The Beautiful Training (Precept) Of Non-Harming

The description for this August 5th edited live event: "What does it mean to engage in non-harming? How does one practice this and why? Beautiful? Yes! How?" The three main categorial approaches for this talk: 1) What is harm? 2) Importance of non-harm 3) A beautiful training

Transcript

Holness,

Welcome.

Josh DePold.

That's me.

That's what people call me.

The website's integratingpresence.

Com.

So today's event is called the Beautiful Training Precept of Non-Harming.

What does it mean to engage in non-harming?

How does one practice this and why?

Beautiful?

Yeah.

How?

So this is inspired by a retreat I did recently,

An online retreat with a teacher,

Gil Fronsdal,

And he looked at these training precepts as beautiful.

I never thought of them as that.

We'll get into that,

But that's what inspired this,

To look at these as beautiful.

So I'm going to basically break this down in three ways.

We're going to take a look at what is harming to begin with and kind of go into that on various levels and some personal experience with this.

And then we'll elucidate why this is important,

Why it's important to engage in non-harming.

And then focusing on this can actually be a beautiful training.

Not most people look at it like that.

We'll go into how people would usually perceive something like this and how it might be perceived differently.

So let's start with this story that happened.

I was giving another Insight Timer talk,

And I keep my phone in my car sometimes.

So I ran,

Kind of the last minute,

I was running out there to get that,

And some guy was,

And excuse my storytelling here,

It leaves a lot to be desired.

There's a guy out there with his backpack,

Hey man,

Can I use your phone?

I can't even call my kids.

I said,

Well,

Hey,

Come back here in a half an hour and I'm done.

I have an old phone that I'll just let you borrow,

And you're welcome to give it back to me whenever you get your stuff straightened out.

And so he came back and I gave it to him,

And it turned out I had forgotten that I hadn't wiped the phone.

So he had started an account on something with one of my email addresses I left in there.

I'm like,

Oh,

Jeez,

I can't believe I forgot to wipe the phone.

So I remotely wiped it.

And then he got in touch with me later because I wrote on a piece of paper how he can get in contact with me.

So I got the phone going,

And it turned out,

He told me a story then and again when he came to the phone that it was telling me how people were just,

He had just been kicked out of his house,

And that he's on the streets now,

And that he's always getting into fights,

And people were kicking his ass,

And really roughing them up and stuff.

But he seemed to get some satisfaction from this.

And so it turned out that the cops had found his stuff,

And he said,

Oh,

I forgot the cops found my stuff.

I just need a ride there.

I'm like,

Well,

I couldn't do that.

So I get this call after that,

I get my phone back,

And I get this call a few weeks later.

He's calling from the hospital,

And he's like,

Of course he's still struggling with some things.

And he's like,

Oh,

I had this number written down.

Who is this?

And I go,

Well,

Who is this?

And he says his name and last name.

How do I know you?

Okay,

Then it dawned on me,

Waking me up here,

Who this was.

And he said,

Yeah,

Me and my friend,

We got an argument over astrology,

And he hit me over the head with a baseball bat,

And I'm in the hospital.

And it just kind of struck me.

I'm like,

And I said,

Maybe you're not ready to hear this,

And this is tough love,

But how many times are you going to have to get this crap beat out of you to feel love,

To feel like you're being loved?

And he just kind of like,

Can you say that again?

I told him,

How many times do you have to get the crap kicked out of you to feel like you're being loved?

And I gave him this example that when I was a kid,

A lot of times I would act out with my parents because,

Maybe this is too personal here,

But it illustrates the point.

I would act out because that's the quickest way I can get their most attention and love.

It didn't matter if it was negative or positive.

Acting out got their attention the quickest and gave the most emotion at one point in the easiest way.

So a lot of times how backwards things can be and distorted,

That acting out was able to get me love and attention.

It wasn't the positive side a lot,

But then again,

I didn't do anything positive to receive it.

You know,

That's neither here or there.

So I applied that to him and it just kind of dawned on him,

Oh yeah,

Maybe I'm getting into,

This is how I get people's attention,

To get people to pay attention to me.

Getting the crap beat out of me.

So and then he said,

Well I gotta go,

I'm filling out this,

I can get,

Filling out my discharge papers,

I'm gonna go,

Oh,

This is wild.

