A (3:10)

Good morning, Nicole. Thank you so much for having me here. I actually how you teed up. This podcast is the perfect segue to talk about the Secret Mind because all day long we're running around super busy. I don't know anybody that gets through their to do list in a day. I mean, mine just if it was a scroll, it would just be unrolling for like football fields long. So all that busy, busy, busy is us using a certain part of our brain's processing system as well as just our attention. Our attention is on that to do list and checking things off. Inside of us are all kinds of responses and knowings and understandings and intuitions and ideas and all of these different ways that we're synthesizing our. The information coming at us, the experiences we're having, we just don't stop to pay attention to it. So our dreams, we're dreaming all the time. We kind of move back and forth between those parts of our mind. There are some biological differences when we dream at night, mostly because finally our body puts us really to sleep. We can't jump right up and go hit that to do list anymore. So all of these understandings that I've been talking about really come to life for us, like on a movie screen, because we're finally still enough and paying attention enough to them.

B (4:41)

Okay, so I have one bazillion questions, but I want to start by talking about, I think when we think of interpreting dreams or understanding dreams or leveraging dreams, it often falls in the category of like, woo, woo. Right. But you're coming at this from a more scientific research perspective. Is that a fair statement?

A (5:03)

Sure, sure, I'll play in either. But I am talking about a very practical use of our dreams. So let's go back to these people you've dreamed about from high school or a million years ago. One of the things about dreams is every aspect of the dream is an aspect of the dreamer. So you talked about people from your past who are in a new and bizarre circumstance. So let's say I dream about. I have a friend who's supremely laid back and I haven't talked to him in like 15 years, but all of my understandings about him. And when we were hanging out in college together, he was Just this super laid back dude. Well, one time he showed up in my dreams in a really tight button down, three piece suit and tie. So there's something about the way I've understood him as super laid back and how he's showing up now in a different circumstance that gives me a clue that there's an aspect of me that is laid back that is now really buttoned up and tight in some kind of way. So if I just play with these images, it's a language of images and that's what throws people off. But nowadays we do understand images. We play with emojis and memes, float around and we do understand images. So if we just stay in that, not think about it too hard. What part of me is normally laid back about things and is now like super tight about something? And if we just play and ask that question, we can draw the line between that and our daily life and find where maybe there's a little knot that we can untangle.

B (6:56)

So there are several things that I like about everything that you just said. First, the point that you make about it being about the dreamer. So how if 10 people had the same exact dream, it might mean 10 different things to those 10 different people based on what's going on in their world. Is that fair?

A (7:15)

Yeah, everything is subjective.

B (7:18)

Okay. And then that leads me to the other part of the word play was, I think, a wonderful choice because there might be the tendency to get a little too literal with our dreams or that there might be one obvious answer. Whereas it's probably telling us something that we might need to play with a little bit or test out a little bit to determine what it means or even maybe what we want it to mean.

A (7:49)

Absolutely. You know, where many people start to get the little hiccups in their life is by getting too tight to begin with and seeing things from just one perspective. So one of the great things about dreams in the scenario I just gave you, there were other people in that dream. So I have a lot of different perspectives in me available at any moment. We make ourselves narrow by sort of just getting into a rut of this is how I am, this is how I'm always going to be. This is my go to personality at work or whatever. But we're so much more than that. And so one of the things that dreams does is sort of pick our curiosity if we allow it to. To different facets that are available in us.

B (8:43)

Okay, so can we use an example that I know I dream of women, maybe not a lot, but frequently enough to it Jumps to my mind that I would imagine many other people do, which is dreaming about somebody that you have a lot of trust or care with doing something in your dream they wouldn't normally do. So I give the example of, you know, sometimes I wake up and tell my husband Jay, that he was really mean to me in my dream last night. And like, I actually have a hard time not being momentarily angry at him, even though I know, I know we all feel bad for him for many reasons, but. Or like he cheated on me, which in my waking hours, this is not a concern that I have. Do I know that it's possible in the realm of possibilities? Sure. Just like for anybody. But this is not something in my waking hours that I worry about. And yet I'll still have a dream. I have moments where I'm like, is it. Is my subconscious trying to tell me something? And then I'm like, yes, but maybe not directly what it's trying to tell me. So how can we play with things like that to determine which interpretation might be most accurate or maybe more most helpful?

