The Power of Dreams: Guidance and Healing with Machiel Klerk

Machiel Klerk, a psychotherapist and dream expert, discusses the power of dreams and how they can provide guidance and healing. He shares his personal journey of finding purpose and fulfillment through working with dreams. Klerk explains that dreams are not just a reflection of daily life, but also a future-oriented phenomenon that can anticipate and guide us towards our goals. He emphasizes the importance of engaging with dreams proactively by asking questions and seeking guidance. Klerk also highlights the healing potential of dreams and how they can be used to address physical and emotional issues. Dreams are interactive worlds where we have experiences and interactions. They are not two-dimensional messages, but immersive environments. Dreams are created based on our beliefs, expectations, intent, and willpower. Dream interpretation involves understanding the associations we have with figures and objects in our dreams. Dreams can provide guidance, support, and healing. Ancestors can visit us in dreams to offer support and share similar life themes. Dreams are personalized and subjective, influenced by our own experiences. Dreams can be accessed for guidance and creativity through a five-step process outlined in the book 'Dream Guidance' by Machiel Klerk.

Takeaways

• Dreams are not just a reflection of daily life, but also a future-oriented phenomenon that can provide guidance and insight.
• Engaging with dreams proactively by asking questions and seeking guidance can lead to valuable insights and solutions.
• Dreams have the potential to provide healing and address physical and emotional issues.
• Dreams can be used as a tool for personal growth, self-discovery, and finding purpose and fulfillment. Dreams are immersive and interactive worlds where we have experiences and interactions.
• Dreams are created based on our beliefs, expectations, intent, and willpower.
• Dream interpretation involves understanding the associations we have with figures and objects in our dreams.
• Ancestors can visit us in dreams to offer support and share similar life themes.
• Dreams can be accessed for guidance and creativity through a five-step process outlined in the book 'Dream Guidance' by Machiel Klerk.

Sound Bites

• "He came to me in a dream. He didn't speak, but he kind of came in and like I knew he was saying hello to me without any words."
• "I'm in a shoe store and I'm trying on some shoes and then someone comes to me with a pair of shoes that I'm finding okay but not super appealing. But I put them on and they fit like a glove."
• "Your ability to heal yourself comes from your consciousness, and dreams provide sustenance for that healing."
• "Dreams are immersive environments"
• "Dreams are created based on our beliefs, expectations, intent, and willpo

Transcript

Well, hey, everybody, welcome back.

Welcome back.

We're Generation X Paranormal, I'm Logan.

And I'm Nicole.

And a couple of quick housekeeping things.

We have, we've had it for a little while, but we've got a Twitter, or X, or whatever they're calling it these days.

Tweet, tweet.

Yeah, tweet, tweet.

I'm not gonna say I X somebody.

What do you say now?

I might miss the little bird.

Yeah, the bird was cool.

But anyway, we're a Generation X Paranormal podcast on there, so check us out.

We've also got a Facebook group that we started.

So definitely check us out there.

That is, I'll let you.

Paranormal group for the eventually deceased.

Yeah, that's cool.

When you guys go there, you'll see why we called it that.

But anyway, but yeah, reach out to us.

But today we have a really good show.

Today we have Machiel Klerk, and he's very interesting.

And I know I say that a lot, but with having a paranormal show, you always cover a lot of the same topics, but this one is a little bit different.

And what can you tell us about Machiel?

So Machiel Klerk is a social entrepreneur.

He's a licensed mental health therapist, an international speaker, dream worker, and a published author.

He has traveled all over the world and studied many cultures and their healing and dream traditions.

He has given lectures and workshops in Europe, South Africa, and North America about dreams and psychology.

He also provides inspirational talks and workshops for companies on creativity, innovation, and leadership.

He has vocationally been guided by dreams when he founded the Young Society of Utah and the online organization where he has written several articles on dreams and released a course.

And he has recently published a book called Dream Guidance.

Awesome.

Well, let's talk to Machiel.

Well, hi, Machiel.

How are you doing?

Very well, Logan.

And good to see you, Nicole.

You too.

We've been pretty excited to have you.

For one, you know, when we do things with the paranormal, we're used to just covering things like the ghost and things like that, UFOs.

But I find what you, what we're going to discuss today would be really fascinating.

But kind of before we dive into that, if you wouldn't mind letting our audience, or giving our audience kind of a, really just kind of a background or, you know, just a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, I, these days I'm a psychotherapist and very interested in dreams and manage an online company called The Jung Platform.

And all of this really comes forth out of my love for dreams.

So in my early 20s, I was stuck in my life.

I was in a dark place.

I hadn't dealt well with the grief of losing my father when I was 10 and had no future vision.

