine that
we came in with all this amazing,wonderful love to survive,
but to start to questionthat and shine a light there and go.
But what's the truth?
What's really happening?
And go,oh my God, I might need to turn everything
(12:27):
on its headand start questioning everything.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's interesting that you use that
first step, this supporting, this untruth.
This is love at the very beginning.
And you find similar situationsthat are your stepping stones.
Yeah.And so that's the unconscious at play.
(12:48):
We've got whatwhere's examples of the unconscious.
Guess what.
Your unconscious is going to magnetizethese experiences
in your waking life to show youwhat's going on there.
And to confirm these ideasthat you're holding
unconsciously about yourself,about your life, about every part of you.
I see why you like doing this. It'sfascinating.
(13:10):
It's so fascinating. And so, yeah.
This one is just a few months later,and I had lots of dreams in between.
I am standing in the foyer of a houseI am working on
as an interior designerbecause I am an interior designer.
The entry door is just behind me.
There is an opening on the second floorthat is to align
(13:32):
with an opening on the first floor.
It doesn't quite align.
There are actual doorsto the right and left of the opening.
On thesecond floor, and on the first floor.
I am decidingif the openings aligning is important
enough to change the whole thing,which would be a really big deal.
(13:54):
I'm also deciding if the door heights
should match as they're slightly off.
I am annoyed that I have to seeif I am willing to settle.
That makes me angry with myself.
This should have just been donecorrectly in the first place,
and I decide that yes,
in fact it all needs to be corrected,which is a big job.
(14:18):
In my dream big job,I have to do some backtracking.
I've got to make sure that this feelsright because this doesn't feel right.
Yes. Again,if we were working with this clinically,
I'd be asking youabout every little piece of this dream.
I want to hear all your thoughts.
Do you want to give me just whatyour initial impressions were? Yes.
(14:40):
So it says if I'm, you know, living a life
where things never feel quite right on
and not right on in terms of a perfectionnot right on.
And it's some kindof tangible meaning, but just
feeling wise, not like an alignment.
Yeah, I feel like I'mgiving something up all the time.
(15:02):
Like I can't get it to a placewhere I'm like, oh yeah, that's it.
And I get that
in order to have that good feeling
all the time,I'm going to have to do a lot of work.
I thought this was a great dreamto follow that first one,
because now you're getting in thereand we've moved past the never
and we're going,okay, this is like an in-process dream.
(15:25):
There's things that have been changing,
but now we have to reassessand reevaluate the whole structure.
Now it's interior design.
I understand this is the work that you do,but this is your interior design.
This is the interior design of your mind.
And you're saying
something's been off kilter, right?
(15:45):
We have the first floor in the secondfloor to often points to the unconscious.
That's a number that we really associatewith the unconscious part of the mind.
So we go, oh, how interesting.
You're saying you're consciousand you're unconscious.
Have not quite aligned.
Do you have to settle for that?
Do you have to settle?
I think you're very smart. In the dream.You go.
(16:07):
I don't want to settle.
Let's do it all over.
Let's correct this.
That's an amazing attitude to have here.
It's just so interesting.
In the dream how disturbing it is.
Yeah, but I still spend a lot of timethinking about.
Am I willing to accept the disturbor do I have to figure out
(16:28):
how to move on from that?
Exactly.
Well,and we can think about how often people
in their waking lives,you know, we hear about settling
and relationships all the time,but probably so many aspects of life.
How many times the people go,I just have to settle for this
or collectivelywhat our governments are doing
or all the thingsthat are happening in the world.
(16:49):
And we go, I guesswe're just supposed to live like this.
I don't really have a choice.We don't have a choice.
But I think this very wisepart of your mind is going, wait a minute,
it's worth
taking the time to get this right,
to get in there,to do the work, to get things aligned.
If we all did this collectively as humans,
(17:11):
imagine whatwe could get aligned in this world.
Yeah, I actually can't even imagine.
Most of uscan weave really straight off course.
I think the unconscious is always
wanting to get us back on course andit's going to do that for each individual.
First it's
going to go, here's where you're off,here's where you're out of alignment.
(17:33):
You know, it's very humbling goingand getting into this part of the mind.
It is the most humbling experiencebecause you have to go and face all these
things that you have insidethat aren't right,
aren't aligned, aren't even you.
What did you absorb and take in?
That's not you.
(17:53):
That's not ever going to feel good to you
because it's not reallyyou and it's going to create problems.
But the easy path is just to keep doing itthat way.
You see path. I say, it's not so bad.
I can live with it a little off kilterwhen you're considering that in a dream
you go, can I live like this?
Can I just it's not right.
This doesn't feel right to me.
(18:15):
But am I going to settle?
And you have this very,I think, wise response
and you go, I'm not going to settle.
We're going to do itover. Big job critical.