A (9:56)

That is such a great question. So let's get Jay, give him a hold pass right now. Let's help him. So when we dream about somebody we know that morning, we've written down the dream. I'm assuming everybody's writing down their dreams. If not, please listeners, just get a dream journal. Start to write down your dreams. That is so very important. It will just. That alone is going to open you out to a much greater avenue of creativity. But then, so we write down the dream. Jay has done something, you know, devious in the dream. Yeah, terrible. Sorry, Jay. We just ask ourselves the question, Jay is the kind of person who. And we fill it out that morning. So like I gave with my friend Jim. Jim is the kind of person who is just always laid back. So whatever that day you're feeling, Jay is the kind of person who fill in that gap. That means that's an aspect of me. So whatever aspect of me that is, if it's the always laid back and now it's cheating on me, then that part of me is no longer laid back. It's cheating on me in a different way. I'm no longer exercising that aspect of me. Does that make sense? It does.

B (11:18)

But then again, maybe because my brain is. Or I tell myself the story that my brain is a little bit more literal, then I'm like, does it mean that I'm, you know, doing something that I shouldn't be? Or like that, you know, then I.

A (11:32)

Start going, so Think about cheating in a bigger way. First of all, let me come back to the cheating thing, because, you know, that definitely wakes us up. And so one of the things that dreams do, they're very clever. And if they were just, you know, copacetic and nice and chill, we probably wouldn't remember our dreams.

B (11:53)

Right?

A (11:53)

But because they give us a little juice, they get us upset about something or there's a big emotion. We wake up to them, and we actually listen to what they're trying to tell us. So if I, for example, am someone who is naturally outgoing and I'm pulling back that aspect of myself, I'm hiding that aspect of myself for whatever reason, there's a situation at my work or whatever, but I'm not being authentic, then that part of me, I'm cheating on myself in some way. You follow me? Yes. I'm not being my true self. And so there is a disconnect in me that my dream is trying to get me to see. And I am emotional about it, because anytime we're not living our true self, it's upsetting to us. We tell ourselves all kinds of things. Yeah, but that, boss, is whatever I have to. But it's a disconnect, and it's.

B (12:54)

It's a problem for ourself that really lands for me. Because when it comes to. I'm going to use the word betrayal when it comes to that, I'm far more likely to do it to myself than I am anyone in my life. And I could see how that is unconscious or subconscious way of waking me up to where I am potentially. Well, there's lots of ways I could be doing this. Right. But potentially betraying myself in some way. Okay, so you mentioned this earlier, and that was gonna be one of my questions with the dream journal. First, there are a lot of dreams that I don't remember or that I'll remember in the middle of the night, but then by the time I wake up in the morning, like, what was that about? I wanted to remember that one. So my question is twofold. If we have dreams that we don't remember, is that just an assumption that, you know, we don't need to do something with that yet, or that it's not that important, or it's just that our subconscious is processing something that we don't need to be woken up to yet? And then my second question is, if we do dream something in the middle of the night, would you recommend waking up and writing it in our dream journal then? Or waiting to see if it sticks with Us in the morning.

A (14:05)

Okay, let's come back to how busy we are. So we are dreaming every night. Everybody dreams and everybody dreams every night. It's a question of just dream recall. And so how do we recall dreams? We recall dreams if we think they're important and if we set the intention to do so. Even when they do dream research in sleep labs, people will come in saying, oh, I never, ever dream. But because now they're in the lab, of course they dream. And it's just as simple as giving people a little nudge. So if you get a dream journal, keep it by your bed and start to just write down whatever comes up. Even if it's like, why is that song in my head? Write it down. Because also, the words might have some kind of meaning if you kind of sit with them a little bit. Once you get into that practice, you'll recall more and more and more of your dreams. So back to your second question. Yes, write it down in the middle of the night. And once you get into a practice of writing your dreams, it'll get to where you probably don't have to write it down in the middle of the night. People get worried, oh, I'm gonna wake up and then I won't go back to sleep. You will, but also very quickly, you'll just get in the habit of writing them down when you wake up in the morning.

B (15:19)

Okay, I wanna talk about, really, the subtitle of your book, How Unlocking the Power of youf Dreams to Transform your Life. Before I do, though, I wanna be careful that I don't hijack this podcast with my dreams. Right. What are some common examples of dreams that you hear and what we might be looking for? Like, we use the example the betrayal or cheating. What are some examples that you hear a lot that we might want to be thinking about?

