Ahimsa: Choosing The Peaceful Path

Let's explore the yogic yama: AHIMSA. What is it like to embrace non-violence towards ourselves and others? Can we catch that inner voice of criticism before it gets too far? Imagine living in harmony with others and our surroundings. Let's explore what's possible. Part I of The Yogic Path Series.

Transcript

So today is the first of a series called the Yogic Path and I want to call everything the yoga path in the light. Like everything I want to talk about is this really seeing the world from a place of truth. Lately I've been quite not obsessed but in my quiet time I think a lot about the shadow world. I think a lot about what's been wrong for a long long time and things that we've adapted to or things we believed we had to adapt to. And every day I wake up and it's almost like this other blinder has been released from my mind and I'm like oh well that's obvious. I mean it's so obvious this element in the world that is just so wrong or whether it's a belief or whether it's even something like believing that another person's criticism is somehow important. You know that I believed for 52 years and adapted to and all of a sudden this little part of your mind opens and you realize that's really nonsense and there's no fight in you for it. It's just yeah that that doesn't make any sense at all and it's just gone. It's just released and one of the visions I keep having because I every so often I really dive into this whether it's because I'm studying Hildegard von Bingen or different things that have happened over the over the centuries but it's almost like I keep focusing on like what you might call the evil of the world. And it might sound really depressing and I don't talk to you guys I don't talk about it here really but but what I keep imagining is that I keep thinking about these things and identifying the things in the world that really aren't right and it's like they're all gathering in this big magnet of darkness and there's this magnet of darkness of all the things that we've ever thought we had to adapt to and if we couldn't adapt to them it was somehow a character flaw in us. One more reason to think we weren't worthy or something it's so insidious and twisted. So imagine you have this magnet here and then you have this lovely world that we live in and it's filled with all kinds of things. It's filled with sunshine and puppy dogs and challenges and great food and I don't know waterfalls and whatever here's the world we live in. But whatever this element is whatever this shadow world is whatever it doesn't matter what it is it's like there's all these little iron flecks mixed in with it and they've always been mixed in as long as we know maybe as long as our ancestral memory go as long as our Akashic records go there's always been these iron flecks in there that we have had to swim around and adapt to and in in in jest in some way and then have to process. And I feel like the more I understand the shadow world and I'm not like intentionally doing it things just keep coming in to my mind. It's like the stronger the magnet becomes it keeps sucking the black flecks out. It just keeps sucking them out and as they get sucked against the magnet this world of light it just becomes clearer and clearer and clearer and suddenly all these black flecks that have really tortured us. We've lost a lot of sleep over them and we've been hurt by them. They just disappear. So this this this journey of the yogic path that we're gonna take in this in the next nine more sessions we're gonna look at the eight limbs of yoga that Patanjali wrote in his sutras and the reason he wrote this it said I mean this is sort of a long time ago but it said that at that time there were so many schools of yoga it was insane there was just zillions like thousands of schools of yoga in India and he was like there's got to be some common path here there's got to be some point because of course every time someone adopts a path of yoga because of course yoga simply means how do we bring the human being back together? Again why are we needing to pull the human being back together? Well it's because we've been floating in this weird world filled with iron flecks and every time we hit a fleck it's like we we disconnect again and then we keep splitting and we keep splitting and so thousands of years ago they already recognized this saying human beings are messed up so I know a way I have a technique that can help bring us back together. This is what yoga is it's not specifically exercise or meditation or anything it's like anything that brings us back to wholeness that's a yogic path. So there's at this time there's thousands of yoga paths yoga teachers schools everything all over India and Patanjali says you know what we've got to figure out something that makes all of these paths make sense so after visiting all these things and talking to all these teachers and figuring it all out he came up with the eight limbs of yoga that on some level every school of yoga embraces one or many of these eight limbs. The first two limbs are the yamas and the niyamas which are what we're gonna talk about in these talks. The yamas are the restraints so the yamas are kind of like if you see a black fleck don't engage with it whatever you do it's a trap don't do it that's what the yamas are. The second are the niyamas and the niyamas are the path like here are the things we're going to focus on and so it's kind of like as you're traversing through this interesting world even if there's black flecks and whatever what you're gonna do is you're gonna head for the bright spaces and we're gonna expand there and then we're gonna expand there and we're gonna expand there. These are the yamas and the niyamas and many yoga schools focus just on