So let's look at the dictionary definition of this harm.

Physical injury,

Especially that which is deliberately inflicted.

Physical or mental damage,

Injury.

Mischief,

Hurt.

Physical or mental damage or injury,

Something that causes someone or something to be hurt,

Broken,

Made less valuable or successful.

To cause hurt,

Injury or damage to someone is something.

To cause harm to someone or something.

So like everything else,

This starts in the mind.

There's an idea or a thought formation of desire or wanting to harm someone.

And then whether it's conscious or not,

Maybe it gets verbalized as wanting to harm.

And then maybe it'll go into physical altercation.

And I also wanted to say too that I lack this thing called the vagina crown.

This is kind of a humorous way to look at it.

I didn't go through the birth canal.

So when I got in here,

At least I've been told,

Right,

That I was born from a C-section.

And just from the get-go,

Now I'm grateful that obviously the doctors did that and it could have been a lot worse if they didn't do that.

I won't go into details here.

But right from the get-go,

Someone else was enlisted to in a way harm my mother by cutting her open just so I could be here and maybe to save her life too.

So right,

You know,

I've got that started right from the get-go of someone else after being responsible for harming someone I love dearly for me to even be here.

So just,

I don't know how that will inform anything.

But another thing what I see so much in culture,

And this is a critique and it just really weighs on my heart,

Now that I've been practicing this for a little bit,

Is it's just the way men and women treat each other,

The games they play.

And you know,

There's just tons and tons of media out there of,

You know,

He said,

She said,

Tit for tat things,

How one harmed another,

How they're getting the upper hand.

And you know,

It's just like over what?

Is this the way we treat each other now?

It really turns me off to a lot of different relationships when it's like in the culture to make these things like not only acceptable,

But like,

Okay,

People are making their living out of,

I don't know,

Aggrandizing these types of behavior and putting this stuff off on a pedestal of how bad we can treat each other.

I mean,

It's just so ridiculous.

I have to laugh and smile because it's just so insane in a way.

It's just ridiculous that,

Okay,

So I'll get off the soapbox and quit ranting here.

So for me,

The harm,

Obvious for me anyway,

Now this is probably varied by people,

Action,

You know,

Bodily action.

It's pretty obvious you see somebody throwing a fist at somebody's face.

That's harm,

Right?

I mean,

That's,

That's,

That's just as clear as day is that people's emotions can,

It can act as a protective mechanism,

Right?

Having high amped up emotions.

It's like,

You know,

Get away from me.

I don't want,

You know,

Near me cause you're harming me,

So I'm going to blast out emotions to protect myself.

And so that goes both ways too,

And it can just keep feeding each other with a thought and emotion until the foot goes off the gas pedal of one or the other and just kind of coast until it coasts down.

The ones that are not so obvious to me are thought and speech.

So yes,

Thought is the most subtle layer pretty much for most people of how harm can be caused.

Can be done,

You know,

Either thinking ill of others or thinking ill of ourselves.

There seems to be some sort of agency over that sometimes.

And sometimes,

You know,

I guess due to habits and patterns,

It takes a while to train some way different than that.

Speech though,

This is one that seems obvious to a lot of people,

But it wasn't to me so much.

And I didn't realize how much trouble I could get in with unwholesome speech.

And at the same time,

You know,

The opposite is how healing and empowering and uplifting speech can be too.

So in between these,

Where it's kind of like,

Yeah,

Not so,

Maybe a little bit obvious,

Maybe not so obvious is kind of the psychological harm that can be done too.

And kind of a psychic energetic harm that can be done.

That's probably just as subtle as thought as well.

And I'm not going to go too much into that.

It's commonly said in some circles like this,

That if you could just imagine something we usually take for granted,

I would just say most of us here or anyone listening to this or those listening to this,

If we all refrained,

Everyone in the whole world,

Humans would refrain from killing just other humans for one day,

This whole world would just be,

Just change overnight and not something we take for granted that happens all the time.

You know,

There's,

As far as I know,

There hasn't been a recorded day of history where one human hasn't killed another for so many different reasons in so many different areas.

