Gabor Maté +: Diederik Exploring the Depths of Identity and Pain #gabor #healing #addiction #trauma

who do you think you are you know and the most recent one on the other hand um an amazon.ca for my book and addiction is a guy gave it five stars out of five and he said my fan my wife is a fan of this man happy wife happy life and that's his book review I want to say that's not a book review [Music] that's a wife review in any case there's a couple of comments I sometimes I speak online at this conference called or a video conference called recovery 2 and somebody writes in to recovery two as a comment and I had to just write this one down government is the wisest most grounded man I've ever listened to there's just something so wise and centered about him and thinking this guy has never seen me at an airline Air Canada checkout counter you know where when my flight is canceled or delayed or when I've lost my luggage again there's nobody would see at all somebody else writes I used to like mate in the 1990s but it did something to turn me off forget what we'll try to figure out what so that's me and Dietrich I know I disagree with them about something but I don't know exactly what it is but I think that might emerge through the course of the evening and incidentally our our plan is that I should speak for about 20 minutes or so and 25 and Diedrich same thing and then we'd like to turn much of it over to you for comments and questions and interactions which is what we both enjoy very much but I think what we both agree on is the message of a song I'd like to play for you now and I do read retweets and seminars sometimes and invariably I begin my sessions with this particular song and and I give this particular guarantee and I give it to you tonight as well if you hear this song and if you totally get it we can give you money back and you can go home and you'll have a perfectly powerful happy centered grounded life you don't have to listen to this dealer can I talk you have to come to the session tomorrow you have to do anything you just have to get what this song is saying and the song is uh by my Guru Johnny Cash and uh it's called uh you know it goes in your mind that's what the song is called and you may not distinguish all the lyrics but listen to the refrain and I think did you can either both agree that it all goes down in your mind [Music] in your mind [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right so that he says in your mind it all goes done in your mind one foot on Jacob's Ladder another in the fire Jacob's Ladder of course is the biblical Ascent to heaven one foot in a fire of course is hell and you could be in heaven and you could be in hell and it all goes done in your mind and whenever we think that it's because of the outside we don't know who we are we think that something's happening so let me return to the Air Canada with that in mind some arriving from Philadelphia back in June after a long series of flights and talking engagements and you know seminars and this one went really well Standing Ovation people engaged lots of questions a lot of gratitude and I'm coming home and I was even upgraded to first class on the way back I'm comfortable you know and I'm thinking wow I finally got it my life is working uh I understand it all I can teach it all wonderful this is who I think I am you know this guy who's got it the plane rans and I receive a text message from my wife Ray saying uh who is supposed to pick me up at the airport she's saying uh sorry I haven't at home yet do you still want me to come so immediately I'm seized by rage and I stand a very short Court email saying Kurt texting never mind or something like that and I take a cab and I come home and when I come in I'm barely even looking at her and this aftermath lingers for about two days this is despite the fact that I take indeedric Workshop just six months earlier where he taught some very useful techniques for dealing with just such situations yeah so who do I think I am well one minute I think I am this guy who's really understands it finally he's got it you know it's working it's smooth it's you know the road is now clear the national internet I what am I angry about the fact that I have to take a taxi home I can't get into a taxi at age 71 I can't get into a taxi and and go home I think I am a child being abandoned by my mother and hence the rage of abandonment of being let down no I don't think that consciously if I thought it consciously that'd be no problem I could say to myself hey I'm thinking I'm a baby again but actually I'm not actually a baby that's an interesting thought but I have to listen to it so in this conversation that I'm having with you when I say who do I think I am or who do we think we are I'm not so much talking about the conscious thoughts that we have but the unconscious beliefs underneath those thoughts but those are thoughts as well except they're not arising to the surface If Only They did if only I could say to myself my God here I'm thinking I'm a baby again but no that doesn't happen instead the emotion happens that the baby would feel I'm being abandoned which is the tension the anxiety and then of course the anger so the question who do I think I am if you ask most people I I once participated in a seminar in which there's a formal question you know who are you and people say I'm a soul waiting to be born and that's the standard answer that's expected to be given and you know there's truth in that it's not that it's not true it's only that at least for me and I'm not saying for the others who say that I'm still waiting to be born that might be really who they always think they are and it just works for them to make that affirmation I'm not putting it down but for me how it works for me is it doesn't matter how many times I say those things that you know I'm a soul waiting to be born I am part of the Divine expression of creation or whatever I tell myself that may be true something happens and all of a sudden who I think I am really shows up in other words the who I think I am is not fixed in stone it's a process it's a it's an ongoing flow of beliefs the rise that arise from somewhere and is based on those beliefs that we act or react and that's why cash things it all goes down in your mind and it's what Buddha said as well as you know but our thoughts we create the world but as much as with our conscience thought we creates the world even more with our unconscious thoughts we create the world and so how do you get at that if it's unconscious how do you get at it and no amount of affirmations will ever ever penetrate to the unconscious beliefs that's why forms of therapy that for the most part address only what a person says or thinks about themselves for me are as much as they may have value they they just don't get you far enough they just don't they just don't go to the source because the source is deeper than that so that's easy to see in the case of other people it's not so easy to see in the case of yourself you know take an obvious example such as Donald Trump who these days presents himself as a case study in separation from the self if you ask him who he thinks he is he will tell you that he's a successful uh businessman a Savvy negotiator a confident speaker just the kind of guy to lead the United States in this uncertain century that's who he thinks he is on the conscious level and he's fully confident that he's that person but do something next time you see him or somebody else like him speak on the television turn off the sound and look at his face and then who are you going to see you're going to see somebody who's puffed up who's hiding from something who's very angry about something that he doesn't know what it is that actually was quite scared I remember being in Toronto when one of my books was being published I was there for a speaking trip can you want me to speak up is that it okay I remember being in Toronto back in 2004 I think when my book when the body says Nova's published and it was just on the eve of the bombing of 2003 I forget which year it was uneven the bobbing of Iraq by the Americans just before the Iraq invasion began and President George Bush was on television sounding confident and convinced that this is the right thing to do and that will win and all this kind of stuff and he actually did turn off the sound and who did I see I saw a guy who's a bras referred who was completely uncertain about himself I saw a scared little kid so while on the conscious level he may truly believe that is the leader of the Free World which of course implies a whole set of assumptions one is that there's a free world and two that he's the leader of it but underneath it was nothing but fear and you could see this in our previous prime minister when I went around a country doing the Harper era which lasted way too long uh for the country's own good I would ask people what do you see in his eyes and people would say nothing they'd say those eyes are empty well why do eyes empty why does a person see nothing only for one reason because we're never vulnerable and helpless they couldn't bear what they saw that was a deeply traumatized man but he didn't know that and so when he saw vulnerability he couldn't stand it he had to attack it everywhere hence his aggression hence his hostility to his addicts answers hostility towards Native people anybody who's vulnerable veterans were suffering from PTSD he could he couldn't abide anyone who was vulnerable because he was so scared of his own vulnerability because when he was vulnerable he suffered so much let me know something about the chances of these people so I mentioned these politicians not to point fingers at them but to give them as very clear examples of people who on one level they think they are something or somebody but who they're being could actually be in is uh reflective of a set of self-beliefs on a completely different level and that's what I'm trying to get at here is who do we think we are and that question of who we think we are is um the most important question well I don't want to say that I don't know what the most important question is uh who do I think I am when I say I know what I think the uh the it's a very important question and it's worth asking ourselves five times a day every time we have an emotional reaction to something it's worth asking who do I think I am being at this very moment so today I'm part of a because of one of the retweets I let people are are have an email chain so they write to each other and somebody wrote to the group today saying that her mother she was very happy about this her mother said to her that um all of a sudden that you don't have to carry the burden of worrying about my emotions anymore that's quite a gift from a mother to an adult child is you know Let it go I'll take care of myself you know