Thriving As An Empath 1: Love Allows For Sensitivity

So today is the beginning of a series of talks all about thriving as an empath.

And there'll be nine talks in total,

Because I believe this is a really important topic.

All humans are empaths.

We all naturally connect through our emotional bodies.

But some people are kind of ahead of the game,

You know,

For whatever reason,

We're sort of wired in a certain way that we can really feel others emotions.

And in a world that is accustomed to disconnect and accustomed to hiding our truth,

Emotional communication is really scary.

I may not want you to know the truth.

I may not want to communicate this way with you.

I might want to tell you a story or whatever.

And so for millennia,

We've lived in a world that's sort of based in disconnection and truly a lack of real love.

And I mean love in the definition of human connection.

My teacher,

Jim,

He always defined love simply as connection.

And as humans,

This is how we connect.

Whatever that true connection is not just,

Oh,

I'm beside each other,

But I'm actually connected,

Right?

We're actually connected to each other.

This is love.

We often only consider say romantic love or we only consider the love of a mother and child or a father,

You know,

That kind of thing.

But that's not what love is.

Love is simply connecting.

It's simply this beautiful connection that humans do.

So the title of today's talk is Where There is Love,

You Are Not Too Sensitive.

Because this is a huge topic for MPADS that we're forever being told that,

Well,

You're just too sensitive and you should just shut it down or whatever.

Or we just choose to not go out.

We choose to not be around people.

We choose to not go into groups.

We choose not to go to the family events because we're just told we're too sensitive.

And the reality is,

If there was love in the room,

As human beings are designed to love,

We wouldn't be too sensitive.

We would simply be sensitive.

And this is really an important piece to really think about what it means to be sensitive.

If I touch something that's hot,

I want to be able to sense that it's hot.

That's a good thing.

So for example,

My step-sister from the time she was young,

Couldn't feel pain at all.

And she was an athlete.

So she would perpetually hurt herself because she would go so hard like to the point like it's kind of,

I won't even say it,

But to the point that like bones would like pop right through her skin.

She would hurt herself because she couldn't feel the pain that was telling her,

This is damaging your tissues.

This is damaging the muscles.

This is damaging your tendons.

Stop.

So the sensitivity to touch and to pain is really important for us to keep our bodies safe.

Our sensitivity to taste,

To spell,

To sight.

This is really valuable.

You're never going to say I'm too sensitive in my eyes.

I mean,

I guess some people are highly sensitive to light and things like that,

But you want to be sensitive.

You want to actually be able to see well.

You want to be able to smell well.

And so it's an interesting thing when we're emotionally sensitive.

We want to be able to feel others emotions.

This is a natural human characteristic,

But because of where we've lived and it's not just a case of sort of looking at our parents or even our grandparents,

But continuing back,

We've come out of very difficult times where being sensitive emotionally was almost a handicap.

If you imagine our most intimate connection,

Say beyond,

You know,

Parents or family,

When we choose to partner with someone today,

People have a lot more choice.

It's even a choice to partner.

But historically,

That wasn't really it.

For example,

Because women had no rights and couldn't work and whatever,

You had to partner just to get out of your dad's house because your dad was the head of the household and they need to find new,

Obviously heavily heteronormative because we're talking about history.

But we had to,

You know,

Just find a new male leader for us or whatever.

So we married.

And inside that marriage,

On occasion,

We lucked out and there was love.

And it was okay to be sensitive.

And it was even enjoyed because it was like,

Wow,

I really love that we're so connected this way.

But that wasn't really the norm.

A lot of people came out of a lot of pain and a lot of difficulty.

And we bring that pain and that difficulty and that separation into this very intimate relationship.

So now all of a sudden,

We're in this very intimate relationship and maybe we're even sexually connected.

So now we're playing in our first and second chakras.

Like we're opening ourselves in this very vulnerable way.

But yet the other person or ourselves,

But let's just blame the other person for a minute.