And by some fortunate circumstances, I stumbled upon the works of Carl Jung, who gave me some insight in how to think about dreams and to work with dreams.

And so I started doing that, and to my own surprise, they were really insightful.

They showed me where I was in life, like a psychological x-ray, and then started to point towards where my life could flow.

And so I climbed out of the dark pit, got reconnected with my deceased father, got a sense of purpose, and life became much more fulfilling.

So I've been holding on to the threat that dreams can provide, and then traveled the world, studied dreams and all kinds of traditions, became a psychotherapist, wrote this book on dreaming, and that is in a nutshell a bit about me and the world of dreams.

Sure.

No, I appreciate that.

You know, a couple of things.

One, Nicole and I have both lost our father, so we understand that, you know, that loss, so I appreciate you sharing that with us.

You had mentioned a little bit about, you started looking into the readings or the teachings of Carl Hume, but what sort of got you there?

Because I know that when you experience a loss like that, there's so many different things that run across in your mind, but was there a specific reason that led you down that path?

No, that was really fortunate.

I had gotten stuck in my life.

I lived in Amsterdam, was smoking way too much marijuana, which in itself is not an issue, but if you have some problems, it can become an issue.

And so I became lethargic and didn't go to school anymore.

Then one of my roommates happened to have this book by Carl Jung, and I started reading it, and I was just amazed.

And it clicked.

And then I continued obsessively to read more of it, and I went in a very turbulent phase, because my world really changed.

And so that was, I don't know if you could say, indicate, say, coincidence or Jung's term synchronicity, or guided, who knows?

Right.

Yeah, I mean, it's amazing sometimes how...

Those things fall into our path.

Yeah, almost like a serendipity in a way, and then you always wonder, was it coincidence or was I really put here for a reason to do that?

And let's go ahead and pivot a little bit to that.

You know, with dreams, I guess my interpretation has always been, and I'm sure that's pretty common, that it's just you working things out that have happened in your daily life, and it's just kind of replaying in your head, and you're running through different things, and I guess your conscious is kind of taking a bit of a 30,000 foot view, for lack of better words, and working things out.

But I'm given to understand there's probably a lot more to that.

I guess my question is, we can kind of get started.

When you started talking or reading the Hume stuff and kind of getting into it, what did you start discovering about dreams?

Well, at that time, the dreams were partly what you mentioned, that we're working our emotions through during dreaming.

That's one of the aspects of dreaming.

But what it also seems to be is that it is anticipating tomorrow.

So it's not only a response on today or a comment on today, yet it might provide a character or a direction that will be helpful for me to develop into.

So it's a future-oriented phenomenon as well.

You might have an insight about an idea that is really good for you to develop.

There's some prognostic dreams or prophetic dreams about things that will happen in the future.

Maybe you have experienced such a thing or the person will die sometimes.

But that's one thing, but also very, very practical things is if you're stuck in in your life, and let's say you cannot speak up well, then the dream might provide a character who is really strong and fearful, who has an ability to speak up.

And so if you then connect to that character, that energy becomes available, and you can integrate it in your life.

So that is one aspect of the dreams.

But to think really about dreaming well is to know what a dream is.

And the experience of a dream is that we are in a world, and in that world we interact.

We see an angry cab driver or a scary crocodile, and we respond to that.

And when we are in the dream, we don't know that we are dreaming.

We take that reality for real, just like we do actually right now.

And once we are in the dream, we don't distinguish between this world and the dream world.

So a dream is a world we find ourselves in that we take for real, and we have an experience.

And then when we wake up, that stream of consciousness doesn't disappear, but continues to coexist.

So dreaming is still present.

It's not like an on-off switch at night, but it's a reality that's still there.

And so we can still connect with the crocodile in the dream, or we can meet ancestors in the dream, or whatever we meet in the dream seems to co-exist next to this reality, and we can find ways to merge those realities better.

And to continue that, dreaming seems to be just one infliction of consciousness, or God, or the universe, to generate an other world.

You have this world, and you have dreaming as another world.

And in a similar way, you could also look at out-of-body experiences, or near-death, or psychedelic experiences, are just other inflictions of an other world that the universe generates in and through us and around us.

So that's a long answer with a lot of elements to your question.

That's a great answer, and that's exactly what I was looking for.

I absolutely want to talk about the Ancestors and Dreams, but I'm going to put a pin in that for just a second, because Nicole and I are very interested to talk about that.

Okay, so I guess my other question would be, or I'm interested in your response, as someone who hopefully has healthy dreams for most of the time, although sometimes they're not, there are definitely those dreams where you wake up and you have, I mean, literally from the moment you are awake or sleep till you're awake, you forget your dream immediately.

Is there a difference between a dream like that and maybe a dream that you're talking about?