There's also this theory for understanding this,

And this comes from teacher Matt Kahn and maybe,

Maybe not,

But I thought it's an interesting idea to mention anyway,

That there seems to be a satisfaction in decay and erosion,

Actually being conscious of when things decay or erode or extinguish.

And when we become conscious of this,

It has this type of satisfaction in it.

This doesn't imply any harming because you look at the cycles of nature,

Right,

That currently happen here on earth.

In the fall,

Things start to die and they go away and they die out and they lose life force and they kind of go into a hybrid,

Hybridatory state,

If that's a word,

And in the spring they come back to life.

A lot of times we're not conscious of how this works,

And so when we're not conscious of this,

We can think,

Oh,

It shouldn't be like this,

It shouldn't happen.

Well,

Maybe,

Maybe not,

But it is happening.

That is the way it is right now.

That's the way nature works right now in the system.

So when we become conscious of that erosion decay,

Oh yeah,

This is how it is,

This is part of reality too,

It can actually be kind of,

You know,

Provide some sense of satisfaction.

Now I wonder that the reason,

Now this is just pure speculation and theory on my part,

I wonder why some of the harm happens is that people are trying,

Or people go to some of these extremes to become conscious that things die,

That things decay,

That things don't always lift themselves up and build up,

But they are torn down and eroded and decay and extinguished.

You know,

The violent video games,

Just the intent to harm,

The way some people verbally attack other people,

I wonder how much of that is just them trying to bring into consciousness that this notion of erosion and decay and extinguishment,

Although obviously that's not the wholesome way and skillful way and wise way to do it.

So those extremes can possibly bring into consciousness this type of satisfaction.

Obviously I don't advocate for this,

If you meditate these things become conscious so you don't need to go through ridiculous amounts of extremes like this to become conscious of,

That things can,

You know,

Go into decline and decay.

Another way we can get kind of this satisfactory notion around death without any kind of harm being involved is this contemplation of death and the charnel ground contemplations.

And I'll link to that in the show notes of the event I did on that and how we just realize and face this truth that we are going to die.

You know,

And in vast detail not to get bummed out or morose,

It's to realize that we only have a certain amount of time left here and that this is the truth of the way things are now.

And so the more we can be prepared for that and notice that,

The less we take for granted in life,

The more we seize every moment to use to help ourselves and to help others.

And nothing has to be harmful around this with this contemplation.

Okay,

So another few critiques about violence.

It's kind of a foolish false power,

You know.

At the same time,

How can one,

Especially for males,

How can one not be emasculated by non-harming?

Because I know a lot of males will look at this and say,

You know,

What is this?

That's so like,

What are you,

Little girly man or whatever?

You know,

You're not going to be able to harm anybody.

That's just ridiculous.

And I would say,

No,

It actually takes more restraint and refraining.

Refraining and restraint from harm actually requires and displays more power and self-mastery than harming someone most times.

You know,

You look at the martial arts,

Right?

So now this doesn't mean that,

Yeah,

You can't defend yourself.

I'm not saying that obviously.

If somebody initiates force,

Then obviously you have the right to defend yourself and the ones you love.

That's not what I'm talking about.

So even if there were no repercussions and consequences for killing or harming,

How would this solve anybody's issues?

You know,

How would that even solve anybody's issues anyway?

I don't get it.

You know,

What does it really solve?

Because it's coming from,

The issue is coming from within.

You know,

If you just,

If something's killed because you don't like it or whatever reasons you want to give for it,

The place that it comes from within,

If that's not resolved,

Then it's just going to continue anyway.

It doesn't matter what you change on the external so much,

You know.

We look at what is the intent for harming.

Sometimes it is because we feel righteous and we're justified for doing harming,

Right?

It's this revenge,

These cycles of abuse,

Victim-victimizer things.

And the way things are so distorted now too,

Some people actually get sexually aroused by harming.

Then you have the whole thing where people are using harm to compensate for sexual shortcomings.

So again,

A lot of this time,

This comes from righteousness.

And those who even say they have a higher power that justifies harming,

I would just ask,

You know,

Well,

How can you prove and demonstrate this other than shows of force that still can't destroy truth,

You know?

So truth,

The reason truth is so powerful is it cannot be destroyed.