because she's been doing it all her life looking after her parents emotionally and so people congratulate on her on having that burden lifted off her shoulders but somebody else in the group wrote in a dissenting opinion and this person said actually your mother can't lift that burden from your shoulders only you can lift it because as long as she's lifting the burden off your shoulders you still think you're a small child who is it the effect of your mother who's under the emotional influence of what your mother may want or not want so it's great that your mother said that to you it shows growth in your relationship and in your mom but it's totally up to you to lift that burden off your shoulders that automatic and compulsive emotional caretaking that you've done towards your parents or your life so these self beliefs that we have I've already alluded to where they come from and then you know in my case I talked about you know it's the abandoned baby uh that's my response when my wife is not there to pick me up at the airport now I reviewed a book that was just published and the review will be in the uh Globe and Mail tomorrow and the book is called wasted and it's about this therapist who becomes a very severe alcoholic and really ruins his life his family his marriage his practice he ends up eating out of garbage bags in the downtown east side and then he has a very it's a very gripping um vividly written book and at the end he he doesn't make it back natu's family but at least he establishes contact with them he makes it back to himself but he thinks that this is only because he was genetically programmed because his father was an alcoholic and so he becomes one he doesn't quite see that the impact of his father's alcoholism and seems like the father having sex with a strange woman in the house with the kids there watching while the mother is in the hospital that this was somewhat traumatizing for him so the the missing piece extraordinarily is always childhood and I this is where you know I don't know if the other guy will disagree on this but my contention is that the concepts that we develop about ourselves the underlying Concepts not the ones that we think and articulate and can be very eloquent about the one that actuate and activate Hardware being and who we're being and how we're reacting and what we accept and what we don't accept and what we put up with and what we don't put up with those Dynamics are set really early in life they're set even in the uterus because we now know that the and there's a movie anybody saw the movie this week in Euro anybody there okay there was a premiere of a film but the Vancouver Film Festival theater called In Utero which I'm one of the people being interviewed and so I was there for the opening of it on Sunday and it's all about how already the Parents emotional States during pregnancy program the self-beliefs the self-concept of the child so for example if the mother is conflicted on the one hand she wants to be happy she wants that baby she loves the baby she wants to have be a mother but another she's in a stressful relationship and no stresses are transmitted to the baby through the mother's nervous system and to the hormones the the chemicals the stress chemicals that reach the baby through the placenta they will already create a sense of confusion in the infant about is this word a welcoming place where I I can just relax and be myself or is it somehow dangerous and I have to kind of worry all the time about what kind of reception I will receive so that it begins to happen in uterus and although we don't have conscious memory we can't possibly have conscious memory for that we do have what's called implicit memory which is embedded in our brain circuits and implicit memory is not for events but actually it's for emotional states and that conscious memory doesn't start to happen until we're much older but the implicit memories of being welcomed or not which which is simply a reflection of how our parents felt when they were around us don't stay with us and they say probably see ourselves and what we believe ourselves in the world and the problem for the child for all of us is that the child doesn't just see how the parent is around him or her but the child seizes how the parent is because of him or her so children invariably and inevitably and automatically make it about themselves that's called the narcissistic phase there's nothing wrong with it that's a healthy natural state of development but if in that phase when you see everything is about yourself then guess what when the parents are unhappy when they're stressed when they can't look at you with fresh and loving eyes because they're too depressed or distracted that's about you so I am somebody who's not good enough I am somebody who is um not likable I'm somebody who has to work to be accepted maybe I'm somebody who even has to put up with some bad stuff just to be accepted and it's those beliefs that govern Our Lives now how can we by the way let me pause here and and recall something that I was going to start with but I forgot so I'm going to throw it in here which is and I'm speaking to you now whatever these words that I've uttered so far mean to you and and how whatever however that resonates for you who you really are also shows up in the fact that you're here tonight because if you're here tonight it means a that you care about yourself because you didn't care about yourself why did you come and if you're here tonight it also means that you're somebody who believes not all the time but sufficiently that there's truth in the world and that perhaps you'll hear some of that truth tonight and if you're here tonight it also means that you believe somebody who you believe you're somebody who can actually grow and benefit from experience and from information because if you didn't believe that you wouldn't be either so whatever my previous words have brought up for you I do want you to take what just one moment they acknowledge yourself for the positive thoughts about yourself not about me not about the Drake not about this event but the positive thoughts about yourself that actually brought you here and you may have even thought that you came out of desperation some of you are out of curiosity some of you or because you wanted help whatever you wanted but underneath all that all those things are true that you care about yourself that you believe there's truth in this world and that you believe that you have possibilities of transformation and growth so just take three seconds and acknowledge each of yourselves for that within yourself that's also true now to go on to my conclusion now for now before I pass the mic over to Dietrich so this is not bad this is just called Humanity this is what it means to be a human being I mean the Buddha said this 2500 years ago that with our thoughts we create the world why did he say it because people then already were suffering and they were suffering because of what then what went down in the mind so there's nothing wrong but it's the reality that we all deal with so then what's what are some of the ways of coming out of it well there are many ways but surely one of them absolutely necessary is um that whenever you're upset with somebody whenever you've been through an experience that's painful where you put yourself into that situation somehow whenever you feel tension in your body about anything my Mantra is whatever this tension it needs attention those are always great times to ask yourself when you've calmed down a little bit when you can actually deal with it to actually ask yourself who did I think I was when that upset me when so-and-so called me a name who did I think I was if I got upset how come I didn't see that it's just about them it's not about me ah the only reason I got upset is because what they said reflected something about I believe about myself if it didn't you wouldn't be upset you would just see the other person is having a problem so every time there's tension every time there's um upset every time you're trying to understand why you did something you know there's two ways of asking that question why did you do that there's the one way to do it which is why did you do that it's not a question it's an accusation how could I have been so stupid that's not a question that's an accusation people don't respond well when they're being accused even if you're doing it to yourself so when you ask yourself the question who did you think you were or or why did you do that in an accusatory tone you're going to be hiding from yourself because nobody wants to be accused at least of all by themselves you're going to be in a defensive mode now as the molecular biologist Bruce Lipton says so so eloquently about the human cell that the cell can be in defensive mode or growth mode but not both at the same time and the same thing is true about the human psyche I would say the same thing is true about the human psyche and I could even go into the physiology of that but I won't take the time now to do that but when there's that accusatory who Do You Think You Are or why did you do that there's a shutdown that happens there's a defensive shutdown of yourself psychically and physiologically but if you can ask the question with a compassionate curiosity okay who did I think I was when I did that when I reacted that way when I allowed that or when I didn't accept that or whatever it was who did it who didn't actually think I was really who was I at that moment not bad as soon as you allow that question and you ask it compassionately towards yourself the answer will arise and you'll be able to see what had been hidden and then you can even be grateful for the upset you're going to be grateful for the painful experience because it came along to teach you who you really think you are and thereby allowing yourself over time to to grow and not have to stay in that trap that made you react emote or behave in that particular way so in asking that question who we think we are there's a lot of potential for liberation now let's find out where did you can I disagree [Applause] what he said um first of all I'm incredibly grateful to be here I'm incredibly grateful to Gabor for inviting me to be part of this I'm incredibly grateful to be in the presence of at least one person but I know a whole bunch of people in the audience who are on the same page who understand that who I think I am is not who I am and that for me was an incredibly eye-opening realization that I had probably 18 years ago when I turned my life around from being a full time drunk and drug addict to setting up here with all of you and with Gabor in an amazingly healing and loving environment that could not have happened unless I had realized that who I thought I was was not who I was so the question who am I is an absolutely vital question