that how to act in a particular way in society that you will feel whole. These are yogic paths then some yoga paths involve pranayama. How do we breathe to fully connect with our divine essence? Some deal with asana. How do I hold myself? How do I find a comfortable seat on the earth? How do I navigate the world this way in my physical being in my physical body? Some focus on dhyana dharana the focus in life concentration. Some focus on pratyahara whatever you do withdraw from the black flecks. Whatever you do don't let them suck you in develop the ability to live without even being affected by them even if they come flying by you you're like yeah whatever this is pratyahara I am not playing in your silly little game. Insomni which is the ultimate enlightenment so these are the eight limbs of yoga that would ever one appeals to you and many times in life there are certain ones that appeal to us at different times of our life there are certain times what we really need are the yamas or what we really need is to practice that comfortable posture that comfortable seat on the earth and asana is the answer it all depends so this is sort of the foundation for all of these talks and we're gonna talk about the yamas and the niyamas but they never act in isolation even today so today we're gonna talk about ahimsa which means it's often defined as non-violence. Himsa means to cause pain ah is not so ahimsa is to not cause pain and so to really understand that these yamas were created to counterbalance those black flecks they were created to balance this shadow world because in the shadow world we are taught not even necessarily overtly but it's almost just the pool we're swimming in that violence is normal. Spare the rod spoil the child that a heavy discipline that's the answer and I just don't mean I mean you may not do it now or maybe it didn't happen to you but you don't have to go back too many generations that are fully in our consciousness fully part of the collective consciousness that this is normal this is good this is the proper way to raise a child and we were all those children or our parents were or our grandparents were it's a dog-eat-dog world out there if you're not causing a bit of you know it's either you or him eat or be eaten this is this is like part of our zeitgeist it's part of our culture that there's no way through without violence and in fact the lesson is that if a black fleck comes at you if you back away if you turn the other cheek you are a coward this is the teaching so the idea of a himsa is like what do you mean non-violence what do you mean not fighting back I'm not a coward like this is somehow a negative thing but but the truth is there's a whole other element like when you think of this shadow world so the Yamas are all these restraints don't cause harm don't tell lies don't steal don't grasp and don't and it's a purity is the but don't do things that are off your path do things that are on your path we're like literally taught that that's the only way to get ahead this is a thing and so then to not do it is literally like so you don't want to succeed in life you want people just to walk all over you there it is so out there I get so in the pool so when you translate the word Yama it means restraint it means many things but restraint is the kind of number one thing but it's not like restraint like don't do this or else you're a big loser like it's not like thou shalt not this it's not like that I see it more like when you go bowling and when I first started bowling and I was an adult here I always wanted to play with the bumpers it's such a bad bowler I would always gutter the balls all the time and I thought well if we could just put the bumpers up so I would never gutter it anyway then at least I could try to focus on the I'm taking down the pins that's like the Yamas they're just saying don't go into the gutters that's all I'm not saying don't do what you want to do I'm just saying don't don't fall prey to the gutters don't fall prey to the taunting of the black flecks don't go there because it only causes harm to us it doesn't help it's kind of like when we think of some of the reasons we might lash out that we might want to hurt another person and this can be physically but it's mostly verbally it's also in our mind how often we are violent to other people in our mind the thoughts we think about them the things we that we're so angry and we just turn ah you know and maybe we talk to our friends about it we're just so violent in our mind and there's a million reasons we do this we've been living in the shadow world for millennia so this isn't a this isn't that like oh wow aren't you a big loser you're not very enlightened it's not like that this is a normal response to a crazy world but the reality is if we're so frustrated because maybe we're in a relationship and for whatever reason our truth no longer matters we feel powerless we feel that nothing I say matters I have no choices I'm stuck there's this there's this primal need to lash back that maybe if I can take you off my off your high horse if I can take you out of this position of authority my soul be free there are really mean people in the world too so that's a whole thing to look at but normally if we get angry like this we're actually just sort of fighting for our own soul survival so if this is a response if this is what's going on in our mind that we're just thinking these just we're so angry all the time or we are having verbal disagreements or all these all the time and we're actually hurting the other person we're trying to hurt them deep down taking those little things that we just know that they're sensitive about that'll get them that'll shut them up we have to take a step back because this is really important information