TRANSCRIPT
If you dare to look within, within your psych, within your past, within your family, within your family history, all I can say is be prepared. It’s not easy, that’s putting it nicely. I’m speaking from my own experience and from watching many other people. Looking within is dangerous. I don’t think it would be dangerous if the world were healthier, if the world were more mature, if more people were looking within. But it’s rare. It’s really rare.
I know sometimes in my small circle of people, my circle of people, even on the internet, reading comments on this YouTube channel, it can seem like a lot of people are doing this. But that’s not the case, not compared to the norm, the billions of people out in the world. I travel a lot. I get out in the world. I get way out of my circle. I burst out of my circle, and in that way, I look without. I look outside of the world, outside of myself, outside of my psyche. I look into the worlds of other people. I live with people all the time in my travels, in very remote places in the world and in my own culture too.
I also remember my childhood. I remember what it was like being in a more or less normal American family. I think of some of the very random places I’ve been in the world, in Africa, in Asia, in South America, very remote places where actually the normal people there, who may be totally different on the surface from my childhood family, are actually much more like my childhood family than I am like my family and I was like my family.
It’s torture to look within in this crazy world because there’s so much pressure not to do it, and there’s so many threats if you do do it. And I think about why I make these videos and why I wrote essays for years and years before I made these videos. It’s been 20 years now since I’ve been publicly putting out information like this, same messages, same ideas: healing childhood history, looking at childhood history, looking at childhood trauma, critiquing parents, being honest about what happened to us, being honest about what we became as the result of that.
And why do I keep doing it? And why did I do it then? Why was I so driven to do it? And it certainly wasn’t for popularity. And the reason I know this is because at times this YouTube channel has become popular. Certain videos have become popular, and part of me is like, this is not what I want. In fact, I feel relieved when they become less popular. Many, many times people say, do X, do Y, do Z, and your channel’s going to blow up. Join forces with this person, give interviews to this person, interview this person, your channel’s going to blow up, you’ll be mega popular. And I think, no, that’s not what I want.
It’s like this is stressful. Yet why do I share the message? I think this message is not for the norm. This message is not for the masses. This message is not intended to become popular, at least now. This message is for, I believe it in my heart, this message is for the rare few who are going against the grain and who are looking within. I aim to provide an ally, and I think my image of that ally is the image of the ally that I didn’t have when I was all alone looking within and going through hell and torture.
And everybody was telling me, starting with the people who supposedly loved me the most in my life, my parents. They told me I was crazy. They told me I was wrong. I was bad. I was unethical for talking and thinking about these things. And heaven forbid speaking about these things with people outside the family, breaking family secrets. Yet for me, I had to do it. I was compelled, and it was so painful because when I talked about it, I did not get mirroring. I didn’t get positive feedback, very, very rarely. Sometimes little bits and pieces here and there, but mostly none. And often I just felt more alone.
And often the message I got fed back from the outside world was the same message my parents had been giving me all along since I was a little boy: shh, be quiet, don’t talk about it, don’t tell, don’t think about this, push it down, feel guilty for thinking about it, you’re a bad person, you have betrayed the family system, you have betrayed your parents. Whereas the message I was getting when I looked within was that they had betrayed me repeatedly. And so I had to become that mirror for myself. I had to become that ally for myself. I had to develop that extra third eye, as it were, that could look at me and speak to me and say, no, you’re doing the right thing, Daniel. It’s okay what you’re doing. It’s important that you do that. It’s supposed to be stressful. There’s no way around it being stressful.
I’ve talked a lot about journaling, written a lot about journaling, journaled a lot. Journaling helped me do that. Journaling helped save my life. Journaling, in a way, became like an external person for me, the person that I needed. This person who could say to me, I would write it down. It was almost like I was channeling some extra part of myself on paper that said, you’re doing the right thing, you’re healing, you’re growing, you are being honest. Honesty is good.
I learned along the way that honesty is bad. Honesty is dangerous. Honesty will get you rejected by the people who love you the most. It was my delusion that they loved me the most. They didn’t love me the most, and breaking that delusion was terribly painful. The delusion was a delusion of comfort, of acceptance, of fitting in, of being the person my parents and my teachers and my society wanted me to be: parents, teachers, society, mostly my family, who didn’t defend me, didn’t defend the little vulnerable me. I had to develop that myself by looking within, and man, it was hell to defend myself against these people. It was a crime in their eyes.
And so this was another consequence of looking within, that suddenly I was put in a position where I had to defend myself because suddenly I had had a self to defend. And part of why I have been compelled to share this, no matter the pain, the cost, the stress, the bad nights of sleep, like last night, which is why I’m kind of tired now, why I needed to share that message: listen to me, I’m tired, and my brain isn’t as strong as it normally is. And suddenly I can’t even remember where I started.
Giving people an ally, reminding myself and others that it’s okay. Now I remember. It’s funny, yes, I’m tired, and that’s why it’s hard to remember, you know, my train of thought sometimes. But the deeper reason is that when I really emotionally tap into how illegal it is to speak about these things, literally illegal in the laws of my family system, the laws of the parents, the laws that govern the safety of a child, what I came to realize and why I need to share this message is that I realized I wasn’t that unusual. Actually, this is universal.
What I have done, the response I got from the world, this is a normal response for people who look within because I’ve heard other people go through the exact same thing, the exact same dynamics: looking within, discovering things, going, wow, this is the truth, this is what I’ve always needed, this is what will save my life, and having the people around you try to kill you for it, emotionally destroy you, slander you, libel you, say horrible things, gossip, you know, hospitalize you, give you a mental health diagnosis. All these different things that happen to people, these are the universal, normal, expectable patterns for someone who looks within.
And so that’s why I have to share this message, because I know I’m not alone. And maybe 5% of me is looking for support when I share these messages, but 95% of me is sharing this as a model that maybe can help other people. So to conclude this, I’m going to go back to the beginning. If you dare to look within, you’re a brave soul. If you dare to look within, and if you dare to look within and you feel these things and you find these things and you…
Suffer the torments as the result of finding the truth within. Hopefully, a video like this will be your ally.