Ramana maharshi we are probably all familiar with will tell you that all you need to do is ask who are you and ask it over and over till there is no longer an answer and when there is no answer that's who you are so all the examples that gabra gave which illustrate that the little s self runs the show the little herself reacts that literal self is in Conflict a little self is sad Etc that has absolutely nothing to do with who I am the essence of my being the essence of your being is pure love and nothing other than love it's abstract formless infinite love that's who I am but because it's kind of hard to walk around this planet knowing that because there's a lot of things I need to do on this planet I also form a self that functions on the planet the problem with that idea is that I formed that cell from as Gabor said in utero for the first five six seven years of my life things happen people say things sounds I made parents behave in a certain way other things happen and all of those things relate back to me every single thing that happens at an early age is because of me I have a good example of that where my first daughter was born I was in the delivery room drunk but when she was born I was not too drunk to say to myself that's the most incredibly beautiful thing I've ever seen I'm gonna stop drinking but I didn't so what do you think the message is that my daughter got subconsciously yes perhaps but at a level consciously as well I don't really believe in subconscious I do believe in the fact that I make choices in with Incredible ability which I then immediately forget that I made them and that's what we then call the subconscious so I simply don't remember but I do remember making that decision that I was going to stop drinking for her and I did not now why did I not stop drinking I go back to gabber just pointed out very very eloquently and importantly that try to remove the why question from your mind because it is an attack question it is a question that leads only to I did something wrong well you can see if you're a father and you have a newborn you keep drinking then you do something wrong that's not a that's not an unreasonable inference to draw however I don't go there I don't go to wrong I go to what was that for so rather than saying why train my mind to say what is this for no matter what it is so whether United Airlines loses our luggage which it does with an incredible frequency I'm not sure what their record is I'd say it's about 40 percent of the time they lose the luggage the question is what is that for not why never why is this happening to me why is this happening to me is a lethal victim position question which I will not allow to enter into my mind I will always say what is this for the other question about who is the eye and the fact that that's made up at such an early age many many years ago probably I don't know if my daughter was still there but probably about eight years ago at the center has been open for 10 years now but there was a Sunday that absolutely everything was going wrong we we had some very severe cases some very difficult individuals that required a lot of attention and that um we're not as committed to Healing as one would think they would be by traveling all the way to Costa Rica you think well you're really motivated but the unfortunate truth is that people don't want to heal and I'll leave that sort of in the air for now maybe we'll talk about that later but that's certainly my experience people don't want to heal they want to keep the eye that they made up so the who do you think you are that eye they want to keep and they want to get a different experience the good news is that will never happen as long as I want to keep that eye I'm going to get the same experience it may look different the form may change anyway on this on this wonderful Sunday everything went wrong and I got a feeling that I simply was not familiar with and that's unusual because I've done a lot of work and all all our work has to do with feeling all our work has to do with feeling because the feeling takes me back to the eye that I think I am but in this particular case I got a feeling that I had no idea where that came from it was a devastated feeling it was just horrible so I decided to do a process on it and we have a very interesting process which we'll talk about it tomorrow and practice in depth but that process takes me back to a belief so it took me back to the belief that I should not have been born now if I had many clients that I've worked with over the years who had that belief and I was always very curious about it because I honestly thought that's not one I have when I have all kinds of other wonderful devastating beliefs but that's one I didn't have so I thought I need to find out where this came from so I went back into my process into a deep meditation and it came pretty well immediately the message came from my mother this was 1942 we lived on Java Indonesia in what was done called Batavia is now called Jakarta and the Japanese had just landed on Java and my plans parents were fleeing into the mountains to escape from the Japanese and my mother was nine months pregnant guess what she was thinking not a great time to be pregnant guess who got that message I should not have been born there it was crystal clear and it's really important that we as a growing healing Community which we definitely are do not allow professionals which are in by far in the majority to tell us that that is impossible please accept the fact that every belief you have every opinion you hold every thought you have is a repeat of something that you felt thought had an opinion on when you were anywhere from In Utero to four five six years old do a little exercise for yourself how many of you were in a slight conflict sometime today at 24 hours period gonna have every hand please goes up thank you now think back to that moment when you had that slight conflict a little Ripple a little trigger you were not quite enlightened at that moment and then ask yourself how old was I at that moment and be honest because the good news is that I'm never never upset now the upset that I'm feeling is nothing other than a replay and it's a replay of something I made up a long ago and here comes the good news the purpose for the upset is to take me back to that belief do you get it to get the circularity so I'm upset the upset is chosen by a belief because all feelings are chosen feelings don't happen I choose the feelings I experience so here's the feeling now if I trade my mind sufficiently I can take that feeling very quickly back to who is the eye that shows that well who's the eye that shows that is not lovable is not important Rey won't pick my dear friend gabra up from the airport what does he think he's not important he doesn't matter that's a natural automatic reaction to the ego but because Gaba is highly trained Lisa hang on a minute that's that's insane like he said can't I take a cab of course I can take a cab so that's not the issue the issue is that very quickly and very briefly the idea that I don't matter was triggered does that make sense can you follow that so any upset you have it doesn't matter what it is doesn't matter how big or how small or how how huge whatever you think it is it comes from a belief and that belief is a contradiction to who you are so the question is who am I is vital because who am I is as I said earlier infinite abstract love as you can well imagine within those words infinite abstract love there's no room for anything other than infinite abstract love and therefore if I'm experiencing something other than that it's because I've made an interpretation so I interpreted the situation my wife doesn't pick me up she sends me little text she's not picking me up at the airport and now I'm going to interpret that but who's going to interpret that not how old are you 72 Jesus you're old not a 72 year old but the three-year-old interprets that because that's who we go to for advice so we automatically go back to the little self I made up in my case 73 years ago and Gabor since it's 72 years ago that's how far back it goes and that's how quickly it goes so I go back and ask the three-year-old what do you think of this well that's this is not a good thing that I'll tell you something else but people often think that in order to have how many people here are addicts can I have a show of hands all the hands should go up against but they don't how many people here believe or think or know that they're addicts yeah all the hands should go up and if you and didn't go up inside you're very tired or you're in denial but it doesn't really matter but what is an addict an addict is someone who has repeated feelings that happened more or done two or three times a day that is the addiction and governor and I have spent many hours talking about these things and I absolutely love sitting down with him I can talk with you for a day without any trouble two three days it'll be be a total jury because even when it seems that we don't agree which does happen because two egors come together you're not going to agree because you can't he can't afford to agree because otherwise your ego doesn't exist anymore I'm we're not ready to do that so we do disagree on occasion but always when we sit and work through it and talk through it we end up not disagreeing and that is because it's not two three-year-olds sitting together if it was two three years old together I would take a position Gober would take a position and even if I secretly agree with him I would go against that which is what I used to do in my drinking days I'd go to a cocktail party and I'd go in one corner and defend a wonderful philosophical position and win that argument and then go to the other corner and take the opposite point and win that discussion as well that was my three-year-old in full flight and a three-year-old will run the show till I say no but I have to say no and I have to be firm and I have to train my mind and I have to be disciplined and I have to develop vigilance and I have to do what my friend is teaching which is meditation which is absolutely essential what is the purpose of meditation to me and it's purely to me not to anyone else perhaps purpose of meditation for me is to get a clear idea of what I'm actually thinking so I could note my thoughts I can see what I'm thinking I can feel then the feeling associated with that feeling and the purpose of the meditation is to be clear of that so it's not a subconscious mess it is not a war that's being fought without my being aware of it I bring the war into my mind very clearly so I can then make what we call a choice and then I can choose again we're called choose again for a very specific reason and that is because every single thing every person every circumstance every situation in my life I have