on our yogic path because every time we reach out to hurt another person we're damaging ourselves it's almost like here we are these absolute loving beings if we think back to all the talks we did about the chakras and we think about all these divine energy centers within us we are divine beings we are pure light pure energy manifested here in this time space continuum on the planet earth that's what we are we are pure love pure light pure energy there is something running in the interface that is causing us to want to harm another person this is really important this is really important information on our path because this is like as soon it's like our soul has split and we've sent one part of us to war well we're now split and so the question is how do we bring these back and this becomes the inner journey and this is where we use all the all the limbs of yoga is it pranayama that I need to figure this out is it asana is it what is it what is it that I can do is it talking is it sharing is it you know what is it is it prayer what can I do to find out what is it the root of this that is creating this soul divide inside of me from the actual truth of who I am and this part of me that wants to harm another person what is that and this is a really and it's just part of our path that's all it's just a wow that's so good to know now when I say this in no way do I mean allowing abusive behavior and then just turning the other cheek that's not it at all there's a great saying I just read the other day and it said unconditional love is not unconditional tolerance because that divine being also lives in a state of choice and that divine being has no reason to accept abuse bad behavior or anything negative and if it is if we are we need to look at that also we need to look at what's going on here what's what's happening in this interface this is why yoga is so much a mental game you know what I mean it's so much we just have to heal this we have to heal our consciousness heal our minds heal our brains heal the interface and everything else changes even within say a practice of physical practice of asana it's very little physical practice actually it's allowing your body to flow in a very particular geometric shape to see what our consciousness is doing there it's all about healing this so ahimla is not about accepting bad behavior Gandhi he taught a lot about ahimsa also because of course he's very famous for non-violence the non-violence movement and it's deeply connected to the concept of Satya of truth and this is what I mean like all of these fit together they don't you don't just study ahimsa you may at a time but only with a light sprinkling and some understanding of all the other concepts so for example Satya when we practice standing in our truth when we even are aware of our truth then suddenly let's say you're in a relationship that's really difficult and this could be a relationship like an intimate relationship relationship with a parent a child a neighbor a colleague a boss an employee anybody and you're in this relationship and for whatever reason it's just like this like for whatever reason nobody's quite hearing each other getting each other maybe there's a power struggle and one person is oppressing the other but for whatever reason we're not actually seeing each other we're not actually acting like the divine incarnate beings that we really are well one of the fastest ways to get there is Satya is to really sit and say you know what is my truth and we'll talk about Satya more in future talks but what is my truth here and then as soon as we can start to kind of come into that truth space then we stand in this truth and this is Satyagraha which is which which was Gandhi's really big teaching was listen within and this isn't a little truth this is our seven chakra truth this is our truth connected to the infinite to God our truth here on the earth our truth in our heart this is our whole truth and when we stand in this truth that's it and this isn't like some kind of weird stubborn power play this is just you know I feel I feel so sad about what's going on well you shouldn't feel sad and yet I do or I feel very strongly that this is what I need to do next in my life well that doesn't make any sense just just the truth there's nothing else Satya isn't something we argue with it's a divine truth it's what resonates as clarity within us not a truth about someone else it's my truth so when I stand in my Satya Satyagraha a hymza goes part and parcel with that if I'm standing in my truth why would I ever lash out at you why would I ever cause harm to anyone else I'm simply standing in my truth and that doesn't change and what's really hard is if we're in a relationship where perhaps the other holds a place of authority over us and I say that because because not only are they holding themselves in a position of authority we are holding them in a position of authority and again this could be a parent a partner anybody but for whatever reason we think they have the last say on this whereas when we just simply stand in Satyagraha we just are honest and we make choices from that space we don't have to hurt them to pull them off their high horse or pull them out of that position of authority the very fact that we lash out at them means that we still genuinely believe that they're in a position of authority over us or else we wouldn't lash out at them so instead we simply recognize that there is no such thing as another human having authority over another human it's not real the only vertical alignment that exists within us is this connection right here this is the only alignment that we need to listen to that's it there's no other person that has authority over us but that's part of our yogic journey too because we need to