Maybe the other person is bringing in baggage from their upbringing or their past relationship or karma or multiple lifetimes or samskaras or who knows,

But they're bringing in a lot of distance.

They're bringing in a pushback and we're open to the guts.

Like we are literally open in our first,

Second chakras,

Our safety,

Our connection with others.

Well,

All of a sudden,

If we are like a tuned empath,

If we are sensitive this way,

This is so painful.

This is more painful than anything because it's like,

But I can feel you.

You're right there.

Why can't we connect this way?

Why can't we feel this love?

Why can't we communicate in this way?

Why are you hiding?

Why don't you trust me?

Why are you lying?

Because the hard thing about being an empath is that a person might say something because we've been trained to actually create a persona that we want to live out.

And so we might say something to you that I want you to believe about me.

But if you're an empath,

You're feeling what they're actually experiencing.

And now you've got this weird thing going on between them going,

I hear what you're saying,

But it's not lining up with what I feel from you.

And then you start to realize that they're lying.

And not in an intentional manipulative way,

But what they're saying is not lining up with their truth.

And we know it.

The challenge is that we're trained that we're only allowed to listen to what's said.

This is sort of this court of law thing.

But this is what is said.

This is the evidence at hand.

And we're like,

Yeah,

But can't you feel that?

Can't you feel that they're actually angry or upset or grieving?

And it's like,

Well,

That's not admissible in a court of law kind of idea,

Right?

And so this is how we live.

Just because you feel a certain way,

That's irrelevant.

That's not what I said.

So that's the end of the discussion.

And you're sitting there going,

What?

In a previous talk,

We talked about how dogs,

Because I'm really intrigued by this,

How dogs map their universe by scent.

So we may make a map using our eyes because we like having strong eyesight.

And so if we make a map,

We kind of go,

Okay,

Here's this road,

Here's this,

Here's a tree,

This,

You know,

We might map it out that way.

But a dog would map it out based on smells,

That this is what this smells like and their whole world is based on smell.

This is like telling a dog that smell is irrelevant,

That you cannot use your smelling as an accurate map.

This is the same as being an empath.

It's like,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No,

That's not a real path.

That's not a real thing.

You know,

I mean,

This is just you,

Just making stuff up,

Right?

I mean,

You're just being silly,

Just being oversensitive.

This is sort of how we're treated.

And so you're kind of like,

I don't really know if I belong on this earth.

We kind of get into this truthfully.

All joking aside,

We get kind of depressed about it because we really feel isolated and we really feel unheard and we really feel unseen.

And that's a real challenge.

And I believe that we're shifting into a consciousness that allows the sensitivity of our emotions to even learn different scripts to say,

I know this is what you said,

But here's what I heard.

Because it's a very interesting thing to actually,

Someone says these three words and the hard thing is we've been well trained to say things in a way that doesn't get us in trouble.

So I'm going to say something that I know you cannot use against me.

You might have only said these five words,

But my body heard the other 5000 words.

And what's really interesting about that is in a lot of society,

People don't want you to hear the other 5000 words.

They want to kind of feel like they've pulled the wool over your eyes and you're kind of believing what they believe.

And yet if we go to a psychic or something,

We want them to read the other 5000 words.

We're never going to say to a psychic,

Gee,

I wish you weren't so sensitive.

That's what we're going for.

We want to get underneath it.

And that's a huge difference when we're around people who actually want that intuitive sense,

That emotional sense.

If you want to actually feel the other information in the room,

Then you're not too sensitive.

We're just having a conversation about what we're feeling,

What's going on in our spidey senses and we take them very,

Very seriously.

So that's why this idea that if there is love,

And again,

I don't mean romantic love,

I mean true human connection,

The way we connect with each other.

There's no such thing as being too sensitive.

There's nothing difficult about being an empath then,

Because all of our inputs are really honored.

So let's look at when this goes amok.

Like what happened?

Why do we suffer so much as empaths?

Like why is it so difficult?

One of the reasons comes from living in a difficult world.

I say that a lot and it makes it sound like I'm really negative about the world.