chosen are you willing to take that 100 accountability if you are you're well on your way I have chosen absolutely everything in my life including Donald Trump including George Bush George Bush was a hell of a Healer for me it took in those days I still had TV so when I turned on the TV that was George Bush and my stomach would turn not get nauseous and I'd say [ __ ] yes but I had to find out what that was about because that's what I'm about now I'm not about rejecting anybody I'm not about judging anybody and I wanted to be right about judgment I could give you a long list of judgments on Bush and Trump but none of those matters and why don't they matter because they're all about me every single judgment I have of George Bush is about me every judgment I have on Donald Trump is on me and unless I'm willing to take that level of ownership I can go around the planet and be really true and be absolutely right about my position and be convinced of my position but it will never lead to Healing it will never lead to love and I am on this planet to learn to love George Bush I'm on this planet to learn to love Trump because what I'm doing is I'm falling in love with those aspects of myself that I call Donald Trump but it's just an aspect of myself it has nothing to do with Donald Trump does that make sense so far should we talk a little bit so thank you and very soon we will um turn it over to you so first of all the issues of well first of all about about this love business um um it's it's interesting for me I mean I believe when you when you say it that your infinite love and um you don't believe it no I stand immediately I want to put a correction in that I don't believe that for a second I know it's true I I didn't see I know you know it and I believe it that's the difference okay I just want to stake out my position here that if I know it you know on some level I must but uh I don't know somehow I miss it a lot of the time you know that's the first thing to say the second is is to do with the matter of choice and this is it's an interesting word choice not to me I get that what you and I are both advocating is that each person take absolute responsibility for themselves in each moment so that if you know so I can ask myself like when I was stuck in and Americans in Charleston West Virginia I think it was West Virginia because there's a Charleston where is there in Charleston South Carolina but the airline they shoot a ticket from South Carolina was down in West Virginia so therefore I had to stay at the airport for six hours well I asked myself why is this happening to me uh not to me you know I mean the the to me is the wrong part why is this happening is not a bad question why is it happening to me is the wrong question why is this happening well it was an opportunity for me for once not to get upset at some airline agent who's actually doing her best to help me and any hostility that I generate would simply make her day more miserable and impair her capacity to help me so yeah that's why it was happening because I needed that teaching I was okay with that but it's the choice that I want to ask you about Dietrich because choice to me implies consciousness we both agree that this stuff happens early so when I'm subjected to a certain set of difficult experiences and we could all think of what they could be what it has to do with personally being maltreated or finding yourself as an infant in a war zone or whatever like the Drake did whatever it is and I did whatever it is what choice do I have at the moment when I conclude that I'm suffering because I am somehow deficient there's no consciousness there and to me without Consciousness you can't talk about choice so when you say choose again I get it it means that today I can choose I can actually choose am I worthless am I insufficient what I decided unconsciously way back then before I had any words for it I can choose again I can I can see where that came from and I don't have to be compelled by it anymore but what is this choice that you keep insisting on happened in the first place how can we choose when there's no awareness there's no consciousness yeah I mean the answer to that is you can't however this room is not full of two-year-olds there's rumors full of people well over 14. and so when when we when I find finally got to the point where I was totally fed up with my life and I had a choice of either driving off the cedar sky highway I found a spot where there was no barrier and it would go down about two thousand feet there was no chance of a wheelchair at the bottom of it or something had to change and from that moment on I became absolutely committed to no longer ignoring the thousands of thoughts that run through my mind no longer taking anything for granted no longer listening to a feeling and justifying the feeling I do not want to justify an upset ever anymore it doesn't matter what what it is I mean all of us have situations in our lives every single one of us have situations in our lives where we all would agree that is a reasonable response you are upset and that makes perfect sense what I don't want anymore I don't want anybody tell me anymore that I have a reason to be upset because if you do that you put me back in jail so I will never do that for you I don't expect you to do that for me we have a very simple exercise we do a lot of work in our in a circle and so somebody will come with a story and the story will be an incredibly upsetting to that person and that person has made an interpretation of the situation not the interpretation gives her the reason for the upset and she's not budging from that then we go around the circle and we ask the other 12 13 14 people is there another way of seeing this story and then the original person can hear 12 13 14 different interpretations of the same situation and what happens then is we make absolutely clear that all of those are also interpretations but they were chosen by a different eye so the original I chose one interpretation which was devastating the other interpretations came from a different eye and then what we've been made clear is that none of these are true not one of those interpretation is true however having done this little exercise I now know that I can choose another interpretation I have a I have a really strong story about this and governor knows this it was a woman that came to see me about 14 years ago and she had been sexually abused by her father by her Brothers by her uncles by simply every male in her early life had sexually abused her in horrific fashions and she was suffering from a variety of cancers and she was very very very upset so she told me the story and um in the first session the second session she started telling me the story again and I said well sooner or later you and I have to understand that you telling me the story again is not going to get us out of it so is there a way that we can cut through the story and go down to what's actually going on and what we teach with sexual abuse or any other abuse is that yes it did happen but it happened to a body and who am I God seen right there at that point because I am not the body all my suffering all the problems every single problem on this planet comes from body identification if you can think of one problem that does not come from body identification let me know but you can't so I turned to this woman because we were not making any progress with the spiritual approach that we use and I said can you say my father's innocent and I love him she exploded she was absolutely Furious she said haven't you heard a word of what I said the [ __ ] should rot in jail do you know what he did and I see I know what he did can you say my father is innocent and I love him same explosion the third time I said what would it cost you to say my father is innocent and I love him and without missing a beach he said it would cost me myself and I said brilliant that is to self you're defending what you're defending here is the self you made up in the abuse but that's not who you are who you are was not abused because who you are cannot be abused does that make sense who you are is infinitely above the battleground of abuse and the minute you're allowed that to be true the minute I allow that to be true I can turn around absolutely every memory and reinterpret it and live that wonderful statement I don't know who came out with it but it's never too late to have a happy childhood it's simply a matter of going back over and over choosing a different interpretation the interpretation is what I'm living so the interpretation of being not being picked up at the airport is what my experience is but the eye that makes the interpretation is a false eye that eye can be transformed and that eye has to be transformed if I want to have a different experience on the planet okay put that in your pipe and smoke it and I said put that in your pipe and smoke it yeah strangely enough even though I I spend much of my working life dealing with trauma I agree with you and um sometimes I even challenge people in the word abuse because that's already a loaded word and it loses dangerous to say and I'm going to put into context in a moment for you but I might choose at some point to say to somebody what if you didn't use the word abuse what if used the word my father forced me to have sex with him that's already different that's just a real that's what happened that's the reality what I want to say and I'm not going to go into it anymore right now and and we're going to stop after my comment here and just take your questions and if you want to argue with us that's just fine because I understand how provoking this perspective may sound to many of you who really have endured a lot of bad stuff that that was way Beyond Your Capacity to handle when it happened we're not dismissing that all I would say is that before Diedrich could say that to that woman or before I could challenge somebody's interpretation of some very difficult experience something has to happen and if that something hadn't happened you couldn't have said that and what to have happened was not the intellectual content of what did require might say but there had to be a relationship built up between you and that client or between myself and whoever I'm speaking to which just has so much safety and so much trust in it that the person finds themselves able to let go of their defenses so the brain reads safety unconsciously parts of our temporal lobe are probably reading how secure we are with a certain person and not just even with a certain person but with a certain person for one moment to the next and when that safety isn't there we go into that defensive mode and what are we defending that self that self that we believe to be under attack now that same exercise that you describe where somebody tells a story and then you ask