reconnect our own divine and physical essence we need to reconnect our very human physical self with our very divine self this is part of the yogic path and so even the journey of recognizing that no other person has authority over me no other person has the final say there is no one in the world I have to convince of anything so why would I ever be mean to anybody why would I ever lash out and try to cause pain to another person if I'm standing in my truth if I know that I have choice and the hardest thing is even if we do lash out even if we do try to cause pain even if it's a trying to have that freedom again it doesn't work it only causes more problems you know in our previous talks we we talked about David Hawkins a lot David Hawkins wrote a book called power versus force and he had these levels of consciousness and sort of looked down here and it said you know there was shame guilt fear apathy anger desire pride and then if we resonate if we live in those states and again it's not that we never get angry or anything like that but if we live in those states that we interpret everything through the filter of anger or the filter of pride or the filter of frustration shame guilt whatever if we take action in those states we only cause problems it's like we're setting fires in our life all over the place then we have to go and spend time putting the fires out and then we have to go and put the fires out that those fires started and all we do is we spend our whole life going around fixing all the things that caught on fire because we took this action and it's exactly the same as causing harm to someone and again I am NOT talking about self-defense self-defense is very important this is also a huge thing I am NOT a pacifist if you hurt me or my children bad stuff's gonna happen if I need to defend myself I'm going to defend myself but defending myself it's funny he was back in 2006 I was on a jury and it was an assault case and it was so interesting because it was not to get into it but it was such an obvious assault case basically what happened is there were two guys one guy was drunk and he starts yelling at this guy and this guy's like this built guy goes to the gym like super strong super tough guy this guy's kind of that just big mouth drunk guy anyway this they'd had a hit a bit of a history you know just a lot of drama in the neighborhood and eventually one day this guy just started yelling and this guy showed up with friends came and beat the crap out of this guy while his friends watched and I didn't know anything about the law but apparently of course that he was trying to this guy forget the guy that beat him up said well it was all in self-defense because he was verbally abusing me well the law states that it's only self-defense if you can't get away if physically defending yourself is the only way to get out of the situation then it's self-defense everything else is an assault and it was actually really funny because on the jury half of the jury didn't agree with that law they believed that was wrong that he had right this the verbal abuse had happened so physically he was gonna stop it that the law of the street the law of the land the law that we all were raised in said that that's okay I for an eye we've really been taught violence for a long time and so what's interesting when you think of a hymza it's the same idea do I have another option that's the question and there are times in our life where we don't if we have an abusive partner the only way out might be to physically defend ourselves or verbally defend ourselves or if we have abusive family members it might be the only way to stop it but then we back off and we're always looking for a different way we're always looking to change it we don't ever want to just sort of take it that's not what a hymza is this is a spiritual path not a path of abuse so it's a really interesting thing to always seek that other way because the cool thing is when we find the other way we grow I start to learn how to bowl between the bumpers I don't consider the bumpers an option anymore I don't consider the gutters an option anymore so what's another way so when I completely release the idea of causing this other person harm new ideas will rise we will pray for different answers we will meditate we will ask for different answers and we will get different answers this is the beautiful thing it's almost like because we've been told I for an eye because we've been told that violence is normal and you have every right to fight back and because they hurt you in this way so you should hurt them in that way and we become blinded to the other infinite possibilities it isn't this or that it's this or these other hundred options and the other hundred options will take us on a different journey and it might not be a journey we've ever seen it might not be a journey we've ever seen in our family maybe our families are fighters maybe our families are sarcastic sarcasm is one of the greatest damaging things we do to each other because sarcasm has a very specific kind of humor that if it doesn't touch your sore spot it's not funny and then of course if you try to call someone on it they're like it's nothing but I'm the one bleeding and then of course what happens too is every time any kind of pain is thrown the other way a distance is created and a distance is created and to really understand that oftentimes that's our intention we create pain in another person because we want distance because for whatever reason I'm standing too close to you right now I don't know what else to do so I'm just gonna throw a bomb in the mix okay now I've got some distance but again to just look at that and say why do I need so much distance from this person what is it within me that I'm struggling to hold