Like I actually really dig life and love and fun and connection and all that.

But to pretend that we've been living in a utopia for the last millennia,

That's not true.

Many of the people here right now lived in families growing up that were mean and cruel and abusive and neglectful.

This is reality.

It doesn't mean that's our life.

That doesn't mean it's our path.

It just means that we have to kind of call a spade a spade sometimes and say,

Yeah,

My intuitive friend Nelda that I talk about,

She always says that she was raised by assassins.

And so she developed a certain filtration system for all humans,

Because that was her upbringing as a child.

And that's an interesting awareness.

It doesn't mean she never has to be around people.

But it is an awareness to say I do have a hypersensitivity to other people because I was raised by assassins.

And obviously I don't mean literal assassins.

I mean emotional assassins.

So what happens when you are raised in a home where there's cruelty or abuse?

And I mean physical,

Emotional,

Mental,

It could be all kinds of things.

It could be living in a home where there's alcoholism or drug abuse,

Where there just simply are,

Especially when there's alcohol involved,

People can say things that children should never hear.

Never once.

One tiny thing spoken in anger can plant a seed inside a child.

And not to be all like guilt laden if that was you or whatever,

But just to really understand the importance of that.

So then what happens,

Especially if you are a sensitive being,

And I don't mean that,

This is not a negative thing,

This is you are genuinely a sensitive being in the same way that you might be sensitive because you can see more colors of the spectrum.

Not everybody can see the same amount of the light spectrum.

Some people can only see these colors.

And as you go out,

Lots of people have all extra rods and cones in the eyes and they can actually see different colors.

So they are more sensitive to the light spectrum.

Super cool.

So now you imagine you're this child living in this home and there is difficulty and it could just simply be that your parents fought a lot or that there was an overreach with the in-laws creating control from the outside which then caused battles within.

And now here you are this little child who cannot escape.

This is you.

There is no other.

This is the pool you are swimming in.

You can't escape.

Well you know you can feel the room a mile away.

You know that if mom starts getting mad,

Go to your bedroom,

Get out of the way.

Or if dad starts acting a certain way,

Get outside or whatever.

You become hypersensitive to everybody in the room out of sheer survival or not wanting to cause trouble.

We're just simply wanting to get out of the fray of potential abuse or damage or trauma or whatever.

Right?

So now all of a sudden we are trusting that emotional barometer inside in the same way that a dog trusts its smell.

It can smell it faster than anything.

It's like animals you know they talk about this whether this is an urban myth or not I don't know but they talk about when a tsunami happens the animals who sense it actually leave long before the tsunami happens.

In many ways this is a child empath.

They feel it so soon.

What's happening inside that child?

They are training themselves to be hyper focused on the negative or difficult emotions of the people in the room.

This is what they're learning.

It's really important to feel all these people for your own safety and you got to run or you've got to protect yourself if something goes awry.

So now we've unconsciously created this filter.

We've unconsciously trained ourselves to be incredibly focused on people around us especially people in authority especially people who could hurt us.

And now here we are we find ourselves 30 or 40 years old and we're at work and all of a sudden the boss is upset and this panic rises inside of you because you can't get outside.

You have to stay.

You have to stay in the boardroom meeting.

You have to stay there.

Well what are you going to do because you still have this initial filter that has taught you no no no no no when people are mad you get out when people are upset you run away.

You do people like I can't stay here.

So this is a real difficult thing for us to sort out and a lot of it comes through self-love.

A lot of it comes through self-empowerment that the awareness that says I'm not five years old anymore.

If someone over there is angry and like this is a really big deal like I love teaching about anger like I think anger is a really important emotion to dive into and really embrace because most people especially the parents maybe that we grew up with the anger that we're afraid of isn't actually true anger like healthy anger is simply the power that keeps our boundaries when someone oversteps a bound and we get angry we go that's enough that's that's not going to happen anymore.

This is a very healthy anger.