other people for the interpretations of it I've done that too in my groups it's interesting what happens some people take person a who tells the original story and have a certain protection of it let's say I'm telling my story and my wife didn't pick me up at the airport you know and I showed that she didn't care about me at all you know fun that's me and then somebody else might say well that's one interpretation another interpretation is that she's an artist and she's completely caught up in her painting and painters never realize what the time is which is a reality you know a third interpretation is is that um maybe she felt hurt because you've been away for so long and you spend so much of your time on the road maybe you just didn't feel like coming and she you know all these are potential through the interpretations what's interesting when I do this exercise sometimes the the person originally told the story well very gratefully receive these other interpretations and they feel liberated because they can let go of that little self that they just mentioned great it's not about me not mattering something else entirely but sometimes people will say they get even more defended and they say you're invalidating my experience you're making me wrong so I'm just saying that this conversation has to be very delicate and there has to be a tremendous sense of safety before we can go that deep to challenge people's sense of themselves but yeah we all hold on to our ourselves and and then we defend the stories that the self has created in order to make sense of itself and I think with that um where the my other mics the mics are portable ones so if you have questions just raise your hand and the mic will come to you and um we may respond by an answer we may respond with a question we may both respond one of us May respond but you see how it goes can you hear me okay I was fortunate enough to spend a month uh in June at the center choose again in Costa Rica and I highly recommend anyone to do that it's the nicest thing you can do for yourself I've also been working for the Portland Hotel Society for nine years I was also fortunate enough to work with you during your last year there mate um and part of my homework after leaving the center in Costa Rica was to have a circle host a circle for some of the clients in the downtown east side and I've tried however it's you know it like you just said it is a very delicate matter because they have to you know they want to hold on to that story and be the victim so I I can't really keep their attention and nobody wants to face that I'm just wondering from your take the circle is the most therapeutic thing I've ever experienced in my nine years more than AA or the smart program but I'm just wondering if you think it is possible to work with some of the addicts and people suffering from mental health and addiction issues in a circle well hmm I saw a YouTube a TED Talk the other day and by a pianists um conductor called um I think it's Benjamin Zander and without going into the details of it he said yet to leave people's eyes Shining and if their eyes are not shining you have to ask yourself who am I being that their eyes are not shining so your question you formulated it as if it was about the people in the downtown east side it's not about them it's about you it's always about me yeah so who are you being so you need to ask yourself I would suggest to you you need to ask yourself who you being that you didn't leave their eyes Shining and I'm not going to engage with that conversation now that's the kind of stuff you might do at the workshop tomorrow but that would be my quick answer to that do you have another answer as well yeah I couldn't quite hear you you said you started the circle and you invited people and it yeah it didn't go anywhere I couldn't get through even the readings and then the one minute of meditation and it's like oh I gotta get out of here I go I'm gonna meet someone like people just couldn't sit still wonderful so you know what my response is my response is what is that for because the only thing that matters is how do you feel when that happened and how you felt when that happened will tell you who the eye was that started this circle so what happened is simply these people came to you to show you where you are and they brought you incredible healing but the three-year-old says it shouldn't be like this I'm inviting to my birthday party and they're not playing with me but they did exactly what you wanted them to do for you to realize once again okay this is the eye that's showing up in this circle why are they not interested in me because I'm not interested in me I'm not committed to my healing otherwise I would recognize this is the best Circle ever all these people don't want to hear word of what I have to say what an Incredible Gift because the eye that doesn't want to be heard now has an opportunity to be heard do you get that yes that I is the IU made up that eye is the eye that you have to heal nothing to do with the other people I am always really totally clear and you know that that the center is there exclusively for me everybody that comes to the center brings me something that I need to work on and I've also said repeatedly if the moment comes that I'm enlightened which is now scheduled for 2842. at that point I won't have a center gabber and I are teaching and I'm speaking for him and he'll he may agree he may not agree but my hunch is he will agree I am teaching what I need to learn every day of the week I'm teaching what I need to learn I repeat over and over and over again just a minute I repeat over and over and over again what I need to learn and I'm such a slow learner you guys can probably get it tomorrow in one day it has taken me 20 years and I'm probably two percent on the way just gonna say I totally agree with you I'm teaching what you need to learn too I just want to show you one little trick you said you were trying right that word is a giveaway I want you to try to stand up no you didn't try you stood up sit down and try to stand up try to stand up I know this one there's no try you can't there's no such thing as trying I know as soon as you use that word check in okay other questions all right I I got a little stuck in my thinking um when it seemed like you were questioning the idea of choice at a non-conscious level and um what's rattling around in there is um we cannot not choose like even even a single celled organism responds to its environment in some way like if it's toxic it tries to get away and if it's hungry that looks appetizing it'll eat it single cell um so we start off as a couple of cells and grow in utero and habits are established but those habits reflect a choice even if we don't have something that observes it and I think part of the learning uh what you're talking about is how do we develop the part that observes and begins to be responsible and claim the habits and maybe if we're lucky change the habits so that helped me kind of unstick about the idea of choice and I just wanted to say it okay fair enough and you know what everything you said about where that leaves us in the present I totally agree with and it's maybe just um an argument about the interpretation of a certain word which is maybe not worth pursuing too much I only mean that for me Choice involves that is an aware person there who sees a number of Alternatives and amongst those he chooses one or she chooses one now the amoeba when I poke it has got no choice but to retract itself it cannot say well I'll stick here with the PIN which should I do so it's just it's just how we interpret that word choice that's all and and for me it becomes about the quality of awareness and that yeah yeah I agree with you so we're refining I agree with you and you know what I think we should go into thank you but rather than answering that we should go into the next question just because there's so many people with their hands up yeah I had something on mind but now speaking of choice um can you hear me yes oh okay I saw this I interpret this as we make decisions but they are not always uh made with a sense of choice that's how it works for me but I really just wanted to tell you that what I'm taking out tonight mostly oh it's so profound for me is when you say don't even use the word abuse just say my father forced me to have sex and I never thought of it before but it just makes so much sense on so many levels not to use that word first of all when you say abuse to me it it implies that uh some for something to be abused something that something is meant to be used like like I can abuse my car by not putting oil in it or my sofa by jumping on it and that's why I think the word abuse is wrong on many levels I really like that when you said try not to use the word abused um and finally I just wanted to ask did Eric when you said um try not to say don't say it happened to me it happened to my body what happens with emotional abuse did that happen to my body um yeah that's a very good question and and I would simply go back to what I said earlier is that every feeling that I have is chosen by Me based on my body identification so emotional abuse still goes back to there is an eye that can be emotionally abused or emotionally whatever if we don't use the word abuse anymore but but spoken to in a way that is harmful or hurtful that can only happen to an identity that I made up that cannot happen to who I am in truth it never did happen to who I am in truth but it did happen to who I thought I was and I'm not who I think I am that's the key to this to this whole talk and to that to really understand that it's impossible for me to be hurt by another physically absolutely emotionally no I can only hurt myself it's there's a wonderful little saying in this work and it says it's my thoughts alone that cause me pain it's my thoughts alone that cause me pain nothing else can do that nothing outside of me can do that now I can invite people and I have to speak to me in a painful what I experience as a painful or hurtful fashion absolutely but I'm doing that in order to be right about a belief I made up a long time before they spoke to me does that make sense uh I have a partner for example who has an interesting habit of when I do something she would say I wouldn't have done it that way now how many of you take that as I'm being made wrong can I have a show of hands please thank you I love collusion it's a delicious game we can all play it together my training has to be to no longer see it as such because what I'm hearing is my father's voice my father never ever in his entire life that we shared for a period of time ever gave me a compliment ever said you did that well I remember we played Sports and one of the things that we had to do at home uh before we were allowed to go play was to rake the yard well