why can I not stand in my truth around this person why did they get under my skin why why do they drive me so crazy and that's just an interesting thing and then the second question is why am I hanging out with them why am I continuing to pick up the scorpion and getting it getting pissed off that it's stinging me why am I picking up the scorpion it's an important question so Ahimsa isn't the end point well there is an aspect of Ahimsa which is interesting in an end point which we'll chat about but it is the journey it is the journey to say wow that's really interesting to avoid all these interesting desires to hurt someone else and it's even an interesting thing to train ourselves to know what I mean by hurting someone I teach tantra one of the first teachings is kindness especially in the land of tantric intimacy like not the spiritual aspects of tantra and connection to God but when we're talking about having tantric relationships with other people friends children parents intimates everybody random people on the street eating ice cream to actually join with these fellow humans and not maintain this separate thing how do we do that the number one foundational thing is kindness because kindness is what makes us lean into each other kindness is what makes us go oh hi how's it going but because we've been raised with all of these black flecks with all of this darkness with all of this belief that violence is the answer no matter how subtle it is we often don't even recognize when we're not being kind and we don't believe that kindness is even possible or a good idea some people have even told me that they think it's boring to be kind all the time where's the spark where's the fun but back to that David Hawkins levels of consciousness when we are so accustomed to flowing in anger pride shame guilt fear all this we think that this is the juice of life we think that this is what gets my heart pounding this is what's interesting this is what makes life fascinating but the truth is it's just firefighting and sometimes we like firefighting but once we hit courage in the David Hawkins program everything changes and courage is that beginning of satyagraha courage is that ability to say okay hold on a minute what if I wasn't affected by you what if you had no power over me it's like a hymza releases the other person from our drama whatever the Akashic pattern karmic pattern that we are repeating with you right now I see it I release you from this drama and I'm gonna think about this myself and the other person is like oh yeah and oh yeah and you're like no we're not playing that anymore you release them from my pattern nothing to do with them they're just playing they're just playing a role on my chessboard and my choice might be to disassociate from them and maybe our time together has passed or whatever or maybe I'm gonna choose to say you know I'd like to speak openly like are you into that yes or no maybe you have a conversation maybe you have an interesting conversation that ends up opening them up as you both share a satya truth and then you actually become closer than ever because it's very strange sometimes you are so called to hang out with some person whether it's family friends intimates whatever and yet there's this like and yet yet there's like this weird magnetic connection so sometimes it might be having a different conversation but it's gonna be from that place of courage that says I'm gonna share with you my truth but where I'm at right now and wherever the cards fall is great and see that there's no need for violence now there's no need to fight back there's no anything if the other person still fights you kind of like okay well let's let's wait let's talk later then which could be ten years from now or it could be tomorrow I'm not into this violence game anymore and then beyond like if you in David Hawkins series beyond that we start playing in very different realms of neutrality and acceptance and love and wisdom and peace and enlightenment and all that which of course is our yogic path so a hymns is basically saying if we are floating in all of these other emotional states look look at courage let's reach for that imagine we didn't respond imagine we didn't react to all these constant things because again like even that difference between the word react and respond responding is actually something happens and I respond to this in this moment reacting is literally just simply repeating an action reacting which means we're walking out our karma again we're just stuck in a loop so a hymns a says watch for those loops be careful be careful and now stay in the center and find another way and it's amazing how many other ways there are besides violence besides harming someone it's even interesting you can have a conversation with someone a really hard conversation where you're yourself trying to get to your truth in the conversation with this other person and it's fascinating to think within you all the different things you want to tell them and when you sort them and you say this is helpful this is kind of mean this is helpful this is kind of mean we actually use a hymns as a filter to say no that's actually just mean I'm gonna hold that back even though it's the thing you want to say so much because you're so hurt and you're so angry and you want them to feel as hurt as you would you I get that but it won't help it'll make it worse and now you've hurt another person and now they're out there and their frequency is lower and they're hurting other people and all that kind of thing like it does absolutely no good the real first place that we have to practice a hymns a is within ourselves that's the number one place because one of the great challenges and again from this shadow world perspective I believe one of the