No, all the dreams are basically experiences in another world.

And the more intense the dream is, usually the better we can remember it.

That is why we remember nightmares well, because they're horribly intense.

So a certain intensity in the dream helps with the dream recall.

But for the rest, when we're asleep, our short-term memory doesn't function.

That is, or not well.

And that is why we forget all these hours.

But actually we have two or three hours of active dreaming each night.

And the wild thing is, is that while we're asleep, our body is asleep, but our mind is awake.

Our mind is in the dream, sees the crocodile, thinks, oh, the scary runs, or whatever it does.

So our mind seems not to sleep.

It's our body that sleeps.

Right.

And then we just continue to have experiences.

Yeah, at least with my basic knowledge of sleep is, I think the first couple hours is your body's recovering.

And then I think after that, it goes into the rims.

Yeah, the rim cycles.

But no, that's really fascinating.

And I just wanted to ask that question because I've always wondered, there's always those dreams that I remember really vividly.

And then they're the ones that I wake up and I'm like, okay, I know I had a dream, but I couldn't tell you what it is.

But it's never the good ones, typically.

No, it isn't.

No.

So for some reason, whenever we talk about dreams, I remember very vividly growing up, of course, it's Hollywood, but you remember like Dream Warriors with Freddy Krueger and all that kind of stuff.

That stuff, you just absolutely scare me.

But of course, I'm a product of the 80s, so what do you expect?

But aside from that, where there's people trying to kill you in a dream, let's talk about the positive part of it.

How do you get guidance from your dreams?

So if you can kind of start to unpack that a little bit.

Yeah, in multiple ways.

One, in the dream itself, we see that there are from time to time helpful characters showing up, trying to point the way.

So there are characters that show up in our dreams that are not ourselves, like a spirit guide or a helpful dream figure that tries to help us.

And so that is one.

Of course, you can work on the dream to extract some meaning or helpfulness out of it, but that's after the fact.

And then you can, before you go to bed, also ask your dream or your soul or God or the universe a question, and then get a dream response for whatever is really relevant to you.

If you want to know how can I grow my business or what's one way I can be more loving to myself or what is one type of food that is good for me to eat or what is an obstacle for me in finding a partner, and you do a little ritual and you ask the dream, then the dream comes with an answer.

And there's a very old technique that comes back in any culture around the world.

So those are a couple of ways we can get guidance from dreams.

Right.

Yeah, that's, you know, I often have, you know, in the dreams that I do remember, I can definitely think of times where it may or may not have had at least a direct impact on things I did either that day or moving forward.

So, yeah, I've always known that, or at least try to listen to them, because like I said in the beginning, I always thought it was something I was trying to work out while I was sleeping anyway.

So, you know, it would make sense to listen to it.

As far as guidance, have you had any guidance dreams, Nicole?

Not that I can think of, but just thinking about what you were saying, a lot of people pray right before they go to bed.

And in their prayers, they usually ask for help, you know, with whatever it is.

So that's like the same thing, I would imagine.

Right.

And then while they're dreaming, yeah, they get those answers.

Yeah, there's in general, and I think you agree, that there are spirit guides or there's some helpful quality in the universe.

And you can get there through prayer or meditation or intention setting.

And dreaming is just one other way that guidance is available.

And it seems to be that dreams spontaneously will give good ideas to people.

Many inventions come from dreams, or the song Yesterday from the Beatles was delivered to Paul McCartney in a dream.

Stephen King uses his dreams for his books, and probably more nightmarish dreams.

Many inventions come from dreams.

I've heard that with multiple authors, actually.

Even the Twilight author.

That's true.

She dreamed about the whole...

The vampires.

The vampire and the woman in the field.

And that's how she came up with the entire story for the Twilight Saga.

Wow.

Sorry, just had to throw that in there.

Yeah, so the dream does this already proactively.

Gives little nuggets and goodies.

That's good.

And we can engage with the dream also more proactively by asking it for support and guidance.

Yeah, I find...

And I'm going to share a little more personal story.

When Nicole and I first met and we were first about to get married, I keep in mind my father had already passed away, gosh, 15 years prior to that?

Maybe even...

no, maybe not that long.

Anyway, that part doesn't matter as much, but clearly Nicole had never met him.

And then she was very hesitant.

I had asked her about her dream, and she was just really hesitant for a little bit.

And then she said, well, your father came to me in a dream.

You want to talk about that for a second?

It's kind of broken now.

I don't remember all of it.

He didn't speak, but he kind of came in, and just like I knew he was saying hello to me without any words, and then turned around and walked back out of the room wherever we were.

It was a long time ago, but I had that feeling like he accepted me and he was telling me hello without any words being spoken.

What a beautiful experience.

Kind of a welcome to the family from the other side.