A (15:48)

I hear a lot. Well, first of all, if I had a dollar for every toilet dream, that would be go to the bank. Toilets that are too full and need to be flushed. Um, is definitely a common dream. And that is so simple, we don't even have to think about that. How much would you love to just sweep everything off of your desk? That would be akin to flushing a full toilet. We just overload ourself. Our, you know, inbox, let's say, is just way more than our outbox.

B (16:23)

So, yeah, way too much shit in our lives. Right.

A (16:26)

Okay, thanks for saying that. Yes, I'm trying to be podcast appropriate, but yes, that's exactly correct. So if we think about that. You asked about the Subtitle of the BOOK how are we using dreams to transform our lives? The most important thing is to make the connection between what am I dreaming at night and what am I living in the day? Because they're exactly the same thing. It's just that what we live in the day, we're accustomed to. It's linear, it's verbal, it's visual. And what we dream at night, even though we're seeing images, it's also very emotional. Is that kind of just murky inner knowing feelings? But it's the same thing. And so if I've got that toilet that needs to be flushed, I can close my eyes and imagine flushing it. That's already going to shift my emotional feeling of my inner self. And then I have to do the sort of cognitive work of thinking like what is all that stuff in my life that I need to really pay attention to and just pull it back. Maybe take a mental health day. Whatever is needed for me at that moment in time. Prime delivery is fast. How fast are we talking? We're talking puzzle toys and lick pad delivered so fast you can get this puppy under control fast. We're talking chew toys at your door without really waiting. Fast pads, cooling mat, peg, hammer. Fast and fast. And those training T R E a T s faster than you can say sit fast. And now we can all relax and order these matching hoodies to get cozy and cute. Fast, fast. Free delivery. It's on Prime. Learning through play starts with Lego Duplo. With Lego Duplo, toddlers can develop real life skills while having fun with colorful bricks make made just for them. Large, easy to grip and safe to explore. When children express themselves with Lego Duplo they build patience, problem solving and empathy. See your child learn perseverance and self expression with everything they imagine and create. Visit lego.com preschool to learn more. Lowe's knows to bring your vision to life. It's important to find the right color. That's why Milo's Rewards members get a free Valspar paint or exterior stain sample to test your look to confidently refresh your space. Offer Valid in store only 87 to 8 20. Limit one per customer while supplies last. Discount taken at time of purchase. See associate for details Rewards program subject to terms and conditions details@lowes.com terms subject to change.

B (19:13)

Okay, so let's talk about some of that cognitive work. Obviously you've already talked about writing down our dreams. I would imagine there's an element of not judging them right? Just whatever they are, writing them down, letting them be. Then what do we do? What are some of the questions we ask or work that we can or should be doing to help learn whatever message our inner knowing is trying to tell us?

A (19:40)

Yeah. So one of the ways, and this is really where I say that dreamers become very courageous because, you know, I can't change what I'm denying. And part of why we run around so busy is because it's nice to distract ourselves from really looking inside. And that's one reason why I like doing this dream work with people, because it is so playful. It's not a heavy hammer, and it's a light sort of playful way of saying, oh, look, are you maybe, you know, betraying some aspect of yourself? Is it time to reach out in a new way? Is it time to exercise a different part of yourself? I have people who come to me and they have a dream and it's been an emotional dream, and they suddenly say, you know, if I could do anything with my life right now, I would like to be playing the piano more. That's simple. It really only takes maybe 15, 30 minutes a day. So if we just allow ourselves to get a little bit curious about the feeling part of dreams, the emotional part of dreams, and just ask those kinds of questions, if I could really feel this feeling, or if it's like the anxiety dream you talked about, if I'm feeling anxious about showing up somewhere, where is that showing up in my waking time? And how can I resolve that for myself?

B (21:09)

I feel like this question might be kind of obvious, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. So let's say people do this, we do this. In what ways does it transform our lives? In what ways does this allow for breakthroughs in our waking days?

A (21:26)

Yeah, you know, I was thinking about that actually all weekend long because I was with my family, I'm traveling right now. I was with my family, and everybody was talking about big things happening in the world right now. And I was thinking about how immediately people jump to the very biggest thing and they say, oh, well, that's too big. And then go back to just, I'm going to be in a rut. We change our lives and the lives of those around us with very tiny little movements. If I just flush the toilet, and that's what my dream is asking me to do. I'm suddenly more available for every single person around me as well as my. If that toilet is full, I'm not going to get that next great idea that's going to move my life forward. And by next great idea, I'm not talking Mozart. I'm talking about my next great idea that, oh, now it's time to, you know, start this podcast like you did. Or now it's time to write a book, or it's time to just call that friend I haven't talked to in a really long time when we're so busy we don't get these messages. And those messages are truly life changing.