greatest disservices done to humanity was teaching us that we have a sinful side and a good side I believe that when we internalized that caused an inner battle inside of us that we now had the good guys and the bad guys inside of us in our very being that this was intrinsic from birth that we have a dark side that we have to oppress all the time that we have to spend energy don't say that don't say that don't say that oh that's just coming out of my dark side that's just coming all that so now all of a sudden you've got your good self that you want to project to the world that you want everyone to see then you have this dark side that you don't like we are so mean to ourselves we are so critical of ourselves you know I've often talked about how we have this board of directors in our brains that every time something comes up there's all these little opinions all within ourselves some of them are so mean it's like every time you look in the mirror and it's like or when something happens you're like there you go again and sometimes even when we think we've gotten over it and we think we're really being kind to ourselves we really think we're being okay all of a sudden something happens and you go wow I'm still being mean to myself I am still judging myself and so to practice a hymns it inside is so so valuable this is the primary thing when we can truly look at ourselves all of us had times in our lives I assume I can speak for me anyway and everyone I know that we've all had times in our lives that even when we think about what what the choices we made we went wow if I knew then what I know now and I'm not talking about regret and all that I'm just saying oh wow I could have made really different choices but that's how we can look at it we can look at ourselves with such kindness and say well that's who you were you were 24 years old you were 17 you were 35 you were 51 however old you were whatever that was your part of your journey and this is one of the things that I hymns that asks us to really rise to that true like universal love to really embrace agape that ability to look at people and ourselves where we truly trust we respect our journey wherever we are at this point imagine like here you are this is the point like where my fingers are this is us this is us right here and behind us is this entire history and that could be the history of our ancestors it could be our upbringing it could be every relationship we've ever had it could be our karmic past our Akashic patterns it could be the culture it could be everything and at this point in time I am the summary of all of those things that's all and so I'm gonna make choices based on that summary point at that point and then now we're in a new moment now we've had a new thought now we've perhaps had an aha moment now I just read a new book now I just walked out in the sunshine and all this stuff just cleared out of my consciousness now I'm different to look back at ourselves and be critical of a previous self or a critical of our current self which one day will be a previous self it doesn't make any sense like it's not reasonable so instead we just stay connected to ourselves wherever we are we love ourselves from the past we love ourselves in the present then we can look out at the other people in the world and give them the same love and say you know I trust you're exactly where you're meant to be on your path I know that if I was in your shoes and I mean all your shoes I mean every bit of karma Akasha cultural ancestral everything we can't just put ourselves in their shoes with our own stuff we have to actually be in their shoes this is a copy when we look at them and we say you know what I honor where you are this might also mean I don't think right now we should spend a lot of time together because we're kind of on different wavelengths and we're gonna end up hurting each other so we either need to find a new way to chat or a new way to have conversation or a new way to be together we're probably best to find other interests for a little while there are ways of being really kind and not necessarily staying in old patterns I think that's the most beautiful thing about these llamas the restraints is it's almost like back to the previous idea about these like black flecks floating through the world if we see something wrong that black fleck we look at it and we respond to it it's like we suddenly are in this extreme duality this extreme yes no space that it's like all I can do is react to that thing and because it's being violent I must be violent or choose not to be violent or whatever it's not that simple because if I choose to not be violent my periphery opens and I see all the white space around them I see all the other possible ways and that's the real path of a hymza to keep looking for another way don't fall prey to the violence because it only hurts us it only perpetuates our own inner disconnect it only creates more disconnect with the other person which really doesn't help anything it doesn't help the family it doesn't help society it doesn't help us spiritually it doesn't help anything yeah they've often they've often just described a hymza as universal benevolence you imagine just walking with universal benevolence and this is one of the big teachings that if a hymza was a final goal which is what they they say in Patanjali sutras that when a person has fully embodied a hymza no violence will come to them it will disappear and that's an interesting thing and we have to be very careful about this be very very careful because in spiritual communities we like to flip things and use them against us it's the back getster so and of course because then we might flip that and say things like oh so if I have violence around me then there's something wrong with