This is a very it's a self-preservation mechanism that keeps people at bay who are not honoring you that's it like an animal simply fighting off an attacker is not a big deal and the anger gives us the strength to fight them off.

That's not the anger that an empath is sensitive to.

The anger that an empath is sensitive to are full grown adults having temper tantrums.

That's that anger.

That's the anger we actually lived with with our parents and our grandparents is truly grown-ups who are just wailing on whoever's close.

Well they're not actually much different than a two-year-old and the hard thing with a two-year-old's temper tantrum is they are out of control.

There's no consciousness there.

They're just flinging at anybody that's close.

It's just a childlike behavior.

At some point we need to grow up like we need to actually say now that's enough.

We need to actually come into our own and say I'm not going to just have a temper tantrum just because I'm 40 or 50 and I'm in power and I can do it and this is a really big deal.

So for example,

If you're an empath and you work with people or you're around people who are doing this they're having these ridiculous temper tantrums because it's childish.

It is really childish.

We need to have the awareness to kind of look at them and say wow aren't you being a child.

We don't have to say that.

We don't even have to be condescending but call it call it for what it is.

They're not angry because something bad is happening to them and they're protecting them.

They just didn't get their way.

That's it.

When my kids were little my kids are strong personalities and if they lots of you guys have met them and when they were little they were fierce,

Fierce beings and when they didn't get their way holy mackerel could they scream.

They have lungs on them.

My husband he'd be out in the barn like way behind the barn and he could hear them screaming in the house.

Why?

Were they screaming?

Because they didn't get the cookie.

They didn't get their way for whatever reason.

They were just phenomenal but they're just angry that they didn't get the cookie.

I would always sort of do a check make sure okay are they okay are they okay this is okay this is okay okay everything's okay.

They just were thwarted and so you just sit and you let them scream it out.

That's okay it doesn't matter and so it's the same thing.

I mean if I meet someone in the street and they're having a temper tantrum it's like wow oh well scream it out.

It has nothing to do with me and that's really important as an empath that we have to kind of sort that out.

We have to sort out the behaviors and what are the feelings where someone's actually communicating to you because that's the point of empathy is communication.

If someone is simply flailing in an angry fit and that angry fit could be a bubbling volcano they could just be like kind of gritting their teeth and getting really quiet and one and they're emoting they're sending out these emotional signals out of their body hoping that you pick them up hoping you realize how angry they are and then you will change your behavior because you don't want to and I'm going to air quote this make them angry because if they sit and they are just quiet and they're emoting and you say one thing you've made them angry.