And so that's another thing here that this non-harming helps kind of buffer and soften and keep truth in check.

Truth can be very destructive.

It can destroy the world we used to live in.

It can be used to harm and attack people too.

Or it can be used to liberate and free people.

So this non-harming,

This commitment to non-harming,

It helps along with the commitment to truth that can be used as a very powerful protector and awakener and liberator.

It kind of helps protect the abuses of truth that can happen too.

So if we're committed to non-harming,

That acts kind of more of a shield,

I guess,

To truth,

Shielding others too.

So how much can one harm,

And this one I had to kind of learn the hard way,

Or still learn too,

I mean,

How much harm can be done by not walking away from certain peoples in certain situations?

You know,

Sometimes it takes way more strength to do this than any kind of physical strength or anything like that just to walk away.

I mean,

Are there,

Is there the equivalent of gyms and combat training for just walking away from a situation?

Or do we just have to get our training with fools,

You know?

I mean,

What's it going to take to finally just walk away from something and leave it and not come back?

So again,

When we look at this,

We can talk about self-harm too,

And hate,

And taking on what others say about us.

So when we listen to people and they say things about us,

And we start taking that on as an identity,

And of course,

Usually what people say is just kind of a reflection or an indicator of where they're at on their journey,

It really doesn't have anything to do with us.

Taking that on as true in who we are,

Things that are harmful from other people,

And believing that and then subscribing to that,

And then having that ruminate over and over in our minds,

And that is a form of self-harming,

You know?

I mean,

That's kind of like the most common everyday version of it,

Or one of them.

You know,

It goes way more extreme than that.

Not just this notion that it might feel real,

But it's not true,

What people,

The harmful things people say.

It's more saying what's happened to them,

Kind of a reenactment of their trauma a lot of times,

You know,

And where they're at and what they're struggling with.

So this term hate speech,

This is a really interesting term here.

I'm not very fond of this,

Obviously.

We all know that hate speech is not appropriate to harm anyone with speech,

And of course it's against the guidelines on both platforms here.

Just want to address the term itself,

Though.

It's kind of a call for a better term for this,

Because the unconscious mind doesn't really know the negative,

Right?

When the unconscious mind sees hate and speech,

For one thing,

It's like you're hating speech.

That's obviously how we normally interpret that.

But there it is.

You're hating speech in general,

Or calling out what's wrong.

So instead of saying the positive of what you want to train the mind towards,

It's immediately locked into the negative of hating.

So right there,

There's automatically a problem and an amplification,

Possibly,

Okay?

I don't know 100%.

You have to see in your own perception what you feel about this.

There's immediately a problem and amplification of hate and speech and wanting to silence someone.

And maybe,

Maybe they should be,

Maybe they shouldn't be.

But it's just like hate building on top of hate.

What about love speech,

You know?

Or I don't know.

I shouldn't,

It should have a solution in place,

But I just want to kind of point out this term and how interesting it is,

And I don't hear too many people address the term itself.

So yeah,

What are the alternatives to this?

You have to use that word to talk about these things.

You have to use the negative a lot of times to talk about it.

I'm not as skillful where I can couch this in more positive terms.

So this brings me to the next point of how do we bridge this into loving kindness?

And loving kindness acts bodily,

Verbally,

And mentally.

So we go from this to that.

So I invite kind of like how do we do that?

Well I think one of the ways is this commitment to non-harming.

I often find out sometimes afterwards that after I've said something that it's been received as harmful to the other person.

And so I wonder,

You know,

Is what was said in and of itself harmful?

Or is it an interpretation of being harmful?

Either way,

I think finding out this a lot of times is beneficial.

We can find out how the other person received it and how they interpret it,

What their feelings are,

And where they're coming from too.

A lot of times things get lost in misinterpretations.

Some people will overlay their own things on top of what's being said.

Some things are just plain harmful and the other person doesn't realize it or sometimes they do.

This is all kind of communication and dialogue that kind of help work this out.

People that are on this training path of non-harming,

Well then they either offer an apology or they realize if it is legitimate that they've harmed someone through whatever means and they offer apology and then do a commitment to not doing it again.

You know,

A resolve,

A firm resolve.