If you want your interior design,your mind,
your inner world, feelinggood to you, feeling aligned,
that means your heartand your mind in sync.
(18:37):
We should all have that.We all deserve, that.
We all deserve to be in syncwith our hearts.
We do.
And so many of us say,I'm just living the life I'm like.
Yeah, we follow directions.
I see it all the time in dreams.
You're just following your orders.
You've got your script,you're on whatever.
You're just you're following your orders.
(18:58):
Here are the steps. Here's what you do.
The problem is oftentimeswhat we see it's not aligned.
Something will keeptelling us this isn't right.
How is it that
we have these dreams and there is so much
fabulous information in them,
but most of us aren't aware.
(19:19):
Do you think that at one point
dreamswere something that humans really valued?
I'm not a historian in this way,so I can't give you
the most accurate picture,but I know that we've had a dance
with that for a long time,and even in ancient Greece
there were these dream temples that youwould go to and really form a connection.
(19:44):
And there's biblical storiesof these dream analysts and Joseph
and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,and we have all these
examples of dreams
having a valuable role in society andknowing that there's something more to it.
This isn't just static,
that the mind is coming upwith the reprocess the day or whatever.
(20:06):
It's not just noise.
But I feel like of late,that being many decades,
that we've really just Poohpoohed that whole thing.
A lot of people have,because a lot of people are listening
to the message from that first dreamand saying, well, never, never.
You know, that's why
I wanted to highlight that for everybody,because I think we all have that.
(20:27):
So I think a lot of people have followedthen go, but there's nothing to this.
It's just noise.
And like you said, when Doctor
Bail, look,I'll just consider it, open it up and see.
I like thatwith people who don't love the idea
some of them are open to, well,we can at least treat it
like a predictive exercise.
Maybe they have nono actual wisdom or meaning,
(20:49):
but we'll treat it like a raw shark,like an inkblot.
And maybe it has some valuethat I'll just come up with my own ideas.
And usually in time, people are blown awaybecause you go,
oh God, this is telling me the truthabout my life in this whole new way.
Like you said,you have to revisit what you held
(21:10):
as the truth about yourselfand be willing to drop it and go.
Maybe I was off.
Maybe that wasn't true.
And maybe I'm going to die.
If I discover the truth.
It feels that severe. It does.
We really are getting intothe most primitive,
sensitive, vulnerable material there.
(21:31):
So I really respect the processand what it takes to actually get there
to a place where you even consider it,because you have to revisit
some incredibly sensitiveand vulnerable material.
You had to do this,didn't you? And of. Course.
And it's ongoing, I imagine.
Of course, of course.
Yeah.
I would never take peoplewhere I haven't gone.
(21:53):
And is it for all of us then continuallyongoing that over the course of our lives,
if we listen to pay attentionto our dreams, we'll learn more and more?
Oh, that's the beauty of it.
We don't get to an endpoint.
We don't.I mean, what's the point of being alive?
It's not like we get, oh, I have evolvedcompletely and I'm just done.
(22:14):
We always have more to learn,and we have this wonderful resource
available to us every single night going.
Here's something to consider.Have you thought about this?
And most of uswake up if we remember that and go
and that's it.
Yeah, whatever.
Yeah.
But we're encouraging people to maybegive it a second thought.
(22:36):
Here's the last dream.
This one is about a year and a half later.
All is black space.
I can't see a thing.
Somehow, though,I can lift a corner of it.
This black spaceas if it's tangible with my fingers.
Almost like lifting pagesin a very thick book.
(22:57):
When I do, I see a bright, warm,
glowing light of another dimension.
I see it and I feel the warmth of it.
It's not just light, it'sanother space with things happening.
The openingI see is an equilateral triangle.
(23:17):
So this other dimension, I'mlooking through this triangle to see it.
That's the whole tree.Yeah, that's a really beautiful dream.
I think even without any interpretationor digging in at all,
we go, wow,that's a really beautiful dream.
But do you want to sharesome of your thoughts?
What were your impressionsof having this dream?
It was
as if there
was a bit of a safetyin coming out of the dark.
(23:41):
The dark being the placewhere I misrepresent everything.
I turned things into things they weren't.
And lifting that up a little bit to say,here's the truth.
You're ready to say
you were completely misaligned.
Yeah.
(24:01):
And not think about
what that truth means in termsof how you've lived your life falsely,
let's say, or how you kind of continuedto hurt yourself over and over again
because you were relying on this truth,which wasn't the truth, but to say,
sorry, it makes me emotional.
It doesn't have to be this way.
And it's okay.
You can stop supporting that thing.
(24:24):
It's okay.
And this thing that I'm talking about
was a terrible thing that I turnedinto a bright, beautiful thing.
And along with that came guilt and shame
and a huge amount of fear.
But I put frosting on itand turned it into a pretty cake.
