I received a lot of feedback from the blog: “Hero/ine of Your Journey” so to further the dialogue, I decided to interview Richard Whitehurst, author, speaker, and Ericksonian psychotherapist who has been practicing living life from the perspective as a waking dream for two decades.

Below the video are typed highlights of the interview. Richard’s audio had a technical difficulty that created some echo. Think of it as a special effect to take you into another realm–the realm of the waking dream. 😉

In the interview Richard discusses:

•  How he began seriously observing his life as a waking dream in the 1990s and how dream interpretation has led him to find meaning in his life.

•  In the Seven Points of Mind Training, (mentioned in The Lucid Dreamer by Malcolm Godwin in the Chapter “The Methods of a Tibetan Master”) the great Tibetan master Atisha said, “One of the most powerful and condensed methods [of mind control] ever devised is to think that all phenomena are like dreams.” Atisha has dedicated his life to the uplifting and enlightenment of all conscious beings. Many spiritual traditions discuss life in terms of a waking dream. In lucid dreaming one can direct one’s dream. We can become lucid in this waking dream.

•  Joseph Campbell was fond of quoting Schopenhauer who said that once you reach a mature age in your life you can look back and see it seems that everything has an intentional place as if written by a novelist.

•  Yet there is a state of Being beyond narrative. There is life in a post narrative state. It’s a way of falling back within oneself where there’s no story, there is just pure Being. That’s the essential nature of the Self. We are a Being in a story, we are not the story.

•  The monomyth is the most basic structural breakdown of mythic story structure and Joseph Campbell explains it is composed of three parts. The first part is a separation from the world. The second is a penetration to a source of power where one finds a treasure. The third state is when we return with the gifts that we found and bring them out into the world.

•  During hypnotherapy clients regularly go into a place of power, call it the creative unconscious or a place deep within our mind. There they find gifts, or treasures that had been lost. Then they bring them into their waking life. Doing this enables them to do good in the world for themselves or others.

•  We separate from the world in that primal state of Being-ness that a child experiences before language tiles over their existence. A child experiences life as  magical experiences.

•  The first virtual reality is the reality of culture, which is mosiac of a world with words and it separates us.

• One is born into this world to accomplish things, in order to address certain aspects of this realm as a human being. It’s my observation that people seem to be born to address realms of love, power, relationship. To address masculine and feminine components of this experience and to integrate into the larger Self the experiences and learnings gleaned in this astounding realm of three dimensions.

•  I am always asking myself, Am I exploring my freedom in this situation? Once you separate from the world the you consider more deeply, Am I actually free? Or am I cut off and in some sort of dream?

•  When you have regular synchronicities then you feel your life is on track. I have been doing this for twenty years and synchronicity is becoming more and more prevalent.

•  We speak about the power of living in the Now. However, we can’t live in the now in an artificial structure of past, present, and future. For within this time frame, the present moment immediately becomes past.

•  When we see life as a waking dream there is a blurring of subjective and objective realms. Sometimes there is a deep bleed-through and there is no difference between the inner and the outer; objective and subjective.

•  I am dreaming this external reality. Let me become conscious that I am lucidly living a waking dream and I’m that far away from wide awake. Just a hair away . . .

•  Campbell says, Dreams are private myths. And myths are public dreams. The monomyth that Campbell describes show how the hero goes through the three stages. When we choose to become conscious that we’re living a waking dream we can choose to go post-narrative. As conscious beings we have the power to make choice. Then we can become the hero/ine of our journey.

•  About a sunrise on the first day of the new milliennia: I look at the world as symbols. I live in Australia, which is known as “down under.” If I was interpreting a dream “down under” holds significance. It is like the under belly or under world in mythic structure.

My wife and I were in Noosa, Australia taking a sunrise walk east toward the Boiling Pot, a geological feature, which is a rock tunnel that the surf is pushed through and water comes up through the pot-liked shape. In the original dialect, Noosa means “place of shadow.” I was in Noosa, Australia the place of shadow, down under.

It was the winter solstice, the very last one of the millennium. Winter solstice is a hugely pivotal time, symbolically speaking. It is a time of renewal and new beginnings. The sun had just come up over the horizon, a new beginning of a new millennium, and there was this stunning mackerel sky illuminated gold and pink by the first sun’s rays.

We looked up at the sky. In a cloud a perfect circle had been cut out and began forming into an mistakably clear heart with the exquisite blue behind it. So a circle, heart, blue.

My wife and I had been practicing living life as a waking dream for about five years. When we saw these signs we knew: Be attentive. Be alert. Be lucid.

We were walking east. Symbolically speaking moving toward the east is powerful. The whole cloud mass circle, heart, blue sky drifted toward the sun. That heart and the sun were afloat in that beautiful blue of a mackerel sky. Blue is here in the throat chakra. That is communication.

Just as we arrived to our destination, the Boiling Pot, we noticed it isn’t shaped as a pot, but a heart. As soon as we arrived here the cloud with the heart eclipses the sun and dissolves before our eyes. We see a sacrificing of a heart to the sun.

I still haven’t interpreted that experience completely, but I know one thing I heard that moment was, “Here Richard. Focus on living your life as a waking dream from your heart. Speak about living life as a waking dream from the heart.”

That moment, in terms of monomyth structure, would you be the movement from the second phase into the third: leaving the underworld and taking your gifts and bringing them into the world.

We’re living in a desperate world. The world needs awakened and awakening human beings. Millions of human beings are waking up now. We can find it all over the place.  Our mission is to connect with people who are like-minded and like-hearted.

You can find Richard’s book Mahamantra Yoga: Chanting to Anchor the Mind and Access the Divine here.

Richard Whitehurst has been in clinical practice for over 20 years in Australia and received acclaim for his uncanny effectiveness in bringing about rapid change within hundreds of clients. He is trained in Ericksonian Psychotherapy, Clinical Hypnotherapy, Advanced Hypnosis, and is a Holistic Life Coach in The Upgrade/Reset Methodology.

Richard studied with a meditation master for more than ten years, and spent six of them living in India studying and practicing Vedic psychology and philosophy. He has consistently practiced meditation for forty years. Inner Traditions just released his book, Mahamantra Yoga: Chanting to Anchor the Mind and Access the Divine.

He has spoken about consciousness, personal transformation, and inner growth at universities, colleges, educational seminars, workshops, and TV and radio programs in the USA, UK, India, and Australia. He is known for his humor, heart, and storytelling skills.