Exactly.

And I remember that one.

I remember this after several years, and it wasn't a scary one.

That's interesting, but they never do.

I have had several with loved ones that never actually speak.

But I know what message they're trying to convey, which I think is interesting.

Yeah.

Well, but there you have a great example of a spontaneous, helpful dream, where the other world and this world, they merge and they coexist, just like your dad doesn't disappear because the dream ends.

It lives in that other world, and it can manifest itself in dreams and in this world as well, if we pay attention in the right way.

Yeah, for sure.

And I think that kind of lends a little bit into kind of where I wanted to go from here.

You know, you mention a lot, you know, I know that you kind of covered a little bit, but as far as like dreams nurturing your soul and how to get, you know, good information for your daily life, is there a way to, like, for example, our audience, when they listen to this, is there a way for them to cultivate that?

Is there a series of things that they can do?

And if you could explain that a little bit.

Yes, it's...

I've studied all these traditions, and I came up with, I desolated to a five-step process that I also wrote out in the book Dream Guidance.

But as an example, recently I met a woman here.

I live in Mexico City on the moment.

And she was here, and she told me, I'm fired from my job, and I'm looking to do something else.

And I said, well, you can ask your dream for support.

And she said, what can I ask?

I said, well, what do you want to know?

And of course she wants to know where to work again.

But the dream seems not to answer it in that way, that it will say go to General Electric and they have a marketing position.

It might happen, but it's very seldom.

And so she says, what can I do to find a new job?

And then she wrote it down, made a little drawing as a kind of a ritual.

And that's always important to do something, light a candle, sing a song, create a ritual.

And then she went to bed, lay in bed, meditated on the question for one, two minutes, fell asleep, had a dream, woke up, and immediately wrote down the dream.

And the dream she had was, I'm in a shoe store, and I'm trying on some shoes, and then someone comes to me with a pair of shoes that I'm finding okay but not super appealing.

But I put them on, and they fit like a glove.

And that was her dream.

And then she worked that dream, and she asked the question, what was happening here?

She was like, oh, I was looking for shoes to fit, a way to move through life, and I got something that I wasn't totally attracted to, appeared to be a perfect fit.

And so she thought, oh, I think the dream tells me to be open to all kinds of possible new jobs that might come from places I don't expect, and just try them on.

And I might find something that's a really good fit because I'm open to it.

So that's one example of how it works.

And the people that are listening can take the same structure and think about something that you really want to know that's really important, make it one question at a time, an open-ended question, and do a little ritual, sleep, make sure you write down the dream upon waking because otherwise they evaporate, and then work the dream.

And half the dreams probably make sense.

The other half, you have to puzzle a little bit.

But don't cave up too early.

The universe responds, and sometimes you just need to share it with a friend or work on it or find some way to work the dream.

Right.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

You know, it's funny because a lot of the times, especially when we do the show and we talk to a lot of people about the paranormal, or paranormal, often try to break it down to before humanity had all this technology and all these different things, obviously we dreamed back then.

You know, this isn't something that's brand new.

It wasn't something that was, you know, that just became real as we went through technology.

So you often think that a lot of people in ancient times would have had, you know, had vivid dreams.

They relied on it for guidance.

Exactly.

Even like, so I'm half Scottish, half Native American.

And both of those have had a lot, you know, in the beginning, my ancestors had a lot to do with, they did a lot from their dreams.

And I would imagine it had a profound impact on their culture, on their society, and obviously probably in their belief structure.

So, you know, I always find it interesting because, you know, we all often coin things as paranormal, but in the reality of it is, this was something that was very normal to us long, long, long ago in ancient times.

So, yeah.

Yeah, very, very much so.

You see it, you see dreaming comes back as being important in, in almost any culture around the world, except the current Western culture that has marginalized it.

Other cultures would look for it for who to marry, where to stay the night, important ways of healing.

Even the Western healing that started in Greece is based in the Asclepian tradition.

In the Asclepian tradition, one would go to the temple of Asclepius and actually engage in this type of dreaming, but almost exclusively for health.

How to get better, get a cure, and that worked reasonably well.

But yeah, we've lost dreaming in a certain sense, just the sense that there are other worlds.

Right.

Yeah, I mean, it makes perfect sense.

It does.

You know, if you think about dreaming in even with, you know, you think about interdimensional travel and all these other things, if you lend yourself to believe that, and if that's something that you accept, you got to think that your ability to do that has to come from your consciousness.

And since we actually don't know for sure, science isn't proven yet, where consciousness resides, obviously dreams would have a very big impact on that.

Especially, you know, you had mentioned a little bit about healing.

You know, if you can expand on that a little bit, because I know a lot of our listeners, and for sure I am very interested in that topic.