It's like you didn't make them angry they were already angry they were just hiding they just couldn't find the words they don't have the consciousness and again I don't mean this to criticize the other people they're on their own journey for some reason they weren't taught to control their anger maybe they were around people growing up that just thought it was okay to flail and try to scare the crap out of everybody with their anger a powerful person in anger that's terrifying as a child as a full-grown adult it's like hey that's enough now and again you don't have to say it like that there's there's there's good ways to say things if you say anything at all point is as an empath to be clear this is not something you need to take on this is really really important so it's the same thing as sadness what if you were raised in a home where there was a lot of sadness and this is a big deal like I remember when my mom was sick my mom was diagnosed with cancer when I was 20 we were really concerned about her obviously so it was almost like we opened our hearts even more how's mom doing she said it was almost like we feel like if I can feel her sadness if I can feel her pain somehow I'm alleviating it somehow I'm helping I want to help like this isn't like some Messiah complex this is I want to help this woman I love so again we can become hyper focused on the suffering of others also because in some way we hope that by feeling it we can help and of course this isn't true we can feel it and have compassion that maybe allows us to slow down and spend more time with someone but in the in the immortal words of Wayne Dyer you can't feel badly enough for someone else to feel better and this was a really hard lesson for my sisters and my dad and I to learn when my mom was dying that it didn't matter how badly we felt mom was on our own journey we couldn't help her we could hang out and have fun and do what we could but the emotionally we had to figure out something important here so this is also something that we can become very hyper focused to other people's sadness and then all of a sudden we go through life and we're in a room or we're uptown or we're wherever and we can feel people's sadness but we have this training as a child that I have to do something I have to help I have to take this sadness on somehow so that I can help or I want to help it's not a negative thing but how dysfunctional is that how impossible is that one we aren't helping it doesn't work like that and so again this is a really important thing this is where you know life isn't just about being empathic it's also about using our mind and our deeper wisdom and our connection to spirit and all these things to create a philosophy of living that allows us to be an empath sort of that masculine structure to that feminine feeling that allows the feminine feeling to have the context it needs to be helpful and to communicate in the ways that we want it to so if I have a philosophy that says if someone's angry I'm gonna be upset then I'm in trouble we need to shift that philosophy if I have a philosophy that says that if someone's upset I need to be upset or I need to fix them I need to shift that philosophy because what if instead we had a philosophy that said well if other people are sad that's their journey if I can't take that away from them I shouldn't take it away from them that's part of their path so it's a really important thing that if it's good to be an empath but it's really good to do the the introspective work to say have I been trained somehow in my life to be hyper focused on others in a way that either in order to protect myself or to help fix them and if that's true we need to really look at that and shift our philosophy because otherwise we're just gonna have to walk around completely shut down all the time especially while there's so many people in the world who have unrestrained anger unresolved issues sadness grief how can we possibly go out into the world and actually be a truly flowing empath to actually thrive in that empathy another way that it goes a muck being an empath is that because of this lack of love in the world and this lack of love is also inside of us that a lot of us we don't have that inner connection to self our inner connection to our soul so we are actually living a lie we're actually telling ourselves stories we've and we're taught to do this we're taught to kind of create personas we're taught to create the life we're meant we want to live you know build the castle and here's what I want doesn't really often have a lot to do with my soul's path it's just sort of here's what I want you to believe so a lot of us are walking around with this sort of fabricated persona that I want you to see me through so I'll tell you all well I'm so happy and I'm this and I've got this and I'm so successful and la la la la la and you're an empath so you can feel the emotions the truth this is not lining up with what they're saying it's just really uncomfortable like I remember learning this when my kids were little because one of my journeys like when I was sick with like the breast cancer was I wasn't expressing emotion because I didn't want to burden my children I didn't want to burden other people with my little emotions so a huge part of my journey was connecting with my own self self love all that kind of thing but in a really practical way simply allowing me to feel whatever emotions were there and what I noticed with my children was if I was repressing my emotions they would pick at each other it was almost like the emotions I was repressing was creating this negative force field in the house and the kids would pick up on it and they'd start to like push each other and steal each other's toys and just do this thing but as soon as I would cry or just be honest or just you know mommy's having a hard day today I'm really sorry I might just sit on the couch with a cup of tea for a bit if you need something come but I'm just I'm feeling really sad today it's almost like the kids are like and then they just play but