But another little story I wanted to say,

My brother and I were raising our voices at each other over stuff I won't go into and this was over kind of a holiday thing.

And you know,

I hadn't seen my dad do this much before but he actually stepped in.

And I forgot what he said to my brother but he said to me,

Josh you need to think before you speak.

And I immediately said yes,

I agree.

A lot of times I get loose in the lips and it has not served me well.

Of course a lot of this talk is prepared so taking him up on that.

So before we get into the importance,

You know,

We start where we are on this.

And I want to also see how subtle this can go.

The gross levels of harm are most obvious to people,

Right?

But this can go really,

Really subtle.

We talk about harmful thoughts,

Things that we just blow off.

Well,

Drop by drop of water buckets filled.

So these will add up over time.

They also kind of condition the mind to be more likely to either speak harmfully and or act harmfully.

Also once people become more energetically sensitive,

Certain things that once might have not harmed them now becomes more apparent that,

And especially when people kind of do an unconscious outflow of energetic garbage and someone's really wide open,

Especially meditators sometimes,

You can easily kind of absorb that in a way empathically.

Some people,

You know,

Not everybody does that.

Instead of using this beautiful thing of empathy to really tune into people,

Kind of know what's going on and get higher levels of information and knowledge and be able to kind of address things and respond in ways that might go beyond just the standard way of doing things and progress and evolve.

That's the upside of empathy that the downside is that wide open,

Depending on where you are,

What's going on.

But then again,

We can learn and grow for that.

See the post on my site called Dharmic Strategies for Empaths,

Addressing a lot of this from a lot of different angles.

Okay,

So the importance of this now of non-harming,

I'll just use a line from the Buddhist teachings.

I think it's a sixth line of the Dhammapada.

And it's something like,

Ill will can never overcome ill will.

Only non-ill will can.

This is an ancient and eternal law.

Or it could also be like,

You know,

Ill will can never defeat ill will.

Only love can do this.

So this is kind of like the ethical base of non-harming.

This non-harm is like the base of other ethics.

You have the doctors,

A lot of them claim to do the Hippocratic Oath where they do no harm,

But there is a lot of possibilities to harm people on subtle layers,

Not necessarily intentionally but so many different things can go on.

So I'm not saying,

Yeah,

Doctors hang up all your hats now.

No,

Of course not.

It's just like,

This is a really serious thing that needs to be held accountable to.

And it's a very admirable thing too.

So like all the other ethics,

I feel a lot of times can be put against this thing.

Is it harmful or is it not?

And of course this is open to interpretation from different people too.

So it's another fascinating thing.

The reason I call this,

Or in Buddhism too,

Calls this a training precept.

It's not like a commandment,

Right?

Thou shall not kill,

Which is,

It's great.

I mean,

It's obvious.

I mean,

It makes so much sense,

Right?

This however,

Because some people will say,

Oh,

You know,

That's too goody two shoes or,

Oh,

I'm going to,

You're going to be damned in hell if you,

Well,

I mean,

We won't get into religious things and that might've changed with the New Testament,

Right?

This is a training.

So it's not like,

It's like,

Okay,

You pick yourself back up,

You dust yourself off,

You resolve to keep doing this,

To training at getting more and more skillful,

More and more wholesome.

Some people start with insects,

Right?

Instead of just swatting the whatever bug that comes your way,

You pick it up and you move it out of the place.

It's not supposed to be in the house.

You take it outside in a jar or something.

Now let's get into why this is beautiful.

This is something I hadn't heard before.

You know,

I,

It's,

This is for our welfare benefit and happiness to take on these things.

You know,

It's not like,

Oh,

I know I should do this.

You know,

I should do this cause it,

You know,

I would be a better person.

No or what?

Maybe.

Yeah.

This is something that really you have to experience how it really helps your life.

It's not because you should or somebody told you or yeah,

I understand that would be better,

But you know,

Maybe I'll get there someday.

But this is actually,

You have to take this on as a training and experience the real benefits for yourself.

And even more so,

How can this be beautiful?

Well,

For one thing,

When we look at this as beautiful,

You can't really be in conflict.

It's very challenging and difficult,

I found,

To be in conflict with something we find beautiful.

How are we going to be conflicting and harming something we find beautiful?

