I tried everything but dynamite and LSD on the water system. Maybe next time, I'll give it a better try. But they wanted to go in there and, like, knock it out of the park, right? We can get this lucid dreaming thing done so that we can make more money become better traders. That's really not the best way to approach this domain. Or even better yet, a couple years ago, no kidding, pitching coach for the New York Yankees, right? Reached out to me and said, Hey, man, I want you to teach my pitchers how to become better pitchers in the world of lucid dreaming so we can get an edge on the competition. And while I appreciated his inquiry and request, I told him, I said, you know, I don't think this is going to work. Man, the gods and the goddesses, if you like that kind of nomenclature, the deities in the night, they don't play in these conventional rules. It's just not going to work. Yeah, sometimes you'll have some success, but you're not going to have it consistently with that type of attitude. To be rather blunt, the nocturnal meditations, lucid dreaming, will just flip you off. Sorry, man, we just don't play by these rules. It's like putting your finger on a beat of mercury, press it and what does it do? Squirts out the side. So as we'll see, there are a number of gods, right? And goddesses, deities that rule the playbook of the night, but there are two prominent ones, kind of gatekeepers. One is the trickster, Hermes, and the other is the trickster, mercurious, the weak and Roman gods, respectively. These are the gods that relate, really. They're the gods of translators. They're the messenger gods. They're the gods of commerce, communication and trickery, and so if we learn how to play by those rules, we're going to have some success here. Parenthetically, by the way, Hermes Mercuria, sometimes the hybrid of these two, was the guide in Greek and Roman mythology, who principally escorted people into the underworld. Well, the underworld isn't just what happens when you die. The underworld takes place in a microcosmic form every night when you fall asleep. So the idea here is the invitation, the suggestion, the tip, to be open minded, to approach lucid dreaming with a beginner's mind, as Suzuki Roshi put it, to succeed in this kind of liminal or demonic reality, we have to really replace or augment traditional causality and logic with a type of fuzzy logic, because conventional effort doesn't always work. So what I've discovered over the years is that these nocturnal gods, if you'd like to work with that kind of anthropomorphism, they'll tease you, they'll seduce you, but then they'll spurn you. And so for me, just to reinstate, I've been doing this for so long. I've had, you know, soaring, hyper, lucid dreams, sometimes called theophantic dreams. I've had cognitive dreams, dreams of the future. And there are times when I feel like, man, I've got this down. I have mastered the dream world well, only to be followed by a drought where, like the well goes dry and nothing's happening. I have heard this, I cannot tell you, and I'm sure Mia can share the same 1000s of times. Why does the well go dry? Well? Because this realm doesn't play by the same diurnal rules. So in techno speak, in the world of chaos and complexity theory, lucid dreaming is a non linear, non linear dynamical system, which means it's like the stock market, one day up, one day it's down, one day it's up, what's down. And just like in the stock market, success and lucid dreaming is staying the course, literally, in this regard, staying with this course, and then staying the course even after this thing ends. So one last thing around this that I have found super interesting. This is a relatively recent discovery. This really helped me understand some of that kind of I don't know, just that the mystery of this whole nocturnal world. So I've come to discover for sure that the nocturnal darkness, right, darkness all together. The nocturnal mind is fundamentally feminine in nature. This is represented by the Goddess paramita in Buddhism, in the Eastern world, or in western mythology, next the goddess of the night. And so what I've discovered is that the best way to play this lucid dreaming game, it's like a dating game. You have to romance these subtle feminine dimensions of your mind. Where really the goddess of the night? She's almost a dominatrix in some regards, right? She takes the lead. So the idea, fundamentally for success, is surrendering, letting her lead this dance. So here's where it gets, really, really cool, if you scared you too, directly with these kind of masculine photoreceptor eyes. So and this is so interesting, biologically, in our eyes, we have two sets of photoreceptors, the kind of the photoreceptors that operative, principally in the daytime. These are the the cones and I this is my languaging, that these are kind of more masculine photoreceptors. If you look at the nocturnal arena through this kind of photoreceptor lens, using my languishing, the darkness is going to shy away from you. The lens is just too direct, it's too blunt, It's too gross. So what I've discovered is you have to look at her, so to speak, this feminine quality of your mind. You have to look at Lucid dreams, almost from the edges of your mind, using what are called the photoreceptors of the rod. So this is if you look out tonight. When it gets dark, you want to focus on something in the dark, you will notice that the best way to focus on something in the dark is not by looking at it directly, with these masculine rods, I'm sorry, combs, but more from the edges of your eye with the more feminine rods. So if you go too directly, she'll shy away. She'll shine away. So in order to really have success in this realm, you almost have to look out of the corner of your eye, E, y, E, and the corner of your eye, literally the letter I, the corner of your sense of self. If you look too directly, she'll shy away. So knowing that this is the way to play the game, right when you're entering this kind of Twilight Zone, not too tight, not too loose, is a maxim that really applies conventional approaches. Absolutely, absolutely worth learning. They have some hidden Miss success, but if you want to have consistent success in the world of lucid dreaming, excuse me, excuse me. You have to think outside of the diurnal box. You have to think outside of the perception box of waking consciousness, fundamentally even to fall asleep. Biology represents this yet again. You literally have to stop, stop thinking all together, if you don't stop thinking, you're not going to fall asleep. Literally, that's what results in insomnia. So this is the way to enter this realm, this unconventional, quirky realm of the dream, this Twilight Zone, right? Is by playing with these new sets of rules. You're entering a mythopoetic dimension of reality, a dimension that's more foundational, that the waking state does not always abide by the same rules. So the rules of engagement is, I've come to discover them. Be curious, be patient, be open and be ready to play, ready to dance. You're entering the world of after hours, literally the world of after logic, after rationality, after thought. These are all literally synonyms for meta. Lucid dreams are a type of meta dreaming, and dreaming here. Meta means here, beyond or after so lucid dreaming is literally an afterthought. It's an after hours afterthought where you bring, for sure, you bring your intellect, you bring your logic, you bring your rationality, but then you're also willing to suspend it. You're also willing to leave it at the gate and be open and sensitive to what the nocturnal mind, ie, your own unconscious mind has to teach you. So in this regard, these practices are really empowering. They're challenging in that regard, but they empower you to trust the threat of your experience, to see what works for you, to be fearless, curious, playful in the way relate to this dimension. So we need with with lucid dreaming, it's considered a somewhat advanced practice, partly because it requires a somewhat advanced attitude where surrender replaces conquest. You know, often I go to India and Nepal and other places, Mount Kailash and the like, is so interesting to me that the sacred peaks like Mike Mount Kailash and others, sacred mountains. You don't climb them, you don't conquer them. You circumambulate them. So this is the kind of narrative that works in the realm of the demonic, the liminal, the dream realm, a realm where you circumambulate, where you're willing to play and surrender and open to a new set of rules. If you do that, you'll be embraced by a dimension that is so rewarding, so so magical, so transformative. It will truly wake you up. You have to be willing to be opened in the best sense, defeated by these so called feminine qualities of the mind. And I think if you open your mind and heart this kind of receptive approach, then