(24:47):
And so to
finally say it's okay, it doesn't meanthat you're not that thing.
You're not this horrible,misconstrued out of alignment thing,
as if there was some unknown value
that I could now find beautiful
(25:07):
about you.
So, you know, you open,you have this space,
there's all this warm, glowing light.
What did you think that was?
It felt like an invitation.
It felt like it was love.
It's hard for me to separatesome of this from Bernard,
because we were talking about our dreamstogether, and I had nothing
(25:29):
but this immense loving support
which I will forever be grateful for.
Knowing that feeling existedand knowing that
this man, that our love for each otherwas so immense.
And to be with this manwho could understand our dreams,
probably before we even spoke them,
(25:50):
made it easier for me.
That little lifting was like,
don't worry, there's love here.
Yeah,I saw that dream and I was like, well,
if this doesn't sum up the entire podcast,it's called End Now, love.
So I think one of the detailsthat I don't know if you mentioned,
(26:12):
but I remember reading it, was thatthat what you lived was six inches.
The triangle, each side was six.
Inches. Yeah. What did you make of that?
I can't say
I mean that everything was equal meantsomething to me,
that it was six inches
I don't know anything about,but it was as if you can't go wrong
when you look at thisfrom a place of love, everything is.
(26:36):
Yeah.
If we use numbers a lot in the analysisbecause there's so much symbolism.
Which I'd love to know more about someday,there's a whole other podcast
to talk about that,
like you mentioned, the numbertwo often refers to the unconscious, but
I have no idea how that coordinates twowith the unconscious.
(26:57):
Yes. Or six with whatever. There.
We always have to look at the context to.
So I'm not saying that a certain numberalways means a certain thing,
but we look at the context.
I want to hear associations becauseperhaps you're talking about an age,
maybe something at agesix here, knowing what
I know, having donethis work, six is the number of love.
(27:21):
So I go, yeah,
that's the other thingthat really struck me.
And we're cross-referencing a little bit.
I listened to another
one of your recent podcasts where you hadmentioned The Book of Suffering.
Yes, that's right, I the book of torture,I think torture. Yes.
Life is torture. Right.
So I thought it was so interesting.
(27:42):
It's like a little wink
to because in this dreamyou say it's like lifting pages of a book.
So we get past the big lie thatlife is torture, that life is suffering.
And you go, there's love available.
I see, I would think my feeling isthis is the divine coming through.
This is divine love.
I think Doctor Vale really opensyou up to that part inside.
(28:06):
I think you did.
I mean, there's things I've never felt that I didn't even know a human could feel.
And it's interesting, when I
was reading to you just now,the first stream where it just never
it reminded me ofalso the book of torture. Yes.
And I imagine if we were to look throughall the dreams, we'd get
(28:26):
lots of flavors of that throughout.
But what an amazing transformationjust in these three dreams.
And this is what, over the courseof a couple of years,
I mean, you were in very closeproximity to Doctor Bail
and you were talkingabout dreams all the time, but you know,
as far as I know,it wasn't a formal analysis.
Yeah.
(28:47):
You know,I think that's also hopeful for people,
maybe that if you really start to developa, a closer relationship
and curiosity with this part of the mind,look at what's possible.
We don't do it because it's greatto have your dreams changed.
Yes, that's lovely, but it changes you.
It changes your life.
(29:08):
Yeah.
If we can all let more love
and light in a true way,not in this kind of bypass.
It sounds great.
Nice in theory.
And we all talk about this kumbaya thing,
but really let it inand let it change you.
Who knows what we could do?
And for me,I don't feel as if I'm a different person.
(29:32):
I'm the same person I've always been.
But even peopleI've known for a long time,
whom I've been friendswith, have said to me,
Cynthia, it's like a light has come on in.
You and you're still you.
But the way you walk through the world
with such happiness and loveand this kind of glow, it's unbelievable
(29:58):
to have someone on the outsideactually notice something like that.
Oh, it's so validating.
Because I feel like it's all,you know, internal.
But the idea is that it's not internal.
The idea is that we come to a placewhere we as humans
operate from loveand spread that out to the people we know.
Let it show, let it lead,let it show, let that light shine.
(30:22):
Really.
But I was told always,as many of us just be insulated.
You have nothing to share.
What you have to say is of no value.
Well, so many of us have this light dimmedor blown out completely.
So really that'sour work is is revitalizing.
This is turning the light back onfor people.
(30:44):
It's awesome. It really works.
It does.
I really felt that people could probably
relate to some of these dreams.
And you could inspire peoplebecause people can see what's possible.
The way you speak about these thingsand the knowledge you have, the feeling
you have,and the investment you've made in
(31:07):
the process is clearly comingfrom a place of pure love.
So I can't thank you enough.
Thank you so, and we'll see you soon.
Yeah, absolutely.
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