It's really challenging,

I find,

At least in those moments when we find it beautiful.

So it could be like being in a big flower garden,

You know,

This is,

This is a beautiful training and practice.

Now what's even more beautiful than that though,

Is that when we inspire others to do the same thing.

When we can inspire others to be really revel in the beauty of this practice.

That's even more beautiful thing.

And one of the common things,

And I'll take this call here,

Is this gift of safety we offer folks.

So when we're really committed to this and have some of this under our belt,

And some of our past actions have maybe balanced out a little bit,

People can sense,

Animals can sense that we don't have any harm in mind towards them and we give them this gift of safety.

When we're around them then.

And furthermore,

If we're out for everyone's best interest,

Not just,

You know,

The greater good of whatever,

You know,

By ignoring other greater goods or,

You know,

The greater good of who,

Me and my cronies or whatever.

When we were actually here to help and serve the best way we can,

I just,

I'm not saying you don't have to be street smart about it.

You know,

There's street smart spirituality too,

Because we don't want to put ourselves in harm's way from trying to help people either.

But when we're committed to this,

People can sense that we're safe to be around.

They can relax and let their guard down for the most part.

I'm going to take this call.

Samantha Ryan,

Welcome.

How are you?

Oh,

Doing well.

Let me put you up to the mic here on the other platform.

Yeah,

You're good.

What's on your mind?

Well,

I mean,

There's so much to unpack.

I love what you had to say.

And I say this with gentleness and sincerity.

I think some of what you're trying to explain are inhumane actions in a human tone.

Like you're trying to give a human aspect to what is essentially inhumane,

Right?

Because that's our nature to try and explain things so that we can understand them.

But I think there's beauty in not being able to understand why people would choose to harm people or animals or anything of that ilk in the manner in which they do.

And it's okay to not grasp that,

To not understand.

Oh yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

It definitely,

Yeah.

We don't have to know everything,

Right?

We can be okay with not knowing.

But when we have that true knowledge,

Then we can understand and be able to better respond in the world,

Right?

If we live in a state of oblivion,

At least I know for myself,

If I live in a state of oblivion,

It doesn't do me any good or anyone else any good,

Right?

It's all oblivion that I'm talking about or ignorance or something I can't stand is willful ignorance,

Right?

It's being okay with the knowledge that something is so outside your scope and realm of understanding that you will never possess the ability to understand it.

And that is quite all right.

You know,

I will never understand for instance why my abuser chose to abuse me in the manner in which he did.

And I'm okay with that.

I don't want to know.

I don't want to know what went through his head.

I'm confident that I am a better person because I don't have the ability to know.

And that's okay.

I just want to say I'm sorry about that.

And this is.

.

.

Thank you.

But yeah,

I'm okay.

I'm in a place now that's.

.

.

I'm building a nonprofit around my experience to help other survivors and create a safety net to help survivors find long-term mental health solutions instead of just short-term because studies have shown that long-term solutions help ultimately further help someone get to their baseline of who they were before that trauma that they experienced.

And no survivor that goes through any kind of trauma that ilk should have to worry about paying for mental health facilities and also deal with the ramifications of what they went through.

That's absurd.

You know?

And then you mentioned hate speech.

And I think the best way to combat hate speech is to simply live by example.

Right?

We don't have to rise to that.

We have the option to walk away and choose the kinder path.

And that's great.

Yes,

Absolutely.

Yes.

And we lead by example.

And if one can do it,

Then that sets a standard that others can too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think it's really interesting on that.

It's a really complex topic.

I would just say that,

Yes,

Sometimes I guess this is just off the top of my head.

Sometimes it can get so severe that the last thing we want to do is,

Especially with.

.

.

Well,

Actually,

I don't know because this is the thing.

A lot of the post-traumatic stress stuff that I've heard about,

A lot of the regular stuff doesn't apply to it,

Right?

Right.

So it has to be addressed in a different way.

And I'm not really qualified to go into saying that.

I would just say maybe sometime down the road,

I would just maybe consider asking,

How do you know that you will never be able to receive the power of true knowledge and understanding or the benefit of acting in ways that will not only help ourselves,

But help others too?

I don't think there's any benefit in understanding how a psychopath's mind works on that level.