me and this is obviously that I'm not enlightened because these things are still happy like this is where it's very dangerous sometimes to talk about that end point because this is what we do we we we we use it in some way to criticize ourselves or other people or things so whatever we do we don't do that but if we imagine this state imagine this state within yourself and that you are fully connected to your Satya your truth your mission in life you imagine that all of these beautiful chakras within us are these beautiful divine infinite energetic whirling wheels and we walk in this state we walk in the world fully aligned with our divine purpose our earthly joys we won't have to fight it just won't even come to us and so that's really what we have to go from that state not can't go too far with that or else we get into weird trouble but universal benevolence okay I put my glasses on if you have questions what if the scorpion is sick it's a very interesting thing that you're never allowed to be mean to people it doesn't matter whether you're sick or dying or in pain or struggling or it doesn't matter and if you are mean to people they are going to leave you that's it it's like I remember I was staying at my sister's place a couple years ago and my sister had adopted this rescue dog a dog from a rescue who had had a tough life and I'm not afraid of dogs and I walked into the bedroom and this dog launched off the bed and grabbed a hold of the back of my leg with its teeth scared the yayas out of me pain like the back of my leg was black and blue well what did I do I avoided the dog whether the dog had had a difficult life whether or not it's irrelevant if you're gonna bite me I'm not hanging out with you and that's it and it's the same thing if someone's sick that's not and again this is also a learned behavior that if I'm sick I'm allowed to be unkind to you if I'm tired I'm allowed to be unkind to you if I had a bad day at work I'm allowed to be unkind to you if you were mean to me yesterday I'm allowed to be unkind to you this is a training and so if somebody really wants your help or they want your company then they need to be nice to you like that's it they made a choice to be unkind and there are natural consequences to being unkind people step away that's all Oh mental health sick and you're there only safe place yeah if someone struggles with mental health that makes it really difficult fully that's um that's a very difficult situation and then honestly I think that's where the kindness to self comes in to really be clear like if someone has mental issues and you know that that's gonna cause them to sort of act in this way and for whatever reason they they've lost that ability to choose then we also accept that and we know that they're actually not being mean to me that's just what they're doing they're just they're just arbitrarily just throwing stuff out into the world but then we're just kind to us and we say okay what do I need in my own world to still be able to help if I want to help and to not criticize ourselves that you know why am I not good enough to do this why am I so sensitive why am I why am I not strong enough to handle this and it's always also interesting when we imagine the people in our life are there for some purpose you know whether it's a difficult child because I saw someone had asked about if the scorpion is your daughter or if if people were related to you know do you have mental health issues or they need your help for whatever and you feel called to help them then you again you sit with that and you say okay what if there's ten different ways to respond to this in love to never limit ourselves to the one way maybe there's many many ways I've just recently stopped talking to my adopted parents my mom is a textbook narcissist so many mixed emotions but life has never been more peaceful exactly and again it's it's not a bad thing to make a choice to not be around someone we don't know why they came into our life at one point and maybe at this point it's time for them to exit we have a lot of funny ideas that parents family partners whoever are meant to be in our lives for the lifetime why who made that up what if they're just meant to be in our life for a few decades and then our paths naturally split why do we assume this so then there's no judgment and the dissonance and the behavior is just simply our souls saying hey guys your time is done go on to green pastures go do something else now no you've you've learned your lesson here you've completed it you got the a you graduated let's get on to the next chapter one of the beautiful things too about allowing people to come and go in our lives is we really allow people to have different perceptions of the world including ourselves that we're allowed to have a different perception than someone else and if those two realities actually don't meet without one of us compromising our beliefs then maybe that's a sign that we're actually supposed to explore something else right now do you know what I mean like imagine everything is in purpose oh I've been pushed away from you right now I wonder who else I'm supposed to be hanging out with who else am I supposed to be learning from thank you so much for being here I hope you have a wonderful day

Reviews

Great insight on how violence to self and others is much more common than I had previously recognized.
Thank you

Love listening to your teachings insights & talks❣️
Thank you so kindly for your offerings✨️🌝⭐️
🕉 Shanti 🥀Namaste🙏🏼✨️♾️☯️⚛️⚘️☄️🪔🖤🌸

Excited to have started this series. Thank you Katrina for helping to demystify this subject. Loved #1.

A beautiful teaching ✨ am loving this series & revisiting these talks thank you for your wisdom - glorious living principles in my language.

Excellante