Do you have a little bit more to kind of unpack on that?

Yeah, so the interesting aspect is that dreaming seems, in many cultures, seems to be closely associated with healing.

So either the shaman or the individual themselves would enter the dream or ask the dream either what is the diagnosis of the illness or ask for a prescription, a recipe.

And sometimes a spontaneous healing would occur because people were engaged with dreaming consciousness.

And dreaming consciousness has the ability to cure people or provide healing.

So if a person is sitting now at home and has some healing issue, they could ask what is one thing I can do to cure this issue or improve this issue.

And then the dream will come.

And usually those are big questions, because usually these are bigger topics.

Then you can ask another question another night.

And that's the old method of, one of the old methods of finding healing.

That's interesting.

I don't think I've ever heard that before.

Yeah, I mean.

About the healing aspect.

The only thing I've heard of similar to that would be, I know a lot of Native cultures, they have, like you had said, like a shaman or something like that, that could go to someone who's injured or someone who's sick.

And almost, this is going to be very, very, I guess, dumb of me to say, but you almost think of like this Vulcan mind meld, you know, that you have this like, they would be able to go into the injured person, the sick person's consciousness.

Was that a Star Trek reference?

Sorry.

For those of us that don't know.

I nerded out there a little bit, I apologize.

But you know, you kind of have, they kind of had this connection and the mind and body connection as far as the healing.

And that shaman could actually either...

Tap into that.

Right, tap into it, heal, and do all these different things from that aspect.

I hadn't heard about it in dreams though, but to be honest with you though, that almost makes better sense, I guess.

Only because I would think, you know, when you're in that deep REM sleep, and you know, even science has told us when you're sleeping, you know, like I said, a couple of hours, you're recovering.

So that's your body is doing its recovery.

Is it so hard to think that your mind isn't, you know, and your dreams aren't providing that sustenance to do that, you know, that reconstruction?

Yeah, I mean, well, you know, they even say, like, we only use so much of our brain.

Could we heal ourselves?

If we could reach that, you know what I'm saying?

I mean, like that makes total sense to me.

Yeah, we are our own best pharmacy.

Mm-hmm.

So it begs the question, how can you access this pharmacy optimally?

And in the native cultures, they would use ritual as a way to kind of grind this reality and become a bit more porous and open to different states of consciousness.

And dreaming is just one of these different states of consciousness that is always there.

We just fall into it during sleep.

And it provides more healing and it seems to trigger the innate pharmacy.

That's interesting.

Well, I know the native, I can't remember which, and maybe all of them, they have a term like dream world or something like that.

I can't remember the native term for it that's translated to English, of course.

But there was like a dream state that they would go into out in the woods.

You know what I'm talking about?

Yeah, it was a vision quest, some call it that.

Yeah, but I've heard like a term, but I can't remember exactly.

It was dream something.

Yeah, native cultures have always valued this type of way of healing or finding guidance.

And now we have a fantastic medical system in the West, but it also has its shortcomings.

And if people would merge a little bit the two, use dreaming as a way to heal in combination with the medical system, then they would be in better ways.

For sure.

I agree, I agree.

We all know that the placebo works, and the placebo is just the triggering of our inner pharmacy.

And a placebo is one way that you, through a certain set of rituals, trigger the pharmacy.

And the pharmacy can heal it, it can do amazing things.

Spontaneous healing from very severe diseases, we have a cut on our finger, and the body knows how to heal.

We just need to facilitate.

And that's with dreaming, too.

We don't need to know how it works.

We just want to be respectfully engaged, dreaming and ask for health or healing or a recipe or a prescription or one thing we can do.

And then dreaming seems to be interested in helping and educating.

Yeah.

You know, that's, you know, when you said that, it kind of triggered a thought in my head that, and this is nothing new, but it seems like the more we get our hands on information and the more we, the more we evolve, if you want to call it that, as a species.

I think we're going backwards.

Well, not only that, but we silo our thinking so much that, you know.

If it's not black or white.

Right.

If it's not a direct answer, like everything else is out of the question.

Yeah.

I mean, you even think about, and I don't know if you've discussed this or really looked into it, but even things like ufology and stuff like that with, with alien visitation, a lot of those start off with a dream state.

You know, they were sleeping, they're in a dream state, and they don't know if they were actually dreaming that they had this encounter.

And I think that it's, it's highly likely that if you lend yourself to that belief that there is such a thing, which obviously we do, why wouldn't that makes perfect sense if you don't silo that off, that maybe that's, that is your encounter as they reach out to you during that dream state.

That's a safe place too.

You think about it.

There's many ways to think about it.

But one is that these aliens just live in different states of consciousness or different worlds.

And they, yeah, or different frequencies.