we had about half an acre and raking half an acre of forest is a lot of work but it had to be completely free you'd think he was German but he was Dutch it had to be completely free by the time we're done guess what my brother and I were excellent Breakers it took us about two and a half hours but there wouldn't be a speck of leaf anywhere to be found and very proudly we walk into the house and then my father would say you you held the rake the wrong way you held the rake the wrong way it's unbelievable that the level of potential for my little ego to be made wrong is huge I remember I played many sports and finally after back surgery one second okay we're going to tell the questions that's what that's that's what I was trying to say so here's what I want to say about deduct's answer had I been answering that question I wouldn't have done it that way you know and because um you know and and the only reason is is that there's a lot of people with questions and so I just want to keep our answers I mean there's everything I agree with everything you said by the way I just wanna okay yeah okay uh so whoever's handing out the mic would you who's got the mic now go ahead yeah hi there my name's Seth very grateful to be here tonight um you shared uh I I have a question what are some ways to encourage those more loving beliefs or more constructive beliefs when we ask the questions uh what is this for or who do I think I am when we are when we come to uh some sort of answers to those questions how do we encourage an alternative belief or an uh uh uh an alternative self as it were my quick answer is that you don't need to encourage any alternative self that's already in your self-harm you're telling yourself that the stuff that you are is not good enough it needs to change my quick answer to your question is that just identify the false belief that's all you got to do and who you are will show up so it's not a question of having to encourage anything it's a question of just seeing through the the veil of this story and and the slot that made up the story would you have anything else to add to that yeah my quick answer would be how do you feel when you don't so I can I can be right about a feeling I can be right about an interpretation of a situation but I don't feel good that is my motivation there's no other motivation needed for me I don't feel good when I'm right the saying is you can be right or you can be happy there's no you can't be both so if I'm right there's a there's a strong ego sense of satisfaction with that but I'm not happy so the motivation is absolutely Within I'm motivated to feel better and you're more joyful as time goes by that's the motivation as a recovering alcoholic um and a trauma-sensitive yoga teacher my experience around Kundalini Yoga when I was first recovering was very activating for for me and it made me actually feel like I wanted to drink or use drugs I've been teaching trauma sensitive yoga for addiction and mental health for about six years now and I teach Hatha Yoga and um I'm just wondering that was my personal experience I'm wondering why this program has chosen Kundalini Yoga and I'm really interested in the program so that's the question I have all right so I'm going to turn the microwave to Southern I'm I'm not a yoga person I don't do yoga um I'm not going to go into why I just don't so it's not that the program chose uh yoga is that the program choose me to participate in it and because I love and trust that their arm even though I find her yoga not something I'm gonna do that's what she does so I'm gonna let her answer the question the program uses Kundalini Yoga because I practice Kundalini Yoga and I created the program and uh and and over the uh uh almost 40 years that I've been practicing Kundalini Yoga I've seen hundreds of people who had addictions or um limiting beliefs or trauma or pain totally transform with Kundalini Yoga kundalin yoga is very can be very intense and I agree with you that it can activate your stuff but it's stuff we need to see and with a safe container and a loving container and with support and insight and self-reflection it's a very fast track to Healing addiction and to Healing the separation we have from the source or from that infinite love as dieterich calls it so uh I personally love the Beyond addiction program not partly because I put it together I'll say that but it also it also works and this is the the third time we're back here in Vancouver teaching it and we wouldn't be here unless we were totally enthralled and inspired by the people that are going through it uh who are are becoming new people so so that's it I appreciate your concern tremendously and I think Kundalini Yoga can be taught in a trauma-sensitive way and that's where incur what we're encouraging as we teach it but it's also probably in my limited experience about all forms of yoga it's a form of yoga that um occupies the whole self so we're dealing with the breath we're dealing with the body we're dealing with a mind by using Mantra or by observing our thoughts and the uh uh the completeness of it in terms of connecting with a cell for connecting with sound or connecting with the breath easily gives us a break from identification with the personality with the self we thought we created and it also creates almost an immediate experience to that place of of Love of infinite love so at the same time we're deconstructing the personality we're creating the connection to that deep state of Love within oneself and also in the safe environment that we create in the group so uh thanks for the question um thank you yeah I just want to say one one little thing in addition to that I have trouble hearing it because I'm very old I'm even older than my friend but I thought I heard you say that when you were doing Kundalini Yoga the urge to to use it came up again is that what you said then I would say Kundalini Yoga is working beautifully don't run from it go to where your discomfort is discomfort is aroused only to bring the need for correction to awareness so if I'm only going to follow programs why I feel comfortable where we hold hands and we sing Kumbaya and we give a lot of hugs absolutely nothing is going to happen but if you can get triggered by kundaliya yoga to a desire to go use again then that is absolutely fantastic welcome it run to it say wow that is where my healing is because I'm being triggered any trigger is an opportunity to heal don't avoid triggers don't avoid people that ignore you go to them go to them your healing is there okay uh with that if there's anybody here whom we haven't annoyed or offended we deeply we apologize okay all right uh I I know that there's a question here in the front here for like you go ahead and then we'll hand it here and then go ahead yeah I have a question about um traumatic experiences so when you're you have an emotional response to something how can you pinpoint when it happened in your early ages well you don't necessarily need to pinpoint when it happened but give me a give me an instance would you uh just as a quick demonstration if you're willing to something that you can share nothing drastic dramatic embarrassing just so upset that you had recently shy okay all right never mind let me ask you we don't have to hear about it let's just let's just let me ask you this question never mind the incident that happened forget the story of what happened out there how it felt inside your body was that familiar to you okay how far can you trace back that familiarity your childhood for sure okay whether you recall this first incident that induced that feeling in you or whether you don't recall it really doesn't matter all you gotta get is that what's Happening Here is Dietrich says is a memory of Early Childhood it's not about the present you get that feeling and then you make your mind makes up an interpretation uh I'm feeling this way because such and such but actually you're feeling this way because you've always felt that way yeah I don't think I disagree although it may sound like I will it is in my point from my experience absolutely essential to go back to the earliest memory that I can find and then do the process at that at that moment reinterpret that moment go back to the moment in my with my eyes closed and say how does it feel now okay I'm feeling a lot more at peace with it now then go back again because maybe there was two or three or four other beliefs that were formed at that moment go back to the incident again that came to your mind do the corrections again and see how do you feel now till you're completely at peace with what happened in your case 12 years ago that's absolutely essential from my point of view because everything that happened from them is a replay of that moment so if I can reinterpret that moment all the others will fall into place does that make sense and also it is our experience and that's that's I would say 95 of the time as soon as you're really in your feeling your feeling will take you back because that's the purpose of the feeling the feeling only has one purpose and that's take me back to the identity made up and when did I make it up okay it's over there that's when I made it up my feeling will take me there and and to me it is so important also to understand that people that have addictions or that have um serious issues in their life quote unquote it doesn't have to come from a horrendic traumatic childhood in our experience I would say 75 to 80 percent of the people that come to see us take that feeling back to a moment that my mother or my father was five minutes late picking me up from preschool that's when I made up I'm not lovable that's how incredibly innocuous it may seem and your ego will then actually beat you up and say you have no right to be that upset about that because it was only five minutes or my wife was painting and therefore she didn't come pick me up but it's it's almost always something really seemingly innocuous but huge to a child it is an experience of life and death if my my mom or my dad is not there when they're supposed to be there I am threatened my life is threatened that becomes a traumatic incident does that make sense so it doesn't have to be huge it doesn't have to be I could go on I'm not going on hello thank you for sharing your words of wisdom and and all the deep thinking around addiction and and the self am I question or or comment is around um helping well my daughter who's dealing with addiction but also other people in my community and I work and live in an indigenous Community where there's a lot of trauma and a lot of addiction and I'm an I'm a recovered or recovering addiction I I don't think of myself as an addict uh addicted person still I actually have a philosophy around that but I'm careful what I tell myself and I realize I'm telling a news story and so no when I