B (22:40)

Yeah, it's interesting. As you were talking, I was reminded of something I say a lot when it comes to confidence. And it's this idea that we have that it needs to be big in order for it to count. Right. And everything in my experience says it's the little, small steps, little risks built up over time lead to big confidence. Or, like, how do we do anything? It's like one foot in front of the other, yet we have the tendency to look at the milestone moment or the peak or whatever and think that that's the sum of the work as opposed to. I think what you're saying is it's small tweaks create big impact, not just for ourselves, but, as you said, for the people around us. And that's how we change things in big ways, is by doing small things.

A (23:27)

Yeah, exactly. I had this woman come to me. She and her husband are both working, they're both really big into their career, and they had hit a sort of impasse. And she was like, he's just not listening. And, you know, in parentheses, I'm right, he's wrong, obviously.

B (23:44)

Right.

A (23:45)

And then she has a dream that he's wearing a white suit that's full of diamonds. There's diamonds all around him. And as we were talking, she said, I just realize I'm actually not even listening to the valuable, precious things he's bringing to the table in this conversation. Like, I'm just so busy and I'm so focused on what I'm getting done, I'm not even listening. And just that recognition shifted everything. It opened them up. They've now moved on. They're buying a house. Like, things have shifted in a dramatic way for them.

B (24:21)

Yeah, good example. I think, again, many of us can relate. So let me ask a few questions that popped into my head. So first, repetitive dreams. I think we all have an example of a dream that we have over and over again, or some version of a dream we have over and over again. Is that a lesson we haven't learned yet? Okay.

A (24:45)

Yeah. It's just like our dreams are kind of like stalkers in a way. It's like, okay, we gave you A dream. You didn't pay attention to us. So now we're going to give it to you again, and maybe we're going to just tweak it just a little bit and kind of keep hammering away until you pay attention to it.

B (25:01)

Yeah, well, I think that happens in our waking hours, too. Like, I always think, you know, before. Before I met Jay, I basically dated the exact same guy in different forms over and over and over again because it was like I refused to learn the lesson that I needed to learn in order to even create the opportunity for somebody like Jay to come into my life.

A (25:23)

That's a great example.

B (25:24)

Okay, so then what about nightmares? The reality is, many people have experienced extreme trauma, and I have to imagine that's some way of the brain and body processing what they've gone through. But what. What do we do with nightmares? Is it the same thing as with dreams, or is that to be treated differently in some way?

A (25:44)

Same thing. And we're gonna go back to the example you gave of dating all these guys before Jay. So, first of all, just in a normal circumstance, nightmares are counterintuitively our friends. So they are acute emotional experiences that are trying to wake us up to something in waking time. So there's a dream I recount in the book of a woman who came to me that she had walked into the stadium and then suddenly had a fire blaster and was just like, blasting away and raising the stadium. And she felt super bad about that. And as we got to talking in the session, she was realizing, oh, I am so angry in my life. I just thought I was dealing with it. I thought I was putting a lid on it. But in fact, I'm lashing out, which is like, for her, blasting out with the fire flamethrower at everybody. My family, my work, everybody. So that acute dream, because it was so shocking to her, frankly, and plugged her into that emotion because she wasn't aware of it in waking time. This is the thing. Back to your question on what does it mean the secret mind? We're not aware often of everything we're doing. Just like right now, we don't know what the back of our head looks like for having a good hair day or bad hair day. We have to have a mirror, and dreams are that mirror for us. So the thing about nightmares is they're there for us to resolve something. Either we can go back into the nightmare itself. Um, I've had people come to me with a dream. I'm walking up to a dark house, and I'm really Scared, and I wake up, they can go back in, walk up to the house with a. A light, a flashlight. And frequently just going back into the dream with the light, the entire scenario changes. And most people are afraid. Yeah, but if I go in, turn on the light, what am I going to see? It's often just the need to turn a light onto something and then things shift. But also in waking time, the person with the flamethrower, she was able to make those corrections in waking time knowing, okay, I have to really deal with my anger issues at the core and what's causing them. So back to the guys you dated before Jay, his thing. Frogs. Yeah, that's really such a great example. Because in our dream times, you know, we may start out with a lot of nightmares or busy dreams or things like that. The patterns, the repetitive themes. And then when we resolve them, we open ourselves to having those bigger dreams. I call them great dreams or even clear dreams that are showing us latent potentials. And that's where we get to really changing our life. We've got to kind of clean up the house before we can start to bring in new and exciting furniture or kiss a lot of frogs before we get to the J's. Yeah.