if I walk around with that fake smile on my face while I'm actually dying inside kids they don't have those filters up to kind of all they know is whoa like this is such dissonance I can't even handle it and they just go crazy and they take it out of each other or the dog or the cat or something and so it's a really interesting thing so now we're an adult and we're around people that are projecting these images of themselves and you're like I'm not even close to what I feel from you it's so annoying it's not light it's hard it's hard to be around people who are projecting one thing and it's not even close to the truth so you kind of you're like how am I supposed to act like am I supposed to go along with this conversation like this is true like is that I kind of get it so that's really uncomfortable like that's a thing so when the person you're with for whatever reason wants you to believe something about themselves and they want to have a conversation based in this alternate version of reality that's hard and so sometimes we have to allow ourselves to be a little weird sometimes we have to allow ourselves to say are you sure so what will happen is for me I can only tell you what happens with me is if someone's doing that I just sort of listen but I don't say anything and as you guys know I like to talk right for me to not talk is that's when you know something's wrong and so I'll just sort of not respond and it's weird because when you don't respond they pick that up too if they're paying attention they'll actually correct themselves inside the conversation without you even saying anything so you'll just sort of sit there and go and you don't have to go like you don't have to make funny faces at them but just listen with all compassion because they're struggling too just like us every single person is struggling just like us so we don't have to be all condescending and stuff we can really genuinely listen and and they'll look at us and they'll realize we're not really picking up what they're putting down and then they may just back up and go well I mean I guess I mean I guess there are these things that are kind of bothering me why I guess yeah there's you know actually yesterday you wouldn't believe what happened and suddenly you're having a real conversation there's something about learning to not just do the small talk to keep a conversation going that actually isn't based in truth but we have to find those scripts and we have to find that Center within ourselves to write that we're not projecting our stuff on them and all that stuff we have to be healthy in our own self too right so that's a huge deal and and there's no real solution to that one except to be aware of it that's all like we just have to be aware of it and if we feel called to say something then we say something and if we don't then we don't like we don't have to we don't have to get all enmeshed and stuff another big challenge is that not only were we often raised in difficult situations where we hyper focused on others is we were taught to repress our emotions this is like massive lack of love for self right but we're taught this we're taught to disconnect from our own emotions so if you're angry well swallow it go to your room until you're feeling better if you're sad well for God's sake get over it that was last week what's wrong with you why are you still sad like we're taught that these emotions are negative they're not just a response to the world around us so we have repressed them think of how hard it is to repress an emotion right now like imagine you were really upset about something right now and to think of whatever that inner mechanism is that we use to force that emotion down to stop crying stop being angry pushing it down think of how much power that is that we're using to try to disconnect ourselves from our truth it's like splitting an atom or something it's really hard so now imagine for the early part of your life you somehow had to learn how to repress your emotions think of the power inside holding that Pandora's box lid shut so now all of a sudden you're out in the world you're an empath and everybody else is feeling emotions that you have worked very hard to repress I'm not angry I'll tell you one of the number one red flags for me with anybody is if they say I never get angry I'm like wow I don't believe you you may not get angry at the person you're angry at that I don't believe that you don't get angry but this repression of anger frustration sadness all these things that are deemed a negative thing unspiritual unstoic all these kind of things and now you're an empath and you're out in the world experiencing sadness anger frustration in other people and you have this massive energetic lid on it inside of you how comfortable are you gonna be around other people who are expressing these emotions you're not like you're working so hard like literally in an anti-human way to not feel these emotions yourself and here all these people are around just vomiting all these negative emotions all over the place and here I am working so hard to keep them down this is infuriating to think that we're spending so much energy holding them down and all these people are just willy-nilly just getting angry and stuff very uncomfortable so what if instead we actually stopped repressing our emotions what if we actually allowed ourselves to be angry when we're angry we allowed ourselves to be sad we allowed ourselves to grieve the interesting thing about healthy emotional reactions or responses is that they rise like a wave we feel them completely and then they are complete just because we're angry in the moment doesn't mean I'm gonna be angry in five minutes that's a state of anger that's a whole other discussion and a whole other challenge but the simple act of being angry you can become furious doesn't mean you hurt anybody or yell at anybody or have a temper tantrum but you can be furious and if you are you dive into it sort it figure out what it's all about and if you really honor it it will dissipate because it did