think about love and how to help my daughter or other people in the community who I see their children suffering in families who are dealing with addictions I think about how do we hold the space to help that child tell another story because I hear Dr gabormate talk about you know how the child picks up in utero this story and how close we are because we love them so much and we're so connected and we're all one right in in my in my world view we're all one we're all related so if we're all related there's a tension a real learning tension for me and trying to hold the space and help people is where do I end and they begin when when they're my daughter and when they inherited the story from me because I look at them and I see that deeply um but I've got to be careful of my own projecting my story and so I guess it's just trying to figure out like how do I on my own journey of self-realization and healing hold the space in a way that helps them to tell a new story Their Own Story um um but especially children like really young children too because they've inherited this memory and it's so deep and it's just sometimes hard because sometimes I've noticed when I've shifted my own energy non-locally I don't even have to be in the same room or the same town with them I see a change your own question just answer your own question I don't have to say anything more about it personally so you so thank you for performing that hahaha and any time uh I'm curious on your opinion or experiences with the relation to depression addiction with physiological illness for example parasite gut issues the gut brain connection inflammation that realm I'm curious so your question is how does a physical illness like having parasites have an impact on on Mental Health the connection there and your experiences helping and treating people I understand you know our psyche and our ego but also how our physical body affects our brain as an organ yeah um the brain of course is connected to the gut you mentioned the gut parasites yes yes the brain the brain is connected to the god uh mostly by means of a nerve called the vagus nerve which is very much under the influence of emotional states that's why we talk about things like you make me sick to my stomach or scared [ __ ] shitless or um pain in the ass or any number of physical states to do with the gut that are mediated by the vagus nerve based on the emotional states but the Vegas doesn't just carry messages from the brain to the gut it carries many more messages from the gut to the brain so the god actually has been called the second brain because it's a sensory organ as well as an immune immune organ as well as an emotionally processing organ and so that when these things go wrong in the god of course will have a powerful effect on the brain and some imbalance in the god will very often show up as imbalance in the brain itself so there's a powerful two-way communication I sensing that sat there I want to say something here is that right well come on up uh it's also now um understood that you know we have about 500 different species of organisms in the small and large intestine some of those organisms are more pathogenic some of them are very friendly uh there's 10 times more bacteria in your gut than there are cells in your body so whose home is it you know who do we think we are um but certain of those bacteria through the vagus nerve create inflammation in the brain where there's inflammation in the brain there's more depression and anxiety so you have to fix the gut to fix the brain and there's now no we now know there's certain species of lactobacillus or bifidobacterium like certain strains that actually decrease anxiety and depression who knew and so you can you can replace those good bacteria which we have in the Beyond addiction program we talk about that as well replace those good bacteria and you reduce some of the anxiety and depression so you always have to heal the gut to heal the brain you got to do that first many people with addictions also are full of candida candidiasis overgrowth of yeast so if you crave sugar if you've been an alcoholic you have a yeast problem you have a Candida problem your brain won't work whether well period until you clear the yeast or the systemic candidiasis side of your system so those are part of the healing process and we want to have three bowel movements a day we want to have 45 grams of fiber a day we got to get rid of the [ __ ] physically as well as emotionally and they go well together thank you I would like to to throw perhaps a non-physical response to that and to and that is um I used to have stenosis and my my good friend the doctor knows what that is stenosis is a narrowing of a bone child through which the nerve runs and it pinches and pins and it gets worse till you can't walk anymore and at one point about two or three two years ago it was crippling it was so painful that I couldn't be in the circle so I went down to my room and laid on my bed but the pain was unbearable I couldn't lie on the bed so I went outside and sat in my rocking chair and then I asked without knowing why who's the eye that's in pain and with that question the pain was gone completely gone now I am not enlightened if I were enlightened I would simply ask that question and not experience the pain anymore as suffering last year I got in a cab and the the taxi driver was from the Punjab and I asked him how was your day and he said oh not so good sir and I said well why not and he said well I didn't sleep very well and I have a really bad headache so I said do you want to keep that headache and he turned around as if I was from Morrison he said of course not and I said are you willing to try a little exercise and he said yes I am I said ask yourself who's the eye that has a headache and he went like that he said how did you do that I didn't do anything see it's like I said earlier it's the body identification that causes the suffering health is inner peace so I can be completely healthy and riddled with cancer because health is inner peace it's my interpretation of what's Happening that causes the suffering not the body does that make sense and that's a stretch for a lot of people but I've had enough pain I've passed two kidney stones with that question who's the eye that's passing the stone no pain and I passed it well before I was hospitalized with kidney stone screaming but that is an incredibly important question to ask under any circumstances who's the eye that's having this experience because if it's not a joyful experience it's not the eye that I am does that make sense so that's really an approach that we use very strongly who is the eye and that's really the subject of this conversation what you keep asking if it makes sense because if it doesn't make sense I'm clearly not expressing myself clearly and I'm highly invested [Laughter] in that I finally get it so if I if I if you don't get it I'm not getting it either so I need to be very clear does that make sense hi there we go uh thank you very much for both speaking um my recent more conscientious awareness of these types of issues of watching some videos online and stuff of your talks um brought me more awareness to The Importance of Being parents to children under the age of seven I have two young boys five and four and a half or five and a half and four at what age do I can I start fostering some type of awareness in them of these types of issues so where are what types of issues well the connection between the formative years up until seven and how it affects them later in life or as they're growing through them I mean why would you want them well at first why would you want them to understand that um because I'm aware of it now and I try and be more aware how it affects me as an adult so that I can be a better parent to them I guess well how about how about you don't worry about what ideas to knock into their heads whether they're true or not how about giving them an environment in which they can stay connected to themselves so they don't have to figure out what you have to figure out at your age well I think my parents thought the same thing when they're I don't know what they thought but did their parents work on themselves like you're working yourself right now I'm sure that's the answer yeah yeah so the the thing is to be the person in whose presence those kids can connect to themselves and stay connected that's becoming harder and harder these days well that has to do with what we both said to the person who has the question about the circle about who you being right in the moment so I would say at this point uh your main task as a father and it's not a task that I carried out very well when my kids were that age but your main task as a father just to be so safe for them that they never have to disconnect from themselves and to manifest so much love in their presence that they know that the universe is love and you don't have to worry about then about what they will know and what not they won't know later on about the early formative stuff if on the other hand later on they start asking those questions that's the time to start giving them the answers but not before thank you I would add to that it's you teach by demonstration so the more at peace I am the more aware I am I'm not in the fortune unfortunate position the fortune position to have four or five-year-olds but I wouldn't worry about it at all I would just do my own work I have a little story about that it was a couple that came to see me that were very close to divorcing absolutely hated each other couldn't stand each other the first two sessions three sessions went really well they really understood that their happiness did not depend on their partner that they were entirely 100 responsible for the relationship each individually for their relationship because it's with themselves the third session the fourth session they asked if they could bring their four and five-year-old boys well these were little Hells on Wheels they were they didn't pay any attention they ran around the room they were doing somersaults they were hitting each other it was a somewhat chaotic session to put it euphemistically they went home the father had got in the habit of meditating and he was sitting meditating it was very be Blissful and very peaceful and the little five-year-old had a brilliant idea to blow up a paper bag and blow up the paper bag went next to his daddy and went boom and his father exploded and sent them to his room the next morning the little boy comes down one session of listening or not listening came down and said Daddy when you were upset last night that wasn't about me kids no so if I do my work the kids will know I don't have to worry about it if if parents if I can take the word you out of my vocabulary when I talk to kids when I talk to my partner when I