And in one of the frequencies they, they can, we, we, we can meet them is the dream frequency.

And, and so I've heard many people talk about an alien encounter or seeing in being, seeing or being in a UFO during their dream.

And then sometimes they feel that it, that they're in an almost another kind of reality, another frequency that they say, I'm so lucid.

I knew this was going on.

I knew that I was also sleeping and I was having this, this encounter.

And those are very interesting experiences, of course.

You know, that's funny.

You say the word frequency.

We have run across that so much.

You know, especially like in the last couple of months.

You know, we had Dr.

Kimberly McGeorge, and she was talking about frequency healing.

So that, it's just amazing that just keeps coming up so many times.

Well, and they also say, you know, for loved ones that have passed, when they come into your dreams, like these are the experiences I usually have, like his father, my father, my aunt have all, you know, no speaking, but I know they're there, but conveyed their message.

It's easier for them to visit us in our dreams than it would be, you know, to like appear as a ghost or something like that.

It takes a lot more energy, and it's a safer way to convey their message and easier for them to get on that frequency, which I think is really an interesting thought.

Yeah, it appears to be that way.

It's more people that will see their deceased loved one in a dream than that they will see a deceased loved one in this reality.

They will be able to feel it sometimes, and sometimes people can have a sense.

But in dreams, almost everyone has had a dream in which they say, yeah, I really had the feeling that was grandpa.

Grandpa was here.

Well, kudos to you.

Anybody who knew my dad, if you got him to be quiet, that's amazing right there.

Love you, dad, but you know I'm right.

The apple did not fall far.

But it also seems that in the dream, you can have telepathic communication.

So grandpa or father might think or communicate, you know, oh, he's welcoming me.

Yeah.

Like I knew it instantly without any speaking whatsoever, which was just, yeah.

Which would have been my dad's style.

I mean, that's just kind of how he was.

But doing it without speaking, that's...

But I bet your dad would also, if he had disapproved, not done it.

Oh, let me tell you some.

If my dad didn't approve, there are so many things he would have done.

Then it would have been a nightmare.

If he was angry, anybody who knew my dad knew that...

You knew it.

You knew he was upset.

Kind of expanding a little bit on that, we had taken that pin, I'm going to take it out, of ancestors and dreams, since we're kind of talking about it.

Obviously, when we just talked about my father and her father coming to you in a dream, but if you can kind of expand a little bit about...

That's a very close ancestor.

We knew them in life.

We knew them in life.

I would imagine...

I know you've talked about this before, but ancestors that are much further back.

Could you give us a little bit of an idea about that?

Well, yes, it appears that deceased loved ones seems to live on the other side, and that they meet us in the dreams.

Yet what also seems to be the case is that we're being visited by ancestors who share a similar life theme.

So if my great-great-great grandfather, or even my neighbor's great-great-great grandfather, knows that I'm working on speaking up or jealousy or whatever topic, and they had an issue with it, they might come to both learn and support.

Because at the other end, it looks like that our life work or karma or complexes aren't finished the moment we cross over.

They seem to want to continue to learn.

And so we might have very old ancestors, not even always blood ancestors, come to us with interest, support, and we could even ask proactively, say, if there's anyone that also struggles with anxiety or depression, please show up if you think you have something to contribute, and you can learn something here.

Because then you will have them come in, because sometimes we need to proactively ask, as if they otherwise, sometimes they hang around, but if we proactively ask, it's like we give an informed consent that we need support, and they will support us.

And then we have an idea, an intuition.

Like I've worked a lot with the African traditions, because I was born in South Africa, and they don't even have a word for intuition.

They call it when ancestor speaks.

They think it's an ancestor that tells you, turn right or put on the radio or give a call, or whatever your intuition tells you.

But that's a way that, in a subtle way, we can get a lot of support, because they need to solve the issue as well, and they somehow benefit from us figuring it out.

So there's teamwork going on between this side and the other side.

And it makes life a little bit more fun, too.

Yeah.

Be a team approaching it.

Connected by blood.

Well, I mean, and there's such a tremendous amount of research between the, you know, just in your genetic DNA, the code that you carry from, you know, from your ancestor from so long ago.

Well, scientists have even, I can't remember the study now that I read, but they're proving that we can pass down our memories through our genetic line, which I find is really interesting.

So if you have that, you know, sense of deja vu, or you go travel somewhere you've never been, it could be, and you like recognize it immediately, it's because your ancestors were there, and they've passed that memory down to you, which I just, that whole thing to me is fascinating.

That is fascinating, yes.

But I mean, there are many cultures, just like you said, and you know, I've read about it that, you know, we know the Native American, they call on their ancestors for everything.

A lot of the Celt tribes did, like I've been reading about them, they look to their ancestors.

