TRANSCRIPT
Sometimes I just need to be alone. Alone with myself, my true self. Alone with my thoughts and my ideas and silence. Alone with my own memories. My ability to process things without having outside interference. Alone such that I don’t have to see people, don’t have to answer emails and messages, don’t want to be on the internet, don’t want to connect with people. Sounds kind of bad in our world. Oh, he wants to be alone. There’s something wrong with him. But I think it can be very healthy.
I just spent a few weeks spending a lot of time with people, people who didn’t really get me, didn’t really understand me so well, such that I could only show certain sides of myself. Sometimes I can’t help myself and I show more sides of myself, the sides of myself that I show here on this YouTube channel, but it didn’t always work out so well. That seems to be the way of the world.
I mean, I think of the first couple of decades of my life, my childhood, where I could only show tiny little bits of my true self. The only sides of myself that I was allowed to show in my family system were false sides of me, sides of me that I had to present through a lens that was acceptable to the people who had the power over me so I could get loved. And it still goes on in the world.
And so I woke up this morning and just thought, I’m going to be alone today. I have a little bit of free time. It’s a weekend. I don’t have any work to do. Now I am coming here. I am sitting in front of this camera talking about this, presenting it to the public. But at this moment, I am alone with my true self, with a camera witnessing me. The camera representing a public who hopefully can get some value from this because I think it’s true for a lot of us.
I think it’s true for everyone who is struggling to become a real self, to convert the false sides of themselves, the traumatized sides of themselves into healthy sides of themselves, real honest sides of themselves. Not real in the way of being real to the world, but real within oneself. And I need this. I need this a lot. Actually, I actually think as a child, the one place I really was allowed to be real was in nature, away from civilization.
It’s funny how being civilized is considered a positive word, a great thing about humanity. But so much of civilization, as it related to the deep truth of me, the honest truth of me, was uncivilized. It was kind of barbaric even. And when I went out in nature, the dog-eat-dog world, the law of tooth and fang, the world of evolution and survival and survival of the fittest, there I could just be me.
And I still see that about myself. I was well recently traveling in a very remote part of the world, a place with a lot of people where nobody really got me. I learned a lot. I got a lot of value from it. I chose to be there. I wanted to learn about this world, this culture, these cultures. But when I think back on it, the time that was most meaningful to me was a time when I went up a slot canyon, a deserted desert canyon up into the hills.
I had to climb with my backpack on my back and my little guitar along with me piece by piece. I had to climb up parts, climb down to get stuff, bring it up. I went to a place where nobody could get to. And I went far, far remote, remotely into this canyon. And I camped there for several days. Barely had any food. Thankfully, I had enough water, and I just stayed there with my thoughts with some wild animals.
What was very interesting is because there were no people there, I could see that probably—[clears throat]—no one had been there in a long, long, long time. The animals were not so afraid of me. It was birds. That was what was fascinating. These beautiful little birds were coming down really close to me and looking at me, watching me. I put out a little water for them. I thought, well, maybe they’ll, you know, they’re thirsty. They’d like to drink. But they weren’t interested in that.
And I noticed that even when I got far away, they didn’t come down and drink. They were just curious, who is this being? Who is this human thing? I don’t know if they’d even seen people before. Maybe they were young birds or maybe they just lived in such isolation that people weren’t around, but they were my companions, and I could be a true self in front of them. And I didn’t talk when I was there. I just was silent. And maybe they liked that. Maybe they trusted me more because I wasn’t saying anything.
But just reflecting on my life in a way much as I am doing now verbally and also thinking how hard it is to be a true self in this crazy world. How hard it is to be real in a world that doesn’t value realness, even hates it, considers it an anti-value. [sighs] I think about people hitting kids, even people I know sometimes telling me they hit their kids, and I’ve seen it happen so many times, and defending it. Well, that’s the only way you can train them.
And I think, well, what better way to crush the truth of a child, a child who is expressing himself or herself? I guess I think the amazing thing is that anybody can become true in this world after what we have to go through to survive the cults of our family system, the cults of school and religion that’s everywhere and laws and morals that are unlawful and immoral.
But basically this idea of the cult of the family system, very few people talk about this and think about this. I think sometimes the only people who can consider it, first of all, had to be so strong emotionally and mentally to have the perspective to see the truth of their family and also had to have a bunch of things line up to make them realize they needed to get out of their family systems.
Most people have no clue that their family system is a cult, that their parents are cult leaders because they’re in the cult. They’re so shut down and split off from themselves and broken that they become like their parents. No surprise. They grow up to have children who become like they were shut down and split off, and they become the cult leaders. This is the prize for growing up and becoming adults. Now they can become empowered and have power over powerless others.
Powerless others who the legal systems of the world and the religions of the world say it is okay to shut down, even though it isn’t okay. And when I’m alone, I can consider these things in depth and in detail. When I’m with others, most others, 99.9% of others, normal people, I can think of these thoughts in tiny little glimmers, but not very long because just the being around them, the energy around them is a replication of where I came from.
It’s like I really can lose myself around other people, and I’m strong. Decades of healing and strength. Sometimes the best way my strength can manifest is the little voice in my head that just says, “Get away. Protect myself.” Funny that sometimes living in a nice house, a safe place with a lot of safe walls and a lock and a door, yet have other people in the space with me.
The safety that I have, the expense that I go to to have this safety is not as good as living in a dangerous little remote slot canyon in a country where I need a visa to enter, where if it rains, I could get washed out. Where all I have is a tiny little $40 Chinese tent that I’m sleeping in that has a zipper that barely works that I have to be really careful to close it.
Where it’s so hot during the day that I can’t exercise too much or I will sweat too much and then have to drink too much water and then I’ll run out and not be able to stay long enough. Strange to think that that wildly remote, supposedly very dangerous place that I have to really climb to get into…
Strong enough or brave enough to climb into such a place. That that place is safer, a place that nurtures me.
And I also reflect on me sitting here talking now. Why I do this? It’s hard. It’s hard to do this. I mean, at the moment, it’s kind of easy. I open my mouth and my thoughts express themselves through my mouth. But afterward, it will be difficult. I will not sleep well tonight. Because [sighs] I know this video will be shared publicly in a way that will present some very real true part of me to some people who won’t like it. Some people who will hate it. Some people who will be very threatened by it as my parents once were threatened by these very ideas.
Threatened by this part of me and then threatened by my reactions to them shutting me down. Threatened by my sadness and my anger and my despair and my expressions of pain that threatened them too. So they had to shut that down too. So, it was like layers upon layers upon layers of being shut down.
Hunting for me is like hunting for fossils in sedimentary rock. Where I was camping, there was sedimentary rock. There were fossils. Digging down layers, the fossils get older and older and older. And that’s my excavation process. That’s probably part of why I really like to dig for fossils. It’s a metaphor for digging for the fossil me that got buried under unnatural catastrophes, the volcanoes of my father’s anger, the earthquakes of my mother’s rejection.
And so here I am in this room of silence other than my voice, a protected place where I can share with others on this path to truth.
[music]