B (28:52)

Okay, my last question is around. Okay, so I have beef with a lot of industries right now, but with the personal development industry specifically, I have a beef with this idea that any one of us will ever be or become fully healed. Right? Like this idea that if you do this thing or if you interpret all your dreams or if you address every. Whatever that like at some point will be. And I put in air quotes, done. And that just is impossible and not truthful. And there is no program we can do or supplement, we can take or anything along those lines. So with dreaming, I want to just. Just so people don't think like if we do all this work that we will never dream again or the absence of dreams means that everything's good in your. What is the goal here? Is it just self awareness? I mean, not just. That's a big goal, but what are.

A (29:50)

Let's just forget goal, because that's the whole problem with this I'm headed towards perfection thing, which I'm totally on your same page. We're never done. And by the way, how boring would that be? Yeah, nobody wants to be done. Life is exciting. And so I might have resolved a lot of nightmares and get to a great dream. If I do that, then I'm going to start living a new potential, which means a whole new set of challenges. Is going to come my way. For example, I just wrote this book. I may have done a lot of clearing to write this book, but now the book is out in the world and I'm interfacing with a lot of people, so no challenges. So every time we sort of, you know, it's like a spiral. We go up maybe one level in the spiral, and then there's whole new challenges. And maybe we have nightmares all over again, but they're different because we've kind of evolved. We're in a new place, but we're not done. Not ever.

B (30:49)

Yeah, okay. I said that was going to be my last question, but another one triggered. We didn't talk about good dreams again. I would imagine the process is the same. We write in our dream journal and ask some questions. But is there anything that good dreams, joyful dreams, are telling us differently?

A (31:08)

Absolutely. So first of all, I use that word, that phrase, latent potentials. We have so many aspects of ourselves that we don't exercise, that we can exercise, but somewhere down the line we threw, you know, into the back corner because someone made us feel like we can't be that person or show those talents in this time place. So that's also part of resurrecting the self, Coming back to all those things that we loved. But then someone ridiculed us. Or we were told, you'll never make money doing that, or whatever that might be. Right? Girls are supposed to be nice. They're not supposed to speak out, whatever all those social, family, conformity things are. So we have to resurrect all of that. But then also really great dreams that open us out to something so much bigger than just our lives, so much bigger than that to do. List places of awe and wonder, joy. These are also human emotions and part of the human experience. And we don't get those often enough these days. And the more we do have those experiences and dreams, the more we begin to see those miraculous things in our everyday life. And I have so many students say to me things. I had a guy tell me recently, you know, I was with my son, and we were by a pond, and these herons came. And he said it was like time stopped. And I saw it all so much more colorfully than I would ever have done had I not been doing this dream work.

B (32:49)

I love that.

A (32:50)

It's nice.

B (32:51)

I also imagine that because as you said, we're dreaming all the time. It's sort of like one feeds the other. So if we choose wonder and awe or joy in moments in our waking lives, does that trigger more of those opportunities in our dreams and vice versa?

A (33:11)

Yes, and that's another way we transform both our own lives and those around.

B (33:16)

Us find this wildly fascinating. I'm ordering your book the second we get off, so let me just remind everybody it's called the Secret Mind and Bonnie's website is bonniebuckner.com we'll put all the links and all the ways to find and follow Bonnie in show notes. Bonnie, thank you for being our guest and for helping talk through all the things that are happening in all the places.

A (33:41)

Exactly. Thanks so much for having me on. This has been great.

B (33:45)

My pleasure. All right, I'm going to close us out with a curious thought. What if the answers you're looking for aren't out there, but in you, sometimes playing out behind your eyelids while you sleep? What if clarity, creativity, and direction aren't things that you have to chase, but things you just have to slow down enough to notice? Maybe our dreams aren't just weird, maybe they're wise. But also, let's not get carried away. Not every dream is literal. Dreams don't always speak in facts. They speak in feelings and symbols, in the stuff that we're not fully processing during our waking hours. I don't have the answers, but I do know this. Listening to yourself, your instincts, your intuition, your inner knowing, that will always be part of what it means to be doing woman's work.

A (34:38)

Hey JJ Virgin here on my podcast.

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