I really don't.

And that's why I was just going to say too,

That's probably another topic I'll take up too is psychopathy because this world is run by psychopaths too.

Absolutely.

But the more I feel that one of the strategies is recognizing how that works.

And when we can identify that,

We don't necessarily have to feel that we know for sure,

I know that and I'm so knowledgeable about that.

But if it can at least be identified,

Then there's more of a choice not to get involved and wrapped up in that.

One of the things I speak about very heavily are recognizing red flags.

That's knowledge,

Right?

That's the kind of hindsight we're so obvious that I just didn't pay attention to.

But as far as understanding why he chose to do those things to me,

I don't ever want to experience a soul that's that black and tarnished.

I'm okay with not understanding that.

And there's peace and tranquility with that decision.

I'm okay with that.

And what a blessing is it that we won't have to experience that?

You know,

Ultimately.

The thing is that core wound with abuse,

From what I've learned too,

A lot of times people will choose that abuse over neglect because that neglect is sometimes more horrible to bear.

And so they seek that abuse after abuse after abuse because it's better than being neglected.

So psychopaths work on a different level than people and they begin by breaking down a person's will.

And that's a very important step to remember.

And so these people,

These poor,

Poor people are going about their lives feeling like they are worthless and they are nothing and that they're paramount to the absolute worst of the worst because they've been made to feel that way.

And they begin to seek it out.

And it's a pattern,

Right?

That deserves to be broken.

And I believe we have the capacity and the strength with kindness and compassion to show these people that there is another avenue,

That there's absolutely a different way to live your life.

And when I talk about my experience,

That's what I try and focus on is the healing journey afterwards.

You know?

I think that's what's important.

Not what my abuser was thinking at the time.

But knowing that there's hope and there's life after something like that.

Yes.

As long as it can be identified,

As long as there's a base level of knowledge that it can be identified so it doesn't happen again and that the will has been restored to choose no matter what's going on to get out of an abusive situation.

You know?

Yes.

But you have the power within yourself to choose a better life,

To thrive.

And that you deserve that.

Your feelings are valid.

You are valid and you are worthy of living your best life.

And that's the kind of path.

Yes,

It is.

And the sad part,

Or it is sad too,

Is that some people actually will,

They get off on it,

You know?

So they will put on this pretending.

That's a power thing.

Yes.

That they will claim that it's not,

But they actually get off on the abuse,

The cycles of abuse and covering it up and hiding it from people,

You know,

And trying to fool other people with it.

And so,

And they think they can gain more power and control by pulling one off on everybody else,

Right?

This level of deceit and deception,

Which I have another level coming up with about.

.

.

Are you talking about the victims who have not really been.

.

.

No,

I'm talking about,

I'm talking about psychopathy.

Oh,

Got you.

Okay.

Psychopaths with psychopaths.

Yeah.

So,

Yeah.

That's definitely a power thing.

Yeah,

It is.

Yeah.

And a lot of these levels of deception,

It's just so rampant.

And I've got an event coming up later this month about discerning deception.

So.

.

.

I will definitely tune into that.

I've really loved what you've had to say.

Thanks.

Yeah.

And yeah,

Sharing the space with you.

And I appreciate you giving me this time to speak.

Well,

Thanks for actually sticking around and joining and sharing your.

.

.

Yeah.

And the good things you're doing too.

I appreciate it.

Oh,

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's an okay place to be in right now,

You know?

Of course.

I'm okay.

And that's okay.

That's all right.

Yes,

It is.

And I love that mantra of radical acceptance.

The only thing that doesn't apply to though is abuse,

Right?

So.

.

.

Right.

You know,

If you're going through abuse,

It's not okay.

You have to do whatever you can to get out of that situation,

Right?

Well,

Survival looks different for everybody,

Right?

So don't.

.

.

Have some grace with yourself.

Yes.

And understand you did what you had to do to survive.

Yes,

Absolutely.

But in the aftermath,

Do what it takes to get back to being you.

Absolutely.

Love and light to you,

Friend.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much,

Samantha,

For sharing.

It was lovely.

And with that,

I will end this.

And may you all be blessed with a beautiful experience of non-harm.

A lot of times that means helping,

Helping ourselves and others.