its job and if we're really sad then we get to feel that sadness and sadness may last longer than anger but then we dive into the sadness and we kind of go wow I feel so horrible or maybe it's something like shame or guilt maybe maybe you did something and you actually realized wow that was awful I really shouldn't have done that that was a horrible thing to do and we let ourselves feel that shame and guilt and we go all the way into it and then we learn from it we sort it we make amends we do whatever we have to do and then we go on to it and we get back to our homeostasis when we personally experience emotions like that we will it'll be so easy to feel emotions and other people so if someone's sad you understand sadness you process sadness you know that sadness will end one day unless you have intellectual things that are keeping you there if someone's angry it's like give her yeah go feel that hmm let's do it you want to go hit pillows or something let's do it because we know the importance of anger this is really different so then all of a sudden as an empath you can kind of flow with other people's emotions and we're not going to get upset by them because we're not spending so much energy repressing them in ourselves and we have a healthy relationship with those emotions as well and the last thing I just want to mention is one of the most beautiful ways to allow this sensitivity is to just sound so corny but it really is about love it really is about connection it's really about allowing ourselves to be in connection with other people because that's where we learn and to allow ourselves to be in places where there is loving connection and if we're always in places where there isn't we're gonna suffer sometimes we really have to listen to that animal instinct that self-preservation mechanism that says this is really damaging this situation here I'm gonna go find another place to work live hang out where there's love and when there's places where there are love and we get to actually just relax we get to release our tension in our body and actually just feel this is a huge deal and it is worth seeking out whether it's a friend whether it's volunteering somewhere that's loving and kind and it's interesting like my sister one of my sister's volunteers at a dog rescue and one of the things she loves so much about it is that the people who run it have these beautiful hearts and a lot of the people who are drawn to volunteer there also have these beautiful hearts so it's an interesting thing to kind of if you are really sensitive to look around and ask yourself where any other beautiful hearts hang out I'm gonna go find them actively find them put that intention out to the universe because once we find them they love your sensitivity it's like a whole different channel of communication opens up and you get to flow in it instead of feeling like you're caged or you have to hide or you have to that there's nothing wrong with you and also to really find that self-love inside to really go inside and say wow what is my relationship with these emotions that I struggle with and that's a really big thing to even think about is if you find it difficult to be out in the world because of this sensitivity to really ask yourself what is the emotion I'm most uncomfortable with is it anger frustrated what is it what is the what is it and then once you kind of identify even one emotion to kind of come home and journal about that and ponder it and chat with trusted friends about it and say I wonder why this is so uncomfortable why is anger uncomfortable for me to be around that's a rabbit hole right that's a journey that's a personal place to go to start to unravel this because the key about thriving as an empath is to stand in our strength being an empath being sensitive is a strength it's an amazing gift but we have to create the structure inside to actually allow that strength to live there because in the world that we've been raised in it's not a strength at all you know like we said earlier it's a handicap because we just get hurt because we were we didn't have power and we didn't have the autonomy to leave or to make different choices it is 2022 now we have a lot of choice and the consciousness has shifted our own consciousness is shifted we're able to actually see things from a more objective a more witness space which allows us to heal which allows us to refit our philosophies you know into something that is really healthy for us happy to answer any questions you might have how do we not get pulled into emotional manipulation it's really interesting it's like watching for signs it's like a it's like going to school so if you find there are people who are masters at emotional manipulation like if you're dealing with people who are over the age of 30 or 20 which most of the time that's our situation if they're 50 60 40 30 they've got decades under their belt of how to get what they want and it started as children whether it was a tantrum whether it was whatever and so we really actually have to study it we actually have to have a very conscious awareness of what's going on it's like it's like when I teach tantra I always think of tantra as the goal of tantra is to live like Zorba the Buddha Zorba the Greek who just lived for wine women and song right just like juicing all of life or what it's got but the role of tantra is to live this exceptionally juicy life with the presence of the Buddha with the mindfulness of our consciousness and it's the same thing if we're around people who are emotionally manipulative okay here's what's going on and I bring this consciousness to the situation and I start to watch and I watch when I say something and if they realize they've kind of lost the battle they'll change the topic to make it about them again or they'll try to guilt you into something or they'll use anger or they'll use a silent treatment or they'll use whatever and you observe this and you learn and we say aha I see that and once you can see it it doesn't work anymore and and in fact once you see it and you stop