So I think it's probably just something that just was.

Until we stopped at some point.

In some way, we disconnected.

Our rational mind became a brilliant island with lots of inventions, but also isolated from the depths of our own being and the connection to these other frequencies, worlds, states of consciousness.

Yeah.

And that makes sense.

I mean, ancestors that have dream catchers and all these different things to help guide your dreams.

I mean, they obviously knew about it back then.

We were just made to forget it in the form of progress.

Yeah, progress.

Yeah.

I do have a question that I'm not sure how to frame it, but obviously, a lot of people have different ideas about dreams.

Obviously, you've got like...

I always think about the books that tell you if you dream this, and it means that, and all these other things, which if folks enjoy that, that's fine, but are there any misconceptions about dreams and dream function that you think people may or may not be, or just kind of missing the point on?

Well, it starts with the things we can verify, and we can verify that a dream is a world we find ourselves in, where we have an interactive experience.

That's a dream, because people can go back to any dream, and they know, oh yeah, I was there, and the car drove by, and then I walked further, or whatever they dream, they are in a world, which suggests several things.

One, that a dream is not a two-dimensional message from Mystery Source X to you.

It's not a letter or a movie that you watch.

It's a world you find yourself in, that you take for completely real, and you're interacting in that world.

So that's the starting point of what a dream is.

And then we can see certain things.

We can learn about how the dream is created.

So the dream seems to be a creation of our own beliefs, expectations, intent, willpower, and some mystery factor X that generates a world.

So we can see, for example, if this was a dream, and I thought, gosh, I'm mumbling on, have a critical thought, then my former boss comes into the room and starts shaking his hand.

That's what a dream does to an emotion that I have and portrays that as a figure that I know to be critical.

Because if you would ask me, what do you associate to your previous boss?

Oh, he's critical.

So criticalness enters the room.

And that is one way that basic dream interpretation works.

You could ask yourself, what do I associate to and then the figure that you encounter?

Because people say, oh, I haven't thought about my neighbor for 30 years and he was there in the dream.

That's so weird.

Yeah, it's weird, but your dream uses that neighbor as a symbol to represent whatever maybe you thought, oh yeah, the guy was so jealous.

So jealousy shows up in the form of neighbor.

And so where the dream books go wrong, they say, oh, neighbor, someone close to you or familiar.

You can make the stretch that jealousy is close and familiar, but the dream book doesn't get you there.

So if you ask the question, what do I associate to a figure or with an object, you can ask the question, what is the function of?

So I'm driving in a car and I slam the brakes and it doesn't work.

What is the function of a car?

The car I drive from A to B, I move through life.

Okay, the way you move through life, you try to slow down, you try to slam the brakes, and you can't slow down.

You feel that you're getting out of control.

Then that is the experience that a dream provides in the dream environment by generating a real car you sit in.

It's a dream car, but it creates, based on your experience, this kind of a world.

So that is just really helpful for people to work with dreams, because then they can see also better, why does the dream dictionary work or doesn't work, what people can find out.

Dreams are also very personalized.

So if I dream about, maybe we knew the same person, and you think he's very arrogant, and I think he's very funny, then maybe funniness takes on the form and shape of that person.

And in your case, arrogance takes the form and shape of that person.

And so it's not always the same thing.

So that's right.

There's always a high amount of subjectivity with some of that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then there are layers of common dream themes, such as home or father or mother or death, that have some universal relevance.

But even that is colored by a personal experience, because we all long for home, but we all have a different sense of what home is colored by our own experience of home.

And it's very relevant to the time that you're in too, because home, you know, at 20 years old was different, certainly different than home.

When you're five years old or you're 40 years old.

Absolutely.

And your sense of home changes with the partner you have or don't have.

That makes a lot of sense.

You know, it's interesting that you're in Mexico City, because we've been now kind of in that area, not the city itself, but in central Mexico and even like coastal Mexico.

And you go to places like Tulum, and you go to places that it's very obvious that that culture utilized more than just face value type things.

They were very, I mean, the Mayan culture and all these different cultures believe very heavily in dreams.

And like we said in the beginning, that probably shaped a lot of their belief structure.

Guaranteed it.

Guaranteed it did.

And that connection didn't disappear because we became little islands.

We can turn around again to the depths of our soul or to the other worlds, as you know.

And then we can rebuild and rekindle and start getting open for better intuition and better dreams and guidance and healing.

It doesn't mean a rose color that life always will be good, but there is support in ways that are beyond imagination.

That's one way for people that feel like they're alone to not feel alone.

Oh, for sure.

Like they have support.

You know, those that don't have families and things like that.

Yeah.

You know, Machiel, there's so many things that we've kind of talked about here, but kind of get a little bit towards the end.