talk to anybody and only talk about the self I will be heard the minute I say you to either my partner or kids or anybody else the door closes nobody wants to hear it they want to hear who you are at that moment who am I that's what they're vitally interested in they're not interested in me telling them how they should be they couldn't care less because I'm not demonstrating it but if I demonstrate it there'll be interested in the same thing with that Circle story if I demonstrate it people will come to the circle absolutely does that make sense okay uh who's got the mic now go ahead first thank you to both of you um first uh to Gabor I accept your apology okay I didn't upset you that's right or annoying me sorry to hear that that's on you um so we've been talking about um how negative emotions trigger implicit memories right I don't I don't I don't know that either of us will use the word negative by the way um we'll use uh any Trigger or upset you said today okay yeah fair enough um yeah how does that apply to positive emotions can you have a positive emotion and be completely present or does it or the positive emotions also trigger implicitly well the first question to you is who's judging whether an emotion is positive or negative who's making that evaluation who's putting value on some emotions and um placing uh a negative interpretation if you like on other emotions who's doing that that's a good point so if we take sort of the the value out of it a pleasurable experience or if we call it joy that you have the the present moment experience of Joy does that mean that that's an implicit memory of a childhood experience or can it be purely present well the the teachers make a distinction they don't call Joy and emotion they call it a state of being and they say it's an essential aspect of Who You Are so when you're experiencing true Joy you're experiencing yourself now you may have experienced it before but the experience is you in the present thank you okay I'm hoping I can get a little a little dose of reality from the two of you you seem feisty enough and I need your guidance um I I am a big believer in the power of of compassion and how far that can reach and I my education I'm not I'm not an academic my my experience and my education comes from way too many years on the street and in the shelters and finally through recovery and and feeling the compassion from others um I have to deliver a talk in front of a tedx audience with my big lofty ideas about compassion and and I wanted to know your feelings on if if the General Public felt that that addicted citizens deserved uh treatment then and and we were treating an addicted person with more compassion do you think the government would provide more opportunities for for treatment well um I wonder if you happen to see an op-ed I wrote for the Vancouver Sun this last Monday I I don't know yeah look for look for it online okay you can find it okay and uh it had to do with a study done by S7 an academic at Simon Fraser University who found that they looked at a certain number of addicted people in the downtown east side and after a number of years a lot of expense a lot of treatment programs so on their legal status didn't improve and the health didn't improve and you know what are we spending all this money on and his question of how are we how to solve the problem of the downtown east side he's coming up and it's based on a fundamental uh misconception which is that there is the problem of the addict or the problem of the downtown east side the problem is that is that of the whole country and the whole culture which generates a lot of pain a lot of hurt for people and some people escape from that pain through addiction which is what addictions are all about so my first my mentor and addiction and somebody would have heard it is never why the addiction but why the pain and that's what you have to have people understand when people get that unless they're too close to their own pain so they don't want to go to that place of vulnerability they actually feel grateful because they want to be compassionate they just don't know how to be compassionate because they see these people breaking the law and all this kind of stuff once they understand that it's about pain a lot of people open with compassion and as to how the government is influenceable well the previous government was completely impervious completely impervious to fact the documentation to um emotional please to anything that they would just rigidly refuse to show any program that showed compassion and sensible treatment they wanted to shut down the current government I'm very grateful is taking a different attitude so the current health Minister last week visited the injection site and the Hastings which the previous government did its best to shut down so yes the more you can convey the the truth that addictions are not about bad habits they're not about um conscious choices I would say but they're about the choices people are driven to when they're suffering more pain than they can bear that uh really opens up compassion for a lot of people so I would say I would suggest that you fashion your talk around those lines assume that your listeners want to be compassionate assume that your listeners want to love assume that your listeners want to help and it's just one final comment more than you said you spent too many years on the street no you didn't I think it was just enough yes you gave me the last education you spent you spent as many years there as you needed to not one second less or more thank you hi um first of all thanks um my question is um basically I'm kind of in like a transition period right now where I've completed a program a treatment program um and this feeling comes this overwhelming feeling comes like I I'm doing good and I'm all okay it's gonna be good I got this my ducks in a row and okay and then I just start getting these overwhelming feelings that I why are you doing this you're just setting yourself up so that then when you relapse you know you're just gonna feel worse about it all and these sabotage thoughts of like this is all just a big setup for when I do relapse go back to my real life and then look back at it and feel like crap about all these good things that I did for myself all these things that I could do but why did I do it just so I can feel worse in the end so my question is what do you have to say about um these overwhelming thoughts that come about when I start getting successful and start feeling like authentic again fantastic question the overwhelming feelings when I'm becoming successful and I define success very simply as a state of being a state of joy that is success my ego the ego which is the self that I am not but the self that tells me that that's who I am cannot live in that state so the ego is going to fight back and you may have noticed when you have and we've certainly noticed that at the center over and over when somebody has a really good day we tell them be aware because tomorrow your ego is going to come up with stuff you haven't even thought of yet it's going to come from behind you and hit you in the back of the neck it's going to do all kinds of wonderful things that's good news because that means the fact that you're hearing these voices that attack you to tell you why you're really doing this you're going to fail anyway that's the voice you need to hear in order to heal that self do you got that so the self that you are now working on or working towards which is the true self which is the capital S self would never think of drinking or doing drugs or doing stupid stuff like that but the self that hates itself is not finished with you yet so it's going to come back up again and it's going to put up a hell of a fight because you're threatening the very existence of the identity you made up yeah and that's not going to go easy I've never seen an ego say okay you win I now know your love I give up it's not going to happen so that little self that I made up is so full of self-hatred that it's going to do everything it can to sabotage my process and you have to be aware of that and you have to learn to listen and say who is the Ayah that just said that is that truly who I am and the answer is no that's not who I am but that's the eye I made up that's the eye that always fell that always failed that always fell down again after thinking that I was getting up but I'm not listening to that self anymore I have to learn to listen to the true self and the true self will not speak unless I ask that I have to learn to ask so my little self comes in and say you're going to fail again Watch what you're doing this is just a setup you've always failed right how many treatments have you been to dozens you will fail again okay wonderful you say I hear that now I want to hear from the loving self what does my loving self say and my loving self says oh honey you've never failed everything you've done has been for you everything that's happened has been for you and all I need to do is listen to that voice and accept that truth and then I know that it's for me and then all I have to do is live according to that voice but that's the truth again that we're talking about I hear this voice or I can say thank you that I've heard for 73 years you're a total piece of [ __ ] yes I know thank you I'm fully aware of it however there's a part of me that knows that that is not true that part has to be brought up that bird has to be educated that part has to be acknowledged and made more and more obvious within my experience cool thank you doable yeah are you worth it yes it's the only question are you worth it yes then you will thank you thank you so that yeah um that will be the last that will have been that was the last question and answer of the evening um uh those of you that wish to participate in a workshop tomorrow you can talk to people about that it'll be this working with people in Greater depth um other than that um before I pass the mic on to sat there on I will just uh thank you uh thank the edwick um it's uh we've never worked together before by the way it's wonderful to do so thank you very much yeah it's not work no it's not you're right uh uh so thank you all

Channel: Inside Serene

Views: 103,834

Keywords: Gabor Maté +: Diederik Exploring the Depths of Identity and Pain, gabor maté +: diederik exploring teh depths of identity and pain, gabor maté +: diederik exploring the depths of identity adn pain, gabor maté +: diederik exploring teh depths of identity adn pain, Gabor Mate, Diederik, pain and addiction, Identity and Pain, Trauma, Healing, childhood trauma, healing and pain, Gabor Mate and Diederik, Gabor Maté +: Diederik, thoughts of pain, Who do you think you are by Gabor Mate

Id: OAVxPAAjVrQ

Length: 112min 7sec (6727 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 16 2023