responding in the way they expect you to their behavior will amp up to the point that they will see it because it just won't work anymore I just feel like everything we do has to do with our story and some kind of ownership of something that can't be owned I guess how can I ever know the real me with any form of the mind created self even conscious is understood with an unreliable me this is why meditation is so powerful there's a lot of reasons to meditate sometimes we meditate for healing like we can do various pranayamas and things that help to heal our nervous system so that we're not so easily reacting to everything sometimes we do pranayama or meditation to train the mind to be still so these are sort of those beginning stages of meditation which are really important it's kind of like you don't run a marathon without training so we can use meditation and pranayama to help actually retrain the brain to not be in fight or flight but once we're there we start to have experiences we start to have an awareness of a self inside of us that has nothing to do with all these people it has nothing to do even with our definition of self it has nothing to do with having meaning in life there's just this deep awareness this silence inside that strangely enough even though there's no words for it feels like home it really feels like our true self and this is one of the beautiful things about meditation you know whatever meditation is for you it could be silent meditation but again in order to do silent meditation you may have to do a lot of the meditations that help us heal our nervous system to be able to even sit still that long or maybe you need to sit by the ocean or you need to walk in nature or whatever it is that helps you feel that quiet inside that has no words and that is an amazing touch point in all of these confusing situations that no matter what kind of manipulation is happening out there we touch in to this truth inside of us and then all of a sudden all the manipulations look very silly and you can't explain it you just allow people to do what they're doing but you're not gonna jump in their bus but ultimately is in every part of yourself a creation of our conditioning and experiences see that's all the question right that's the whole nature versus nurture question do we come in as a personality do we come in loaded with goals and dreams and hopes and fears and challenges do we come in with that or is it all developed by the world this is an ongoing question this isn't a there is no one knows this answer maybe it's a combination of both I feel like I have a intrinsic nature but somehow this unique DNA signature seems to have a pretty unique perspective on the world regardless of my conditioning and my experiences and my experiences have also she have also taught me how to live in the world taught me a lot about myself so it's a great question it's a great meditation to allow to kind of hold in the balance which is it to almost not find an answer just allow it to allow it to live allow the question to live I have a friend who's a professional victim for me syndrome she has a genuine need I'll help but I'll be totally we've talked a lot in past talks about something called the victim triangle and the victim triangle is where it's a philosophy that we live by and we're taught it like we're taught it in movies TV mostly movies and TV but and there's this idea that everyone in my life is one of three things I'm either the victim of someone harming me so there's a victim a perpetrator and a savior and if we live in a victim triangle we will see the whole world like that we will see every situation like that sometimes we love the victim role like that is where we identify the most sometimes we identify in the Savior role that I need to be surrounded by victims so that I can save them it makes me feel good and so this victim Savior perpetrator triangle is really dangerous one and it's not common in all cultures there's a great story is a book called meditation changed my life and it's a story of a Buddhist Lama who came to the States because he had been tortured by the Chinese when they invaded Tibet and he was sitting there telling the story about the torture and he was just kind of being light about it and silly and so the people thought that maybe he had something mentally wrong with him that he wasn't realizing what had happened to him and the Lama he was saying you know it's so interesting because in the West we have this victim idea and they wanted me to paint myself as a victim but he says how am I possibly the victim here when those people who tortured me are still there having to torture people and here I am you know getting all this wonderful help and and this idea of this victim triangle didn't exist in his consciousness and so it's really interesting when we meet up with people who are in that triangle or where they're seeing the world through that triangle and what's really interesting is oftentimes if someone is sort of in that victim consciousness as long as you play the Savior you're in their good books but the second you say well are you sure that BAM you're now a perpetrator now you're against them so it's an interesting thing like you'll know it a mile away because you're not allowed to say anything because now you've popped into a new role as the abuser now oh well you're just like everybody else and no one understands me and well I'm all alone you're like or I'm just sharing my opinion what was the reference to help alleviate the triangle truthfully it's just knowing that it's there and personally in our own lives like the greatest thing we can do to alleviate the victim triangle is to make sure we're not living it to make sure we're not placing ourselves as victim or Savior we never place ourselves as perpetrator but to make sure we're not we're not doing it ourselves and once we kind of rise out of that paradigm it becomes really obvious when someone else is doing it and then you can just interact in a different way thank you so much for being here and we'll see you soon