I know a lot of our audience may want to be able to reach out and let's talk a little bit about the book.

Can you tell us a little bit about, you know, the book that you wrote and where they can find it and kind of give them an idea of what it's about?

Yeah, it's titled Dream Guidance, and it's a very accessible book.

It's written for the general audience.

It's a simple five-step process on how to get guidance for any problem, challenge, or just fun, creativity in your life.

Sometimes people have used it for, I want to make a beautiful song or I want to make a great painting.

You can ask for inspiration that way.

And it's full with practical examples, and it's available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, a Kindle version, a hardcopy version, a spoken book version.

And yeah, it's a fun way to elicit some support.

And people can use it for a one-time engagement.

You can do it multiple times.

You can do it now and then let it rest and then ask your dream another question in three months.

Usually when people see it works, they get excited and they think, oh gosh, what else shall I ask?

Right.

You can ask what's going on with my dog, my pet or how can I help my pet or crazy experiments.

Dad, do you have a message for me?

And then see what comes.

Right.

Yeah, so that's a little bit about the book, and it has been doing really well because it's really written for the general audience.

I wanted to create something that everyone could read and apply to their lives.

That's fantastic.

Yeah, that is.

Because sometimes you can get into some books where, I mean, you get a little lost sometimes, where there's so much ideas and different things that are thrown at you for people who don't, who aren't in it every single day.

Sometimes it's a bit of an abstract to get into, so that works out really well.

Are there any plans for a follow-up, or did you kind of have a plan in depth for this?

No, on this moment, I'm happy one book is out, and it was a longer and more intense journey than I anticipated.

And out of a nighttime dream, I started a company called the Jung Platform, based on Carl Jung's work, J-U-N-G Platform.

And there we make courses on dreams, but also on synchronicity and the tarot and all kinds of topics, also for the general audience.

And that is a very demanding new creature that eats up so much time.

There's not a lot of space for pondering about another book.

That's good.

I mean, it's always a nice problem to have.

Yes, it is.

So where can our audience find that information at?

Yeah, that's Jung Platform, J-U-N-G Platform.

Or go to my website.

That's my first and last name, machielklerk.com.

Maybe you can put it in the show notes, because I lived a long time in the US.

And when I came in the US., I had to give up on people knowing how to pronounce my name, which is totally understandable.

But I know it's difficult.

Again, we're so happy to have you.

And for our audience, I really urge you to reach out to Machiel and kind of dive into something that we all do.

I mean, dreaming is a human experience.

Whether you remember it or not.

If you start paying attention to it, that's the number one thing for dream recall.

So people that listen to this and maybe tell tonight to their dream, gosh, I've been listening to Nicole and Logan and Machiel and I'm not sure if there's something to it, but I'm curious to experiment.

I like to remember my dream or you ask a question such as, was one thing I can do to love myself more deeply?

Then you will see that most likely you will have a dream.

And if you do it three nights in a row, 90% of the people will have had their dream.

That's cool.

Well, we're going to try that out.

Let me know.

We will definitely let you know.

Well, Machiel, again, thank you so much for being on the show.

We had a great time.

Hopefully, maybe we can have you back sometime and find out a little bit more about dreams.

Would love to.

It was a pleasure to be with the two of you.

Loved your energy and till the paths cross.

Sounds good.

All right.

Well, you have a good one and we'll talk to you soon.

Machiel is a good person to talk to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Really nice guy.

You know, it's funny because you think about, you know, dreams.

Everybody's got them, you know.

And if, like I said in the interview, if you lean yourself to believing in a lot of the different things that we cover, you also have to realize that your mind is perfectly capable of a lot of different things.

Oh, it is.

I mean, there's so much that we could do if we could tap into that.

Yeah.

It truly is kind of like, for me, it's always been a little bit of a nebulous because you always think of the mind and the brain and kind of, you know, how it operates and different things that it does.

You know, it always is a bit mysterious, you know.

But no, with Machiel's information, that's very important for me because I think that you can glean a lot from dreams.

Yeah.

I mean, and the fact that he studied all these cultures and how each one of them goes about contacting and talking to whoever's in the dream and guiding the dream, I think that's interesting that across the board, it seems to be very similar.

And you know, these cultures didn't speak to each other.

So, I mean, he's definitely done his research.

And I'd be interested.

I think we're going to, I'm going to read his book because I'm that interested.

Yeah, I'll take a crack at it too.

That sounds like fun.

But if you guys want to, obviously, pick up his book, get to learn a little bit about it.

Yeah, we'll put the link in the comments where you can find it on Amazon and his website.

And his website.

But once again, guys, thank you so much for joining us.

We've had a great time and we'll see you later.

Talk to you next week.